So, how do you end up with a spanking new-looking Amiga A600? Well, I decided to take an odd approach. Instead of getting a nice, clean A600 and tarting it up, I actually got 2 different machines and took the best bits from them. Here's how it went.

     It all started when I stumbled across an A600 in a second-hand shop. The bloke wanted 20GBP for it so I bit his hand off and headed home with my quarry. The unit worked, but the keyboard membrane was faulty and there was some cosmetic damage. So I headed off to eBay to try and get a tidier model.

     A couple of weeks (and 16GBP) later and another A600 lands on my doorstep. This one had a faulty motherboard and floppy drive, but the case, keyboard and ROM were all good. I set about dismantling the pair.

     Once I had them in bits I took to whitening the cases. The English Amiga Board is a wealth of information and there's a thread about using peroxide solutions to aid whitening. The concoctions now go by the name of Retr0brite, but some folk are now using this as a verb as well as a noun!!

Here's a half-retr0brited case (right) compared to a fully retr0brited top case. You can't see too much difference here, but in the flesh it looks great:

Here's the full parts list. All cleaned up and ready for the rebuild:

First up is the keyboard. It was disassembled and then retr0brited before being washed in the sink with a toothbrush. Obviously the membrane and metal baseplate have been removed so all we need to worry about are the steel springs. A quick blast with a hair-drier and a night in the airing cupboard and we're ready to go.

In goes the first screw. Only another 20 to go!! I'm not sure if there's a correct order to insert these, but I did the 4 corners and then worked from the inside out.