Philippe Lang is looking for $140,863 from fellow Amiga enthusiasts, which he’ll spend producing a run of new cases for Amiga (and Amiga-alike) computers, in 12 colors of UV-resistant plastic.
The money mostly will go to producing the three molds necessary to reproduce the original Amiga cases, tweaked to allow both original Amiga motherboards and new Amiga-ish systems made from Raspberry Pis and other reboots. The new cases will have dust-covered holes for USB ports and other modern niceties.
This Kickstarter is phase one: if he succeeds, Lang plans on making repro keycaps and keyboards for your franken-Amiga.
Lang is part of a new movement of Commodore enthusiasts who’re making new molds for their old machines. Earlier this year, there was a successful kickstarter that produced Commodore 64 cases from the original molds, which complemented 2014’s limited run ofnew C64 motherboards from Individual Computers.
Back in 2009, old computer enthusiasts were cheered by the appearance of Retr0bright, an open-source plastic polishing cream that restored the original color of yellowing old plastic, such as that used for the housing of Amigas and Commodore 64s.
Retr0bright was a beautiful dream, but it was just a dream. Plastics treated with Retr0bright quickly go yellow again, even if they’re kept out of strong light.
Given the poor material quality of those original PC housings, it seems the only way to pursue the dream of ever-bright cases for retro computers is to make new parts with modern plastics.
New AMIGA 1200 Cases (Made From New Molds) [Philippe Lang/Kickstarter]
(via /.)