As Moore’s Law continues to grant us ridiculously powerful computers that we can fit inside of our pockets, the experience of using some of the earliest personal desktop computers continues to become an even further distant memory. Unsurprisingly, some people aren’t ready for that memory to fade yet.
Among others is Philippe Lang, an IT specialist and self-described “early Commodore Amiga Fan” who regularly enjoys discussions about his “Amiga years” with IT buddies. One topic that the group kept coming back to was that the early-90s plastic housings had been “yellowed, like super yellowed” and in some cases, feature cracks and/or holes.
“So the idea came to buy new cases for our A1200s to be young again,” explains Lang. “But besides eBay – where we can find used and partially yellowed cases – there aren’t many other places to go. From this ‘buying’ idea, we shifted our thinking to ‘create new cases’ altogether.”
According to Lang, any new Amiga 1200 cases would be manufactured under the Amiga, Inc. license, which would make him legally safe if he wishes to reproduce them.
With those bases covered, Lang is now busy recreating Amiga history:
Since the original molds were (sadly) scrapped by original manufacturer Commodore & Escom, a significant part of the casing reproduction process involved 3D modeling everything from scratch all over again – which was done by a team of SolidWorks designers.
With an army of like-minded Amiga fans across the world who have shown support on Kickstarter, Lang is on his way towards manufacturing the all-new Amiga 1200 cases after having raised nearly $110,000 of his campaign goal of $140,000 with almost two weeks left to go in his campaign.
Find out more over at Kickstarter.
