Fitting a Raspberry Pi into an Amiga 500 without Modifying the Original Case

For fans of retrocomputing, the most egregious faux pas you could make would be irreversibly modifying a beloved classic computer. Just a few years ago, you couldn’t pay someone to take most of those computers off your hands. But now they’re rapidly becoming cherished collectibles, and, like any collectible, they’re most valuable in their original condition.

So, when Mattsoft on the Amiga Love forum wanted to upgrade his Amiga 500 with a Raspberry Pi, he took the time to do so without destructively modifying the original hardware. As you’d expect, the Raspberry Pi 3B is a lot smaller than the Amiga’s original motherboard, so there was a lot of space inside the case to work with. Mattsoft designed and 3D-printed custom brackets to mount the Raspberry Pi and keyboard adapter inside the case, and additional mounts to make the connectors (like the USB ports) accessible.

That keyboard adapter—from Tynemouth Software—made it easy to connect the keyboard to the Raspberry Pi via USB, and even provided additional DB9 connectors for vintage joysticks. On the software side, Mattsoft used DietPi and Amiberry. DietPi is a lightweight alternative to Raspbian, and Amiberry is a configurable Amiga emulator designed specifically for Arm-based computers like the Raspberry Pi. Together, they allow the user to boot into the emulator in just seconds, and then provide a faithful reproduction of the Amiga 500 experience.