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Author Topic: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip  (Read 7946 times)

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Offline desiv

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2012, 02:26:26 AM »
Quote from: barney;717895
The reason I have doubt is because if the hack is absolutely necessary and I never did it yet, then I likely don't have 1mb chip Ram.
Open up a SHELL and type "avail" to see.

Very few A500's came with 1M CHIP.  The A500+ did, although I think some very early ones were 512k CHIP.

desiv
Amiga 1200 w/ ACA1230/28 - 4G CF, MAS Player, ext floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 500 w/ 2M CHIP and 8M FAST RAM, DCTV, AEHD floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 1000 w/ 4M FAST RAM, DUAL CF hard drives, external floppy.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #15 on: December 07, 2012, 07:15:59 AM »
Quote from: desiv;717897
Very few A500's came with 1M CHIP.

I dunno if that is true. My "Flight of Fantasy" pack came set for 1M chip. Annoying when playing Lionheart
 

Offline Lurch

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #16 on: December 07, 2012, 07:23:10 AM »
1MB RAM was very common in New Zealand. Everyone I knew had at least that. Most of the packs that Commodore pushed had the 1MB as a selling point.

I remember drooling over a 2MB upgrade at the local PC store back in the day :-)
-=[LurcH]=-
A500 Plus Black 030@40MHz 128MB | A1200T 060@80MHz 320MB | Pegasos II G4@1GHz 1GB  | Amiga Future Sub
 

Offline desiv

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #17 on: December 07, 2012, 04:26:23 PM »
Quote from: alexh;717909
I dunno if that is true. My "Flight of Fantasy" pack came set for 1M chip. Annoying when playing Lionheart

Not quite sure what that means..  :confused:

OH!  I just re-read what I typed..
Duh!!

I know what you mean..  I was considering an A500 to be different from an A500+.

Even if you include the 500+ as an A500 tho, I still think very few A500's came with 1M CHIP.
Only near the end of life when they were stuffing a few A500+ motherboards in the A500 cases, as I understand it, and then the A500+'s.

I'm not saying it didn't happen.  I didn't say that no A500's came with 1M CHIP.  Just very few.

Of course, in that case, I'm assuming that very few of the total Amiga 500's that were sold were 500+'s.

desiv
(And by "very few" I mean in comparison to the Amiga 500's sold.  It could well be many thousands.  But compared to the (something over a million) 500's sold, I consider that very few.)  I suppose I should have said a small percentage.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2012, 04:41:16 PM by desiv »
Amiga 1200 w/ ACA1230/28 - 4G CF, MAS Player, ext floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 500 w/ 2M CHIP and 8M FAST RAM, DCTV, AEHD floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 1000 w/ 4M FAST RAM, DUAL CF hard drives, external floppy.
 

Offline nickoteen

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #18 on: December 07, 2012, 05:56:53 PM »
Quote from: utri007;717211
Here is how to do it rev 6 mobo
 
http://s2.postimage.org/8o0x83w69/A500_6a_1_MBCHIP.png
 
With this, you can use you slot expansion memory as a chip ram. You can also solder memory chips to directly to mobo
 
You have 8mb fast? Do you have harddrive controller?? If so you should use whdload

Uh-Oh ! Cool ! Just what I was gonna google myself to. Thanks !
Amiga 500: 1MB chip/8MB fast/Ide68k - 2GB SD/KS 3.1/MC68010/FULL ECS
 

Offline psxphill

Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #19 on: December 07, 2012, 06:31:25 PM »
Quote from: desiv;717948
Only near the end of life when they were stuffing a few A500+ motherboards in the A500 cases, as I understand it, and then the A500+'s.

I never heard of any revision 6 motherboards being shipped with 1mb of ram, even though they obviously designed it specifically for that. However it would conflict with memory in the trapdoor and they didn't include a clock on the motherboard. So I doubt they shipped any with the memory on board and I can't see them fitting a memory expansion to them.
 
The revision 8 in an a500 case was down to marketing as far as I can tell. For some reason they didn't launch the a500+ in some markets. It turned up in the UK early due to the last a500's being on a ship when demand stripped the supply in the run up to Christmas, all they ready were a500+'s that could be put on a plane. These did ship with 1mb of chip ram, and with kickstart 1.3. I wouldn't bother with an a500+ though, an a500 with trapdoor memory expansion is fine for floppy games. For anything else an a1200 is better.
 

Offline Zac67

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #20 on: December 07, 2012, 06:57:29 PM »
A - real - A500+ does support 2 MB chip ram though... ;)
 

Offline psxphill

Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #21 on: December 07, 2012, 09:40:11 PM »
Quote from: Zac67;717971
A - real - A500+ does support 2 MB chip ram though... ;)

You can get 2mb chip ram on an a500, but it's just not worth it.
 

Offline desiv

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #22 on: December 07, 2012, 09:50:25 PM »
I suppose that depends..
It's not that difficult to get 2M CHIP on an A500.  I have that.
The mod mentioned and a DKB miniMegaCHIP.
Wasn't that spendy...

But, is it worth it?
Interesting question.  
If you're wanting to do more serious video/graphics or music/sound stuff, then yeah.
Those things can get CHIP hungry.

But for the average user?  (Like me)...
Well, I'm glad I have a 2M CHIP A500.  It was fun to get there, but I doubt I'll ever really use it....

Still, I got a decent deal on the DKB, so I think it was worth it.  For the Amiga enthusiast in me... ;-)

desiv
Amiga 1200 w/ ACA1230/28 - 4G CF, MAS Player, ext floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 500 w/ 2M CHIP and 8M FAST RAM, DCTV, AEHD floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 1000 w/ 4M FAST RAM, DUAL CF hard drives, external floppy.
 

Offline barney

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #23 on: December 08, 2012, 01:27:24 AM »
I was always under the assumption that if you installed the common 512kb expansion in the trap door, then you would then have 1mb chip ram.
 

Offline Zac67

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #24 on: December 08, 2012, 11:47:08 AM »
Quote from: barney;718035
I was always under the assumption that if you installed the common 512kb expansion in the trap door, then you would then have 1mb chip ram.


Nope. Without A19 and _EXRAM being correct it's still $C00000 'slow' RAM.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #25 on: December 08, 2012, 04:29:42 PM »
Quote from: Zac67;718083
Nope. Without A19 and _EXRAM being correct it's still $C00000 'slow' RAM.

I've ended up selling my A1500, but that was setup for 1mb chip ram and loads of software refuses to run on it (it's kickstart 1.3).
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #26 on: December 08, 2012, 04:44:47 PM »
Quote from: desiv;717948
Not quite sure what that means..  :confused: I know what you mean..  I was considering an A500 to be different from an A500+.
Flight of Fantasy A500's were NOT A500+. They were half ECS A500's (ECS Agnus but regular Denise) and mine with a 512Kbyte trapdoor RAM was configured for 1Mbyte of Chip RAM.
 

Offline desiv

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #27 on: December 08, 2012, 06:44:11 PM »
Quote from: alexh;718108
Flight of Fantasy A500's were NOT A500+. They were half ECS A500's (ECS Agnus but regular Denise) and mine with a 512Kbyte trapdoor RAM was configured for 1Mbyte of Chip RAM.
So, I wonder if those were some of the ones that were talked about where it was a 500+ MB in an A500 case?? I don't know enough about them to know whether motherboard revs are generally specific to 500+ or ?????

Otherwise, kind of weird that Commodore would bother to mod boards for 1M CHIP, but it is Commodore...  ;-) :-)

I still think it's probably in the less common area, but that's just a guess.

desiv
Amiga 1200 w/ ACA1230/28 - 4G CF, MAS Player, ext floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 500 w/ 2M CHIP and 8M FAST RAM, DCTV, AEHD floppy, and 1084S.
Amiga 1000 w/ 4M FAST RAM, DUAL CF hard drives, external floppy.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #28 on: December 08, 2012, 07:00:12 PM »
Quote from: desiv;718125
So, I wonder if those were some of the ones that were talked about where it was a 500+ MB in an A500 case?
Nope sorry. This was April 1990, over a year before the chipset for the A500+ was even invented. Months before the A3000 was launched.

I'm not sure there wasn't even an ECS denise at the time. Just this 1Mbyte Agnus.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2012, 07:05:15 PM by alexh »
 

Offline kirk_m

Re: A500 512KB Chip VS A500 1MB Chip
« Reply #29 from previous page: September 04, 2017, 04:16:42 AM »
I know this is an old thread, but, if you are still around, can you provide a picture of this setup?  I have already done the 1mb chip mod on my Rev6a board, but, want the ability to switch between 512k/512k configuration as you describe.  I have a 512K expansion in the trapdoor port.

Would I use a switch like that in the link below?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3220?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjNaop8-K1gIVkrXACh1VLwIaEAQYAiABEgKPgvD_BwE


Quote from: Zac67;717233
To change a 512/512 KB machine to 1 MB chip you need
- 1 MB Agnus
- change the A19 jumper to map the 2nd 512 KB to $080000 (instead of $C00000)
- cut the _EXRAM trace or jumper to disable the $C00000 RAM

The 1 MB Agnus by itself doesn't cause any incompatibility issues.
Some (extremely few) programs get confused by 1 MB chip RAM. For those you can add a switch to the A19 line (JP2 jumper) to switch between both jumper positions. $C00000 pseudo fast RAM will only be present if _EXRAM is active (usually closed by the trapdoor board), so you need a 2nd switch or a dual contact one.
Just don't set Agnus A19 to CPU A19 and activate _EXRAM at the same time - the machine will crash on boot-up. Also note that if you switch the A19 line while powered up the system will crash violently. ;)
« Last Edit: September 04, 2017, 05:01:00 AM by kirk_m »
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