Amiga 500 Rev 5. and ECS chip set...??

[omnicron10]

I got the docs for the Expansions Systems Baseboard if you need them.

A chap on EAB was kind enough to send them to me.

I will try to find a place to host them online.

I put them on the ZONE at EAB so if anyone needs to get it they can for a while.

[Rabbi]

Don't forget the following mods are 100% needed if you're going to upgrade a version 5 A500 motherboard Kickstart ROM:

1) Bend pin #31 up 180 degrees & solder an insulated wire connecting it to pin #21
2) Solder an insulated wire onto pin #1 that terminates into the socket where pin #31 would've gone.

I didn't do this originally.  I plugged the ROM in without this modification & must've damaged a chip or something because there's a column of spurious lines in the column whereever the cursor is.  Also in the 3.1 boot-up screen, there's a flashing solid thin blue line at the bottom of the screen when the animation of the disk being inserted plays.  Can someone tell me what I damaged?  Agnus??  I had another Ver 5 A500 & plugged that 3.1 ROM after I removed it from the "damaged" rev 5 A500, modified that 3.1 ROM kernal chip, & inserted it into a different A500 rev 5 one & it seems fine, the ROM kernal being undamaged.

It looks like I bought the last of the Super Denise from what Vesalia had in stock.  You can use a VGA monitor on the A500 once you get it to boot up in Euro 72 Productivity mode,  but 4 colors is a bit lacking.

EDIT:  BTW, the pin #1 starts on the top left side by the notch, proceeding counterclockwise around the chip.

[Zac67]

I plugged the ROM in without this modification & must've damaged a chip or something because there's a column of spurious lines in the column whereever the cursor is.

That has nothing to do with anything ROM connected. Sounds like something on the chip bus. Have you checked power levels?

Original C= ROMs came with a simple resistor installed between pins 1 & 31 to rearrange A17. I'm pretty sure nothing breaks if no modifications have been done, the system simply won't boot up.

[Rabbi]

That has nothing to do with anything ROM connected. Sounds like something on the chip bus. Have you checked power levels?

Original C= ROMs came with a simple resistor installed between pins 1 & 31 to rearrange A17. I'm pretty sure nothing breaks if no modifications have been done, the system simply won't boot up.

The strange thing is if I put back the 1.3 ROMs, no such problem occurs with that.  The old 1.3 arrow cursor display correctly w/out a column of vertical lines in the cursor "column".

Could it possibly be that I also changed out the Denise chip to the ECS Super Denise?  It still has the OCS Agnus, 8370; whereas the other A500 that I got working w/out the vertical column lines that follow the cursor in 3.1 ROMs has an NTSC ECS Agnus, 8372A.

I also swapped out the MC68000 & put in an MC68010P8 into both.  It's darned hard to find anyone selling 68010s, too.

I'm eventually going to try swapping suspected chips between the one A500 that works & the other A500 that gets vertical lines in the cursor column, both 3.1 upgrades & both rev. 5 m/b's to see if I can determine the problem that way.

How & where would I check the power levels?  I've got a VOM.

[Zac67]

An '010 won't cause anything of the sort either. The Hires Denise might be a good lead - ECS modes won't work w/o a newer Agnus anyway. Possibly the 3.1 ROM tries to activate some trickery.

[waltermixxx]

I did get my ROM 3.1 up and running, i did do the mod, so thank you all for the kind reminder...

Just waiting for my Super Denise and Fatter Angus to arrive from Softhut.com
I'm getting spooked becuase I have not heard back since he accepted my  paypal payment... I'm hoping he is enjoying the holidays and is too drunk with the festive spirit to send the parts...

Hoping I get them soon...

[LoadWB]

1) Bend pin #31 up 180 degrees & solder an insulated wire connecting it to pin #21
2) Solder an insulated wire onto pin #1 that terminates into the socket where pin #31 would've gone.

Dear, God, PLEASE don't do this with the ROM.  Go pick up a 40-pin DIP socket to modify.  I never understood why people would recommend doing mods with the actual chips, like the stereo SID upgrades.  If you're in the 'States, you can still pick up the socket at most Radio Shanty stores, or you can order from Jameco, Mouser, etc.

[waltermixxx]

Hi there, I appreciate the concern,
I bent the pin out just a bit, enough to clear the socket...
and soldering the chip, I was very gentle....

Cheers...

(biting my nails, nervously waiting for my ecs chips to arrive...)

[save2600]

Dear, God, PLEASE don't do this with the ROM.  Go pick up a 40-pin DIP socket to modify.  I never understood why people would recommend doing mods with the actual chips, like the stereo SID upgrades.  If you're in the 'States, you can still pick up the socket at most Radio Shanty stores, or you can order from Jameco, Mouser, etc.

If you know what you're doing and are not holding a 30+watt iron to any pins for any good length of time, there's no reason for the fuss. I normally recommend what you suggested though and did just that (with the socket), but had to reverse what I had done recently in order to fit an 68kIDE device into the 68000 socket! lol  With a socketed Kickstart chip in place, it wouldn't fit  

[save2600]

I did get my ROM 3.1 up and running, i did do the mod, so thank you all for the kind reminder...

Just waiting for my Super Denise and Fatter Angus to arrive from Softhut.com
I'm getting spooked becuase I have not heard back since he accepted my  paypal payment... I'm hoping he is enjoying the holidays and is too drunk with the festive spirit to send the parts...

Hoping I get them soon...

Joe at Softhut is notorious for not communicating well, but he is a good guy and a long time Amiga supporter. Hang tight!

[waltermixxx]

Totally hanging tight...
just excited about getting up and running...

cheers and thanks for the note, he seems like a good guy,
gave me tons of information regarding the various Angus chips available,
and what would work best for me...

Say I'm dying to get a hold of one of those 68K socket IDE cards,
where can I get one?   would love to get some storage on my Amiga 500...

Cheers and thanks for the note...

[waltermixxx]

I got my Expansion Systems Baseboard today...  have not gotten my Fatter angus yet, so I just installed the Baseboard as is... it came with  rows 2,3,6,7 populated, which is suppose to give 2 megs of additional ram... but for some reason, I only see 1,621, 248 in other memory, and not the 2,207,704 the documentation says I should see...
 
Keep in mind the jumpers are set to: WB:1.3 (even though I have 3.1)
and the FAT jumpers are set correctly as well... ... (page 5 on document)
Jumper B on 2-3 and Jumper A on 4-5
 
No modifications have been made on the Amiga 500 (no fatter angus yet so no reason to change the J2 jumper)
 
Page 9 indicates with fat angus and ks 1.3 i should not have to use the software to see all the ram...  ... strange... not sure what to do at this point...

[omnicron10]

No you do have to run the adram program.  You see SOME ram with KS1.3+ but not all of it.  With KS1.2 you would not even see that.  Page 9 states that you will see upto 2 MB with KS 1.3+ but not all the RAM.  If you only have 2 Megs then you check the avail command to see what ram is actually available.

[waltermixxx]

Thanks for your quick reply !!!
 
I downloaded and booted up with the baseboard install/boot disk ( WB1.3) and it saw all the ram...not all, but more than before...
 
oddly enough: when running sys info I get the following three pages for RAM info:
 
 
First Page: 255 Kilo Bytes Slow RAM Public
Second Page:1.7 Megabytes Local Public Kick 24BitDMA
Third Page:512 Kilo Bytes Chip RAM Local Public Kick 24BitDMA
 
so there's the 2 megs plus the 512 chip ram, but wondering what the 255K slow Ram Public is all about... the terminology is new to me...
 
cheers...

[waltermixxx]

how do I iliminate the 255K slow ram public,
so I have a full 2 megs slow ram local local public...
 
what's the difference ?  

[Rabbi]

An '010 won't cause anything of the sort either. The Hires Denise might be a good lead - ECS modes won't work w/o a newer Agnus anyway. Possibly the 3.1 ROM tries to activate some trickery.

Problem solved!  If you upgrade the Kickstart ROM chip to 3.1, replacing an OCS Denise with an ECS Denise - yet retaining an OCS Agnus - yields the result of a column of vertical lines in the cursor's "column".  I found this out by replacing the ECS Denise with the OCS Denise that I swapped out.  Once I put back the OCS Denise w/the OCS Agnus, the problem disappeared.