My A500+ Project

[Lockon_15]

AFAIK, there are 3 types of trapdoor RAM expansions:

- i.e. A501 with 512Kb RAM; those use so called "SlowRAM" and always use only exposed socket to function
- i.e  Elbox 500/2 with 2Mb RAM; those also use so called "SlowRAM", but due limitations/design of Amiga memory map, it can only use appx 1,8Mb of installed RAM banks. Moreover, such expansions need extra logic (provide address space for 4 RAM banks) which can be easily seen in form of additional adapter which connects RAM expansion board with one of well known Amiga chips (usually GARY, but can also stretch to 68000 COU as well)
-i.e. Elbox 500/8 with 8Mb RAM; those use real FASTRAM in 100% address space; physical layout puts RAM expansion board on trapdoor, but there are 2 additional adapters which connects to other Amiga chips on motherboard. Basically, this type of expansions offering 8Mb RAM need access to expansion bus usually ocuppied by sidecar expansion port on left side of Amiga.

Regarding A501+ RAM expansion holding additional 1Mb CHIP RAM, I'm not sure if that's correct.

[sim085]

Thanks for the reply Lockon_15. Things are more clear now regarding RAM I will try to find a 1Mb RAM expansion board then since I would like to leave the sidecar expansion port free for a hard drive and also I do not want to mess to much with the chips in the A500+. Thanks again

btw - is it important to know the maker of a RAM expansion board? or they are no so different from one another?

[pyrre]

EDIT: never mind

[derringer3]

i recommend ebay too.

Try different sites. So for exapmle ebay.de and ebay.com etc. The result will be different.
Two years earlier at least 2 pcs of a500 accelerator hit the ebay.de site so it is not impossible to get one. I buy mine for more than 100 Euro, so it will be not cheap.
Try to get an accelerator with onboard ram, or ram slot. this will be the fastest ram.

For example i have an a500 which is the latest revision. So it is truly an a500+ motherboard. It has 512 ram by default, but i can solder an additional 512kb ram to it because it had the space on the pcb. I had an a501 (512kb ram expander)clone so then i have continuous 1,5MB chip ram on my machine.

I has an ide controller which has got ram slot, but i can't use it because the ram of theaccelerator card ram and the ram expansion of the controller is incompatible with each other.

[sim085]

Thanks for the suggestion, I am doing some more research right now

I now also have another question (sorry buy questions keep popping in my mind :$)

What would be the best setup; to have a hard drive and an accelerator card all in one (like the GVP A530) connected to the Side Expansion Slot OR to have a hard drive (like the GVP A500 HD8+) connected to the Side Expansion Slot and an accelerator card (like the Viper 530) connected to the CPU Socket?

[Lockon_15]

It's hard to judge as the most important figure remains unknown - available budget. If your budget can hold on his own, then I would advise combo like Derringer or Viper and GVP HD8+. That would put you in fastest CPU/maximum RAM envelope covered with additional fast storage solution. In any terms that's a more powerful solution than A530, but it could also be more expensive overall.

As you already figured out, those goodies for A500 are EXTREMELY rare targets for low-budget prespective owners. basically, you're gonna shell-out a nice pile of cash if youe're after a specific setup, meaning that there are other HDD solutions and CPU/RAM designs.

For instance, I can assure you that at least 10 GVP A500 HD8+ units will pass eBay listings before a single A530 unit appear. It's not a rule, but it shows some trend for sure.

[darksun9210]

i've not had problems with ebay. but then i've never sold anything... i've even lost an auction or two and had the seller come to me and say that the top bidder couldn't complete on the purchase and ended up getting it anyway.
however, i have had my paypal account "hacked" and it is now locked out, along with my associated bank details and credit cards. which sucks. paypal have, (barring catching the fraud, for which i commend them whole heartedly), generally sucked bigtime for any help in getting my account back and working.

anyway, i have an A500 with 3.1rom, 40Mhz GVP A530, 8Mb 32bit fast, plus half a meg chipram, and half a meg 'slow' fastram, a 4Gb compact flash acting as a hard drive, a clock port adapter, a subway USB card, and a USB2LAN adapter.

for the best web browsing on an A500, you really need to cover the following bases.
 - as much CPU as you can for image rendering
 - as much chipram as you can for images, you got an A500+ so the 2Meg max isn't as out of reach as for anyone with an older machine ;-)
 - as much fastram as you can for everything else. TCP/IP stack, workbench, web browser, browser page loading, cache etc.
 - hard disk. i suppose you could work from floppies. i used to when i used to hook upto BBS's and the like, but web browsers are a bit bigger, and need space for caching pages and all those aminet downloads ;-).
 - a 3.1rom in there with make life much easier, as your machine will support datatypes and the like for image loading. if you think this detracts from the plus'ness of your A500, just think of it as an OS upgrade, or what OS2x should have been :-)
 - some form of internet connection.

i think someone said that they wern't sure how the amiga would use a USB LAN adapter. well, the USB stack takes care of that and provides a usbpegasus.device (in my case) for a SANA networking driver.
be warned though. i havn't found the subway/USB LAN adapter isn't really a good combo. but maybe its just the pegasus chipset of my adapter, but the subway card seems to poll the CPU's interrupt lines massively when the IP stack is active and using the USB2LAN device, and drains what extra CPU power the accelerater provides leading to a painfully slow "just cos i can" web surfing expirience, and about a 4-5KB/s transfer rate from the LAN.
so i'd really be better off on dialup, or a serial link to a PC sharing it's network connection.

i hoped it would be fixed in the version 4 release of the poseidon USB stack, and to be fair, it is better. but i still wouldn't think it usable. nowhere near as usable as an 030 based A1200 with a cnet card...

'nother thing i've found. i wouldn't really bother with anything higher than OS3.1 on an A500. 3.5 and 3.9 look pretty, but will chew hard on what little resources you have. 3.1 is still perfectly usable on a 7Mhz 68000

the viper530 would be the best solution for accelerating your amiga. you wouldn't need an external hard disk, as it has IDE ports to take both 2.5" laptop drives, and 3.5" desktop drives. the more expensive versions had onboard scsi too. plus it has its memory addessed outside of the Zorro2 range, so it could take upto 128Mb on a single 72pin simm. not to mention it is pretty much the fastest, (bar the PPS 33Mhz 040, with no hard disk controller, and only able to take 8Mb ram).

if you had some other internal accelerator that didn't have a hard disk controller, then yes, you would need an external solution like a GVP, or A590 for your hard disk.

i hope this helps, but this is just my expirience from kinda following the same path as you :-)

[sim085]

Thanks, I'll buy the GVP HD8+ and 1Mb RAM extension board now and then when a Viper or Derringer becomes available I'll try to get it as well I also hope to upgrade my Kickstart ROM chip soon as well!

[darksun9210]

i bought a GVP HD8+ and SupraTurbo28 (super clocked 68000@28Mhz!) initially, but they are now sitting gathering dust as i found a GVP A530 on ebay about two months after buying them! :lol:

i wish you the best on your hunt for a viper or Derringer! :-)

[sim085]

Thanks darksun9210 for your long description. Your setup is very interesting. However I am hoping to stick to the GVP HD8+ a little longer then you

I bought the GVP HD8+ and the 1Mb Ram expansion board from eBay for GBP 60.98 (excluding shipping). Is that a fair price? Also the GVP HD8+ I bought is 2GB. Is that good? Or I should already start thinking to upgrade this?  

[darksun9210]

2Gb sounds fine. you'll be able to fit workbench and all the apps you could ever need in about 200-300Mb, and will still have over 1.5Gb left for games and stuff.
Hard disk amigas used to come equiped with 20, 40, or 80Mb drives. maybe even 52 or 105Mb drives if i remember the GVP series correctly. so 2000Mb is a huge amount!   :-)
and the price for both? sounds good. i think i paid 45GBP for mine with 4Mb internal fastram, and a 52Mb drive
but you are getting a chipram boost aswell for an extra 15GBP, which is good  

[sim085]

The GVP I bought should also have 4Mb internal fastram So I guess I got it for a good price. Now I just have to wait for the stuff to arrive and see if they work (They should, at least that is what the seller told me)

[darksun9210]

one thing to bear in mind with the GVP, is my PSU made a high pitched "singing" noise and then died after a few weeks. i guess at being nearly 18 years old i can't complain. so you may need to find someone that is good at electronics and can find the fault in the PSU and replace the part, (audio repair shops are a good source of soldering skill). or there are a two sets of jumper pads (one for 5Volts, and one for 12Volts) you can solder together yourself, or have someone solder for you that makes the GVP draw power from the Amiga itself.
The A500's PSU should be more than able to power everything quite happily if you have PSU problems... i had to do this for my A530.

[alexh]

It is dirt cheap to upgrade HD8+ to 8Meg if you wanted to. They use regular 30-pin SIMMS. It will happily take 1*8Meg or 2*4Meg.

Be warned the HD8+ (ROM?) is particularly picky about what accelerators it will work with.

If you find your HD8+ a little slow, and if you can find one, a Guru ROM for your HD8+ is worth getting.

Here is a link to the self-power mod mentioned above:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a500hd.html

If you are worried about power you can use an ACard 7720U SCSI->IDE adapter (~£15) to use IDE drives and an IDE->CF (~£3) to use silent, low power, compact flash.

And of course the best purchase now you have a hard drive is WHDload

[darksun9210]

the SCSI>IDE adapter and compact flash route is brilliant. after running a howling 1Gb scsi drive to a silent compact flash, makes life so much more pleasant. not to mention the less stress on the A500s power supply...

and WHDLoad... what a genius bit of software. :-D

[pyrre]

@ sim085

Here is your future accelerator for your A500+...
Just start bidding.

I have one of these myself. it is really great...
Although, it do not have any kind of hdd controller. but the speed is close to comparable to an A1200 with blizzard 1230 mkIV. A friend of mine has an A1200 such speced...
(though, i have the 50mhz version...)

EDIT: ooops. i forgot the link... :-D