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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Miked on April 30, 2006, 12:14:44 AM
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Are there any companies out there that will still build to order Amiga parts? I've been doing google searches and it seems the only place to find hardware is Ebay. I can't seem to find chips for my A500, accelerators,etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Miked
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Hi Miked.
If you go on Craigslist (SFBayarea) and type Amiga, a guy in San Francisco is selling 500/2000 chips
and CSA is still in business, selling A500 030 accelerators CSA accelerators (http://www.snoopez.com) somehow. Try them. I used their Derringer and Mega Midget Racer accelerators and had no problems. It's somewhat pricey, but, there's a warranty, which is pretty good these days.
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I didn't know they were still in business. The 50Mhz 030 one looks nice. Too bad there's no IDE or ROM upgrade on the card.
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Thanks for the help. Do you know where I can get a good harddrive system for the A500? :) I remember Supra used to sell a "sidecar" but don't think they are still around. (To run OS3.9, how much hard drive space do I need to have)
-Miked
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Definately nice that CSA is still making accelerators for the Amiga :-o . A derringer could be a feasible upgrade for my 500 if i don't see a viper out there on ebay.
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Are you sure they are still offering them for sale? On the site it says that Safe Harbor is selling them and I checked the site and could not find anything Amiga related.
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To run OS3.9, how much hard drive space do I need to have
Believe me, you don't want to run 3.9 on an A500. See my explanation in this thread:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22117
I managed to cram WB 3.1 and all the best patches and most useful utilities, Internet, Email, EaglePlayer, Songplayer, my best mods, PPaint, image display programs, and my 5 best Amiga games onto a 40Mb HD (that's Megabytes, not Gigabytes!) - still leaving around 10Mb free for internet cache and temp space! If I showed you a whole list of programs I had on the drive, it would take a whole page. I was amazed at how useful that little drive was.
I've got a 40Gb drive now, but I really only use 3Gb (and that's with 1Gb of music). The rest I use for multiple backups.
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TjLaZer wrote:
Are you sure they are still offering them for same? On the site it says that Safe Harbor is selling them and I checked the site and could not find anything Amiga related.
Well, I'm curious as heck, personally. :kitty: Just because I haven't dealt with them in years, after I sold my Derringer. Their service wasn't too bad.
Monday, I think I'll give them a call, just to see what they have. You might have to order from the company.
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Interesting..I tried to email the "contact info" on the CSA site and I got an email error saying that email address doesn't exist. Anyone have a similar problem?
-Miked
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Believe me, you don't want to run 3.9 on an A500
mrA, I am assuming that you have an A500. So basically what you are saying is that I should get 3.0 Roms and run WB3.1? (or 3.1 Roms w/WB3.1) Is this the optimal set up for an A500 (btw I dont even have the ECS yet.. my system is circa late 80s)
-Miked
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Safe Harbor hasn't sold anything Amiga related in years.
It's probably just like GVP-M. Their page is up, but the company is gone. The 1-800 number says something like, "In the mood for some stimulating talk? Call 1-800...".
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On the bottom of the home page is printed:
"Copyright © 1996- 1997 CSA."
I don't think they're in business anymore...:roll:
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mrA, I am assuming that you have an A500. So basically what you are saying is that I should get 3.0 Roms and run WB3.1? (or 3.1 Roms w/WB3.1) Is this the optimal set up for an A500 (btw I dont even have the ECS yet.. my system is circa late 80s)
Yes, I'm using my A500 to type this. If you're buying a ROM, it's best to get 3.1 or if you've already got a 3.0 ROM there's no need to get 3.1. Either way, you can run WB 3.1. If you really want to run WB3.9, go ahead. I just found it worse than 3.1 in my own experience.
The main reason for ECS Agnus is for more Chip RAM. I think you can still run WB 3.1 on the original Agnus, but you will run out of display RAM much faster. You can easily run without the ECS Denise. ECS Denise only gives a couple super-high-res display modes (totally useless) and the ability to have the screen border black (which is nice). I ran WB3.1 with original Denise for a year - no problem. (but I'm still glad I got it for the nifty borders)
I think the Viper really is the best accelerator because it has the A1200 3.0 ROMs on the card. This alone makes my A500 run about twice as fast as having the 3.0 or 3.1 A500 ROM in the original ROM slot (can see it in speed tests). So if you get an accelerator that doesn't have ROMs on it, the ROM reading will be the bottleneck unless the card allows you to map it to Fast RAM (I think the Derringer does).
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Ok, so I was talking to the guy from "craiglist' and he told me that the Amiga 500 cannot run 3.0/3.1 Roms and that the highest I could go was 2.04. He also suggested that I would not be able to add 2meg chipram because the parts that I need to do this are very scarce (in other words - good luck)
It seems my project is going to be difficult if not impossible. Maybe I'll just enjoy my 1 meg WB1.2 A500 for what its worth. Finding parts for an A500 is like trying to find parts for a Delorean.
-Miked
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@MikeD:
A stock A500 can use Workbench/Kickstart 3.1, but not 3.0.
You can buy the Kickstart 3.1 ROM here (http://www.vesalia.de/?V02b0f145155461a785f5b52520e514e01101f0d435605551c4e1108515d324c536c352c2c6165693647097c6a2e6a2c784e0f130e79722a276d1a0438033a2b6149455a4) and the Workbench 3.1 disks here (http://www.vesalia.de/?V02b0f145155461a785f5b52520c514e01101f0046414752050144190a1e31115579633a223c6373744e03263f2a2a797605620d1d033d3d2e207918547f0329724f564d544).
/Patrik
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patrik wrote:
A stock A500 can use Workbench/Kickstart 3.1, but not 3.0.
What? Why not 3.0?
MikeD wrote:
He also suggested that I would not be able to add 2meg chipram because the parts that I need to do this are very scarce (in other words - good luck)
I think they still have Mini Megi (http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog/hardware/accelerators/apollo_minimeg.html) (2Mb chip for A500) at Softhut.
They're not scarce, just bloody expensive.
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What? Why not 3.0?
Simply because there was no Kickstart 3.0 ROM-chip made for the A500.
The only way to get 3.0 on an A500 is to softkick or use a Viper card, but the latter doesnt count as a stock A500.
Btw, to "hide" links, type for example (without spaces before and after the [ and ] characters):
[ url=http://www.aminet.net ]amystuffhere[ /url ]
Which without the spaces would look like this:
amystuffhere (http://www.aminet.net)
/Patrik
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Ah ha. That's what I suspected.
Edit: Thanks for the url tip :-)
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If I could find an a500 with a derringer, I'd be a happy man. That's all I would need to satisfy my Amiga craving. I like emulators, but I want the real thing and I want to be able to play all the old games, the old way.
I bought a 2000 that had a derringer in it, so I threw it in my 500, with 32MBs of ram. It was blazing fast. I can honestly say, getting rid of that derringer was the worst thing I've ever done.
I wish I still had it. :-(
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I think they still have Mini Megi (2Mb chip for A500) at Softhut.
They're not scarce, just bloody expensive
So, I contacted Softhut, and except for a few remaining Roms they have nothing for the A500. The person was nice and did suggest I purchase an A4000 desktop unit. Maybe this is the way to go as it seems everywhere I turn I hit a brick wall.
-Miked
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Hi Miked,
I too am trying to increase the specs of my A500. It's a tough job, because parts aren't as readily available as they are for the A1200. CSA's site seems out of business for years. I also had my mail bounce a couple of days ago.
A500 accelerators are pretty hard to come by and when you do find them, they can get pretty expensive, but don't give up!! My advice is to keep checking eBay, or better yet, set it up that way to have eBay mail you as soon as an auction matching the terms amiga and accelerator pops up. Most will be for the A1200, but just yesterday an auction for an A500/A2000 Harm Professional Turbo board ended on eBay (from a Danish seller I believe), which didn't sell, because the 70UKP reserve was not met. (Find it here: http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-030-accelerator-for-Amiga-500-2000-RARE_W0QQitemZ8800924661QQcategoryZ4193QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem )
It's just 14 Mhz so a bit on the light side and didn't justify the 70UKP asking price IMO. The holy grail of A500 expansion (GVP A530, at least IMO) did sell a short while ago for 465 US$ !! *gulp*
http://cgi.ebay.com/GVP-A530-Turbo-68030-Accelerator-for-Amiga-500_W0QQitemZ8794216318QQcategoryZ4598QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I was in luck and managed to find a local Dutch seller on a fleamarket site, also selling a Harms Professional Turbo 030 with CPU + FPU, but this one clocked at 25 MHz IIRC and I bought it for 100 euros. I'd have liked a faster accelerator, but this one will do for the moment!!! I just had to snag it away before someone else did :-) I got this one:
http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo.pl?id=professional530plus
I also managed to buy an A590 harddisk controller + 100MB SCSI disk for about 50 euros I believe.
What it all boils down to is having patience. A500 stuff like harddisks and accelerators (especially accelerators) are scarce, but they do pop up on eBay and other secondhand goods sites every so often. I'd also advise you to bone up on the brands of hardware available for the A500 on Amiga hardware sites like http://www.amiga-hardware.com/. They even have a section on A500 accelerators. Sometimes sellers only put the product name in the product description, which might make you miss the listing. E.g. I only found the Harms Professional 030 after searching for that name on a local auction site. Just looking for "Amiga accelerator" would not have found this product.
Hope these tips were helpful. Sure, I could get an A1200 or even an A4000, but it's the A500 with 1.3 Kickstart that I grew up with all those years ago, so I'm sticking with it! I love that machine! :-)
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MikeD:
So, Softhut finally cleared out eh? They had lots of A500 stuff when I upgraded in 2002 and I thought they would still have lots left because they're so damn expensive and never lower their prices.
I hate companies that don't alter their websites to remove stuff they no longer sell. Before finding Softhut in 2002, I "added to shopping cart" lots of items on many sites (even entered credit card info!) and later found the companies actually haven't sold Amiga stuff for 8 years or more.
I eventually found my Viper 520 card in Australia - probably becuause they didn't call it a Viper and people searching wouldn't have been able to find it. Unfortunately, they went out of business in 2004. So, it seems that there are finally no companies left selling A500 upgrades.
I suggest you leave your A500 as it is and buy a new A1200 from Amigakit (http://www.amigakit.com) (I'm getting one!). Expanding an A1200 should be much easier and you'll have a much more powerful Amiga than you would have had with an A500.
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adolescent wrote:
Safe Harbor hasn't sold anything Amiga related in years.
It's probably just like GVP-M. Their page is up, but the company is gone. The 1-800 number says something like, "In the mood for some stimulating talk? Call 1-800...".
Yep, the CSA phone # is disconnected. How sad. :-( Sorry for misleading you.
I bet there's a warehouse somewhere that's got a bunch of the old Derringers stashed away.
How long do these websites stay up anyway?
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Miked wrote:
I think they still have Mini Megi (2Mb chip for A500) at Softhut.
They're not scarce, just bloody expensive
So, I contacted Softhut, and except for a few remaining Roms they have nothing for the A500. The person was nice and did suggest I purchase an A4000 desktop unit. Maybe this is the way to go as it seems everywhere I turn I hit a brick wall.
-Miked
An Amiga 1200 is generally more cost effective than an A4000 although it is easier to get a graphics card for an A4000. Either the A1200 or A4000 will be more cost effective than upgrading an A500.
The best part about the A500 is the number of older games that will run on it that would require some hackish HD installer such as WHDLoad to get it to work on the A1200/4000.
Rumor has it that the A3000/4000 version of the PowerVixxen accelerator card will come out before the A1200 version. These new cards will come bundled with AmigaOS 4.0 and will run older software through emulation using a JIT compiler on the PowerPC processor.
It is doubtful that there will ever be a PowerPC-based accelerator card for the A500/2000 since these were 16-bit systems.
In short, an A1200 or A4000 would be a good investment compared to upgrading your A500.