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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Herbman on July 10, 2006, 03:17:50 AM
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Hi!
just want to know about accellerators for the A500/A500+? haven't seen any on ebay, Are they hard to come by?
Peace!
Herb.
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It is not much it is hard to get an accelerator it just not worth it at all. Spend your money for accelerators for the Amiga 1200, at least it have 2 MB chip RAM and AGA graphics chips.
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Hehe! That's already in the works ;)
but i'd like to have one for my 500 as well, hence this post.. Is there any webshops that sell them or should I continue to search personal ads?
Peace!
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Hehe! That's already in the works ;)
but i'd like to have one for my 500 as well, hence this post.. Is there any webshops that sell them or should I continue to search personal ads?
Peace!
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I am a pround owner of Amiga 1200 68060 with 64 MB of RAM 4 GB, it is 10000% more powerful than Super Nintendo itself. As for accelerators for the Amiga 500, yup, eyetech sells them. Check that place out. but most of their upgrades are RAM upgrade leaving the 68000 in tact, you can always check ebay for 68030 upgrades, I think the maximum you can do with Amiga 500 is 68040...but I heard they are doing custom chipset upgrade, from OCS/ECS to AGA.
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Ok, cool, thnx!
Also.. How much Ram can u cram into a A500? Are there any slots on most accellerators or does it install elsewhere?
Can you upgrade the 500 by just switching the processor?
Herb.
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@ Foody
Uh, Foody? Your facts sound like a 1993 rumor column. There is no way to add AGA to an A500 (DCE did a prototype solution, but it was never released and never will be). And Eyetech hasn't sold much of anything in quite a while. Their website is completely out of date and their stock has supposedly been sold off to other dealers.
@ Herbman
Unless you get really, really, really lucky, the only A500 accelerators you're going to come across will be secondhand (ebay, comp.sys.amiga.marketplace). A 68010 chip is a quick, cheap drop-in solution, but its performance advantages are negligible. WHDLoad can take advantage of its Vector Base Register however.
68040 accelerators for the A500 do exist, but I've never seen one and have heard about someone having one only once.
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I checked eyetech and found acouple of links to some other stores, thats about it.. I think I have a couple of 68010 lying around, but i'll have to verify.. but as u said.. theres no big advantage..
I was thinking of something like the GVP line of turbo accessories or something like that.. But I guess I'll have to keep looking!
Thnx for the headsup!
Herb.
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I admit I am ignorant with Amiga 500 acceleration but professional with Amiga 1200 ;). However, I do own an Amiga 500 myself and personally I don't think I will ever want to upgrade it, I consider my Amiga 500 as a Nintendo Entertainment System and my Amiga 1200 as an Advanced Super Nintendo System. I love them both for whatever they are and have no intention of changing any configuration, I do plan to make games for the Amiga 500 though and games for the Amiga 1200. The only thing I need is a very good program that converts colors to 32 to 64 palettet and save the files converted to IFF to be run in the Amiga. Ones that is done, then all problems will be solved.
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I think A500 accelerators are getting pretty rare. I got my Viper 520 from Australia brand new in 2002, but the only reason they still had it was because they didn't have it listed properly (and so wouldn't show up in searches). That store closed a couple years ago.
A few other people have also posted threads recently looking for A500 accelerators and apparently all places that used to sell A500 upgrades (like Softhut) no longer have them. Even if you get an accelerator, you'll still need a Mini Megi for 2Mb chip to do anything useful and they're rare too (... but I have one!).
It's a pity because with these two upgrades, you can do some amazing stuff like this (http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=11525&d=1152469159). (yes, once again I'm shamelessly flaunting A500 screenshots ;-))
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Yeah a nice accelerator would be nice but as was stated before why lose sleep over it? Get a nice cheap A2000 system and upgade away. Or go to the next step and get a real amiga, a A3000 or A4000 ;) :banana:
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If you put the A500 in a tower case and attach a Micronik busboard, then you can use accelerators designed for the Amiga 2000 such as the Blizzard 2060, and also Zorro II graphics cards.
But I have seen GVP 030 accellerators for the A500 quite often on eBay (like this one (http://cgi.ebay.com/GVP-A530-Turbo-68030-Accelerator-for-Amiga-500_W0QQitemZ260006755079QQihZ016QQcategoryZ4598QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)). But sometimes the prices are a little crazy.
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If you put the A500 in a tower case and attach a Micronik busboard, then you can use accelerators designed for the Amiga 2000 such as the Blizzard 2060, and also Zorro II graphics cards.
Someone could probably design and build a 68060 accelerator for the A500 before one of those turns up! :-)
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There is also the SupraTurbo, which is a 28mHz accelerator that plugs into the sidecar slot, and will take (I think) up to 8 Mb of extra memory, if you can still find the chips.
It's not quite in the '030 league, but is probably easier to find.
Also, it can be powered externally, which helps take the load off "The Brick". (BTW, if anyone knows for sure what voltage it uses, please let me know, as I don't have a PSU for mine, and I'm not prepared to risk frying it. :-)
(I assume it's 5 volts, but....)
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Even if you get an accelerator, you'll still need a Mini Megi for 2Mb chip to do anything useful and they're rare too (... but I have one!).
Mini Megi 2Mb? This I didn't realise? Why do you need one, and is it like a 1.5 Meg upgrade for the trapdoorslot underneath?
But I have seen GVP 030 accellerators for the A500 quite often on eBay (like this one). But sometimes the prices are a little crazy.
Yeah! Im bidding on it soon :)
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The chip ram expansion isn't needed, but it's highly recommended. All graphics the computer displays depends on the chip ram, so the more the better. With only half a meg of chip ram you run out pretty fast if you want to use colourfull icons (NewIcons, GlowIcons), etc.
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You dont need a MiniMegi (MegaChip) if you have an A500+.
It is an agnus replacement with 1Mbyte of RAM that plugs into the Agnus socket.
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doctorq wrote:
The chip ram expansion isn't needed, but it's highly recommended. All graphics the computer displays depends on the chip ram.
Ok. So the FastRam in the accellerator doesn't fill this purpose?
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Nope. Only way to avoid chip ram being used for graphics is with a graphics card, but that's gonna be a bit overkill and not very handy.
I would recommend getting the accelerator and harddrive controller first, and then you can find out if you really need more chip ram or not.
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I bought a couple of second hand amigas. One of the A500's had a Hurricane 030 25mhz with 4mb fast ram inside of it. I consider myself very lucky.
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I knew someone back in the good old days that had a lot of a500 hardware and topped it off with one of these bad boys (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?id=progressive540). Easily the fastest still-in-the-original case A500 I ever saw. Cost an absolute fortune too...
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Accelerators for the A500 are totally useless unless you get one with its own onboard RAM. I had a board with a 50MHz 68030 and it didn't even increase the speed 20% per AIBB benchmarks. I now have a 16MHz 68000 with 4MBs of same speed onboard memory, and am hitting an 80% increase in speed. Pretty sad.
:crazy:
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@Chrisisdog:
Yeah, the 030 has way to small caches to be able to give much performance when running code from slow memory.
/Patrik