Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: davidmace on November 14, 2006, 04:49:59 PM
-
Bought an amiga 500 off e-bay a few days ago, should arrive at the weekend, it's this one here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=012&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=220044439024&rd=1&rd=1
and the strange thing is i don't actually care if I got a good deal as long as it works, not had an amiga in years, I've also bought two of my favourite games Datastorm and Wings, great games!!
Anyway the reason Im posting this is im really behind with the Amiga hardware scene (as in 10 years behind) and want to know if anyone has any recommended purchases for this and where i can get them. I've got the 1/2 MB upgrade but i wouldnt mind more, i've already got my eye on a couple of things i saw on amiga kit, a new joystick and a device that allows you to plug 2 joysticks and a mouse in at the same time.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Apologies for posting in the wrong forum in the first place.
-
A hard drive "with fast ram" and cdrom will make things much easier. Then you can for example install most of your games through whdload and run them off the hard drive instead, which means no floppy swapping and really speedy load times.
If you go with this, then you are also better off upgrading the rom chips and OS to 3.1
-
If you're just going to limit yourself to games, a HD is not required, just convenient. Be sure to get one if it pops up on ebay.
Don't bother with OS3.1 otherwise. You're fine with what you have.
-
If you use it and enjoy it, no way it is overpaid. If you mainly want games, IMO stick with KS1.3. If you want to also upgrade, buy a Kickstart switcher and have both KS1.3 and KS3.1 at the flip of a switch.
Enjoy! :-)
-
Thanks for the replies, I've thought about a hard disk and certainly wouldn't mind one, I remember playing monkey island 2 when i had my old Amiga 500 which had 12 disks so it took a lot disk swapping. Where exactly do they plug into, it's been a while since I had one as you can see.
What's the advantages of using kickstart 3.1 over 1.3, if im correct you can buy those from amiga kit.
And of course I know there isn't a lot of knew hardware going around with it being an old mostly unsupported machine, although I have some quite impressive new stuff at Individual Computers, so where would be the best place to pick up new hardware? Should i keep checking e-bay or is there any shops that are recommended?
Thanks
-
The A500 Hard Drive attachments plug into the edge connector on the left side of the unit. The A590 is the Commodore one, although there are others made by different companies. The A570 CD-Rom also plugs into the same connector. If you're serious about upgrading it, you're better off looking for an A1200 as they're the cheapest to upgrade, and have an IDE connector onboard (just throw a 2.5" drive in) but if all you're doing is playing games, the 500 is fine :-)
Kickstart 3.1 allows you to run OS 3.1 - 3.9, and has much more support for things like TCP/IP stacks, other applications and browsers, etc. If you're thinking of putting an accelerator in, and using games off the HDD, 3.1 is the way to go. However, it's up to you whether you do it, 90% of games run fine on 1.3 :-)
As for hardware, eBay is usually your best bet. Places like AmigaKit are good, but the most stuff usually goes on eBay, and it's usually more likely to work out than somewhere like Amibench (an Amiga 'trading post' site). Hope that helps :-D
-
Thanks for a quick reply, the reason i got a 500 was because the games i want to play are OCS and correct me if I'm wrong but it's not possible to play these on a 1200, I already have a top of the range PC for things that aren't retro games and really missed my A500 recently.
Anyway, found this on e-bay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-A500-A1000-8MB-EXPANSION-8-MEGA-BYTE-MB-RAM_W0QQitemZ150058411381QQihZ005QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
wondering if you think this would be worth it, i assume it would upgrade my RAM to 9MB which would make my games load up faster.
-
OCS/ECS games are indeed playable on an A1200, but it also plays AGA games as well. There are incompatibilities with a few games and KS 3.1, but those are usually fixed by patches, etc. However, as you said, it's easy to emulate an Amiga on a PC, and for games, the A500 is still King, it just means you need disks :-)
That card should boost your ram to 9mb, but beware - it uses the same slot as the A500 HDD and the A500 CD-ROM. If neither of them matter, go for it, but I don't know whether you will get much use out of that 9mb without a hard drive. You can get something along the lines of an ADIde interface that sits under the CPU (IIRC) and gives you an IDE port, that may be the best thing to look out for. Apart from that, I'm not sure. But if you're only playing games, I don't even know if you'll need the ram expansion, not that many OCS/ECS games require more ram as far as I know.
-
Oh right didn't know that OCS games were compatible with A1200, might get one of them in the future but for now im happy with my good old a500. I've noticed that the 8MB expansion has a through port so I could still get CD Rom or a hard disk as well.
For now, i've bought myself a new competition pro joystick and an automatic joystick/mouse switcher, better to buy these things new where possible to support the Amiga community, because lets face it the people who make these could probably make more money if they manufactured for PC's rather than an old machine like the amiga.
Have to say i do have some great games for my PC but you just can't beat some good retro games, not even sure what makes them so appealing because the graphics now are terrible but the gameplay in some of them are great and am really looking forward to getting the Amiga.
-
Another quick question, I've seen there's a lot of expansion that use a clock port which an A500 doesn't have. However i've just found this http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=609&osCsid=eaf00b1cbf171396f5060c5327d0a645
which provides you with a clock port on an A500, it says it fits to the 68000 slot, is that the CPU slot? Would this mean i'd have to take the Amiga apart at all. and of course would it be worth it if this is all possible.
Sorry for my lack of Amiga knowledge, comes from using PC's for too long.
-
Sorry, didn't see that had a through port! :lol: Shouldn't be a problem then, but it will take up a lot of room on your desk, just something to think about.
The 68000 socket is the CPU, yes. As for the Clockport adaptor, I don't know whether it's worth it. The Clockport does have quite a few uses - mainly USB cards, Soundcards, and the like, but I doubt you'll get any use at all out of it under 1.3, or with a base 500, it just won't handle it very well. Probably better to spend the money on something else, perhaps an accelerator of some sort (though they are hard to find for the 500)
-
Okay so here's my POA, split into what i'm definitely going/have done in the next few weeks, what i'm considering doing and what i might do in the future.
What I Am doing
Bought a new competition pro joystick
Bought an automatic joystick/mouse switcher
What I'm considering in next few weeks
Buy an 8MB Ram extension
Upgrade to ROM 3.1
Future upgrades
Buy a hard disk (very expensive though)
Buy a CD Rom
Try find an accelerator of some kind
If anyone else has any other suggestions for me then i'd appreciate.
I found a hard disk on e-bay for the A500 but it was over £100 with days to go and only a small one at that. Now you mentioned something about connecting an IDE hard disk, is this possible with A500 if so how do i go about doing this.
Thanks for all your help, ill let you know when it arrives and keep you up-to-date on how im finding it.
-
£100 for a harddisk for the A500 is way too much. If you look around with some patience, you should be able to find an A590 harddisk controller for less than half that price. Throw in another £5-£10 and you'll have a decent SCSI harddisk (2,1GB). In the A590 controller there's also usually 2MB of extra RAM on board.
-
Darklight wrote:
OCS/ECS games are indeed playable on an A1200, but it also plays AGA games as well. There are incompatibilities with a few games and KS 3.1, but those are usually fixed by patches, etc.
I do believe you are understating this a bit IMO. There is a wide range of game incompatabilities of older (1.3 era) games with KS3.1. I used a loaded A500 for a few years and was driven mad by it to the point I started soft kicking into 1.3 just to play games.
-
@davidmace
Years ago, about ~1998-1999 I had a loaded out A500. It was a lot of fun and back then with amiga prices still relatively high it was what I could afford for a hobbyist computer. There are a lot of limitations with with a loaded A500 compared to it's big box brothers. Keep this in mind as a consideration before you dump big bucks upgrading.
It all depends what you want to do. If you want to upgrade to the point you can ue major internet apps, consider picking up at least an A2000 instead.
Hmm.. Back in the day there were no clockport adapters for the A500.. Now there are, and I am salivating thinking how much I would have LOVED to have a Silver Surfer on my old A500 set up :-( Darn, you guys make me want to buy another Amiga! :-/
-
davidmace wrote:
Future upgrades
Buy a hard disk (very expensive though)
Buy a CD Rom
Try find an accelerator of some kind
If you're purely after playing games on the A500, you could consider getting a Catweasel PCI card for your PC rather than items to expand the A500 itself... The Catweasel will allow easy reading/writing of Amiga floppy disks using a PC...
Certainly, lots of the old 1980s floppies will be beyond the end of their life these days, and having a Catweasel is great for lots of transfer stuff, and easier/quicker than using an RS232 lead.
Just something else to consider!
- Ali
-
Yeah people have suggested getting an emulator instead but i think i'm just stubborn and you cant beat the real thing.
Beside my PC doesn't have a floppy disk or room for adding one as i've got loads of hard disks rammed in there.
I'm basically gonna see how it goes and play it by ear, my new joystick arrived today which is good, the amiga should arrive Saturday i think.
So kickstart 3.1 has incompatibilities with old games, the majority of games ill be playing are the real old ones like datastorm and kid gloves, and definitely wings. Someone mentioned a kickstart switcher, how does that work and where can i get one from?
-
@davidmace
Please see the message I PM'd you :-)
-
@redrumloa
So it's out there cloackport expansions for the 500? Is possible to have a silver surfer on it?
:-o
-
Dave
Always amazes me how folk say they are missing the Amiga and currently have a fast PC, then start talking about emulating the PC with more RAM, CDROM, hard drives, accelerators. For goodness sake, save your money. Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor RAM. If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it... The A500 is far too restricting ( sorry ) I have two dozen A500s all in varying forms, some with the 3.1ROM and even accelerators. But my basic A500 with GVP sidecar is good to go every day for gaming... Mostly Space Invaders. The 1200s are seriously upgraded and networked. I would start steady and then work your way up through the classic kit... And then you`ll never touch your PC again.
Get a good monitor... Not the TV.
If you wanna see my kit then click the link.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
scuzz
-
PS
If you wanna see what an accelerator does to the inside of an A500 then take a look at my A5000
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz360.htm
scuzz
-
I wasted more than 400 EUR to my a500, to bring back from its prehistoric state to an affordable (?) computer. You can say for that price I can get an accelerated 1200. Yes you're right but that will be my second project.
The a500 was my first computer and i wanna se what's the maximum on it.
For example I tried many HDD-s for my a500. (80MB,1GB,1,5GB,4,2GB etc) But only the 80Mb working. Ten years ago I have 600MB hdd which was worked well. Currently everbody said that modern HDDs (40-80GB or more) will not working for my system. I have many 80GB hdds because I have a pc shop, but here I can't find any used 100-900MB unit.
So one day i decided that i can try it. And it worked. So i have an 80GB hdd for my a500 now. The strangest thing is that, it has 2mb cache. My total system memory is 5.5MB. whoever it has 1,6Mb/sec transfer rate, which is not bad from an a500.
-
davidmace wrote:
Bought an amiga 500 off e-bay a few days ago, should arrive at the weekend, it's this one here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=012&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=220044439024&rd=1&rd=1
Wow! Looks like you got a good bundle of software with it too. Enjoy!
Fester
-
Hi, just thought i'd give an update now I've got it up and running. Really enjoying it, been playing datastorm and speedball the most, am waiting for Bubble Bobble and Wings to arrive.
scuzzb494 wrote:
Dave
Always amazes me how folk say they are missing the Amiga and currently have a fast PC, then start talking about emulating the PC with more RAM, CDROM, hard drives, accelerators. For goodness sake, save your money. Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor RAM. If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it... The A500 is far too restricting ( sorry ) I have two dozen A500s all in varying forms, some with the 3.1ROM and even accelerators. But my basic A500 with GVP sidecar is good to go every day for gaming... Mostly Space Invaders. The 1200s are seriously upgraded and networked. I would start steady and then work your way up through the classic kit... And then you`ll never touch your PC again.
Get a good monitor... Not the TV.
If you wanna see my kit then click the link.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
scuzz
To be honest mate I think I'm just curious to see how pimped out so to speak you can make the A500 while still running the old games I play and love.
Following the advert above I've found this http://eu-shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=660E502
and this http://eu-shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=660E500&sid=4ae262db
and have to admit I'm really tempted to get them, even if I just get the top one first.
Anyway get paid next week so might consider one of those.
A1200's are something I might consider in the future but for now I'm really happy with my A500.
I'll update this thread if get any more upgrades.
-
@scuzzb494
If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it...
I am of a similar view. I think its easier to expand a 1200, and cheaper. I would keep the A500 pretty much as is, and if you want to have a much more capable Amiga get an A1200 from a boot fair or whatever then look at an 030 accelerator card with some ram and a hard drive. That gives you a very capable Amiga especially with WHDLoad for games.
Anyway, welcome back and enjoy it. :)
-
[/quote]To be honest mate I think I'm just curious to see how pimped out so to speak you can make the A500 while still running the old games I play and love.[/quote]
I have my A500 "pimped out" about as far as possible and it still runs every game I want it to through WHDload. See a screenshot (http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=11525) and this thread (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=26412) about some things I've done with it. This thread (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=26290) has a couple pictures of my hardware.
My upgrades were extremely hard to find though and expensive. As others have said, it probably would have been better if I got an A1200 and upgraded that instead.
(this post was posted with my A500)
-
Hi
You do realise that the ultimate A500 was in fact a Checkmate. Check out the images from my website of mine which I acquired for £42 together with a whole room full of kit...
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz86.htm
A1500 System by Checkmate Digital Limited which has an Amiga A500 at its base...
An A1500 ( prior to Commodore version ) with A500 fitted.
Included also is an A590 XT 20Mb version sidecar with half Mb plus additional external 50MB hard-drive, 5.25 and 3.25" external floppy drives, and a 1084S monitor. The machine is fitted with the 2.04 OS and version 2.0 Roms. Probably retailed for about £1200 in its day
Other features for this machine include the Megachip 2000/500 giving 2Mb of chip RAM, the Multistart II which allowed the installation of the Kickstart V2.0 ROMS, Workbench Management System 2.0 by TTR, teletext add-on and scanner.
Evidently the popularity of this model concerned Commodore sufficiently to warrant the release of the official A1500 to the UK market only
There you go.
I do agree that the A500 gives bags of fun. I wouldn`t be without mine..
scuzz
-
scuzzb494 wrote:
Dave
Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor
scuzz
I agree. I liked WB 2.04 because it allowed me to softkick back into 1.3 a hell of a lot easier than when I upgraded to WB 3.1/3.5 on my A500. WHDLoad works for most of the games quite well however.
-
@jjans
How is softkicking to 1.3 from 2.04 any easier than from 3.1? I have no problem whatsoever softkicking to 1.3 from 3.0/3.1. (not that I ever need to use it - WHDload solves any compatibility problem I ever had)
You do realise that the ultimate A500 was in fact a Checkmate.
No, I don't realise that. The current "Ultimate A500 of the Universe" is Lemmink's A500 (http://home.joice.net/j100513/scans/temp/A500/). He is one of three people in the world who has the elusive Viper 530. I only have the Viper 520. Still, I think I have the best OCS/ECS software configuration in the world - until someone else proves otherwise. (...and I hope they do so I can steal their ideas ;-))
-
Hi
The Checkmate was one of the few purpose designed computer cases of the day that was created around the Amiga 500. As such the fun and games you have trying to get all these expansions into the A500 small case can be avoided. The machine was labelled an A1500 before the 1500 and would comfortably house all that is shown in those images. As such it is in my view the ultimate A500. As to the acceleration and other gadgets, I can appreciate what has been done here... And I would love to get my hands on that Viper. However, I have my A1200 with internal IDE, 2 SCSI hard drives, Blizzard and SCSI kit, CDRom, ZIP drive, Ethernet on PCMCIA and modern monitor, with 32MB modest RAM. And it does all this with ease... I use my A500 to play Space Invaders... Saying that I have about a dozen A500s.. I do like them. Red LED or Green LED.. What's your serial number ? :-)
scuzz
-
Hi
I do like the GVP sidecar. Wish I could get hold of the 040 version... One day no doubt.
I do enjoy it when I read what kit people have tagged onto their mails... And so here is my base list of Amigas. Though I do have many many many more.. Along with 160 or so other makes of retro computer...
scuzz
A500
A500 3.1 A5000
A500Plus
A600
A600HD
A500 plus A690 ( yes A690 )
Amiga 1000
A1200
A1200HD
A1200HD/40
A1200Tower
A1500
Checkmate
A2000
A2000HD
A2000 3.1ROM
A3000
A3000T
A3000UX
A4000d
A4000T
CD32
CDTV
CD32 plus SX32
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
-
mr_a500 wrote:
@jjans
How is softkicking to 1.3 from 2.04 any easier than from 3.1? I have no problem whatsoever softkicking to 1.3 from 3.0/3.1. (not that I ever need to use it - WHDload solves any compatibility problem I ever had)
You do realise that the ultimate A500 was in fact a Checkmate.
@mr_a500: Don't know, it used to work until I upgraded to WB 3.5, and I can no longer go back. Maybe 3.1 would have worked, but 3.5 won't, (I believe the later Kickstart patch runs in ram during boot)
What are you using? I can't remember because WHDLoad works great anyways...
I may just go back to 3.1 if that works OK.
-
The Checkmate was one of the few purpose designed computer cases of the day that was created around the Amiga 500. As such the fun and games you have trying to get all these expansions into the A500 small case can be avoided. The machine was labelled an A1500 before the 1500 and would comfortably house all that is shown in those images. As such it is in my view the ultimate A500.
Trying to cram expansions into the original case is part of the challenge. The case is part of the computer's identity. To me, if it doesn't look like an Amiga 500, it's not an Amiga 500. (A Karmann Ghia has mostly Beetle parts, but you don't call it a Beetle)
I am impressed that you managed to get such a rare Amiga, though. It certainly looks a lot better than the awful Bodega Bay case. I'm also impressed with your Amiga collection. I only have two A500s and an A1000.
jjans wrote:
Don't know, it used to work until I upgraded to WB 3.5, and I can no longer go back. Maybe 3.1 would have worked, but 3.5 won't, (I believe the later Kickstart patch runs in ram during boot)
That's strange. I used to also use 3.9 and never had a problem softkicking to 1.3 from that either. Maybe the upgrade deleted your A500 kickstart file or something.
What are you using?
I use the SKick program. (version 139.122)