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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: circlip on January 22, 2008, 01:01:37 AM
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Hi all,
now that I've got my Amiga 500 working again, I'm downloading and transferring ADF's across from the pc.
I was only wondering, what sort of Hard Disk would work with the A500, and how is it connected? I'm assuming it's SCSI, since it was the norm back in the day. Where do I connect it, do I need adapters?
Will an ebay pc scsi hdd do? How many Gb can I use?
Thanks
Circlip
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Oh dear...
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you'll need a a500 scsi board like the ones listed here (http://amiga-hardware.com/showcat.cgi?CATID=31). they're kind of rare and pricey. ebay is your best friend.
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Hmmm.... rare. Not quite the word I was wanting to hear. I guess I'll stick to floppies for a while.
Thanks!
Circlip
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your chances aren't as bad as these guys want it to be, if you stick with IDE it's not that rare and it won't cost you astronomous amounts of money (though everything in the amiga world costs bucks now a days).
links to these expansions follow under, it's an expansion that goes in the slot on the left of your 500. both the controller and the disk itself is inside that box (see links). note that i haven't checked the details of these auctions, examples only;
Amiga 500 Sidecar HDD controller (http://cgi.ebay.de/Amiga-Festplatte-AT-Bus-HDD-170MB-fuer-Amiga-500_W0QQitemZ140199375898QQihZ004QQcategoryZ8142QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
More of the same (http://cgi.ebay.de/Commodore-A590-Hard-Drive-Plus-20-MB-Amiga-500-Plus_W0QQitemZ140199346534QQihZ004QQcategoryZ8142QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
or you could go for a top of the line accelerator;
E-matrix Accelerator for Amiga 500 (http://cgi.ebay.com/E-Matrix-530-68030-40Mhz-Amiga-500-accelerator-Viper_W0QQitemZ180208036469QQihZ008QQcategoryZ4598QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
gives you 50Mhz 030 cpu and a max. of 128Mb ram. And ofcourse three IDE-connectors.
ofcourse this IS rare and very expensive.
as for sizes you can use any standard IDE (non sata ofcourse) disk but I will recommend you to keep them small to avoid extra configuration and problems. Under 2GB.
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kidkoala wrote:
your chances aren't as bad as these guys want it to be, if you stick with IDE it's not that rare and it won't cost you astronomous amounts of money (though everything in the amiga world costs bucks now a days).
DOH, what the hell are you talking about ? IDE add ons are actualy even more RARE since they are more sought after.
links to these expansions follow under, it's an expansion that goes in the slot on the left of your 500. both the controller and the disk itself is inside that box (see links).
the second link you gave is an A590 which is a SCSI controller (technically, it has an XT controller too, but it's useless).
besides, SCSI is a much better idea for a 68000 system, cause it incurs less cpu load.
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Or do it yourself!
There is a guide on Aminet to build your own IDE controller!
Look for A500IDE.
With a "plus": if you have a ROM (aka Kickstart) version 37350 or up, you will have autoboot!
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I found a "Dataflyer Plus Zorro II SCSI controller" in Aussieland, where I am.
It says "Works in 1000 & 500 if you have an external box & connector. Supports small HD's"
It's $AUD 59, so not toooo expensive.
The DIY option would be nice, but I just don't have the skills for that.
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that's a zorro board for a2000's. you need a a500 expansion slot converter to use that (which is also rare, and sometimes VERY EXPENSIVE (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180204934834&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=008)
a500 is the most popular amiga ever was and every kind of expansion for it is sought after.
or you can get a cheap A600 (http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-replacement-motherboard-A600-2-05rom_W0QQitemZ110191284320QQihZ001QQcategoryZ98928QQcmdZViewItem) mobo which is an a500 with built in IDE and PCMCIA and move on from there. However you'll find it much more difficult to upgrade than the a500 if you're thinking of an CPU upgrade (a chip ram upgrade is readily available at amigakit and vesalia for about 50$ and a DIY ram upgrade is in the works which wil give you 8 mb fast ram)
or you can get a cheap A1200 (http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-mother-board-for-tower-or-case-with-roms-etc_W0QQitemZ310016304415QQihZ021QQcategoryZ98928QQcmdZViewItem) mobo and have all kinds of upgrades more readily available.
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@countzero
don't agree, the 500 sidecar expansion pops up often and doesn't cost that much..you would ofcourse have to check ebay in several countries regularly until you find one that suits you and doesn't cost too much. (about my second link, like i said i didn't check details it was merely a "more of the same" link, i wanted to point out that sidecard expansions are on ebay a lot, for several systems.
as for cpu ide being cpu intensive, does it really matter, he's talking about using adf, meaning playing games i guess..why would you _need_ scsi to just play some games, the difference isn't that big in this context.
i love scsi myself, but i know when i don't need it.
and making his own scsi-card, come one, this guy seems like he doesn't want to pay or do a lot of stuff, he just want the simplest, easiest way to using adf's on a disk, and i think that's the sidecar expansion..
@circlip
btw here's another one of the sidecars,
Ebay UK sidecar (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/GVP-Impact-Series-II-A500-HD8-Hard-Disk-for-Amiga-500_W0QQitemZ300192140756QQihZ020QQcategoryZ4193QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
this one might be a little more expensive since it has onboard ram (4mb this one), the cheapest ones are those without ram ofcourse.
some extra ram will be good when classic gaming but a lot is not necessary.
since someone brought up the a600 that's a nice tip, will make you able to play ecs games (second generation chipset games), and you can very easily connect a 2.5" hdd or a CompactFlash-card, like he mentioned. it's also smaller than the 500.
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@kidkoala, you're quite right, I do want the simplest method for using an HDD, and yes, I don't have much money to work with.
@countzero will an A600 mobo simply fit straight into an A500 case? What to do with an A1200 mobo? :-o Does it fit into a pc "tower" style case?
Thanks guys.....
Circlip
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@circlip
A600 mobo is much smaller, don't think it fits directly, maybe countzero can answer that better.
i'd rather just buy a whole 600. they don't cost that much either if you search for the right one. i have one myself with fitted Compactflash card.
a 1200 is said to be the best choice for classic gaming/general amiga-fiddling by many:) it has the last generation chipset (aga) and is backwardscompatible with most old games
by using bios switches. and like countzero says it has a _lot_ of expansions easily available on ebay and elsewhere.
prices vary from very cheap to very expensive depending on what you are after i guess. it has an onboard ide-controller like the 600.
what you can do with it? aside from putting a disk in it for playing old games, you can put much more ram in it, you can put an accelerator in it (now we are beginning to talk more money), these range from low-end 68020 (?) to high-end PPC accelerators. this makes you able to use an amiga much like a more modern computer, with a more modern operating system (os 3.5, 3.9 or os4) but it's not really comparable, and when speaking of prices again it gets outrageous :) other than that there are numerous other expansions that do various things; network, internet, graphics cards, soundcards etc.
btw here's _another_ sidecar for the 500, this is also the 590 scsi-controller;
Ebay Italy sidecar (http://cgi.ebay.it/COMMODORE-A590-UNITA-HD-ESTERNA-PER-AMIGA-500_W0QQitemZ110214933652QQihZ001QQcategoryZ74945QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
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@kidkoala
making his own SCSI expansion ? when did I say that ? Why do you think I'm against sidecar expansions ? That's what I'm suggesting. But I claim IDE ones cost higher. SCSI sidecars are cheaper. Anyway, not that it really matters ...
That's a very nice GVP HD8+. But it's also a SCSI unit :) SCSI sidecar expansions by far out number IDE sidecars, that's why they're cheaper. Also, you'll see that this HD8+ won't go anything less than 60-70$ since it's a nice boxed unit. it may go well beyond 100$.
@circlip
a a600 motherboard is way smaller than a500 mother board. You can easily fit it, however you'll need to secure it somehow, as screwhole locations would probably be different. Another problem is the keyboard. You can't use the a500 keyboard directly. You'll need to make yourself an adapter which clips on the keyboard controller chip of a600. you'll need a pllc socket and do some soldering 8-)
a1200 mobo is also smaller than the a500 mobo. You can put it in a pc tower case but you'll have to a lot of hacking.
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kidkoala wrote:
btw here's _another_ sidecar for the 500, this is also the 590 scsi-controller;
Ebay Italy sidecar (http://cgi.ebay.it/COMMODORE-A590-UNITA-HD-ESTERNA-PER-AMIGA-500_W0QQitemZ110214933652QQihZ001QQcategoryZ74945QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
oh my god poor a590 ... somebody burned it ! this auction looks really fishy, I'ld never spend any money on it ... altavista translates :
"UNFORTUNATELY I DO NOT ARRANGE PIU' OF An AMIGA 500 NE' Of ITS LOCAL P0WER SOURCE IN SMARRITO HOW MUCH And I DO NOT HAVE The POSSIBILITA' TO TEST OF The OPERATION"
means, sold as is, a big gamble really.
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@countzero
i commented on the scsi controller DIY because someone else mentioned it, wasn't you..
and like i said, i don't think he wants to solder and stuff he want the easy way to the solution. though i personally find modding/hacking fun to.
haha italians are always fishy aren't they?;) like i said my links are examples, buy it or leave it.
@circlip
there are also towers meant for the 1200 but now we are talking money again so i won't go into that.
i think your best options are get the cheapest sidecar you find for the 500 that seems like it's in ok shape, ide or scsi, doesn't matter hehe:)
and maybe get a little extra ram for it, also cheap (for the small upgrades at least).
or, get a whole 600 cheap and put a cheap 2.5" hdd or CF card in it. you can probably get the ram upgrade for the 600 used on ebay as well, might save you some dollars. i know i did..
here's all ebay country-links for you if you want to do some heavy searching :) i usually just check the biggest countries.. amiga.com does _not_ cover all countries or even all items in the biggest countries.
Ebay country links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay)
@thread
btw if he goes for the hhd in 500 solution, don't he need the 2.05 or 3.1 rom upgrade as well? 1.3 doesn't support hdd? that's not expensive anyway..
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you are better off buying A1200, they are not rare and some people would like to get rid of them, forget ebay and do a local search.
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1.3 kickstart does support harddrives (autobooting) however partition size is quite limited. some people claim to have agb partitions under 1.3, my personal experiences I could never get a 200 mb partition on a 1gb scsi hdd get to work. under winuae, it seemed to work fine (with 1.3 kickstart, 1.3 workbench) when I go to real amiga, it always corrupted when I put some files after a certain limit. Therefore I strongly suggest going 2.05 or 3.1.
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@orange
hehe who tosses 1200's around cheaply and locally?
please tell me cause then i'd like one of those :)
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i'm selling a supradrive 500xp hard disk and ram expansion for the 500, although shipping to Oz would be pricey from england .
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not that i'm the one to bid on it, but how much do you want for it?
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@rkauer if you're still around...
Is the circuit for the IDE pcb complicated? My soldering isn't up to par, but I've made some basic stuff in the past. I've had a look in the readme files from the lha file on aminet, and stuff didn't make much sense to me, as I've never had to deal with HDD's on an Amiga. Plus it said about determining the base address with dip switches... I got no idea how I would go about that.
Circlip
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@kidkoala...its not on fleabay...i'm open to offers
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EDIT:
Duplicate post
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@circlip
I made that one using Aminet instructions, when it was double sided. It should be much easier now, that its single sided PCB. But the author himself says its just a 'hack'. The main problem with it, in my opinion, is that it has no extra RAM and you need that badly on a500.. The other small problem is that its not autoconfig, at least version I used.
Most difficult part is obtaining side expansion slot connector (86pin IIRC)
There is another project on Aminet with IDE, RAM, ROM from Russia but its way more complicated.
forget e-matrix unless you're millionaire..
A1200 is still your best option (unless A500 is very important), it really shouldn't be so hard to find one for someone in Europe and connected in a way to EU.
Look for it in "Amiga countries" like England and Germany, they are probably full of them.
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@pyrre & orange
read the thread before posting, eh? ;)
i already posted the E-matrix link _and_ told him it's very expensive..
and i already posted this "a 1200 is said to be the best choice for classic gaming/general amiga-fiddling by many"
@circlip
..but my personal choice in your context would be the 600, if you want to switch the machine out at all (cheapest option would still be an A500 sidecar with extra ram or 512kb chipram upgrade imho, since he already has the machine for it), because the 600 has a much smaller footprint, and the 1mb upgrade you need is available used on ebay, eg. here 1mb upgrade w/clock (http://cgi.ebay.de/seltene-Amiga-600-A600-Ram-Speicherweiterung-auf-2MB_W0QQitemZ260205274625QQihZ016QQcategoryZ8142QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem), and here (http://cgi.ebay.de/1-MB-RAM-fuer-AMIGA-600-funktioniert-100_W0QQitemZ120210894175QQihZ002QQcategoryZ3544QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) . that gives you 2mb chip wich is what you need for most old games. another reason for buying the 600 over the 1200 is that the 1200's tend to be stuffed with expansions or peripherals that make them expensive, whereas 600's are often plain or with a 1mb ram expansion and/or hdd/cf card, wich is just what you need! :) like this one 600 on Ebay.de w/cf (http://cgi.ebay.de/Amiga-600-mit-1024MB-CF-Festplatte-ADF-Transfer-Kit_W0QQitemZ260204976698QQihZ016QQcategoryZ8142QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
..and forget about do it yourself projects, if you want the fastest and simplest way of getting to your solution, use Ebay, things are easy to find, and are there right now. just find the right stuff at the right price, and if the item doesn't ship to your country, ask seller, they often agree on sending anyway. Searching through newspapers every day and driving around finding fleamarkets is just wasting time for that small chance of finding anything useful in good shape imho.
That said, you should post a "want to buy" with the stuff you'd like on all amiga forums like amiga.org, amigaworld.net and amigans.net, and watch the classifieds sections for interesting things. the chance that someone has a cheap 600/1200 there is pretty good..
a plus of buying the a1200 would be that it comes with 2mb chipram already installed, wich is nice, and that it has the aga chipset, but most games that you stumble onto in classic gaming are not aga, they are ocs like your A500 has, or ecs like the A600 has.
it's not an easy question to answer really, depends on what you want to do, what you want to play, and the money involved..but now you've got some background info. :)
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@ kidkoala
You are very found of the A600.... :-D
If he buys an A600 he still has the problem of kickstart incompatibilities. And would need a degrader, I do not know how easy those are to get your hands on.
And the A600 has ECS... For those rare games requiring OCS.
In the A500 he will not have those problems, not to that degree at least. And sidecars tends to pop up on ebay every now and then. However, tha choise is still his...
But a favour for sidecar is it can be put in any A500, not just the one he has now...
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Kidkoala.
You are aware that IDE expansions for the A500 are very few, if almost non-existant, aren't you? Almost every side-car expansion for the A500 was SCSI.
Of course there's the Zorro II adaptor for the A500's expansion port, so that an IDE card can be used, but this is almost harder to find.
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Some updates for the "a500ide" project: http://www.iki.fi/mkl/ide/ (I should probably update the lha-package on Aminet, too.)
There is also two other IDE-interface boards there.
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@pyrre
hmm,what do you mean kickstart incomp.? can't the 2.05 rom use 1.3 games? i think most can be run with 2.05? (wich is what the A600 has as standard). however if he wants to install hdd and use probably os3.1 it is recommended to upgrade rom (kickstart) to 3.1, like i did a few years ago.
as for ocs games, those are not rare i think? there are tons of ocs games, ecs games are the rare ones, correct me if i'm wrong.
besides you can set the A600 in ocs mode from the bios if you have an ecs incomp. game, or i guess you can run some kind of software from amigaos to fix incomp. (or run a whdslave?)
while you mention the A500, wich is ocs only, and cannot run ecs games,so the A600 is more classic-gaming-ready ;)
@ral-clan
this is broughtup earlier in the thread. while saying that ide-sidecars are almost non-existant i think is a bit harsh :) i follow several ebay-countries regularly and have seen the go now and then..
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while you mention the A500, wich is ocs only, and cannot run ecs games,so the A600 is more classic-gaming-ready ;)
I have never encountered a game that do not work on A500, except for AGA games though... And that was before i got the 500+, my old A500 was a A500 kick 1.2 0,5/0,5 MBram.
And it played ALL the games i ever tried on it (-AGA)...
I shoot muself in the foot... I have become very unsertain about what was rare... ECS games i guess is the rare ones...
I have kick 2.04 in my 500+, and i have not found the OCS possability...
I am confused. Until a year ago it was 10 years since last i used any amiga.... And i started back up again with the A1200, exactly where i left it...
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If only some manufactorer could put together a batch or two of http://torlus.com/floppy/ :-)
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well, 500+ is named + because it has the ecs chipset, among other things, so in that way you're ecs games would work.
but when you say you could play all the games when using your plain a500, i guess that is because you didn't try any ecs games,am i correct? thought some (or a lot?) of ecs games where backwardscompatible with ocs..
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@kidkoala
I got A500 (rev 6A) with Fat Agnus (8372A) so it should be ECS too.
IIRC, there are some games that require 1Mb chip ram.
I never managed to run Alien Breed Tower Assault on 512Chip+512slowfast.. :(
I think kickstarts are not an issue, as he would probably use WHDLoad anyway (after upgrading)
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but when you say you could play all the games when using your plain a500, i guess that is because you didn't try any ecs games,am i correct? thought some (or a lot?) of ecs games where backwardscompatible with ocs..
Might be. honestly i do not remeber anymore...
EDIT:
as for the topic.
I personally never liked the A600, am bidding on one on ebay. perhaps i change my mind, once i've tried one.
However, back to topic.
A sidecar is not a bad idea, it can be used an any A500 and possibly even in A1000. And he don't need to buy a new machine. It is possibly the cheapest alternative.
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I got the "ide68k" adapter working today.
I'll put some IDE adapters for the 68000 socket for sale this week, probably to the Marketplace forum, Ebay, etc.
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hi guys... been offline for a while due to moving house, and no internet.
I have a 1mb clock ram now, thanks to a friend.
I will try look out for sidecars on ebay, etc. Maybe a few "wanted" posts.
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i have a A590 with 2 mb fast ram installed & replaced the original 20 MB hd with a 2.2 GB scsi hd & I love it :-D
best best is to watch for them on ebay..look to pay around $50 to $100 for one...GVP also makes some nice drives for the A500 too...