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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Naton on April 18, 2008, 01:04:29 PM
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Hi there, I hope you guys don't mind some really newbie questions, since I guess most Amiga users these days atleast recall the basics.. However I just bought my first Amiga. I used my dad's one as a kid, and when I saw one at a recent gaming exhibit I had to get one. It's a second hand A500 and I'm really excited about it, but I don't really know what to do with it.
Some of my problems are software related sorry for putting them here but I didn't want to start two threads :)
Firstly, before I even turn it on, I'd like to clean it, open her up and get any dust out, and to check for any problems like battry leakage which I head can happen. I'm a little worried about doing this so if there are any tips you can give to prevent me breaking the thing in the process that would be great :)
I'd also like to 'reformat' it, if that's the right word for this kind of thing, reset it to its original state, you know :roll:
It also came without any software, as far as I know it already has an OS installed, but no kick start disk or anything, and I don't know which OS version is most suitable for this machine.. Would appreciate advice :-D
Lastly, if there are any hardware addons you think are worth getting I'd like to hear them! The more bits and pieces the better (it came with a 512k ram expander installed)
Sorry if any of these questions seem stupid or a bit much, but thanks for any help you can give, eager to explore what this ol' computer can do :-D
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You are going to need a "Workbench Disk" at least... all software is on floppy disks... try and hunt some down... there is nothing installed on the machine.
Turn it on, and a white screen with a hand holding a blue floppy disk will appear.. that is your cue to insert either the Workbench disk or a game.
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Well, since the A500 doesn't have a battery you don't have to worry about leakage. However, some 512KB RAM expansions have a battery on them, so you might need to watch for leakage there. Buy yourself a can of air and give it a good clean out. Though try not to breath it in. It is an aerosol after all.
All you need to fire up the OS is a Workbench 1.3 disk. Assuming you don't have a later ROM installed. As far as resetting it to it's original state, it pretty much already is. There's no internal harddisk that needs reformatting, or any flash memory that needs resetting. You just need a WB1.3 disk or whatever games you have and you're set.
Expansion-wise, I'd definitely be looking to upgrade the kick ROM to version 3.1. Though some older software may not be compatible. A ROM switcher can solve that, so you can switch back and forth between the ROMs. A hard disk expansion is a good thing to have, for obvious reasons. The A590 was a good HD expansion.
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@Xamiche: I don't think you should recommend upgrading the kick rom to version 3.1 without knowing what he wants to use his A500 for.
If he for example intends to use it mainly for classic games, he should definitely stick with the old kickstart version. In that scenario, upgrading to 3.1 would mostly be a waste of time and money. In fact, it would just get him into a lot of compatibility troubles.
Who uses a (vanilla) A500 for newer apps anyway? :-)
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Thanks, this is all enlightening :-D
I cracked the front of it open (those weird shaped screwes required some unconventional tools to get out) and while the dust clogged keys were bad enough, there's actually a dead spider that's made a small web on one of the chips in the top right.. It's only a little one but it scared the crap out of me!
(If it's still working) I think I will look into a hard drive (mainly because it looks cool plugged into the side of it like that ;-)) but is Workbench 1.x or 2.x more suitable do you think? I mainly intend to play old games like Agony and some of the other programs.
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Maybe if he shows his location some friendly person will be willing to teach him some basics, throw him some disks, etc?
*Disclaimer* - This is my first post here...I'm not him phishing for help...LOL :lol:
PZ.
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Naton wrote:
Thanks, this is all enlightening :-D
I cracked the front of it open (those weird shaped screwes required some uncontentional tools to get out) and while the dust clogged keys were bad enough, there's actually a dead spider that's made a small web on one of the chips in the top right.. It's only a little one but it scared the crap out of me!
(If it's still working) I think I will look into a hard drive (mainly because it looks cool plugged into the side of it like that ;-)) but is Workbench 1.x or 2.x more suitable do you think? I mainly intend to play old games like Agony and some of the other programs.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com is good for internal pics etc...
With an A500... it's really best to leave it in stock condition... and use an Emu if you really need to use more modern software :-)
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madsjm wrote:
@Xamiche: I don't think you should recommend upgrading the kick rom to version 3.1 without knowing what he wants to use his A500 for.
If he for example intends to use it mainly for classic games, he should definitely stick with the old kickstart version. In that scenario, upgrading to 3.1 would mostly be a waste of time and money. In fact, it would just get him into a lot of compatibility troubles.
Who uses a (vanilla) A500 for newer apps anyway? :-)
Which is why I suggested a ROM switcher. Plus it gives him access to WB3.1. It's exactly what I've done with my 500 and I've never regretted it. I not only recommend it, it's the best thing I ever did for my old beasty. Of course if you can't find a ROM switcher you might have trouble.
Maybe if he shows his location some friendly person will be willing to teach him some basics, throw him some disks, etc?
That's a good idea. There are many users world wide who post here. You're bound to find someone near by who can help you out with wb disks and such.
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The ROM switcher certainly sounds interesting, versitility's always a plus!
I removed the spider's remains, hope I don't run into any more nasty suprises like that, but now I'm up to the metal grate, and can't see any way around the metal prongs holding it in place :-?
I live in Melbourne, I hear there's still a lot of Amiga users around here. ;-)
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Bend the prongs outward so that they line up with the slots they are protruding through...then the top RF shield will slip right off :-)
PZ.
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Melbourne? Cool. If you have trouble locating a WB disk, let me know and I'll send you some.
To get the metal RF shield up, you need to bend up the 4 tab/prong thingies that poke through the RF shield, then undo the 2 screws at the front, and the 2 screws on the left side switch hold the expansion guard in place. That should see you good. You're gunna need one of those special star type screw drivers though.
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Stuff the special drivers, file one edge off a large "small precision screwdriver" and it'll get the screws out, then just replace with regular items of appropriate thread pitch.
As for the WB disks, I reckon Xamiche's probably got you covered...but I'm in AU too, so anything he hasn't got (doesn't seem likely that he's without anything), I can try help too.
Get ready man, you are in for a wild ride...I got myself an A500 2 years ago thinking just to advance slightly over the C-64...now I own 8 Amigas, 6 of them expanded in some manner...after next week's arrivals it will be 13!
PZ.
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Thanks Xamiche, cool having local in the community, after I look around a bit I might take you up on the offer :-D
I got the screws out with the end of a nail file ;-)
That sounds like quite a collection Fingers :-D If the price is as good as this one I can see my self snatching up a few more machines eventually ;-)
I got the metal plate case off and apart from a few more cobwebs everything looks fine! I'll give it a quick dust and put it back together and fire it up and see how it goes.
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Hi again. So I got my Amiga hooked up to my TV and turned it on. It gave me a white screen, but no disk image, so I removed the RAM expander and bingo, she works! But looking at what I pulled out, I'm not sure that's what it is.
The machine came with it installed. The seller sent me the box for an A501 RAM expander, saying he assumed it was already in the machine, but this doesn't look anything like the picture on the box. Can anyone tell me what this is?
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/3903/img54052ig4.jpg (http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/3903/img54052ig4.jpg)
I also tried running a floppy with a demo version of the lost vikings on it (only amiga disk on hand) but inserting it takes me to a workbench 1.3 AmigaDOS window, what should I do here? :-?
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From the picture I can tell you its a RAM expansion with a battery backed-up clock. There were dozens of different makes available so it may not match the box. Try re-inserting the RAM expansion and testing it again. It may have had a non-contacting pin or something. It happens. If you do get it working I recommend removing that NiCad battery. It looks like it's starting to leak already and that will kill the board for sure, if it hasn't already. Those caps near U1 and U2 look a little funky. Looks like the battery has already leaked unto the some components. If you're going to remove the battery and clean the board, know that the substance is not acid as most people think. It's actually a base. Potassium hydroxide (KOH). After removing the battery, get yourself some isopropyl alcohol to clean the affect parts as best you can.
With the demo, try looking for a draw/folder. Open it up and you'll probably find the programmes executable file in there. Just double click it.
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Ah, thanks I'll try reinstalling it later.
Sorry to get deeper off the hardware topic, but the only things on the screen are the Workbench Screen bar and an AmigaDOS window, can't seem to do anything but move them around and type jibberish :-(
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ahh. Did you try typing in DIR to see the contents of the disk? That may or may not work. If not the disks start-up sequence is probably cactus.
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The a500 is okay with old classic amiga games. I however really recommend getting a a4000 or souped up a1200 if you want to use it for more than just old games. I have a a1200 with a hard drive added and a rather slow 1220/4meg accelerator and have installed all games onto hard drive using whdload. This means you can just click the game icon under workbench and they then load within seconds usually.
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I agree, a 4000 or 1200 would be much better. If you can afford one. An Amiga 4000 in Australia is going to cost you at the very least $800. And if you find a cheap one over-seas you can expect to have any savings eaten up by shipping costs. A 1200 will cost around $200-400. That's un-accelerated. If you want an accelerator I hope you have a spare kidney or two.
If you're an Amiga fanboy nut, like myself, you might be able to justify spending that sort of money on an Amiga 4000/1200, but realistically if you're just looking to play some games and spend under a couple hundred dollars, the Amiga 500 is the way to go. Maybe even an Amiga 600HD if you can find one. They go for around $100-200 when they come up on ebay. Maybe cheaper if you find someone selling one here.
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I did first look out for an A4000, made sense if I'm gonna get an Amiga, might as well get the most recent one, with all the new and old capabilities. But since I havn't seen any for sale, and I read there weren't that many made, I reckon they're a bit out of the price range of what I'm willing to spend on a hobby at the moment ;-) I then thought about an A1000, but thought maybe I was delving a bit too far back.. The A500 seemed like the most well rounded machine for me :-)
I got the battery out of the RAM expander, but probably did more harm than good, it took the clamps holding it in place with it, and I chipped one of the little orange things trying to sperate it from the glue :roll: reckless people shouldn't be let near computer chips I guess.(not too bothered if I broke it so don't worry or anything ;-))
Entering Dir gave me an unknown command response, and I managed to get an error 212 typing in c: , if that means anything :roll:
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Naton wrote:
I did first look out for an A4000, made sense if I'm gonna get an Amiga, might as well get the most recent one, with all the new and old capabilities. But since I havn't seen any for sale, and I read there weren't that many made, I reckon they're a bit out of the price range of what I'm willing to spend on a hobby at the moment ;-) I then thought about an A1000, but thought maybe I was delving a bit too far back.. The A500 seemed like the most well rounded machine for me :-)
I got the battery out of the RAM expander, but probably did more harm than good, it took the clamps holding it in place with it, and I chipped one of the little orange things trying to sperate it from the glue :roll: reckless people shouldn't be let near computer chips I guess.(not too bothered if I broke it so don't worry or anything ;-))
Entering Dir gave me an unknown command response, and I managed to get an error 212 typing in c: , if that means anything :roll:
My guess is you need to boot into Workbench first, then access the disk from there.
Hmm. Do you have a soldering iron? The little orange thing is a capacitor. Cheap and easy to replace. I have about half a dozen 512kb RAM expansions here. If you like I will send one over if you send the broken one to me. I can send you some workbench disks at the same time.
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Hi Mate,
Was going to reply ealier but i couldn't find the link. In Vic you are very lucky there is a man called David Myers http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/amiga.html He doesn't live in melbourne but he does attend the commodore/Amiga get togethers (now i can't really speak for him, but his was always helpful to me when i needed some advice).
Also although Aussy prices are high we have a few sellers of Amiga stuff (if you don't want Ebay).
http://mc1.boing.net/
http://www.anythingamiga.com/
http://www.amigainnovations.com/ (there site is temp down)
Mind you expect to lose a body part... :-D
If you need anything you can always let me know as well (but i think Xamiche pretty much has you covered). ;-)
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Anything Amiga has been down for over a year now. It says June of last year on the site, but it was down before that. Anything Amiga was a great place to get stuff. I wish who ever it is that runs the site would come back. Amigakit is just too far away for my liking. I don't fancy waiting 3 months just to get some parts. I emailed him once but got no reply. I'm guessin' he's packed it in. :-(
The Amiga Innovations guy is pretty cool, but his prices are just awful. More than double what it would cost at Amigakit or other Amiga sellers.
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That would be awesome, thankyou :-D PM me the details and I'll send it asap :-)
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With Amigakit i have gotten my stuff very quickly BUT it cost me what i spent to get the stuff over here that fast.... Well it depends on what you buy if it's the light stuff then it's cheap. But i got 1 x a1200 and a cd32 from him along with other stuff so the postage was enough to choke a horse... :-D
BTW i have recently opened up my 6 512KB A500 expansions and what do you know they have all leaked (the worst one spread over 1/3 of the board :-( ).
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Thanks for the info and support Retro :-D these batteries seem like a real pain just to tell the time ;-)
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Yes they are.. there even more of a pain because i can't seem to find them in OZ easy (Jaycar and Dick Smith don't have them) So i am ordering A500,A3K and A4K batteries + KS 3.1 from Amigakit (there goes my other kidney... :-D ).
I really wish we had a decent Amiga shop still in Australia. Amigakit is good but they're just too far away.
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Retro_71 wrote:
With Amigakit i have gotten my stuff very quickly BUT it cost me what i spent to get the stuff over here that fast.... Well it depends on what you buy if it's the light stuff then it's cheap. But i got 1 x a1200 and a cd32 from him along with other stuff so the postage was ebough to chose a horse... :-D
Do you think it would cost too much to have AmigaKit ship over some KickROM chips by air? I've been trying to track down some 3.1 ROMs for my Amiga 600HDs.
BTW i have recently opened up my 6 512KB A500 expansions and what do you know they have all leaked (the worst one spread over 1/3 of the board :-( ).
That really sucks. I hope they survive the leak. Damn NiCads. I curse them. :pissed:
I lost a few expansions that way. I lost an A601 to a leak. Those little buggers are as rare as rocking horse wheels. :-(
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Xamiche It's Difficult to say how much the postage will be, i had to send my IDEFIX back to them it cost me $3 (from Sydney) and i don't think it would cost that much more coming from the UK (normal airmail took about 2 weeks).
You can always try and PM him here on the forum just search for Amigakit he has always answered my Pm's and is really nice bloke.
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Approx prices for Kickstart 3.1 to Australia in Australia Dollars:
Kickstart 3.1 for A500/A2000 or A600: $35
Shipping by Airmail: $4
Total: $39
Please note we have many Australian customers and ship many parcels there weekly.
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amigakit wrote:
Approx prices for Kickstart 3.1 to Australia in Australia Dollars:
Kickstart 3.1 for A500/A2000 or A600: $35
Shipping by Airmail: $4
Total: $39
Please note we have many Australian customers and ship many parcels there weekly.
Thanks for the info AmigaKit. It's great to know you ship here regularly. :-)
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O BTW Naton how are you set for Joysticks? I have dozens and dozens of them. (i can always spare 1 or 2 (yes i mean free))
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I ordered a Quickshot joystick off ebay about a month ago, hoping to get it working with my PC some how. Unfortunatly it got lost in the mail from hongkong, which is a real shame because I distinctly remember liking the feel of the buttons. So as it happens I'm joystickless, and was lamenting ordering another off ebay, so a new one from around here without strings attached would be much appreciated kind sir :-D I'd love any joystick for playing games like Agony :lol:
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Naton wrote:
I ordered a Quickshot joystick off ebay about a month ago, hoping to get it working with my PC some how. Unfortunatly it got lost in the mail from hongkong, which is a real shame because I distinctly remember liking the feel of the buttons. So as it happens I'm joystickless, and was lamenting ordering another off ebay, so a new one from around here without strings attached would be much appreciated kind sir :-D I'd love any joystick for playing games like Agony :lol:
There not really New, but they do work and are clean. PM your address and i'll send them on Tuesday. I'll find a small box for them.