Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: zombie10k on March 08, 2010, 09:15:55 PM
-
I have a 2 meg DKB Agnus upgrade with the 8375 and was thinking about upgrading a Rev 5 A500 I have. I started thinking about, since the DKB only has an additional meg, am I going to end up with only 1.5 Megs of chip memory?
I recall there was a hack to allow the A501 add on card to be used as chip memory Is this legit or just a passing legend?
I have an A530 turbo that I am attempting to resurrect (missing the HD) and thought it would be a fun project to get an A500 with 2 megs of chip, 8 meg fast with the 030 precessor, booting with Kick 3.1 / WB 3.1.
any hints or tips are appreciated. The alternative is to use it in the A2000 with a Rev 6.2 and 1 meg already there for the chip memory.
thanks!
-
I think the hack on this link :
http://amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4722
Is what you mean?
-
I have a 2 meg DKB Agnus upgrade with the 8375 and was thinking about upgrading a Rev 5 A500 I have. I started thinking about, since the DKB only has an additional meg, am I going to end up with only 1.5 Megs of chip memory?
Yep.
I recall there was a hack to allow the A501 add on card to be used as chip memory Is this legit or just a passing legend?
Nope, it's real and necessary if you want a full 2mb Agnus scenario. May as well perform the hack since the 512kb memory in the trap door is slow Fast Ram anyway. lol (no really, it is)
http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/1MBChip
I have an A530 turbo that I am attempting to resurrect (missing the HD) and thought it would be a fun project to get an A500 with 2 megs of chip, 8 meg fast with the 030 precessor, booting with Kick 3.1 / WB 3.1.
any hints or tips are appreciated. The alternative is to use it in the A2000 with a Rev 6.2 and 1 meg already there for the chip memory.
thanks!
Wedging all that stuff into an A500... you're going to want a beefier power supply for sure, which an A2000 already has. There's definitely a coolness factor to pimping out an A500 though - so you're going to have to decide if that's something you really want to do. Stuffing a HD in an A500's case is kind of BS too, since you have to remove the A500's floppy drive. There goes part of the coolness or feel of the machine - unless you somehow wedge a 2.5" drive in there somewhere.
-
Yep.
Nope, it's real and necessary if you want a full 2mb Agnus scenario. May as well perform the hack since the 512kb memory in the trap door is slow Fast Ram anyway. lol (no really, it is)
http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/1MBChip
Wedging all that stuff into an A500... you're going to want a beefier power supply for sure, which an A2000 already has. There's definitely a coolness factor to pimping out an A500 though - so you're going to have to decide if that's something you really want to do. Stuffing a HD in an A500's case is kind of BS too, since you have to remove the A500's floppy drive. There goes part of the coolness or feel of the machine - unless you somehow wedge a 2.5" drive in there somewhere.
thank you guys for the reply, I might give this a shot on a relatively clean A500 Rev 5 computer I picked up from Ebay recently.
Save2600 - The only changes inside the 500 were going to be a kickstart 3.1 rom, the DKB 2 meg upgrade and perhaps the mod to move the internal memory to chip memory.
The A530 is the old GVP side car with it's own power supply. I had one back in the early 90's and upset that I sold it when I switch to the x86 in 95. I found one on ebay a few years ago and it's in pretty good condition. It has 1 4MB module and the 68030EC without the FPU. I was looking to change it for the 68030 @ 50 along with a matching FPU and a SCSI->IDE-> 4 GB card.
It also has the 286 card in it. It would be a little out there to see a DOS window on the A500.
I think this is about as much I could max out an A500. Although I also thought about trying to get the A530 working on my A1000. My dream Amiga in the late 80's would have been the '030 A1000 with a 3.1 kick/WB.
-
I have a 2 meg DKB Agnus upgrade with the 8375 and was thinking about upgrading a Rev 5 A500 I have. I started thinking about, since the DKB only has an additional meg, am I going to end up with only 1.5 Megs of chip memory?
I'm not familiar with the DKB version, but I have the MiniMegiChip, which is quite similar. It had an "Denise adaptor" to integrate the 512 kB built in RAM and annother 512 kB from the Trapdoor RAM.
I recall there was a hack to allow the A501 add on card to be used as chip memory Is this legit or just a passing legend?
Not sure about that.
I have an A530 turbo that I am attempting to resurrect (missing the HD) and thought it would be a fun project to get an A500 with 2 megs of chip, 8 meg fast with the 030 precessor, booting with Kick 3.1 / WB 3.1.
I had an 1.8 mB Ram expansion in the trapdoor and a "SupraRAM 8mB" at the Expasion port. Together with the 512 k of the built in RAM of the A500 I had 2.3 mB + 8 mB = 10.3 mB. But this also required an "Denise adapter" for the trapdoor-RAM.
This way I had 2 mB CHIP RAM + 1.3 mB Trapdoor-RAM + 8 mB Fast RAM = 11.3 mB total RAM.
-
...
Wedging all that stuff into an A500... you're going to want a beefier power supply for sure, which an A2000 already has. There's definitely a coolness factor to pimping out an A500 though - so you're going to have to decide if that's something you really want to do. Stuffing a HD in an A500's case is kind of BS too, since you have to remove the A500's floppy drive. There goes part of the coolness or feel of the machine - unless you somehow wedge a 2.5" drive in there somewhere.
IIRC, there were two different PSUs for the A500s.
Initially they came with a "heavy" one that had a big transformator in it. Those had enough power for my heavily expanded A500.
Later they came with a "light" switch-mode power supply, that was not powerful enough for heavily expanded A500s.
-
The setup your have described will work fine. I used to have an A500 setup very much like that. The chip RAM mod isn't hard at all, and your stock A500 PSU will cover this OK as long as your GVP has its PSU.
You may find the GVP 286 card is a little problematic, and frustrating (spell that slow), but it will work.
Good luck with the project.
-
IIRC, there were two different PSUs for the A500s.
Much more.
Initially they came with a "heavy" one that had a big transformator in it. Those had enough power for my heavily expanded A500.
Later they came with a "light" switch-mode power supply, that was not powerful enough for heavily expanded A500s.
It's a better idea to look at what is written on the type plate of the PSUs instead of the weight when doing comparisons.
Type S is light, T is heavy.
http://chain.3dgrafika.cz/joomla/index.php?option=com_geda&Itemid=89
As you can see, there are 4.5A units of both types.
-
Everything you need to know is described in the Megachip manual. Done it myself, too.
http://amiga.resource.cx/manual/MegAChip.pdf