My 500+ Project

[djos]

Some nice chip and fast ram numbers

Cute little cpu adapter you have there

Az

Cheers.

Yeah it is neat. I had asked kipper to make a version of the 8mb fast-ram board that moved the CPU away from the keyboard so there was room to install an IDE68k as well. he then came up with the idea of the adapter as he was already making an adapter for his ram board to fit into a1000's without blocking the floppy connector.

Needless to say it works great and made mounting my cf-card reader easier too.

[djos]

Awesome! There isnt many A500+'s in Australia. I think I've only seen 1 on ebay Australia in the last 5 years.

In my opinion the A500+ was one of the nicest Amiga's ever made.

Cheers. I had to import mine from the UK - I'm not sure they where ever officially sold here.

Me too, IMO it's the pinnacle of the consumer ECS/OCS Amiga's, the only thing that let it down, back in the day, was the 2.04 rom.

[djos]

Ahem... A3000 was the pinnacle ECS machine

Az

I did clarify with the word consumer. the 3k was a business machine IMO.

[djos]

Just noticed your wb screenshot and since I have also A500 setup, I would suggest that you install MCP 68000 version and turn on no icon borders.

Doesn't take much resourses or memory, but makes it look much better

To be honest I like wb3.1 just the way it is. :cool:


Btw, dose anyone know the best way to change a partition to FAT without killing the remaining PFS partitions? Obviously I'll lose anything on the partition I want to change to FAT but that's fine with me.

[djos]

Got my German a500 last week and last night finally got a chance to take out the rev5 mobo and drop in my rev6.

I had to do some work on the Rev6 cause i'd been using it to experiment with (Agnus 8372AB + 2mb trapdoor card from TomThul) - basically I reverted it back to stock with trapdoor as "Slow Ram" as im going to install a HxC SD Card Floppy emulator in it (ordered that the other day with Blue LCD) and I want maximum game compatibility.

While reverting it I managed to destroy one of the solder pads at JP7 (DOH!) but luckily it was the one closest to the bottom of the board and I was able to drop a patching wire down a connector hole in the trace and connect it to the middle JP7 solder pad. I still have no idea how I destroyed the solder pad!

I also soldered in 4 DIPP sockets so I have the option of taking chip ram to 1Mb but discovered the keyboard wont go all the way down with ram chips in it! I think if dremel the square edge off the top of the chips the keyboard should go down properly.



Anyway so it's all working perfectly now and I was playing SWIV till quite Late and also played with a few Aussie Demos from my original Amiga software collection - anyone remember these two? :biglaugh:

[djos]

Rings a bell, Public Domain software?

I do remember playing SWIV till my thumbs almost dropped off! Ironically with a joystick similar to Ammojammo's post.

I probably had it but it probably got thrown out with all my other stuff years ago:(

They are the Steve Vizard and Derryn Hinch demo's from around 1990 by an Aussie demo scene group called Decay!

Steve Vizard Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgL53qxAIYk
Derryn Hinch Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq5dCniC8NI


SWIV's awesome but I suck at it and play with all cheats on! :lol:

[djos]

I Thought this is a new thread sorry but anyway my post might be useful...there you go:
 
A very talented man in Sweden does similar stuff unfortunately I do know know him in detials but he might be a user here as well! Check out his magic:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj0Qbrs_3Gk&feature=plcp

Wow, some impressive skills there! I was being lazy and just replaced the board as mine had far more damage than the one he fixed.

[djos]

Got my KCS Power PC Board (XT PC Board, rev 4.2) for my 2nd a500 a few days ago.

More info:
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha...cgi?HARDID=333
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/powerpc

I've read the manual but it's not very helpful and doesn't even explain what the "123" jumper is for!

I had to clean the trapdoor connector  several times with Isopropyl before the board became stable - I also cut off the battery as it was completely dead. I might put a new one on in a proper coin holder later.

So once I got it working properly it works great, I found the v4.5 disk which made a big difference as 3.5 would only work in CGA mode. Anyhoo I ran a few tests and fired up SQ2 for fun:



CheckIt 2.0:




Space Quest ][:

[djos]

Cool, have you tried any other programs?

Not yet, im going to try DOS 6.2 but until Kipper to starts making the a500 Fast-Ram plus CF-IDE boards (as the v4.5 KCS software supports Gayle IDE) i'll prolly not do anything too serious.

[djos]

Have you thought about putting in low profile dip sockets?

I hadn't but it's not something im bothered by, was more for fun. I'll keep things as is but plan to add 4mb of real fast-ram as mentioned above.

It's not worth the effort, if you populate it then you can't have a trapdoor expansion & that means no real time clock. Besides, you can use the trapdoor expansion for 1mb of chip ram.

I have 1mb on my KCS Power PC trapdoor card and that makes 512k available as slow ram + an optional 512k battery-backed RAD disk.

I need to put a new battery on the board tho as the old one was dead (thankfully it was a lithium, not a nicad).

[djos]

My "HxC RevC SD Floppy Drive" arrived yesterday!

works great too during my limited testing! :cool:

[djos]

and here it is in action:





I just need to dig up a longer FDD cable from my "junk" collection and install it internally.

[djos]

Why can't I see it in action ? :-)

Cant you see the drive activity light on while loading WB1.3?

Have had one for over a year now well worth getting. :-)

Can you explain to me how I queue up several disks for multi disk games when using the autoboot manager? (I dont mean load 1 disk in df0 and one in df1, that's easy)

EDIT, never mind, I worked out the slot system ... eventually :p

[djos]

I know and compatibility is what I want for this machine. This one is going to be dedicated ks1.3 machine but I'm getting a custom 1.3 rom burned with a 2.05 scsi.device burned in so I can have a hdd too for multi-disk & hdd native games.

I'm might even sell my 500+ as this machine is giving me a great retro experiance :-)

[djos]

Wow, the HxC sure is flexible, I was able to put DOS disk images (.imz) on my SD card for my KCS Power PC Board and they work perfectly too!

Brilliant!!!

[djos]

I built a lower shelf today for my Roland MT-32 Synth and Amiga external Drive (missing its mechanism atm), it's a bit rough but works great!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2012-12-29%2014.29.39.jpg