Using Iomega Zip drive with A500 Plus

[AmigaBruno]

Looks fun...what version of DPAINT are you using?

I'm using DPaint III. The date given in the manual is Copyright 1989. It mentions EHB modes, but I don't think there's any way of using the ECS 1280 horizontal resolution modes. This would require a patch, because those chips weren't released until 1991. Does DPaint IV support those modes?

[AmigaBruno]

Just an FYI: you can forget about doing animations in 1280 modes on an A500.  The ECS chipset is just tremendously slow in those modes.   In any event you can't even display a 1280 screen in EHB as that would take more bandwidth than exists.

If you are interested in 1280 resolution screens then you really need AGA.

You can draw static graphics in 1280x512x256 colors in Dpaint 5 (maybe 4 too) and it will be a bit sluggish but still completely usable.

If you cut the colors down to 64 then it will be even faster.

I never said I was thinking of doing animations in the 1280 modes, I just wondered if I could use them at all. Anyway, it seems I need to upgrade my RAM even to run some of the animations supplied with DPaint III, but although there have recently been a few A502 1Mb RAM upgrades for the A500 Plus on eBay, there don't seem to be any available now. AFAIK and have read in an old Swedish magazine recently the A501 is incompatible with the A500 Plus.

BTW, I've just noticed this http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=51&products_id=572 , which is a right angled Zorro adapter. I've never noticed this before. I think this may open up some new possibilities when it come to hard drives.

[AmigaBruno]

I thought I should let you all know that luckily I got outbid on the Iomega Parallel 100Mb Zip drive, so I haven't wasted any money.

I'm now considering what Amiga items I shoud buy for my A500 Plus to upgrade it at all. These could be a 1Mb trapdoor RAM upgrade, or a file transfer kit made up of a cable and a floppy disk with or without a PC parallel port card.