Storage devices for A500 Plus

[Lurch]

First thing to do is to open that puppy up and remove the battery :-)

Second thing is get a V402 ide68k from Mkl on Amibay, this will give you a booting IDE/CF-Card.

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=7158

3rd thing is to purchase auto config 8MB RAM from kipper2

http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/

Only thing missing is a 68010 and CF-Card to install workbench and WHDLoad.

68010 can be picked up for $5 from Ebay. CF-Card and adapter off ebay is around $19.

Would recommend 3.1 kickstart roms from Amigakit or Vesalia but not really needed.

The Floppy emulator is awesome, I have one. Cheaper to buy through his website though over getting it through ebay.

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/

Oh and do you have the 1MB expansion in the trapdoor, if not you can pickup one of those off ebay for $15-$19 to give you 2MB chip RAM.

[Lurch]

Lurch and hese7, perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough.

I'd really like to know where I can buy some compatible mass storage devices for my Amiga A500 Plus, complete with the prices. The availability of them and the prices have to be current.

TBH I have, follow the links in my post. Prices etc are all there.

Does anybody know does this "ide68k" device have a real website, with photos and prices, etc.?

http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/ide68k.html is the only website there are pictures there too, if you email him he usually provides a list :-)

I would assume the items kipper are selling are still available, but being xmas holidays he could be busy. I'd wait for the new year.

http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/

:-)

[Lurch]

Not sure why people are saying it is tricky, the V402 ide68k hits the spot. It's not that expensive and can be bought new via the Amibay link I provided.

There's plenty of support too on how to set it up etc.

Plenty of side cars are available too, just have to visit the market place here or check out amibay there's items always being listed.

My a500 plus is currently setup with an a590 with 7.0 roms and a SCSI card reader I picked up through mechware. All very good prices too.

If you come across a a590 without a PSU don't panic, 1) you can mod the A500 or 2) buy a cheap atx adapter from amigakit.

I also just remembered that tomthul via Amibay has a non autoconfig cf card/RAM solution too which comes with a floppy disk to boot and use it, so that could be another option.

The hardware is there, links are provided just need to ask the people that make the hardware and you will receive.

The A1200 is easier, you can pickup cf cards and adapters really cheap. Or even IDE laptop hard drives will suffice. Which they originally had installed. All very cheap.

Accelerators, turbo cards are everywhere too for the A1200. Jen's can be partly thanked for that. But then you get into another issue with timing problems which apparently are a fault with the 1200. Which I recently found out about first hand.

The only hard thing I've found with the A500 is finding accelerators for it, people hang on to them tightly and when they do sell it is for a rather high price.  They're also under powered in most cases.

I was lucky and found a broken one that Amigakit was able to repair for me.

Anyway if you just want games then a 2MB A500 plus with a floppy emulator will suffice. Although after I played with WHDLoad it makes a huge difference.

[Lurch]

@Lurch - that's a great tip about modding the A590, I recently started looking on ebay.de and found several of them (the regular North American ebay.com hasn't had a single Amiga 500 hard drive in months).

Any SCSI side car should work, but the trusty old A590 is pretty common :-)

Have bought a few items from Germany, usually quick on postage and theres some really good dealers too. Google translate works well, but most of them speak english so answer your questions fairly quickly.

On the other part, you keep mentioning links on Amibay.

Haven't had any issues with Amibay and the rules are there to protect buyers/sellers. They are a great bunch. The mods are friendly and easy to chat to and have a lot of useful information.

Amibay is a great resource for hardware/contacts. Same goes with EAB. Actually leaning towards EAB/Amibay more these days.

Both sites have information about new hardware that doesn't show up on amiga.org. This never use to be the case but times change I guess. I miss the good ol'days of Amiga.org.

If it wasn't for Amibay I wouldn't have a couple of items I've acquired. Love being able to swap hardware aswell as purchase which isn't possible via Ebay

Although I've made a few contacts through ebay that source amiga gear.

Prices to me seem cheaper on Amibay and a better range of gear to look through.

aminet (docs/hard) has free schematics and guides for most of those 'independent developers projects'.

Problem with docs is it's not actual hardware, I couldn't put one together myself.