Looking for new hardware-A500

[mr_a500]

I didn't know they were still in business. The 50Mhz 030 one looks nice. Too bad there's no IDE or ROM upgrade on the card.

[mr_a500]

To run OS3.9, how much hard drive space do I need to have

Believe me, you don't want to run 3.9 on an A500. See my explanation in this thread:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22117

I managed to cram WB 3.1 and all the best patches and most useful utilities, Internet, Email, EaglePlayer, Songplayer, my best mods, PPaint, image display programs, and my 5 best Amiga games onto a 40Mb HD (that's Megabytes, not Gigabytes!) - still leaving around 10Mb free for internet cache and temp space! If I showed you a whole list of programs I had on the drive, it would take a whole page. I was amazed at how useful that little drive was.

I've got a 40Gb drive now, but I really only use 3Gb (and that's with 1Gb of music). The rest I use for multiple backups.

[mr_a500]

mrA, I am assuming that you have an A500. So basically what you are saying is that I should get 3.0 Roms and run WB3.1? (or 3.1 Roms w/WB3.1) Is this the optimal set up for an A500 (btw I dont even have the ECS yet.. my system is circa late 80s)

Yes, I'm using my A500 to type this. If you're buying a ROM, it's best to get 3.1 or if you've already got a 3.0 ROM there's no need to get 3.1. Either way, you can run WB 3.1. If you really want to run WB3.9, go ahead. I just found it worse than 3.1 in my own experience.

The main reason for ECS Agnus is for more Chip RAM. I think you can still run WB 3.1 on the original Agnus, but you will run out of display RAM much faster. You can easily run without the ECS Denise. ECS Denise only gives a couple super-high-res display modes (totally useless) and the ability to have the screen border black (which is nice). I ran WB3.1 with original Denise for a year - no problem. (but I'm still glad I got it for the nifty borders)

I think the Viper really is the best accelerator because it has the A1200 3.0 ROMs on the card. This alone makes my A500 run about twice as fast as having the 3.0 or 3.1 A500 ROM in the original ROM slot (can see it in speed tests). So if you get an accelerator that doesn't have ROMs on it, the ROM reading will be the bottleneck unless the card allows you to map it to Fast RAM (I think the Derringer does).

[mr_a500]

patrik wrote:
A stock A500 can use Workbench/Kickstart 3.1, but not 3.0.

What? Why not 3.0?

MikeD wrote:
He also suggested that I would not be able to add 2meg chipram because the parts that I need to do this are very scarce (in other words - good luck)

I think they still have Mini Megi (2Mb chip for A500) at Softhut.

They're not scarce, just bloody expensive.

[mr_a500]

Ah ha. That's what I suspected.

Edit: Thanks for the url tip :-)

[mr_a500]

MikeD:

So, Softhut finally cleared out eh? They had lots of A500 stuff when I upgraded in 2002 and I thought they would still have lots left because they're so damn expensive and never lower their prices.

I hate companies that don't alter their websites to remove stuff they no longer sell. Before finding Softhut in 2002, I "added to shopping cart" lots of items on many sites (even entered credit card info!) and later found the companies actually haven't sold Amiga stuff for 8 years or more.

I eventually found my Viper 520 card in Australia - probably becuause they didn't call it a Viper and people searching wouldn't have been able to find it. Unfortunately, they went out of business in 2004. So, it seems that there are finally no companies left selling A500 upgrades.

I suggest you leave your A500 as it is and buy a new A1200 from Amigakit (I'm getting one!). Expanding an A1200 should be much easier and you'll have a much more powerful Amiga than you would have had with an A500.