Proud owner

[InTheSand]

Hi Lurch,

I'm guessing from the address in your profile that you're in NZ? If so, welcome from another NZ Amiga user!

Which ROMs does your A500 come with? Is it Kickstart 1.x or 2.x? Realistically, in order to do anything semi-serious with an Amiga, you want to be running at least 2.x...

As far as ROMs go, you can either buy genuine 3.x ROMs from various online dealers, or you could consider buying the Amiga Forever DVD set (which gives you licences to all the ROMs) and soft-kicking Kickstart 3.1, at the expense of some of the Amiga's RAM. I have a 1.3-based A500 with hard drive that I use with a soft-kicked 3.1 ROM.

You're unlikely to find a network card for an A500, but you're right in thinking you can use a null modem cable to a PC.

Finally, upgrading the A590's hard drive should be easy - try TradeMe for 50-pin 1Gb SCSI drives and you should be able to get one for around $10!

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Hi Lurch,

Amiga hardware is definitely hard to find in NZ... Ah well, sometimes bits and pieces appear on TradeMe, but usually just basic A500s...

Yep, I'm from Nelson, but I'm a Pom really (don't hold that against me though!) - emigrated out here in March/April so still getting used to all things Kiwi! Brought several Amigas with me though: A1000, A500, A600, A1200, and then bought a stock A3000 since I've been over here, which I've recently expanded.

You can find the A590 setup disks here, assuming you've got some way of reading those into a real Amiga. If you haven't, give me a shout and I'll write them out on to real Amiga disks for the cost of the postage and a padded envelope.

Soft-kicking into 3.1 is relatively easy, assuming you have legal ROM images of an A500/A2000 3.1 ROM set. Search Aminet for the relevant software. I can't remember what I used on my A500... I'll dig it back out of its box and give you the configuration if you have no luck with the above.

 - Ali

P.S. 3.x ROMs from an A1200 won't work in an A500.