A500 HDD? How to do it?

[countzero]

you'll need a a500 scsi board like the ones listed here. they're kind of rare and pricey. ebay is your best friend.

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kidkoala wrote:
your chances aren't as bad as these guys want it to be, if you stick with IDE it's not that rare and it won't cost you astronomous amounts of money (though everything in the amiga world costs bucks now a days).

DOH, what the hell are you talking about ? IDE add ons are actualy even more RARE since they are more sought after.

links to these expansions follow under, it's an expansion that goes in the slot on the left of your 500. both the controller and the disk itself is inside that box (see links).

the second link you gave is an A590 which is a SCSI controller (technically, it has an XT controller too, but it's useless).

besides, SCSI is a much better idea for a 68000 system, cause it incurs less cpu load.

[countzero]

that's a zorro board for a2000's. you need a a500 expansion slot converter to use that (which is also rare, and sometimes VERY EXPENSIVE

a500 is the most popular amiga ever was and every kind of expansion for it is sought after.

or you can get a cheap A600 mobo which is an a500 with built in IDE and PCMCIA and move on from there. However you'll find it much more difficult to upgrade than the a500 if you're thinking of an CPU upgrade (a chip ram upgrade is readily available at amigakit and vesalia for about 50$ and a DIY ram upgrade is in the works which wil give you 8 mb fast ram)

or you can get a cheap A1200 mobo and have all kinds of upgrades more readily available.

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@kidkoala

making his own SCSI expansion ? when did I say that ? Why do you think I'm against sidecar expansions ? That's what I'm suggesting. But I claim IDE ones cost higher. SCSI sidecars are cheaper. Anyway, not that it really matters ...

That's a very nice GVP HD8+. But it's also a SCSI unit SCSI sidecar expansions by far out number IDE sidecars, that's why they're cheaper. Also, you'll see that this HD8+ won't go anything less than 60-70$ since it's a nice boxed unit. it may go well beyond 100$.

@circlip

a a600 motherboard is way smaller than a500 mother board. You can easily fit it, however you'll need to secure it somehow, as screwhole locations would probably be different. Another problem is the keyboard. You can't use the a500 keyboard directly. You'll need to make yourself an adapter which clips on the keyboard controller chip of a600. you'll need a pllc socket and do some soldering 8-)

a1200 mobo is also smaller than the a500 mobo. You can put it in a pc tower case but you'll have to a lot of hacking.

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kidkoala wrote:

btw here's _another_ sidecar for the 500, this is also the 590 scsi-controller;
Ebay Italy sidecar

oh my god poor a590 ... somebody burned it ! this auction looks really fishy, I'ld never spend any money on it ... altavista translates :

"UNFORTUNATELY I DO NOT ARRANGE PIU' OF An AMIGA 500 NE' Of ITS LOCAL P0WER SOURCE IN SMARRITO HOW MUCH And I DO NOT HAVE The POSSIBILITA' TO TEST OF The OPERATION"

means, sold as is, a big gamble really.

[countzero]

1.3 kickstart does support harddrives (autobooting) however partition size is quite limited. some people claim to have agb partitions under 1.3, my personal experiences I could never get a 200 mb partition on a 1gb scsi hdd get to work. under winuae, it seemed to work fine (with 1.3 kickstart, 1.3 workbench) when I go to real amiga, it always corrupted when I put some files after a certain limit. Therefore I strongly suggest going 2.05 or 3.1.