Strange things are afoot in my a500

[foleyjo]

last night I opened up my A500 to see if I could work out why it has stopped working (cant get a picture tried the modulator on another amiga and it works fine)

I was surprised to find a couple of items in there Ive never seen before.
Firstly this might be me being ignorant/stupid but I noticed a big Paula chip. I thought they were only found in later amigas like the 1200/4000

Secondly where the rom chip is supposed to be was a device which claims to be a keyboard rom switcher. Am I right in thinking this lets me use 2.0 or 1.3 kickstarts? How does it work?? and where the hell do I put it? The switch part of it was just flopping about inside. (might be part of the main problem)

The last thing I found was a strange rectangular block which appears to be soldered onto the motherboard near the expansion board slot. If anyone knows what type of thing it could be I could go have a look and see if its the same

Sadly I cant take a picture of these parts as my camera isnt working at the moment

[foleyjo]

Cheers. Ive found what appears to be the kickstart switcher and it also explains the other device.

I believe it to be a Switch-Itt. It looks a lot like the Wilcom which according to the BBAH is the same design. It goes on to say

"The SWITCH-Itt draws power from a clip that attaches to pin 18 of the 68000 CPU."

Another mystery solved with the help of the kind folk at amiga.org :-D

[foleyjo]

The other device was the thing the romswitcher draws power from