A500 HDD? How to do it?

[kidkoala]

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).
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). note that i haven't checked the details of these auctions, examples only;

Amiga 500 Sidecar HDD controller
More of the same


or you could go for a top of the line accelerator;
E-matrix Accelerator for Amiga 500

gives you 50Mhz 030 cpu and a max. of 128Mb ram. And ofcourse three IDE-connectors.

ofcourse this IS rare and very expensive.


as for sizes you can use any standard IDE (non sata ofcourse) disk but I will recommend you to keep them small to avoid extra configuration and problems. Under 2GB.

[kidkoala]

@countzero

don't agree, the 500 sidecar expansion pops up often and doesn't cost that much..you would ofcourse have to check ebay in several countries regularly until you find one that suits you and doesn't cost too much. (about my second link, like i said i didn't check details it was merely a "more of the same" link, i wanted to point out that sidecard expansions are on ebay a lot, for several systems.


as for cpu ide being cpu intensive, does it really matter, he's talking about using adf, meaning playing games i guess..why would you _need_ scsi to just play some games, the difference isn't that big in this context.
i love scsi myself, but i know when i don't need it.

and making his own scsi-card, come one, this guy seems like he doesn't want to pay or do a lot of stuff, he just want the simplest, easiest way to using adf's on a disk, and i think that's the sidecar expansion..

@circlip

btw here's another one of the sidecars,
Ebay UK sidecar
this one might be a little more expensive since it has onboard ram (4mb this one), the cheapest ones are those without ram ofcourse.
some extra ram will be good when classic gaming but a lot is not necessary.

since someone brought up the a600 that's a nice tip, will make you able to play ecs games (second generation chipset games), and you can very easily connect a 2.5" hdd or a CompactFlash-card, like he mentioned. it's also smaller than the 500.

[kidkoala]

@circlip

A600 mobo is much smaller, don't think it fits directly, maybe countzero can answer that better.
i'd rather just buy a whole 600. they don't cost that much either if you search for the right one. i have one myself with fitted Compactflash card.

a 1200 is said to be the best choice for classic gaming/general amiga-fiddling by many:) it has the last generation chipset (aga) and is backwardscompatible with most old games
by using bios switches. and like countzero says it has a _lot_ of expansions easily available on ebay and elsewhere.
prices vary from very cheap to very expensive depending on what you are after i guess. it has an onboard ide-controller like the 600.

what you can do with it? aside from putting a disk in it for playing old games, you can put much more ram in it, you can put an accelerator in it (now we are beginning to talk more money), these range from low-end 68020 (?) to high-end PPC accelerators. this makes you able to use an amiga much like a more modern computer, with a more modern operating system (os 3.5, 3.9 or os4) but it's not really comparable, and when speaking of prices again it gets outrageous other than that there are numerous other expansions that do various things; network, internet, graphics cards, soundcards etc.

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

[kidkoala]

@countzero

i commented on the scsi controller DIY because someone else mentioned it, wasn't you..

and like i said, i don't think he wants to solder and stuff he want the easy way to the solution. though i personally find modding/hacking fun to.

haha italians are always fishy aren't they? like i said my links are examples, buy it or leave it.

@circlip

there are also towers meant for the 1200 but now we are talking money again so i won't go into that.

i think your best options are get the cheapest sidecar you find for the 500 that seems like it's in ok shape, ide or scsi, doesn't matter hehe:)
and maybe get a little extra ram for it, also cheap (for the small upgrades at least).

or, get a whole 600 cheap and put a cheap 2.5" hdd or CF card in it. you can probably get the ram upgrade for the 600 used on ebay as well, might save you some dollars. i know i did..

here's all ebay country-links for you if you want to do some heavy searching i usually just check the biggest countries.. amiga.com does _not_ cover all countries or even all items in the biggest countries.
Ebay country links

@thread

btw if he goes for the hhd in 500 solution, don't he need the 2.05 or 3.1 rom upgrade as well? 1.3 doesn't support hdd? that's not expensive anyway..

[kidkoala]

@orange

hehe who tosses 1200's around cheaply and locally?
please tell me cause then i'd like one of those

[kidkoala]

not that i'm the one to bid on it, but how much do you want for it?

[kidkoala]

@pyrre & orange

read the thread before posting, eh?

i already posted the E-matrix link _and_ told him it's very expensive..
and i already posted this "a 1200 is said to be the best choice for classic gaming/general amiga-fiddling by many"

@circlip

..but my personal choice in your context would be the 600, if you want to switch the machine out at all (cheapest option would still be an A500 sidecar with extra ram or 512kb chipram upgrade imho, since he already has the machine for it), because the 600 has a much smaller footprint, and the 1mb upgrade you need is available used on ebay, eg. here 1mb upgrade w/clock, and here . that gives you 2mb chip wich is what you need for most old games. another reason for buying the 600 over the 1200 is that the 1200's tend to be stuffed with expansions or peripherals that make them expensive, whereas 600's are often plain or with a 1mb ram expansion and/or hdd/cf card, wich is just what you need! like this one 600 on Ebay.de w/cf

..and forget about do it yourself projects, if you want the fastest and simplest way of getting to your solution, use Ebay, things are easy to find, and are there right now. just find the right stuff at the right price, and if the item doesn't ship to your country, ask seller, they often agree on sending anyway. Searching through newspapers every day and driving around finding fleamarkets is just wasting time for that small chance of finding anything useful in good shape imho.

That said, you should post a "want to buy" with the stuff you'd like on all amiga forums like amiga.org, amigaworld.net and amigans.net, and watch the classifieds sections for interesting things. the chance that someone has a cheap 600/1200 there is pretty good..
a plus of buying the a1200 would be that it comes with 2mb chipram already installed, wich is nice, and that it has the aga chipset, but most games that you stumble onto in classic gaming are not aga, they are ocs like your A500 has, or ecs like the A600 has.

it's not an easy question to answer really, depends on what you want to do, what you want to play, and the money involved..but now you've got some background info.

[kidkoala]

@pyrre

hmm,what do you mean kickstart incomp.? can't the 2.05 rom use 1.3 games? i think most can be run with 2.05? (wich is what the A600 has as standard). however if he wants to install hdd and use probably os3.1 it is recommended to upgrade rom (kickstart) to 3.1, like i did a few years ago.

as for ocs games, those are not rare i think? there are tons of ocs games, ecs games are the rare ones, correct me if i'm wrong.
besides you can set the A600 in ocs mode from the bios if you have an ecs incomp. game, or i guess you can run some kind of software from amigaos to fix incomp. (or run a whdslave?)

while you mention the A500, wich is ocs only, and cannot run ecs games,so the A600 is more classic-gaming-ready

@ral-clan

this is broughtup earlier in the thread. while saying that ide-sidecars are almost non-existant i think is a bit harsh i follow several ebay-countries regularly and have seen the go now and then..

[kidkoala]

well, 500+ is named + because it has the ecs chipset, among other things, so in that way you're ecs games would work.

but when you say you could play all the games when using your plain a500, i guess that is because you didn't try any ecs games,am i correct? thought some (or a lot?) of ecs games where backwardscompatible with ocs..