Upgrade Ram to 1 MB Amiga 500?

[save2600]

SuperTwit, do you have an A500 Plus? Or do you live here in the States? If you have a regular A500 and you add the 512kb expansion to the trapdoor, chances are you'll end up with 512kb Chip and 512kb Fast. You need to determine what mobo revision you have and go from there. Most A500 mobo's need to be modified (it's really easy to do) in order to take advantage of the 1mb capability of the Fatter Agnus. Do a search on A500 modifications after you've determined your mobo revision...

[save2600]

Some (not all) A500 mobo's do indeed have the solder pads to add the extra 512kb of memory. It'll be a crap shoot if yours does.

@Tone007: the configuration of the mobo (Gary, Agnus and the expansion RAM) determines how the memory is split - not the OS. It only appears that way on OS1.3 as Workbench adds the two values together. OS2.x+ is just a little more revealing, showing the difference between the two.

[save2600]

Yes, you can just pop in the trapdoor RAM and Super Denise and still yield great compatibility. Only a handful of games took advantage of the extra Chip RAM anyway. If you're working with graphics and sound however, you'll want to do the Chip RAM mod eventually and get yourself some Fast RAM for the side expansion port.

Only really old (like software written during the OS1.0/1.1 time) or poorly written software will "break" with the addition of Chip RAM, so I wouldn't worry about it.

[save2600]

Hmm, you may be correct, now that I think about it, I've never actually tested it. Memory a bit fuzzy on that front.

Doesn't really matter though as why would you spend the extra money to buy a 2M one when either way you'd get no benefit over a 1M one if you're just doing a drop-in replace?

For $95 shipped, I'll sell you a GVP MegaChip that includes the fattest Agnus AND the 1mb of memory...

[save2600]

@ rkauer

Your signature grabbed my eye.  Is everything OK?

Yeah, WTF?? Hope you're not planning on exiting stage left like