Why is NTSC Amiga 500+ so hard to find?

[LoadWB]

This has plagued me for quite a while.  I managed to come across a true Amiga 500+ with Rev 8 mobo several several years ago, I think 1996-ish.  My 500's have been so Frankensteined that I honestly have no idea where I found the 500+.

Recently I started looking for another one, or at least a Rev 8 mobo to no avail.  I can only find PAL 500+s from UK.  Are NTSC A500+s really rare?

It recently hit me that I could also just pick up a 600 which would pretty much give me the same system (save for KS1.3 for older games) with PCMCIA and IDE interfaces.  But then I noticed that the 600 was solidly crippled with base of 1MB RAM.  Pfah!  Man, why would Commodore do that?

[LoadWB]

I've seen upgrades for the 600, including the ChipRAM upgrade.  I'll continue to consider that, meanwhile I'm putting my 50MHz Derringer '030-based 500 back into production.  Now I just need to find a Rejuvinator for the 1k  :-D

[LoadWB]

Sweetness.  My NTSC 500+ has the Derringer and I will be trying the AdIDE interface, too.  I have three KS switchers to choose from sitting in a box here.

[LoadWB]

The Rev 8 mobo has an onboard battery-backed clock.  Try checking for it.

[LoadWB]

Come to think of it, I complained about the A600 only having 1MB on-board, IIRC the A500+ also only came stock with 1MB, and the A501+ provides the second 1MB for 2MB of ChipRAM.  I'll have to pull mine out of its box and double check.  I am pretty sure this is the case, though.

BTW, I realized just now that this was under software and should have been under hardware... I originally started this thread to ask about NTSC CD32 titles, but changed my mind  :-)

[LoadWB]

Okay, one last thought on identifying your A500... ShowConfig or SysInfo can identify chips.  I don't think any other revision A500 mobo came with the 2MB Agnus.

That's it, I'm done :-)