Amiga 500 Rev 5. and ECS chip set...??

[omnicron10]

1 Meg Agnus like the 8372A

You would also have to have 1 meg chip activated via hardware mods on the MB.

http://theweeks.org/toms-stuff/files/TDTTS_a500_r5_ag-hack_fix.txt

[omnicron10]

I do have a question,

I will be replacing my supra 512 card with an "expansion systems" Baseboard ram upgrade, that is a two part memory upgrade:

one part sits on the Gary IC socket, and the Gary plugs into it, piggy pack.
and there is a small ribbon cable to goes to the memory board that can hold
up to 4 megs of RAM giving a total of 4.5 megs....  

will that memory expansion still work with the line cut going to the trap door ram?
is anyone familiar with upgrading the Agnus, and using the Baseboard ram upgrade?  

I just did this.

The ICD Baseboard will not autoconfig more than 1MB chip of ram on machine with ECS agnus (512  motherboard and 512 baseboard). The extra RAM must be configured with the adram program on the floppy disk.

With baseboard you need to add the ECS Agnus, Add a wire from the P4B gary daughter board to JP2-2 (second pad on the JP2) and make sure no other connections are present on JP2.  Then you have to cut the JP7A (on rev 6a A500) jumper or the equivalent line on the rev 5 machines. Now you will have 1 meg chip with ICD Baseboard.  ICD had a GAL upgrade that allowed autoconfig of fast ram but I dont know where to get it.  I use to have it on my A500 that got tossed when I went to school by my parents... darn it..  

I have still yet to find the DOCS for the ICD baseboards but I just did this mod with a 6A mb and remember some of the details from the docs over 15 years ago!

Another thing.. you want super denise but dont have or can't find one... Indivision ECS will support ECS screenmodes with normal denise over the VGA port AND the cool Graffiti modes!!!  Best mod evar!!

I am in the middle of finishing up a REV 6a A500 with all these mods...

Tim

[omnicron10]

Here is a good link I found regarding A500 rev 5 and 6 mb upgrades.

http://eabmobile.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=13726&d=1177615199

It was an article from Amiga Shopper 1993, Issue 27 Called "Transform Your Machine"

Tim

[omnicron10]

ICD and the Baseboard are different but function the same way.  The daughterboard on the baseboard is larger and has the clock on the board.  They have the same flaws and design issues.  You will still need to run the wire from the daughterboard to JP2-2 as well as run a program to get all your memory once the system is booted if the 1 meg agnus unless you have the GAL update that does on the daughterboard.

Here is a link to a thread on getting the ICD AdRam Docs.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=626989

[omnicron10]

I got the docs for the Expansions Systems Baseboard if you need them.

A chap on EAB was kind enough to send them to me.

I will try to find a place to host them online.

I put them on the ZONE at EAB so if anyone needs to get it they can for a while.

[omnicron10]

No you do have to run the adram program.  You see SOME ram with KS1.3+ but not all of it.  With KS1.2 you would not even see that.  Page 9 states that you will see upto 2 MB with KS 1.3+ but not all the RAM.  If you only have 2 Megs then you check the avail command to see what ram is actually available.

[omnicron10]

P 6 Of the Baseboard docs for Rev 5 says to short JP2 2-3 not 1-2.  Are you looking at it backwards?

Make sure Row 0 is populated with chips on the baseboard.  That is the other 512k chip.

Make sure you did not cut pin 32 like the commodore 1 meg upgrade state.

Also I would imagine you have the ribbon cable from the gary daughterboard to the trapdoor slot board.

[omnicron10]

The disk might not work with KS 3.1 but to see the additional ram without the PAL upgrade on the Gary daughterboard requires that you run the cram command.  Just make a WB disk that has cram in c: and put that in the startup-sequence.  I would add it as early as possible in the startup so things will load to fast ram as much as possible.  I believe cram works with 3.1 since I had a A500 with baseboard and 3.1 a long time ago....

[omnicron10]

You can.  Most 1MB agnus should work.  Can you get complete part numbers to make sure?  What machine and what revision motherboard?

[omnicron10]

one interesting note:

when i go into sysinfo, it shows the ram in 4 windows.
3 x 512 k segments
1 x 1 meg chip ram...

is this use ful?   why would it not show up and 2 screens, 1 meg chip and 1.5 fast?

The way the ram allocate memory but still have versatility to add memory they made the expansion this way.  

The ICD Adram 540 tends to allocate ram in larger blocks.

The ram being cut up like that can cause problems with some graphics programs that want contiguous space for large graphics or programs.

Any "Ranger" memory expansion will have those issues as they have to find areas to allocate ram.

Actual zorro II memory should not have that problem.