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Author Topic: Possible to determine A500 board revision without opening the case?  (Read 13977 times)

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Offline psxphill

Quote from: Colani1200;748307
Is there a software tool to determine the board revision of an A500 without opening the case? Or any other possibility?

No, the motherboard revision can only be determined by opening the case.
 
You can find out the kickstart version & whether it's OCS/ECS but that doesn't pin down the motherboard revision.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Possible to determine A500 board revision without opening the case?
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2013, 12:06:27 PM »
Quote from: AmmoJammo;749450
turn the case upside down!
 
you can look through the slot vents under the memory, and see if it has the single row of memory chips, with every second one missing, or the two rows of chips with all being populated...
 
then at least you'll know if its a rev3/5 or rev6a/8

All my a500's have shielding around the entire motherboard. You can't see anything through the case vents, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Possible to determine A500 board revision without opening the case?
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2013, 11:33:35 AM »
Quote from: AmmoJammo;749501
As said, all the ones I've looked at have the same slots cut out in the metal shield, but have a translucent sheet, which you should still be able to tell if its rev3/5 or rev6/8... Although I'm not sure that helps much :P

hmm, yeah the plastic looks reflective so unless you shine a light on it you don't see anything & even then it's tricky to make out. It would be interesting to get pictures of each revision though as it might be that it's enough, if there are slight variances in component placement.
 
I'm not sure why you'd want to know what revision it was though. What people want to know is:
 
Kickstart
Agnus
Denise
 
You can probably figure out which revision it is from that tbh.
 
I think rev 3 was kickstart 1.2, rev 5 was kickstart 1.3 (although some people seem to have rev 5 with 1.2 roms, so whether you have a commodore or amiga key might give it away). Both were OCS.
Rev 6 was ECS but still kickstart 1.3, it might only be ECS agnus though and not ECS denise.
 
Rev 8 will definitively be ECS, probably 2.04 but it's been known to be 1.3 as well. I don't know if there is a way to tell the difference between a rev 8 configured as an a500 and a rev 6 (possibly only if you can detect the difference between a 1mb agnus with 0.5mb ram and a 2mb agnus with 0.5mb ram).
 
It wouldn't surprise me if commodore shipped some rev 3 with 1.3 though if they found some old pcb's in a box somewhere, the same for keyboards. You got what you got.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2013, 11:41:19 AM by psxphill »
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Possible to determine A500 board revision without opening the case?
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2013, 11:39:15 PM »
Quote from: AmmoJammo;749538
I had a factory sealed Rev5 with a 1.2 ks, and a keyboard that looked like all my other Amiga 500's?
 
Anyway, why would you want to know... so you don't have to open it! lol

Do you know what the difference is between a rev 3 & rev 5 motherboard?