Amiga 500 vs 500 Plus Hardware Compatibility

[psxphill]

A lot of older A500 games software needs 16-bit slow memory ("other mem"). However the A500 plus can have a maximum of 2MB graphics memory ("chip mem").

The A500+ has kickstart 2.04 and once again a lot of software requires Kickstart 1.3 (and sometimes 1.2).

So the two main causes of incompatibity are attributed to these factors.

It should be possible to fit a switch to the 500+ to select chip or ranger c0000 memory, plus a kickstart switcher can be fitted. Effectively at that point you have turned the a500+ into an ECS a500 though making the point moot.

[psxphill]

Apart from possibly not getting any use of a trapdoor memory expansion in a 500 plus, they are identical.

 
 What do you mean? The a500+ has 1mb of chip ram on the motherboard, if you want more ram then you can use the trapdoor.
 
 

Incompatibilities are software caused. Software can be patched.

If you find hw that is not compatible then it is to my best knowledge a first, and it would be extremely interesting to hear about.

Hardware needs software too and original floppies can't easily (and shouldn't be) patched. It depends on how original/compatible you want to be, whdload is great but it's not exactly the same.

[psxphill]

Except at least original Power PC board afair, http://amiga.resource.cx/search.pl?product=power+pc
they had to release plus version for A500+

 According to this thread the original board is unstable in an A500+
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59665
 
 The plus version for a500+ would have still been necessary to support 2mb chip ram though. Although the original board had 1mb on it, it wasn't possible to map it the same way.
 
 It was always a rather crazy design. According to http://amiga.resource.cx/search.pl?product=power+pc it doesn't work on NTSC amiga's.

[psxphill]

Huh. They were pretty extensively marketed in the states at the time, can't recall ever hearing that before. Weird?

It is weird, they even have a US advert on the same page :-) The A600 version is insane http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?25361-KCS-Power-PC-Board-Rare-Amiga-600-Version