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

[waltermixxx]

I have an Amiga 500 with the OCS and was wondering what chips consist of the ecs upgrade... I know there is a super Denise and that is one of them,
but what are other chips I would need to be replaced to upgrade my Amiga 500 to an ECS Amiga 500...(also kickstart Rom 3.1 but what else?)

Are Kits available?

I'm already getting the ROM 3.1 and workbench 3.1...
what other chips would I need and does anyone know where I can get them?

cheers and thanks...

[waltermixxx]

I see an auction for a bunch of chips including the fatter agnus,
but no mention of super denise... I did email him to find out...

thanks for the info...

[waltermixxx]

I have a REV 5 Amiga 500

ok thanks for the info, i have done some looking around, and it looks like I will be purchasing the following:

Fatter Angus 8372A and a Super Denise.  I am in ntsc land so I don't have to mess with pin 41 on the Angus, I just have to do the JP2 thing from middle to bottom, to top to middle jumper, and then cut a trace that goes to the Bottom trap door ram....

that is supposed to give me 1 meg of continuous ram, assuming I have a memory expansion in my bottom trap door ram... I do the supra 512K memory upgrade with real time clock...

I will also be installing a ROM 3.1 and I know what to do with pins...


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?  

[waltermixxx]

One other quick question,
will the 8372B (2meg fatter Agnus) work on my REV 5 Amiga 500?
I have the opertunity to get that instead of an 8372A (1 meg version)

[waltermixxx]

wow thanks for all the additional information and links, I think I will stick to the 1 meg angus and keep it as simple as possible...  the Baseboard memory expansion board that I have is made by Expansion Systems, not ICD and being new to Amiga, I don't know if they are infact the same?   But I just thought I would point that out, if they are indeed the same, than very cool I will definately give it a shot...
 
 
thanks again for the info...

[waltermixxx]

Very Cool, I will have to give that a shot, it looks like it would not be a problem to reverse... I understand I will need to run something on start up for the amiga to see the additional ram on the card...

I do have one other question:

with the new ecs chipset, that gives me 640 X 400 flicker free, I read, but would need a multisync monitor to see it properly... will a standard, LCD SVGA monitor work ?
with one of those 23 to 9 pin rgb to vga connection adapters?    So in general, are today's LCD computer monitors multisync?  I would think so but just wondering if anyone has tried these connectors...

In the mean time I will search for an answer...

Cheers and thanks again, the link about two messages up was crazy helpful... excellant artical   cheers.!!!

[waltermixxx]

I did get my ROM 3.1 up and running, i did do the mod, so thank you all for the kind reminder...

Just waiting for my Super Denise and Fatter Angus to arrive from Softhut.com
I'm getting spooked becuase I have not heard back since he accepted my  paypal payment... I'm hoping he is enjoying the holidays and is too drunk with the festive spirit to send the parts...

Hoping I get them soon...

[waltermixxx]

Hi there, I appreciate the concern,
I bent the pin out just a bit, enough to clear the socket...
and soldering the chip, I was very gentle....

Cheers...

(biting my nails, nervously waiting for my ecs chips to arrive...)

[waltermixxx]

Totally hanging tight...
just excited about getting up and running...

cheers and thanks for the note, he seems like a good guy,
gave me tons of information regarding the various Angus chips available,
and what would work best for me...

Say I'm dying to get a hold of one of those 68K socket IDE cards,
where can I get one?   would love to get some storage on my Amiga 500...

Cheers and thanks for the note...

[waltermixxx]

I got my Expansion Systems Baseboard today...  have not gotten my Fatter angus yet, so I just installed the Baseboard as is... it came with  rows 2,3,6,7 populated, which is suppose to give 2 megs of additional ram... but for some reason, I only see 1,621, 248 in other memory, and not the 2,207,704 the documentation says I should see...
 
Keep in mind the jumpers are set to: WB:1.3 (even though I have 3.1)
and the FAT jumpers are set correctly as well... ... (page 5 on document)
Jumper B on 2-3 and Jumper A on 4-5
 
No modifications have been made on the Amiga 500 (no fatter angus yet so no reason to change the J2 jumper)
 
Page 9 indicates with fat angus and ks 1.3 i should not have to use the software to see all the ram...  ... strange... not sure what to do at this point...

[waltermixxx]

Thanks for your quick reply !!!
 
I downloaded and booted up with the baseboard install/boot disk ( WB1.3) and it saw all the ram...not all, but more than before...
 
oddly enough: when running sys info I get the following three pages for RAM info:
 
 
First Page: 255 Kilo Bytes Slow RAM Public
Second Page:1.7 Megabytes Local Public Kick 24BitDMA
Third Page:512 Kilo Bytes Chip RAM Local Public Kick 24BitDMA
 
so there's the 2 megs plus the 512 chip ram, but wondering what the 255K slow Ram Public is all about... the terminology is new to me...
 
cheers...

[waltermixxx]

how do I iliminate the 255K slow ram public,
so I have a full 2 megs slow ram local local public...
 
what's the difference ?  

[waltermixxx]

I should have (once they arrive) an ecs denise, and an ecs (fatter agnus)... I already have the 3.1 kickstart in there...
 

[waltermixxx]

Well my ECS chips have arrived, I Installed my Super Denise,
and my fatter Agnus....
 
I had a devil of a time getting my Fat Agnus out, but she finally did,
the socket looked fine, and the chip I got looks great as well...
 
I modded my REV 5 motherboard so Jumper 2 is shorted between pin 1 & 2 and not 2 & 3.
 
I Have a baseboard Memory card, with the Gary chip adapter...
the jumpers on the Gary chip are set to Fatter, and KS 1.3 ( I have 3.1)
 
the jumpers on the Memory card (populated with 2 megs of ram)  are both set for
1 & 2 and 4 & 5 (fatter agnus)  ...  now my A500 does not see 1 meg of chip ram like I was hoping, but only 250kbytes or so...
 
not sure what to do...  it's only seening about half of the original chip memory...
anyone know why this might be?

[waltermixxx]

latest update...  I read the manual some more, and realized that in order for the A500 to see the additional chip ram, the chip ram has to sit in row 0.   Then it says I can populate the rest in any order...
 
sure enough the amiga does see the full 1 meg of chip ram ( actually about 820 K) as some of it is being used as a ram disk,   then 0 other memory...
 
so the question is,  I have 2 megs of ram in total  .5 will be used for chip ram, leaving me with 3 addtional rows of memory, in which rows should they go in?
 
I tried 2, 6, 3  .... if I boot of the Baseboard boot disk 1_7  the system crashes after booting, if I boot from a regular 3.1 boot disk, the computer sees the 1 meg of ram,
but it does not see the rest... so it looks like I have to do the install again...  
 
Just wondering why the a500 would crash with a guru thingy of 8000 000B then some hex number 0007ffbc or something like that...either way... hope I can sort it out... it's too late now, 2:22 am and I have to go first downstairs to unplug the soldering iron, and second to bed...
 
cheers.  ( it is nice to have an ecs system with 1 meg chip ram, but it would also be nice to have 1.5 megs of other ram as well...