I am desperately in need of help with refurbishing an Amiga 500.

[Nuisance22]

I am a complete novice to the world of Amiga and vintage gaming in  general as I grew up in the age of retro with the Super Nintendo etc.

I recently picked up an Amiga 500 with a ton of original and blank floppy discs for around £20.

Upon testing it I found that what I would consider the main components  work fine. Everything powers up ok and the picture via the RF output box  is perfect etc.

When attempting to load discs I stumbled across 2 major problems.  Firstly, discs will not fully load due to an error message that pops up  saying that the "RAM DISK IS FULL" and secondly neither of the Joystick  ports seem to be working meaning I have no control when it gets to this  point meaning I just have to switch it off and on again to get back to  the main screen.

If someone could offer some repair advice that is jargon free it would  more than appreciated. I am not squeamish about taking it apart or  soldering etc, I just wouldn't know where to start.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to any replies.

Mike.

[Nuisance22]

Apologies for late replies. Yes, everyone is being amazingly helpful, I just need a minute to sort out some other consoles I have. I thought this may be a simple fix, but as it seems it is going to take some time to sort out I will post a new thread as soon as I have more time to be more thorough.

Thank you all again, and I will come back with the applicable info you have asked for.

Mike.

[Nuisance22]

I'm back. Thank you for your help on the ram issue, I will search for an upgrade asap. Just to let you know, I have a compatible mouse. I get nearly no movement out of the cursor, have tried cleaning it and it did nothing. The only thing the mouse picks up is the left and right click. I tried a joystick just to see if I could get movement, but had exactly the same issues.

Right, here is the info I have been asked for......

The Amiga is a 500A, not +, and the power light is green.

I do have the official Workbench Disk, this is version 1.3.2, but on the screen it shows v1.3 when switched on. I also have a copied disk with Workbench 1.3.3 on it.

I have opened the trap door and there is nothing there, no battery or even battery housing to speak of even inside the unit itself.

As for processor, I am taking an educated guess that it is only running 512k as I have tried a couple of games and they all require 1mb of ram or won't go past a blank loading screen. Although having taken it apart, I noticed that the board says 512k/1m Ram. I don't know if this is of any significance?

The board is in immaculate condition, I have noticed people mentioning U15 etc, I located this on the board and it seems to be in good aesthetic condition.

If necessary, I am able to upload some pics to photobucket if it helps?

Mike.

[Nuisance22]

OK, have found a revelation. I am able to play certain games absolutely fine via Joystick port 2. Still no luck with Joystick port 1. So the RAM problem is obviously due to lack of it running at 512k and the port 1 doesn't affect 1 player gaming but is obviously still a minor problem at this point. Any suggestions at this point?

Thank you all again for being so helpful, it is honestly more than appreciated.

Mike.

[Nuisance22]

Many games only use the game port (port 2) so you wouldn't need to keep unplugging the mouse all the time. The first port is usually only used for joysticks in two player games and such.

For the mouse issue... is it possible you have an Amiga/Atari mouse with the switch in the Atari position? That would cause all movement to be very glitchy.

Your a genius!!! The mouse has an Atari/Amiga switch on the bottom. I didn't even realise when cleaning the bloody thing out, lol. It works perfectly now and all it took was less than 2 seconds.

Thank you all so much for your advice and help.

I get the privilege of going through every game I got with it now to see what runs with what RAM. I doubt I will upgrade anything on this due to a tight budget, but I may be back with a list of games I will be looking to sell that aren't compatible if anyone is interested? I'll start an entirely new thread for that one this time, and I'll make sure don't duplicate it, lol.

Thanks again.

Mike.

[Nuisance22]

Spoke to soon....My floppy drive has completely stopped reading Disks, Sods Law