A500/a500+

[Carrot007]

Hi,

Have taken a bit of time out of looking at the A1200's to look at my A500's.

Looked at a A500 and A500+ so far (6a/8a).

Have snipped off the battery in the A500+. Was a GP so later one and no signs of leak so all good. (2.0 rom)

There was a trapdoor expension in the A500+ but it seems not to work. Should a 512k expansion work? I would have expected it to take the memory the 1.5mb chip.

Not much to indentify it but saw another on amibay But without the battery and clock bits. I snipped off the 2032 on it too as it was non removable.

Have booted the machine using my gotek (not sure where my disks are yet to check real drives!).

Have turned on the A500 and saw the 1.3 rom boot screen but not gone further yet. Also seems to have an expansion in the machine but a shorter one with no battery. Maybe better in the A500+ if it should work.

So advice on the expansions and if they should work in th A500+ and is there anything else I should do beyond a good clean.


Cheers.

[Carrot007]

Trapdoor expansion in A500+ should add as chip, assuming everything else is working correctly, no damage from leaking battery, not using something "weird" like the AdRAM, etc.

Btw, CR2032 won't leak (it's not a Varta), but if it's soldered in you can clip it out and replace with a socketed one (you can get these from AmigaKit, Amazon.com, etc.).

I thought it should work. I shall try the one in the A500 in the + shortly and see if there is any difference. Maybe the 2 clocks confused it. Though I got the A500+ that way so I would have expected it to do something!

Yeah 2032's are less likely to leak, though I have had one do it, though not that badly. But mainly it was dead! So I removed it. Might put a socket on if I can confirm it works!

I have found an action replay (II I think) to test also. Should that work in the A500+ or just the A500?

[Carrot007]

they should work. can't remember chip or fast. wonder if there could be some conflict with battery clocks.

Never though about two clocks conflicting. Guess It's possible. I did try it before I removedthe battery too and was no different.

[Carrot007]

Update.

The 512k ram does appear to work. Though I have swapped it for the samller one without the clock!

Apparently sysinfo which I was using does not like reporting the extra chip memory. I found some post on Eab with someone with a similar issue, but where avail and other utils reported it fine.

So putting the a500+ back together to await disk testing and going to test the A500 with the gotek.

[Carrot007]

So I have A500+ 1.5mb chip and A500 1mb chip/slow. All working nicely. Keyboards cleaned a little!

Floppy not checked until I venture into the loft to find a damn lot of disks I know are somewhere up there (In a "underbed" box though so not with added dust!).

Not checked Action Reply (2?) yet as it has not been located!

Only one PSU checked. I know one does not work as I think it is the one I got with my A1200 in 1994. It was an a500 light one. And the shop said it could not possibly be the one as it was not an a1200 one and ignored the fact commodore had folded and all a1200's were whatever they could cobble together! (Yeah I am still bitter!). Don't think I have an A500 heavy one anymore though!

Also found what I am labeling as A500 3 and 4. Though not real machines! One is a rev 5 motherboard with no sheilding or floppy of floppy power connector. Does not boot, just a black screen. Think this one is one of mine from back in the day. Has a A500+ style keyboard (the extra two blank keys!). But on testing it in the others the bottom row does not work (amiga keys/space etc). Also stole a spring from the right alt for the a500 as it was missing one! Could try the controller with an a1200 keyboard of one of the other ones to see if it's the membrane or the controller that is dead. I guess the membrane is more likely. The other is just an A500 case! Though it has my old A1200 original keyboard in it! It does not work and has missing keys!

Also noticed a lead on my gotek was not pluged in so did it and now it makes disky noises. Not sure that is a good thing though!

Need to find an external drive or get the gotek adaptor though to archive off some of my disks if I can. I do have an old HD external somewhere if I can find it to check it works! I assume since the eject button says 1.44 rather than 1.76 it is probably a standard pc drive that I can change also. But I guess it might have been modified. Are such Amiga HD drives slow with SD disks too. I know they are damn slow with HD disks!

Also random question but was workbench 1.3 machine specific? The first disk I put on the gotek just caused a guru on boot. (And was a legitimate image from amiga forever, I guess it may have been altered also?).

Ramble over for now!