New to A500/C64

[temba]

Hi there,

well, I finally went and bought 3 x A500's and 2 x C64's and a C64-4plus is maybe on the way.

I bought them in different places with the idea of putting together the best A500 and C64 possible from the different purchases.

Now the thing is that I am new to A500 (had a C64 as my very first computer) and am in doubt as to what I can do with them, apart from playing wicked old-school games!!

Here are my questions to you gurus out there!

1. can I connect an IDE HDD to the A500 and how? What is the max size of the HDD? I have seen pics of peoples Amigas with HDDs 'lying' around
2. what kind of RAM do I need to get to upgrade?
3. I run Suse Linux 10.0 x64 - which is the best emulator I can use to connect to my A500?
4. which cable is needed? just a serial cable?
5. do I automatically have rights to download and use any Kickstart as I now own an A500?

Hope to hear from you guys!

regards
temba

[amigagr]

1. can I connect an IDE HDD to the A500 and how? What is the max size of the HDD? I have seen pics of peoples Amigas with HDDs 'lying' around
2. what kind of RAM do I need to get to upgrade?

search on ebay for the A590 expansion for the a500 it has a hard disk inside and usualy 2mb of ram.


5. do I automatically have rights to download and use any Kickstart as I now own an A500?

no you don't. you have rights only to the rom(s) that is in your a500.

[KThunder]

    you can also use adide or adscsi devices from icd or similar devices these fit in the 68000 socket and take the 68000 on top.
    there are also schematics and drivers that you can find online that you can use to build one of these devices. they are actually quite simple. all of those are nonbooting though, so you would have to use a floppy to boot and load drivers.

[KThunder]

1. max size for the hd would be 2gigs unless you do a bunch of upgrades (68020 accelerator, 2megs ram os 3.1 kickstart, and cdrom) and used os 3.5 or 3.9
2. trapdoor can take specially made 512k cards several boards are made that attach to the side and allow hds and other types of ram
3. uae- unix amiga emulator works really well i use fellow for dos alot for games
4. null modem cable i think there is a parallel port setup you can use too, check uae docs
5. buy amiga forever from cloanto  it has all the emulators, all the roms, all the os files and great documentation as well as some software including personal paint.  

[_ThEcRoW]

As you have a 500 with his 1.3 rom, you CAN download a 1.3 rom in case you don't know to dump it for use in an emulator.
What's wrong in using a rom downloaded if you already own the same rom on your real miggy?.

[temba]

Sounds good!

Well, what I can summise from these replies is that:

1. I need to upgrade in order to use one of the many 6.4 Gb HDDs lying around
2. I need more RAM for this to work
3. I need to buy/upgrade my Kiskstart version to ver 3.0 or higher

If I have left something worthwhile ou, then pls let me know.

Can someone send a link of sorts mentioned for adidec? I did a quick google and found some clothing and fabrics sites!

thanks again!

I look forward to getting into this 'new' area on Tuesday when my babies arrive!!!

temba

[amigagr]

and if you can find any 030 accelerator would be grate :-)

[KThunder]

you can use 6.4 gig hds but only 2 gigs will be usable
more ram is good but old games and many apps only need 512k to 1-2 megs at most
yes os3.1 rom is a very good thing

[temba]

Thanks guys,

I will venture forth and fiddle with the new machines.

Maybe find this 030 accelerator thingy and see how to upgrade the animal so it becomes a beast.

Trust me, I will be posting again soon, and even better, someday helping other newbies  :-D

[madsjm]

I don't really understand the purpose of lots of ram and acceleration for the A500. Most of the software written for it can only utilize its original resources. In fact, some older stuff demands that you disable memory expansions. It makes more sense with an A1200 or A4000.

If you are a "newbie", you'll have plenty of fun with just a vanilla A500.  :-)

Come on, it's not like it can really be used for web surfing, rendering etc anyway, you can use a pc for that.

I can understand the need for an A590 and some ram for running games with WHDLoad, but that kind of ruins the retro feeling of floppy swapping, doesn't it?  :lol: