A500 Revisions

[BenShep]

I've just been opening the A500s I have to see which one is the best revision.  Most are Rev 6A with a few earlier.  One however is a Rev 7 and has a 8371 rather than the 8372A that all the Rev 6A's had.

Is there any advantage in using a Rev 7?  I guess I could perform the Agnus upgrade proceedure if there is a benefit.

[Tenacious]

Isn't the 8372A a 2 Meg Agnus?  Do you have A500s or A500+s?  How much chip ram shows in the WB title bar?

Aside from having chips capable of 2 Megs of chip ram and the Productivty screen modes, I don't see any advantage.  The later revs probably have fewer ram chips, reducing power consumption.

How many A500s do you have?

[Amiga4k]

BenShep,

I checked the list, and realized your systems might be PAL:
Agnus (512K)   8371    318071-01   A500 (PAL), A2000 (PAL)
Agnus (1MB)   8372    318069-02   A500 (PAL), A2000 (PAL) Regular Type
Agnus (1MB)    8372A     318069-02         A500 NTSC
Agnus (1MB)    8372A     318069-029   A500 (PAL), A2000 (PAL) (changed after some damage)
Agnus (1MB)   8375VBB / 8375 R1   318069-16   A500 (PAL), A2000 (PAL)

Tenacious,
If you want an A500 system, let me know.
A500 with Hard drive and AdRam 540, BigFoot Power Supply
 RAM: 1 meg chip, 3.5 meg fast.
 Rev 6A motherboard with 8372A Agnus NTSC
 ROMS: 2.04 with 2.01 disks. Hard drive size optional.
 (Has 52 meg installed now)
 DataFlyer SCSI hard drive unit
 Floppy: standard 880k

 NOTE: external SCSI cable mount available.
       Hard drives from 40 meg to 3 gig are available.
Just got a fresh batch of hard drives on the bench, so sizes vary.
 

[Tenacious]

@ Amiga4K

Thanks for the offer, I have 4 A500s that I can't keep busy now, sounds like a nice system though.  I asked how many he had because the poster sounded as if he had found an abandoned warehouse or something.

It's always fun to see how far an A500 can be expanded.  One of my next projects is to expand only the fast ram to 8 Megs and run a RAD: drive. I will leave it 'on' always and interface it to something, data-logging maybe.  There is something pure about this.  Grin  

What I need is a source for the Zip ram chips that Supra used in their 500RX.  Anyone know of any?

[BenShep]

Ha.. no just had 7 I'd accumulated over time and had never cracked them open.  They're not even in that great condition (yes they're all PAL - I'm from Australia).

The only reason I can think of a rev 7 having an earlier agnus is a deliberate downgrade (which makes me think there must be something wrong with it for them to do that).  Guess I'll put it off to one side until I can fully test it (it boots - that's as far as I've got).

[zipper]

Didn't they go straight from rev.6 to 8, which was A500+ mobo but also used in the latest batch of plain 500's?

[BenShep]

I guess not.. it quite distinctly says rev 7 on the motherboard.