Just got my "new" Amiga 500...

[MrWho]

... and I'm so excited.  :-D

Anyway, I gave it a quick run just before going to bed, and I got some trouble running three of the four games I tried.

Super Cars 2 (I think), Sensible Soccer and inball Dreams refused to run (all I got was a black screen). I only managed to run R-Type (Oh, the old days...  :-P ).

I gave a quick peek at the trapdoor under the Amiga and I found out a switch there connected to what I think is the expansion card.
(Here's a picture (Advise: It's big and slow).

Can this be the source of my trouble? What is this switch?

PS: I made a post before under the name Takssista. This will be my handle from now on.

Cheers!

[billchase]

The card looks to small to be an accelerator, my guess is
it is a ROM switcher to switch between the original
kickstart and a newer version.  Using a newer Kickstart
like 2.1 or 3.1 can cause problems with some older games.
Again, just an educated guess.

C Snyder

[Jope]

That's a 512k expansion board, something that just about every A500 in the world has.. This is one of the (physically) smaller sized ones, using large chips to get 512k..

There are many many different models of ram expansions for the A500. Just about everyone made them, since the design is so simple.. Just connect the chips to the bus and enable exram.

KCS made a PC-emulator for the trapdoor too, but mainly it's for ram expansions only on the A500. (no turbo cards like with the A1200)

It probably doesn't make a difference to the games, most need 1MB anyway. The switch is for switching the expansion on and off.

[MrWho]

Well, whatever it was, it wasn't to enable/disable the memory expansion. When I got the Amiga, I tried to play lots of games that refused to run. I turned the switch to the other position and now some of them run fine. And, if I remember correctly, workbench shows me more or less the same ammount of free memory as before I turned the switch.

Now I can't wait to send some ADF files to the amiga. I won't make the same mistake again (pluging the null-modem cable to the joystick port), but will it work with a 25 to 9 pin adapter?

And will I succeed with 1Mb of free memory?

[EnyGmaTiK]

Yes, it seems like the 512k expansion for the A500, if you switch it off you won't be able to run most of the games, because they need 1mb of ram, so you must keep it enable.

You can buy an DB9 <-> DB9 cable and then use it with a DB9 -> DB25 adapter to plug on the AMiGA side in the SERIAL PORT.

[MrWho]

EnyGmaTiK wrote:
Yes, it seems like the 512k expansion for the A500, if you switch it off you won't be able to run most of the games, because they need 1mb of ram, so you must keep it enable.

I'm pretty sure workbench showed me around 800kb free with the switch on either position, but I'm gonna check it out as soon as I get home from work...