My A500 is a Draco!

[fx]

Hi everyone, I was playing around with the program WhichAmiga by Piru and decided that I wanted to try it on my A500, but the results I got wasn't really what I expected



the system is a clean 1.3 A500 with the standard 512KB ram expansion, I also have a Action Replay MK II.

[x56h34]

I remember that once I replaced the Dmac 2 and Ramsey 4 chips in my A3000D system with Dmac 4 and Ramsey 7 chips, it was reported within WhichAmiga that I've had an A3000T. :crazy:

[irishmike]

Where does one obtain this software?  And how do you get a screen capture?  I am still quite new, but these things will be helpful.

Thanks,

[Piru]

1.3.3 is horribly old and buggy.

Try WhichAmiga 1.3.24, it should work better. Note that 1.3.24 is later than 1.3.3, since 24 > 3.

BEWARE. WhichAmiga is buggy and probably will make your system unstable, esp on 030 systems. Be prepared to crash and save all unfinished work before trying it. You have been warned.

[x56h34]

Nevertheless, it's a great piece of software. I wish you were still able to update it. :-(

[sir_inferno]

ooooo, hee hee, oh my  :-D

[Piru]

I read some WhichAmiga changelog and found out the reason why such weird results were returned by 1.3.3:

Before kickstart 2.0, "extra" memory allocated by hunk alloc wasn't zeroed by LoadSeg.

I use this extra alloc space for variables, and didn't realize the memory might not be all zeros with Kickstart 1.x. The result was that various flags and variables would be set, and this explains the quite funky random output.

[Tenacious]

Hi Irishmike,

I've been reading your posts with interest.  What Amiga did you end up with?  I have a number of Amigas, some more expanded than others.  There are some pitfalls (incompatibilities, depending on what you want your dream machine to be) to watch for on each model.  Example: There are hardrive, fast ram, CD rom, and accelerator expansions for the A500, but some will damage circuitry when combined. This is especially true when combining products from different manufacturers. (The A570 CD rom will combine with a SCSI hard drive adaptor (SCSI-TV) and Supra's Rx500 ram expansion, but is damaged when you accelerate the CPU (both ICD's Adspeed and Supra's 25Mhz 68000) ).  It's best to figure out how you want to expand and then ask if anyone has successfully done it.

Have you visited the Aminet sites yet?  It is a huge repository of Amiga freeware and shareware that is mirrored several places around the world. I have found nothing as large and comprehensive as this collection for any other platform.  

If you upgrade nothing else, consider upgrading from Amiga OS 1.3.  OS 2.1 is the minimum for most software and 3.1 is better still.

I still enjoy using an A500 with some extra ram and a second floppy.  It's a pure experience, nostalgic.  

Good Luck!

[Ni72ous]

That screenie looks iffy to me tbh.

[fx]

Piru wrote:
I read some WhichAmiga changelog and found out the reason why such weird results were returned by 1.3.3:

Before kickstart 2.0, "extra" memory allocated by hunk alloc wasn't zeroed by LoadSeg.

I use this extra alloc space for variables, and didn't realize the memory might not be all zeros with Kickstart 1.x. The result was that various flags and variables would be set, and this explains the quite funky random output.

Ah, I will definitely try a newer version then!