Upgrading my A500

[MontrealCL]

I recently acquired an Amiga 500 and need the following to make my system useable:

1. 68832 math co-processor rated at 40MHz ( or higher )
2. AMIGA Kickstart 3.1 ROM
3. 4 meg GVP simms ( for my GVP A530 )
4. Internal SCSI CD-ROM ( already own an external caddy )
5. WB 3.9
6. RTC battery ( I removed mine from my A520 1 meg expansion, and probably need to replace it eventually )

If any of you have any of these items, let me know...

Once I'm satisfied with the AMIGA experience, I have an AMIGA 2000 waiting to be upgraded!

[adolescent]

You need a 68882 PGA FPU.  I'm not sure what a 68832 is.  

Most of the stuff you're looking for can be found fairly cheap on eBay.  For the rom at least, check for seller amigetta.  Good price and great service.

I'd also suggest getting an external scan doubler/flicker fixer so you can plug your machine into a nice VGA monitor.

Either way, you're building a nice first system.

[doctorq]

If you mean 30 pins 4 MB modules I can help you out on that one. Use them myself in my HD8+.

[maniac]

u lucky u found all those things for your vintage amiga 500. those parts are very hard to find. like the a530 , i dont see any of those on ebay right now and the same for workbench or kickstart disks , even an a500 computer is hard to find. i hope u manage to do something with this computer but i think u should look into more performant machine like a 1200 or 4000. the a500 has its limits and you will find them very fast. for my part , my a500 has 1.3 wb and i dont see how i could put hundreds of $ to make it a better computer. if u want a good advice , u should buy a new comp. instead of upgrading this old vintage machine. im an a500 lover but i play old games and dont expect much from it.

[B00tDisk]

Hey, why not see if you can find an old Slingshot Zorro cable and put a Retina ZII card on that sucker?  You'd be all set!  Stick an AMAX-II emulator on for classic Mac emulation and you're in business!

(Seriously, I'd enjoy a system like that!)

[MontrealCL]

Well, I wasn't really looking for an Amiga, it sorta stumbled into my life.  I was at a yard sale and saw it for sale, asked how much it was, the guy replied $40CDN, and I said, "Sure", without even thinking what I was getting myself into.

The fact that my A500 has a 68030 @ 40 Mhz, makes it worthwile for me to invest $$$ into it.  I won't be investing that much, because there isn't much left to do anyways.

I saw a A500 + GVP530 combo last week on Ebay selling for $150US or so, which brings me to my next point.  Why am I not upgrading my A2000?  Well, it's NEARLY impossible to buy anything off of Ebay.  I've tried bidding on a few systems, and they go for MUCH more than I am willing to pay...  I don't see myself spending hundreds of dollars for a computer which I am unfamiliar with.

I'm taking this A500 as far as I can, and if I like what I see, I will continue moving onwards...

[Tenacious]

I like your point of view!  Try Software Hut or Compuquick (these are dealers who specialize in Amiga) for the co-processor, 3.1 rom, 4 Meg simm, and WB 3.9.  Also, watch eBay for these and especially a SCSI CD-rom (all most any should work with the A530).

If your handy with solder, you can get a cordless phone battery fron Radio Shack.  Even those of a different shape with wire leads will work if the following is met:

Red wire to the pad where the old battery's + was, black to the - pad.

Voltage rating of new and old battery should be the same!

The capacity (usually in mA/hours)can be anything greater or equal to the original.

I installed one of these in my A3000 years ago, works great.  

OS3.9 is great but it's icon scheme really looks best with an after market graphics card (very hard to find for the A500).  Substituting the old style icons is the only way I've ever gotten around this.  Someone here has probably found a better solution to this.

[jjans]

MontrealCL wrote:
I recently acquired an Amiga 500 and need the following to make my system useable:

1. 68832 math co-processor rated at 40MHz ( or higher )
2. AMIGA Kickstart 3.1 ROM

3.1 ROMS here:
A500/2000 ebay

68030 and 68882 FPU's here from this guy:
Mr Hardware specifically here: Misc

Also keep in mind the older Macs used the motorola CPU's as well. I found a Mac DayStar Turbo board on eBay real cheap, and removed the 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU to install on my A530 with success.

3. 4 meg GVP simms ( for my GVP A530 )
4. Internal SCSI CD-ROM ( already own an external caddy )
5. WB 3.9
6. RTC battery ( I removed mine from my A520 1 meg expansion, and probably need to replace it eventually )

If any of you have any of these items, let me know...

Once I'm satisfied with the AMIGA experience, I have an AMIGA 2000 waiting to be upgraded!

As for a CDROM, I installed a YAMAHA CRW8824S CD-R/RW (24X)that works fine with gvpscsi.device. I find AMICDFS from Aminet works better than the WorkBench 3.xx cdrom FS for some reason. I can burn CDRW's at 4X with MakeCD (purchased from Germany online.)

As for WorkBench 3.9 the NEWICONS really look nice, but do tend to slow the WorkBench down quite a bit. I simply replaced them with Magic WorkBench icons that are as fancy as you want to get on our stock OCS A500's.