A500 - How much can I expand it!

[GreggBz]

Does anyone know if this: Harms Professional 030' Accelerator
will work with this: ICD AdIDE 40


I'm not to concerned about clearence because I plan on towerizing the
whole system soon.

I currently have 1.3 roms, an 4 MB ram card, and the ICD scan-doubler, flicker fixer in my mighty A500. I guess I might as well make the ultimate A500 tower now that there is a 030 accelerator on Ebay.
That's the plan anyway.

[jiffydos]

Does someone make an A500 tower kit?  Or, do you plan to try this on your own?

[GreggBz]

Well, I had notions of putting it in an old Cisco router box,
with a modified TFX power supply.

It'll be homemade basically.

[Tahoe]

Micronik did once make tower expansions for the A500, inluding Zorro slots and even a 2000-style CPU slot. They are pretty rare though.
But imagine putting a Blizzard 2060 in a 500....

The Bodega bay was also nice, it sat on top of the A500 making it look like a desktop computer, it would also take Zorro Expansion cards.

[Argus]

ICD's products in general were pretty picky about compatibility with other h/w.  You could just try it and see if it works.

[billchase]

I remember the Bodega Bays, did it also have a video slot, or just
strictly ZorroII?

C Snyder

[GreggBz]

From the hardware information:

"The card must be fitted underneath any accelerator which also occupies the CPU socket."


Using some very abstract logic here, I'll make the assumption that the timing/innerupts on the pins on the bottom of the accelerator are adjusted so that's it's transparent to the rest of the hardware. So, I guess it will just look like a 68000 to the ICD device.

[mr_a500]

Oh, don't "towerize" the poor old thing. You'll just turn it into a "towerized" A2000, defeating the whole purpose of the A500. My upgraded A500 looks like a stock A500 from the outside. And check out Lemmink's A500 - probably the best A500 upgrade I have ever seen: http://home.joice.net/j100513/scans/temp/A500

The Bodega bay was also nice, it sat on top of the A500 making it look like a desktop computer

I have an old AmigaWorld magazine with a Bodega Bay advertisement. I always thought it was the ugliest, most disgusting A500 add-on in Amiga history.

[K7HTH]

This Amigan totally agrees with mr_a500!

[Argus]

If you can't find either a Viper520CD or 530, the ultimate all in one case A500 would be an ICD AdIDE in the 68000 cpu slot, internal 2.5" harddisk, 4.5mb fast ram on trapdoor ICD AdRAM card.  I wonder if anyone has gotten an ide laptop cdrom to work with the AdIDE board?

Another possibility, though external, is Jens' new Buddha adaptor for the A500 86-pin expansion slot.

[_ThEcRoW]

Don't towerize it!!!! An Amiga 500 is beautiful on his original case, also if accelerated enough is interesting showing it running quake and showing at a friend who never wondered that a 500 could do that
Also, are you saying that Jens Schoenfeld has made a buddha for the 500?? If it's real it could be an interesting addon for my 500!!!

[mr_a500]

Quake on an A500?

I've done a lot of things with my A500 - ran MacOS 8.1, faxed PDFs I made, scanned 24bit images from DVD movies, played DOOM, and I'm even using it to type this post - but Quake is impossible.

[Tenacious]

I remember ICD products being incompatible with most things as well.  I have an old AdSpeed around here somewhere.  It was a 68000 clocked at 14 Mhz, a modest speed increase when coupled with some true fast ram, next to worthless without fast ram.  I was running an A570 CD drive at the time, never found any accel. compatible with it including AdSpeed.

For what its worth, I've always thought the A500 casing looked great by itself.  If you can boost performance/function and still keep that look, it'll be very cool.

[Tenacious]

I forgot.

@ Mr A500

I would be interested in details of your modifications.  I have several A500s that I would like to develop into unique machines.

[mr_a500]

I would be interested in details of your modifications. I have several A500s that I would like to develop into unique machines.

Well then they won't be unique ;-).

I didn't do anything too clever (nothing amazing like Lemmink). I got a Viper 520 - which gives me a 33Mhz 68020, 8Mb 32bit Fast RAM, 3.0 A1200 ROMs and 2,5" IDE, then I added a 40Gb 5400RPM 2.5" HD and 68882 FPU. I got a Mini Megi 2Mb Chip and ECS Denise. I already had an A501.

I use WB3.1. If you haven't seen my screenshots, here's one:
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/photo.php?lid=2533

You should definitely get DCTV. It's awesome. You can view and scan 24bit composite images (requires 1084 or TV). You can't use it to make WB 24-bit. I use it to display jpegs or scan still images.