Why is NTSC Amiga 500+ so hard to find?

[nscaleworld]

Not quite, the A500+ has 2MB Chip RAM when a 1MB upgrade card is installed. Pretty sure the only way to get that in an A500 is a Megachip or something similar. Considering I got an 8a board and 1MB upgrade shipped from the UK for probably under $50 total, it beats paying for the hard to find and pricier Megachip and the additional few bucks for a Super Denise.

If you think $80 for a MegaChip is "pricier" then you should not be in this hobby.  Anyway, who really needs more then 1 mb of chip ram on an Amiga 500.  I still say that the best Amiga 500s are plain old Kickstart 1.3, 512k chip, 512k fast, and a plain Denise chip, anotherwards, nothing fancy.  I have NEVER had problems with this kind of an Amiga 500, and all classic Amiga games run great, look great, and sound great.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it  

[tone007]

If you think $80 for a MegaChip is "pricier" then you should not be in this hobby.  Anyway, who really needs more then 1 mb of chip ram on an Amiga 500.  

$80 for a MegaChip is "pricier" than a whole rev 8a board.  I've personally spent thousands on Amiga stuff (having had one of each released system plus PPC boards,) so I'm not complaining about the cost of a MegaChip, just trying to eliminate its need in my application.  I wanted 2MB Chip ram on my A500 to go with the '030 accelerator and ethernet board while running AmigaOS 3.9, it was an exercise in maxing out a non-towered A500.  Sure, I could've just used the 3000T or 4000T with '060s, but it was a fun project.

[nscaleworld]

Ok, have fun.

[motrucker]

@ nscaleworld
     Not everyone just played games on their A500s. There were plenty of applications that demanded 2Mb of chip RAM if you were really going to use them.

[Matt_H]

I also have one of these (luckily found NOS) with the 500+ style label minus the "plus". I never opened it because of the intact warranty seal, and also thought they hadn't sold Rev 8 motherboards in the US market. It would sure be a downer if there's a leaking battery in there. Knowing C=, they probably would have shipped them sans battery but I suppose it's worth a look.

-edit-

If the BBOAH is correct, US Rev 8 boards were likely all OCS without batteries.

In the intervening years since I posted about my A-500, I did open it up. Turns out to have a rev 6 board inside.

[Damion]

In the intervening years since I posted about my A-500, I did open it up. Turns out to have a rev 6 board inside.

DOH! Didn't even notice the thread was 6 years old.. :lol:

[desiv]

Follow up Super Denise question..

From Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge.. ;-) :

The ECS Denise chip offers Productivity (640×480 non-interlaced) and SuperHires  (1280×200 or 1280×256) display modes (also available in interlaced  mode), which are however limited to only 4 on-screen colors.  Essentially, a 35 ns  pixel mode was added plus the ability to run arbitrary horizontal and  vertical scan rates. This made other display modes possible, but only  the aforementioned modes were supported originally out of the box. For  example, the Linux Amiga framebuffer device driver allows the use of  several other display modes. Other improvements were the ability of the  blitter to copy regions larger than 1024×1024 pixels in one operation  and the ability to display sprites in border regions (outside of any  display window where bitplanes are shown). ECS also allows software  switching between NTSC and PAL video modes.

So, Super Denise gave us Productivity and SuperHires...

Is it also required for PAL/NTSC switching?  Or will Kickstart 2 (and the Super Agnus?) allow that?

I've got the DKB Megachip and 2M CHIP now in my A500, and Kickstart 2 is on its way..
(yes, 2.x.  My A1000 has 1.x and my A1200 has 3.x, so it just made sense.. ;-)

I don't think I'd ever need Productivity/Superhires on my A500, but PAL switching would be nice..

desiv
(to be fair, the Wikipedia article is about ECS, not just Denise.  So they aren't saying that Denise is required for PAL/NTSC switching, just ECS..  I'm just not sure if Agnus and Denise are both required.)

[Damion]

You don't need the ECS Denise for 50/60Hz switching, just the updated Agnus. I had a few PAL reset tools for running games on my 1.3 A500 with a 512k trapdoor card. (The best one was the "BANZAI" tool.)  IIRC, my Rev 6 motherboard needed a modification for 1MB chip (instead of 512k chip / 512k "slow") to get it working. I bought a new 1MB Agnus just to open it up and discover it already had it from the factory.

[TjLaZer]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I just bought a NTSC A500 Plus motherboard on eBay! There is one more for sale right now for $79 with some battery leak damage but it seems to be working.  These are hard to find in NTSC.  I already have one in PAL.

[Digiman]

I wish someone would  just mass produce a cheap IDE adaptor that fits in via the 68k socket for Amiga 500/1000 machines. I really couldn't care less for the build quality of the 600 and 1200, they are as horrible to type on as a 1987 Atari 520STFM. Hideous machines to use seriously, and yet if I wanted to finish coding my game I had a choice of using the horrible 600/1200 thing OR spend 100s on yet another A2000 that would probably fail within months like the others. Pfft!

I'm not surprised by the rarity of certain NTSC models, Americans really were dumb idiots with their useless Macs and pathetic PCs being sold non-stop even in the mid 80s? Honestly why were Americans so f**king stupid to buy EGA PCs and that putrid homo lovers console the NES? Why???

The whole downfall of C= is down to idiot Americans buying Ninbendo NES rubbish and sub standard PCs which couldn't even label files with as many characters as a f**king Commodore C64 from a decade before it :huh:

[TjLaZer]

I wish someone would  just mass produce a cheap IDE adaptor that fits in via the 68k socket for Amiga 500/1000 machines.

There is one in the works!  ACA500.  Will be a 14MHz 68000, 2MB RAM and IDE.  And a A1200 CPU slot!  

I'm not surprised by the rarity of certain NTSC models, Americans really were dumb idiots with their useless Macs and pathetic PCs being sold non-stop even in the mid 80s? Honestly why were Americans so f**king stupid to buy EGA PCs and that putrid homo lovers console the NES? Why???

The whole downfall of C= is down to idiot Americans buying Ninbendo NES rubbish and sub standard PCs which couldn't even label files with as many characters as a f**king Commodore C64 from a decade before it :huh:

Yeah I never got it either.  I was one of the Americans who got it. lol  Been an Amiga fan since 1986.  I hated the clunky over priced PC's and when VGA came out it seemed like it was over.  The Amiga with it's ECS chipset was "obsolete"  AGA came out 2 years too late.

[kedawa]

I never really understood the success of x86 business boxes and garbage macs here either, but the Amiga and the NES weren't even close to being in the same market.

[AmigaClassicRule]

I'm a proud owner of an NTSC A500+ upgraded to 2MB chip ram and an internal E-Matrix 530 accelerator, internal 40GB 2.5" IDE hard drive, and soon to be added internal slim-line CD-R drive. :-D

One question...you managed to install 2 MB CHIP RAM (which to me is not really that much of a priority), but then you installed an internal E-Matrix 530 accelerator which is awesome...and I knew it...you can install a 2.5" IDE HD and you installed that 40 GB inside of it...which is again super awesome...and you are even going as far as installing an internal slim-line CD-R drive...you must be going out of your way and damaging your case to fit it...I am sure you will do a good job at it...

But here comes the real question...is there anyway we can install a PCMCI like A1200 to have WiFi internet or internet in the Amiga 500 all together? Is there anyway we can have internet connection on Amiga 500 without the need to using serial cable...but have fast speed internet connection on an Amiga 500 with like 300 Kb/sec transfer on the internet?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

But here comes the real question...is there anyway we can install a PCMCI like A1200 to have WiFi internet or internet in the Amiga 500 all together? Is there anyway we can have internet connection on Amiga 500 without the need to using serial cable...but have fast speed internet connection on an Amiga 500 with like 300 Kb/sec transfer on the internet?

You can stick an A1200 motherboard inside your A500, it's been done before.  That will give you PCMCIA!  

[Tenacious]

Is there anyway we can have internet connection on Amiga 500 without the need to using serial cable...but have fast speed internet connection on an Amiga 500 with like 300 Kb/sec transfer on the internet?

I don't have one, but, wasn't a 1200-style clock port just released for the A500?  Isn't there an ethernet expansion board for the clockport?

[AmigaClassicRule]

I don't have one, but, wasn't a 1200-style clock port just released for the A500?  Isn't there an ethernet expansion board for the clockport?

There it is http://www.vesalia.de/e_a500clockport.htm and it seems to work on an A500. Sadly it is not available for sale in any means.  So now technically speaking I can actually have a clockport in my Amiga 500 which in return allows me to have a WiFi support in my A500. That is super sweet! Knowing the fact that I can have internal HD, and internal WiFi..simply scotch tape the metallic with tape to avoid short circuiting the motherboard, install the clockport, install the USB Sub, place a WiFi card and poof problem solved.  I have a working A500 with internet connection....the fact there is a solution for it..makes me happy Even if I cannot achieve that solution lol