Was needing NTSC 500+, maybe I *can* use PAL?

[LoadWB]

I bought an A500 from eBay last week.  I asked the seller twice to make sure this was the A500+ model with the Rev 8 mobo, and twice he said it was.

I got it today, it's a Rev 6a.  Don't get me wrong, this is a pristine system and, from the looks of it, I am the first to crack its shielding.  The clamshell itself had signs of having been opened already.

So, now I have a 500 in great phsyical condition, with power supply and various other peripherals, and said to be working (haven't tried it yet, honestly.)  But it's of no use to me as I was looking for either a spare to my existing 500+, or a system to supplant the current 500+ and turn it into a spare.

Does anyone out there have an NTSC A500+ with the A501+ expansion they would be willing to trade, or even sell?

[x56h34]

I've got an A500+ NTSC with an upgraded 68000 socket (mach type now). This was done basically to make any socket accelerators plug in better. Now they can't pop out. It was done by Amiga France, so the job looks as if it were factory done like that in the first place. :-) No battery leakage. A new NiMh battery has been installed.

Offers? :-)

[LoadWB]

Interesting developments.  Last week I ran SysInfo on my 500+ to see if it rated the 50MHz Derringer at the right speed (rates it 51MHz, FWIW.)  I noticed that it determined the system was PAL.  Odd... I don't think anything of it because for many years it was working fine as an NTSC system, right?

Well, the signs make sense now.  For instance, many games and demos I run on my REAL NTSC systems (2000, 1200, 4000) always seemed to have different timing, along as some music.  Nah.

Tonight I'm having a peek around the custom chips area of the Big Book of Amiga Hardware and I think about the 2MB Agnus.  There it seems that there were two version of the 2MB 8275 Agnus used in the 500+, PAL (-01) and NTSC (-02).  Hmmmm, you thinking what I'm thinking?

I crack the hood tonight and, yup, my 500+ has a PAL chip in it.  Has always worked seemingly fine under NTSC, but my memory says to me that I never ran an OS older than 3.1 on this system, so NTSC monitor driver only.  Does that make sense?

But it's definitely running PAL -- I have it connected to my FP2001 LCD monitor which shows "PAL@50Hz" in the early startup menu.  Well, I'll be darned.

[TjLaZer]

Makes sense, as A500+ are very rare especially NTSC.  yes PAL will work fine unless you try to use a TV that does not support PAL...

[alenppc]

Also if I remember correctly most of the A500 motherboard revisions had a jumper that would allow you to manually select either a PAL or an NTSC mode as the default one.

Even after you move the jumper, you can still switch video modes via software, as the jumper only affects the default video mode at bootup.

At this moment I don't remember which of the board/chip revisions did not have this functionality, but I can look it up if you like.