Just Bought a "New" Amiga 500

[davidmace]

 Bought an amiga 500 off e-bay a few days ago, should arrive at the weekend, it's this one here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=012&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=220044439024&rd=1&rd=1

and the strange thing is i don't actually care if I got a good deal as long as it works, not had an amiga in years, I've also bought two of my favourite games Datastorm and Wings, great games!!

Anyway the reason Im posting this is im really behind with the Amiga hardware scene (as in 10 years behind) and want to know if anyone has any recommended purchases for this and where i can get them. I've got the 1/2 MB upgrade but i wouldnt mind more, i've already got my eye on a couple of things i saw on amiga kit, a new joystick and a device that allows you to plug 2 joysticks and a mouse in at the same time.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Apologies for posting in the wrong forum in the first place.

[Tomas]

A hard drive "with fast ram" and cdrom will make things much easier. Then you can for example install most of your games through whdload and run them off the hard drive instead, which means no floppy swapping and really speedy load times.

If you go with this, then you are also better off upgrading the rom chips and OS to 3.1

[Amiduffer]

If you're just going to limit yourself to games, a HD is not required, just convenient. Be sure to get one if it pops up on ebay.

Don't bother with OS3.1 otherwise. You're fine with what you have.

[redrumloa]

If you use it and enjoy it, no way it is overpaid. If you mainly want games, IMO stick with KS1.3. If you want to also upgrade, buy a Kickstart switcher and have both KS1.3 and KS3.1 at the flip of a switch.

Enjoy! :-)

[davidmace]

Thanks for the replies, I've thought about a hard disk and certainly wouldn't mind one, I remember playing monkey island 2  when i had my old Amiga 500 which had 12 disks so it took a lot disk swapping. Where exactly do they plug into, it's been a while since I had one as you can see.

What's the advantages of using kickstart 3.1 over 1.3, if im correct you can buy those from amiga kit.

And of course I know there isn't a lot of knew hardware going around with it being an old mostly unsupported machine, although I have some quite impressive new stuff at Individual Computers, so where would be the best place to pick up new hardware? Should i keep checking e-bay or is there any shops that are recommended?

Thanks

[Darklight]

The A500 Hard Drive attachments plug into the edge connector on the left side of the unit.  The A590 is the Commodore one, although there are others made by different companies.  The A570 CD-Rom also plugs into the same connector.  If you're serious about upgrading it, you're better off looking for an A1200 as they're the cheapest to upgrade, and have an IDE connector onboard (just throw a 2.5" drive in) but if all you're doing is playing games, the 500 is fine :-)

Kickstart 3.1 allows you to run OS 3.1 - 3.9, and has much more support for things like TCP/IP stacks, other applications and browsers, etc.  If you're thinking of putting an accelerator in, and using games off the HDD, 3.1 is the way to go.  However, it's up to you whether you do it, 90% of games run fine on 1.3 :-)

As for hardware, eBay is usually your best bet.  Places like AmigaKit are good, but the most stuff usually goes on eBay, and it's usually more likely to work out than somewhere like Amibench (an Amiga 'trading post' site).  Hope that helps  :-D

[davidmace]

Thanks for a quick reply, the reason i got a 500 was because the games i want to play are OCS and correct me if I'm wrong but it's not possible to play these on a 1200, I already have a top of the range PC for things that aren't retro games and really missed my A500 recently.

Anyway, found this on e-bay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-A500-A1000-8MB-EXPANSION-8-MEGA-BYTE-MB-RAM_W0QQitemZ150058411381QQihZ005QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

wondering if you think this would be worth it, i assume it would upgrade my RAM to 9MB which would make my games load up faster.

[Darklight]

OCS/ECS games are indeed playable on an A1200, but it also plays AGA games as well.  There are incompatibilities with a few games and KS 3.1, but those are usually fixed by patches, etc.  However, as you said, it's easy to emulate an Amiga on a PC, and for games, the A500 is still King, it just means you need disks  :-)

That card should boost your ram to 9mb, but beware - it uses the same slot as the A500 HDD and the A500 CD-ROM.  If neither of them matter, go for it, but I don't know whether you will get much use out of that 9mb without a hard drive.  You can get something along the lines of an ADIde interface that sits under the CPU (IIRC) and gives you an IDE port, that may be the best thing to look out for.  Apart from that, I'm not sure.  But if you're only playing games, I don't even know if you'll need the ram expansion, not that many OCS/ECS games require more ram as far as I know.

[davidmace]

Oh right didn't know that OCS games were compatible with A1200, might get one of them in the future but for now im happy with my good old a500. I've noticed that the 8MB expansion has a through port so I could still get CD Rom or a hard disk as well.

For now, i've bought myself a new competition pro joystick and an automatic joystick/mouse switcher, better to buy these things new where possible to support the Amiga community, because lets face it the people who make these could probably make more money if they manufactured for PC's rather than an old machine like the amiga.

Have to say i do have some great games for my PC but you just can't beat some good retro games, not even sure what makes them so appealing because the graphics now are terrible but the gameplay in some of them are great and am really looking forward to getting the Amiga.

[davidmace]

Another quick question, I've seen there's a lot of expansion that use a clock port which an A500 doesn't have. However i've just found this http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=609&osCsid=eaf00b1cbf171396f5060c5327d0a645

which provides you with a clock port on an A500, it says it fits to the 68000 slot, is that the CPU slot? Would this mean i'd have to take the Amiga apart at all. and of course would it be worth it if this is all possible.

Sorry for my lack of Amiga knowledge, comes from using PC's for too long.

[Darklight]

Sorry, didn't see that had a through port!  :lol:  Shouldn't be a problem then, but it will take up a lot of room on your desk, just something to think about.
The 68000 socket is the CPU, yes.  As for the Clockport adaptor, I don't know whether it's worth it.  The Clockport does have quite a few uses - mainly USB cards, Soundcards, and the like, but I doubt you'll get any use at all out of it under 1.3, or with a base 500, it just won't handle it very well.  Probably better to spend the money on something else, perhaps an accelerator of some sort (though they are hard to find for the 500)

[davidmace]

Okay so here's my POA, split into what i'm definitely going/have done in the next few weeks, what i'm considering doing and what i might do in the future.

What I Am doing

Bought a new competition pro joystick
Bought an automatic joystick/mouse switcher

What I'm considering in next few weeks

Buy an 8MB Ram extension
Upgrade to ROM 3.1

Future upgrades

Buy a hard disk (very expensive though)
Buy a CD Rom
Try find an accelerator of some kind

If anyone else has any other suggestions for me then i'd appreciate.

I found a hard disk on e-bay for the A500 but it was over £100 with days to go and only a small one at that. Now you mentioned something about connecting an IDE hard disk, is this possible with A500 if so how do i go about doing this.

Thanks for all your help, ill let you know when it arrives and keep you up-to-date on how im finding it.

[McVenco]

£100 for a harddisk for the A500 is way too much. If you look around with some patience, you should be able to find an A590 harddisk controller for less than half that price. Throw in another £5-£10 and you'll have a decent SCSI harddisk (2,1GB). In the A590 controller there's also usually 2MB of extra RAM on board.

[redrumloa]

Darklight wrote:
OCS/ECS games are indeed playable on an A1200, but it also plays AGA games as well.  There are incompatibilities with a few games and KS 3.1, but those are usually fixed by patches, etc.  

I do believe you are understating this a bit IMO. There is a wide range of game incompatabilities of older (1.3 era) games with KS3.1. I used a loaded A500 for a few years and was driven mad by it to the point I started soft kicking into 1.3 just to play games.

[redrumloa]

@davidmace

Years ago, about ~1998-1999 I had a loaded out A500. It was a lot of fun and back then with amiga prices still relatively high it was what I could afford for a hobbyist computer. There are a lot of limitations with with a loaded A500 compared to it's big box brothers. Keep this in mind as a consideration before you dump big bucks upgrading.

It all depends what you want to do. If you want to upgrade to the point you can ue major internet apps, consider picking up at least an A2000 instead.

Hmm.. Back in the day there were no clockport adapters for the A500.. Now there are, and I am salivating thinking how much I would have LOVED to have a Silver Surfer on my old A500 set up :-( Darn, you guys make me want to buy another Amiga! :-/