Just Bought a "New" Amiga 500

[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! :-/

[InTheSand]

davidmace wrote:
Future upgrades

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

If you're purely after playing games on the A500, you could consider getting a Catweasel PCI card for your PC rather than items to expand the A500 itself... The Catweasel will allow easy reading/writing of Amiga floppy disks using a PC...

Certainly, lots of the old 1980s floppies will be beyond the end of their life these days, and having a Catweasel is great for lots of transfer stuff, and easier/quicker than using an RS232 lead.

Just something else to consider!

 - Ali

[davidmace]

Yeah people have suggested getting an emulator instead but i think i'm just stubborn and you cant beat the real thing.

Beside my PC doesn't have a floppy disk or room for adding one as i've got loads of hard disks rammed in there.

I'm basically gonna see how it goes and play it by ear, my new joystick arrived today which is good, the amiga should arrive Saturday i think.

So kickstart 3.1 has incompatibilities with old games, the majority of games ill be playing are the real old ones like datastorm and kid gloves, and definitely wings. Someone mentioned a kickstart switcher, how does that work and where can i get one from?

[Ryu]

@davidmace

Please see the message I PM'd you :-)

[_ThEcRoW]

@redrumloa
So it's out there cloackport expansions for the 500? Is possible to have a silver surfer on it?
 :-o

[scuzzb494]

Dave

Always amazes me how folk say they are missing the Amiga and currently have a fast PC, then start talking about emulating the PC with more RAM, CDROM, hard drives, accelerators. For goodness sake, save your money. Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor RAM. If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it... The A500 is far too restricting ( sorry ) I have two dozen A500s all in varying forms, some with the 3.1ROM and even accelerators. But my basic A500 with GVP sidecar is good to go every day for gaming... Mostly Space Invaders. The 1200s are seriously upgraded and networked. I would start steady and then work your way up through the classic kit... And then you`ll never touch your PC again.

Get a good monitor... Not the TV.

If you wanna see my kit then click the link.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

scuzz

[scuzzb494]

PS

If you wanna see what an accelerator does to the inside of an A500 then take a look at my A5000

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz360.htm

scuzz

[derringer3]

I wasted more than 400 EUR to my a500, to bring back from its prehistoric state to an affordable (?) computer. You can say for that price I can get an accelerated 1200. Yes you're right but that will be my second project.

The a500 was my first computer and i wanna se what's the maximum on it.

For example I tried many HDD-s for my a500. (80MB,1GB,1,5GB,4,2GB etc) But only the 80Mb working. Ten years ago I have 600MB hdd which was worked well. Currently everbody said that modern HDDs (40-80GB or more) will not working for my system. I have many 80GB hdds because I have a pc shop, but here I can't find any used 100-900MB unit.

So one day i decided that i can try it. And it worked. So i have an 80GB hdd for my a500 now. The strangest thing is that, it has 2mb cache. My total system memory is 5.5MB. whoever it has 1,6Mb/sec transfer rate, which is not bad from an a500.

[Fester]

davidmace wrote:
 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

Wow! Looks like you got a good bundle of software with it too. Enjoy!

Fester

[davidmace]

Hi, just thought i'd give an update now I've got it up and running. Really enjoying it, been playing datastorm and speedball the most, am waiting for Bubble Bobble and Wings to arrive.

scuzzb494 wrote:
Dave

Always amazes me how folk say they are missing the Amiga and currently have a fast PC, then start talking about emulating the PC with more RAM, CDROM, hard drives, accelerators. For goodness sake, save your money. Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor RAM. If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it... The A500 is far too restricting ( sorry ) I have two dozen A500s all in varying forms, some with the 3.1ROM and even accelerators. But my basic A500 with GVP sidecar is good to go every day for gaming... Mostly Space Invaders. The 1200s are seriously upgraded and networked. I would start steady and then work your way up through the classic kit... And then you`ll never touch your PC again.

Get a good monitor... Not the TV.

If you wanna see my kit then click the link.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

scuzz

To be honest mate I think I'm just curious to see how pimped out so to speak you can make the A500 while still running the old games I play and love.

Following the advert above I've found this http://eu-shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=660E502

and this http://eu-shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=660E500&sid=4ae262db

and have to admit I'm really tempted to get them, even if I just get the top one first.

Anyway get paid next week so might consider one of those.

A1200's are something I might consider in the future but for now I'm really happy with my A500.

I'll update this thread if get any more upgrades.

[Angus]

@scuzzb494

If your gonna waste £50 get an A1200 and stop mucking about. Have the two set up and start modifying the A1200 for the fun of it...


I am of a similar view. I think its easier to expand a 1200, and cheaper. I would keep the A500 pretty much as is, and if you want to have a much more capable Amiga get an A1200 from a boot fair or whatever then look at an 030 accelerator card with some ram and a hard drive. That gives you a very capable Amiga especially with WHDLoad for games.

Anyway, welcome back and enjoy it.  

[mr_a500]

[/quote]To be honest mate I think I'm just curious to see how pimped out so to speak you can make the A500 while still running the old games I play and love.[/quote]

I have my A500 "pimped out" about as far as possible and it still runs every game I want it to through WHDload. See a screenshot and this thread about some things I've done with it. This thread has a couple pictures of my hardware.

My upgrades were extremely hard to find though and expensive. As others have said, it probably would have been better if I got an A1200 and upgraded that instead.

(this post was posted with my A500)

[scuzzb494]

Hi

You do realise that the ultimate A500 was in fact a Checkmate. Check out the images from my website of mine which I acquired for £42 together with a whole room full of kit...

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz86.htm

A1500 System by Checkmate Digital Limited which has an Amiga A500 at its base...

An A1500 ( prior to Commodore version ) with A500 fitted.
Included also is an A590 XT 20Mb version sidecar with half Mb plus additional external 50MB hard-drive, 5.25 and 3.25" external floppy drives, and a 1084S monitor. The machine is fitted with the 2.04 OS and version 2.0 Roms. Probably retailed for about £1200 in its day

Other features for this machine include the Megachip 2000/500 giving 2Mb of chip RAM, the Multistart II which allowed the installation of the Kickstart V2.0 ROMS, Workbench Management System 2.0 by TTR, teletext add-on and scanner.

Evidently the popularity of this model concerned Commodore sufficiently to warrant the release of the official A1500 to the UK market only

There you go.

I do agree that the A500 gives bags of fun. I wouldn`t be without mine..

scuzz

[jjans]

scuzzb494 wrote:
Dave
Just enjoy the 500 Commando.. ie as it was intended. Sure, get a 590 or a GVP HD+ ( better ) and a small amount of trapdoor
scuzz

I agree. I liked WB 2.04 because it allowed me to softkick back into 1.3 a hell of a lot easier than when I upgraded to WB 3.1/3.5 on my A500. WHDLoad works for most of the games quite well however.

[mr_a500]

@jjans

How is softkicking to 1.3 from 2.04 any easier than from 3.1? I have no problem whatsoever softkicking to 1.3 from 3.0/3.1. (not that I ever need to use it - WHDload solves any compatibility problem I ever had)

You do realise that the ultimate A500 was in fact a Checkmate.

No, I don't realise that. The current "Ultimate A500 of the Universe" is Lemmink's A500. He is one of three people in the world who has the elusive Viper 530. I only have the Viper 520. Still, I think I have the best OCS/ECS software configuration in the world - until someone else proves otherwise. (...and I hope they do so I can steal their ideas ;-))

[scuzzb494]

Hi

The Checkmate was one of the few purpose designed computer cases of the day that was created around the Amiga 500. As such the fun and games you have trying to get all these expansions into the A500 small case can be avoided. The machine was labelled an A1500 before the 1500 and would comfortably house all that is shown in those images. As such it is in my view the ultimate A500. As to the acceleration and other gadgets, I can appreciate what has been done here... And I would love to get my hands on that Viper. However, I have my A1200 with internal IDE, 2 SCSI hard drives, Blizzard and SCSI kit, CDRom, ZIP drive, Ethernet on PCMCIA and modern monitor, with 32MB modest RAM. And it does all this with ease... I use my A500 to play Space Invaders... Saying that I have about a dozen A500s.. I do like them. Red LED or Green LED.. What's your serial number ? :-)

scuzz