Amiga 500, whats available.

[knight76]

Ive just bought an AMiga500. Picking it up in a few days. Its a vanilla 500 with 512k expansion via trapdoor.

I believe you can increase the chip ram to 1024k by buying the memory chips and putting them on the motherboard in the supplied spaces. Is this true?

Also, what is still available as far as accelerator cards go via the side expansion slot. Can the trapdoor expansion slot be used for expanding past the current 512k addon?

If my internal drive craps itself can it be replaced with a pc laptop ds/hd drive so it can read and write 1.44mb. Or do I need to buy an amiga specific 1.44mb floppy drive.

Thats about it for now. Im just testing the water with this one. I am planning on buying an A1200 for the hard drive and better power/ability over the A500. Then I will be interested in modding the a1200 even further.

[whiteb]

If my internal drive craps itself can it be replaced with a pc laptop ds/hd drive so it can read and write 1.44mb. Or do I need to buy an amiga specific 1.44mb floppy drive.

No.  *SOME* 1.44 PC drives CAN be modified to run on an Amiga, but they will only register as 720KB.  for amiga to use High density drives, you NEED amiga high density drives.

The trapdoor for the A500 has had a few Ram expansions made for it that can handle like 4MB (Using 30 pin simms) I know, i have one.

[Argus]

There are quite a few old 720K pc dd drives that can work or be modified to work with the A500.  More modern hd drives may work as dd drives if they have jumpers and you modify the floppy cable.  There are some internet sources on these mods.

As far as tricking out an A500; you can do just about anything with it but the hardware is rare and hard to find for the most part.  Still available from Individual Computers and E3B is a cpu socket clockport adapter and USB card (Subway) to add at least USB or a fast serial port (Silversurfer) to the machine.  Most harddisk expansions for the A500 came in so-called 'sidecars' that connect to the 86pin expansion connector on the left hand side.

Most accelerators (except the GVP030) connect to the 68K socket inside the A500.  The best internal ones are probably either the CSA Derringer (25MHz 68030 & up to 32MB fastram) or the Viper530 (also an 68030 with 32 bit memory simm and IDE).

There is a 2.5" or 3.5" ide adapter made by ICD that fits in the 68K socket and allows an internal IDE harddisk inside the actual case.

More ambitious projects are available on Aminet to make your own Zorro 2 expansion slot or ide interface.  You could then even add a Zorro 2 ethernet or graphics card.

Basically, expanding an A500 fully is a lot of work and you're probably better off just expanding the A1200 and using WHDLoad to run A500 games.

[alexh]

knight76 wrote:
I believe you can increase the chip ram to 1024k by buying the memory chips and putting them on the motherboard in the supplied spaces. Is this true?

No. You have an A500 with 512kbyte on the motherboard and 512kbyte on the trap door expansion (1Mbyte in total) which is the most your Amiga can have without adding a sidecar expansion. Adding more RAM to your motherboard will just make the Trapdoor RAM stop working.

Also, what is still available as far as accelerator cards go via the side expansion slot.

Nothing. No one sells any new Amiga accelerator hardware for A500's anymore. In the past you could get a GVP A530 but it today it is sought after and expensive.

Can the trapdoor expansion slot be used for expanding past the current 512k addon?

Not without additional hardware, all of which is not made today and was rare back then so is super rare now hence expensive. If you want to add more RAM you should consider buying a MiniMega Agnus board. But in reality these are no longer made and highly sought after by A2000 / CDTV users so you'd be better off selling your A500 and buying an A500+ (but if you are getting an A1200 why bother!).

If my internal drive craps itself can it be replaced with a pc laptop ds/hd drive so it can read and write 1.44mb. Or do I need to buy an amiga specific 1.44mb floppy drive.

You have to buy an Amiga one. There are guides to modifying PC drives but I have yet to see a good one that works with readily available modern drives.

[knight76]

Thanks for the advice. As I said im going to buy a 1200 in the not too distant future so will probably leave this one alone. Just curious is all.

The 1200 is the goal.

[trekiej]

Try elbox.com under Elbox 500/8 and Elbox 500/2.

[alexh]

€123 euro for the 8Meg one and €64 euro for the 2Meg one.

Totally unrealistic prices. I bet they haven't sold one for many years!

It is a shame because if their 8-Meg CDTV RAM upgrade was say €45 or there about then I would buy one.

But they are theives. They sell what they call a "clock port riser" for €6. You can buy the two components you need in strips from any good electronics store for about €1 they come in a length long enough to make 2 or 3 :-)

[Lokki]

alexh wrote:

knight76 wrote:
I believe you can increase the chip ram to 1024k by buying the memory chips and putting them on the motherboard in the supplied spaces. Is this true?

No. You have an A500 with 512kbyte on the motherboard and 512kbyte on the trap door expansion (1Mbyte in total) which is the most your Amiga can have without adding a sidecar expansion. Adding more RAM to your motherboard will just make the Trapdoor RAM stop working.

Can the trapdoor expansion slot be used for expanding past the current 512k addon?

Not without additional hardware, all of which is not made today and was rare back then so is super rare now hence expensive. If you want to add more RAM you should consider buying a MiniMega Agnus board. But in reality these are no longer made and highly sought after by A2000 / CDTV users so you'd be better off selling your A500 and buying an A500+ (but if you are getting an A1200 why bother!).

It is possible to add more RAM but it isn't going to be autoconfiguring after you move past the amount which the Agnus can address.
This is an interesting RAM hack which isn't too hard to do:
http://aminet.net/hard/hack/2Megram.lha


The trapdoor expansions which go past 512k/1Mb generally contain switching circuitry and either jumper clips or a socket adapter to connect to the GARY chip and force him to recognise the extra RAM. Basically a more user-friendly version of the hack described in 2Megram.lha

So theoretically you could add the extra 4256 RAM DIPs to the motherboard (if you have rev 6 or higher and an 8372 Agnus) and then hack in the trapdoor RAM in a similar method to this using a few logic chips and ADDMEM to configure it in workbench.

[Tomas]

Totally unrealistic prices. I bet they haven't sold one for many years!

I totally disagree.. It is indeed much more expensive than in the pc world, but this is hardware made specifically for this small community and thus will be more expensive due to the limited demand. It is not cheap to make hardware for the amiga these days...

But they are theives. They sell what they call a "clock port riser" for €6. You can buy the two components you need in strips from any good electronics store for about €1 they come in a length long enough to make 2 or 3

So they should not be paid for the job of assembling these parts? and have a little profit to keep the business going?

[terminator4]

I totally disagree.. It is indeed much more expensive than in the pc world, but this is hardware made specifically for this small community and thus will be more expensive due to the limited demand. It is not cheap to make hardware for the amiga these days...

- Not only this, I'd like to add dealers have to test things, ensure all items work, often picking up inventory only to sit on things for years.  
Prices are high b/c there is not enough amiga users.  If a NEWBIE (not anyone here) wants cheaper prices, then he/she should go back to PC.  Logically, the size of market warrants the prices we have.

If users want to build their own, then let them.  

[knight76]

Yeah its pretty much just supply and demand. There just isnt enough users out there buying this stuff. Even many people who own amigas would not get into modding it and getting accelerators etc so that reduces the market again.

Prices reflect this.

[yock1960]

alexh wrote:
€123 euro for the 8Meg one and €64 euro for the 2Meg one.

Totally unrealistic prices. I bet they haven't sold one for many years!

___________________________________________________________

Well, I know they have sold at least one 500/8 in the past 2 months. The prices are high but not unrealistic. One could easily pay half the price for hardware that's 20 years old and it's history unknown. Granted I'm putting this on a computer that's just as old, but not everything can be logical  :-) .

Unless one has alot of patience and a fair amount of luck, not to mention money, getting the hardware you want can be pretty frustrating. It's nice to have at least the option of going out and buying some new hardware....now! The folks at Elbox were also very helpful and timely in answering my questions, which is nice when you haven't been involved with the platform for the past 20 years and information on the hardware may not be available!

[Tenacious]

Hi Yock1960

How do like the 500/8?  Was expensive it with shipping and currency exchange? Have you found any incompatibilties with other expansions (A570, SupraTurbo25Mhz, SCSI interfaces, etc), what do you use it with?  I was un-aware of this product and it might suit me well.

It's nice to know there is at least one other Amiga user in this corner of the world, grin.

[yock1960]

Tenacious wrote:
Hi Yock1960

How do like the 500/8?

It's great! :-)

 

Was expensive it with shipping and currency exchange?

Yes it was! :-o

 

Have you found any incompatibilties with other expansions (A570, SupraTurbo25Mhz, SCSI interfaces, etc), what do you use it with?

Just a trapdoor 512K expansion. Soon I will have a SCSI adapter to try. There are 2 jumpers, one for auto/non-auto config and the other for external device attached or not. I haven't asked, but I'm not sure if it would be compatible with an accelerator.

 

I was un-aware of this product and it might suit me well.

It's nice to know there is at least one other Amiga user in this corner of the world, grin.

 There are others; I'm probably just one of the newest.

[Tenacious]

You say there a jumper to indicate something else is attached to the side of the computer or attached to the 500/8?