Noob with an A500

[Xamiche]

From the picture I can tell you its a RAM expansion with a battery backed-up clock. There were dozens of different makes available so it may not match the box. Try re-inserting the RAM expansion and testing it again. It may have had a non-contacting pin or something. It happens. If you do get it working I recommend removing that NiCad battery. It looks like it's starting to leak already and that will kill the board for sure, if it hasn't already. Those caps near U1 and U2 look a little funky. Looks like the battery has already leaked unto the some components. If you're going to remove the battery and clean the board, know that the substance is not acid as most people think. It's actually a base. Potassium hydroxide (KOH). After removing the battery, get yourself some isopropyl alcohol to clean the affect parts as best you can.

With the demo, try looking for a draw/folder. Open it up and you'll probably find the programmes executable file in there. Just double click it.

[Naton]

Ah, thanks I'll try reinstalling it later.
Sorry to get deeper off the hardware topic, but the only things on the screen are the Workbench Screen bar and an AmigaDOS window, can't seem to do anything but move them around and type jibberish :-(

[Xamiche]

ahh. Did you try typing in DIR to see the contents of the disk? That may or may not work. If not the disks start-up sequence is probably cactus.

[Tomas]

The a500 is okay with old classic amiga games. I however really recommend getting a a4000 or souped up a1200 if you want to use it for more than just old games. I have a a1200 with a hard drive added and a rather slow 1220/4meg accelerator and have installed all games onto hard drive using whdload. This means you can just click the game icon under workbench and they then load within seconds usually.

[Xamiche]

I agree, a 4000 or 1200 would be much better. If you can afford one. An Amiga 4000 in Australia is going to cost you at the very least $800. And if you find a cheap one over-seas you can expect to have any savings eaten up by shipping costs.  A 1200 will cost around $200-400. That's un-accelerated. If you want an accelerator I hope you have a spare kidney or two.

If you're an Amiga fanboy nut, like myself, you might be able to justify spending that sort of money on an Amiga 4000/1200, but realistically if you're just looking to play some games and spend under a couple hundred dollars, the Amiga 500 is the way to go. Maybe even an Amiga 600HD if you can find one. They go for around $100-200 when they come up on ebay. Maybe cheaper if you find someone selling one here.

[Naton]

I did first look out for an A4000, made sense if I'm gonna get an Amiga, might as well get the most recent one, with all the new and old capabilities. But since I havn't seen any for sale, and I read there weren't that many made, I reckon they're a bit out of the price range of what I'm willing to spend on a hobby at the moment ;-) I then thought about an A1000, but thought maybe I was delving a bit too far back.. The A500 seemed like the most well rounded machine for me :-)

I got the battery out of the RAM expander, but probably did more harm than good, it took the clamps holding it in place with it, and I chipped one of the little orange things trying to sperate it from the glue :roll: reckless people shouldn't be let near computer chips I guess.(not too bothered if I broke it so don't worry or anything ;-))

Entering Dir gave me an unknown command response, and I managed to get an error 212 typing in c: , if that means anything :roll:

[Xamiche]

Naton wrote:
I did first look out for an A4000, made sense if I'm gonna get an Amiga, might as well get the most recent one, with all the new and old capabilities. But since I havn't seen any for sale, and I read there weren't that many made, I reckon they're a bit out of the price range of what I'm willing to spend on a hobby at the moment ;-) I then thought about an A1000, but thought maybe I was delving a bit too far back.. The A500 seemed like the most well rounded machine for me :-)

I got the battery out of the RAM expander, but probably did more harm than good, it took the clamps holding it in place with it, and I chipped one of the little orange things trying to sperate it from the glue :roll: reckless people shouldn't be let near computer chips I guess.(not too bothered if I broke it so don't worry or anything ;-))

Entering Dir gave me an unknown command response, and I managed to get an error 212 typing in c: , if that means anything :roll:

My guess is you need to boot into Workbench first, then access the disk from there.

Hmm. Do you have a soldering iron? The little orange thing is a capacitor. Cheap and easy to replace. I have about half a dozen 512kb RAM expansions here. If you like I will send one over if you send the broken one to me. I can send you some workbench disks at the same time.

[Retro_71]

Hi Mate,
Was going to reply ealier but i couldn't find the link. In Vic you are very lucky there is a man called David Myers http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/amiga.html He doesn't live in melbourne but he does attend the commodore/Amiga get togethers (now i can't really speak for him, but his was always helpful to me when i needed some advice).
Also although Aussy prices are high we have a few sellers of Amiga stuff (if you don't want Ebay).

http://mc1.boing.net/
http://www.anythingamiga.com/
http://www.amigainnovations.com/ (there site is temp down)
Mind you expect to lose a body part...  :-D

If you need anything you can always let me know as well (but i think Xamiche pretty much has you covered).  ;-)

[Xamiche]

Anything Amiga has been down for over a year now. It says June of last year on the site, but it was down before that. Anything Amiga was a great place to get stuff. I wish who ever it is that runs the site would come back. Amigakit is just too far away for my liking. I don't fancy waiting 3 months just to get some parts. I emailed him once but got no reply. I'm guessin' he's packed it in. :-(

The Amiga Innovations guy is pretty cool, but his prices are just awful. More than double what it would cost at Amigakit or other Amiga sellers.

[Naton]

That would be awesome, thankyou :-D PM me the details and I'll send it asap :-)

[Retro_71]

With Amigakit i have gotten my stuff very quickly BUT it cost me what i spent to get the stuff over here that fast.... Well it depends on what you buy if it's the light stuff then it's cheap. But i got 1 x a1200 and a cd32 from him along with other stuff so the postage was enough to choke a horse...  :-D
BTW i have recently opened up my 6 512KB A500 expansions and what do you know they have all leaked (the worst one spread over 1/3 of the board  :-( ).

[Naton]

Thanks for the info and support Retro :-D these batteries seem like a real pain just to tell the time ;-)

[Retro_71]

Yes they are.. there even more of a pain because i can't seem to find them in OZ easy (Jaycar and Dick Smith don't have them) So i am ordering A500,A3K and A4K batteries + KS 3.1 from Amigakit (there goes my other kidney...  :-D ).
I really wish we had a decent Amiga shop still in Australia. Amigakit is good but they're just too far away.

[Xamiche]

Retro_71 wrote:
With Amigakit i have gotten my stuff very quickly BUT it cost me what i spent to get the stuff over here that fast.... Well it depends on what you buy if it's the light stuff then it's cheap. But i got 1 x a1200 and a cd32 from him along with other stuff so the postage was ebough to chose a horse...  :-D

Do you think it would cost too much to have AmigaKit ship over some KickROM chips by air? I've been trying to track down some 3.1 ROMs for my Amiga 600HDs.

BTW i have recently opened up my 6 512KB A500 expansions and what do you know they have all leaked (the worst one spread over 1/3 of the board  :-( ).

That really sucks. I hope they survive the leak. Damn NiCads. I curse them. :pissed:
I lost a few expansions that way. I lost an A601 to a leak. Those little buggers are as rare as rocking horse wheels.  :-(

[Retro_71]

Xamiche It's Difficult to say how much the postage will be, i had to send my IDEFIX back to them it cost me $3 (from Sydney) and i don't think it would cost that much more coming from the UK (normal airmail took about 2 weeks).
You can always try and PM him here on the forum just search for Amigakit he has always answered my Pm's and is really nice bloke.

[amigakit]

Approx prices for Kickstart 3.1 to Australia in Australia Dollars:

Kickstart 3.1 for A500/A2000 or A600: $35
Shipping by Airmail: $4
Total: $39

Please note we have many Australian customers and ship many parcels there weekly.