If you ignore the obvious
"The best upgrade for an A500 is an A1200!" then hardware wise, a hard drive is the best buy for an A500. It really brings an A500 to life.
The best hard drive for the A500 is the
ICD Trifecta LX but they are insanely rare and the prices are nuts, but they have both SCSI and IDE. ICD Trifecta EC (IDE only) is just as rare.
A
GVP HD8+ is a good alternative, particularly when upgraded to use a SCSI->IDE->CF adapter for silent operation (also means you can ditch the external PSU too!) It adds 8Mbytes of RAM to the Amiga too and has external SCSI connector for external DVD-ROM. If you have / or are thinking of getting any hard drive adapter take care to make sure any CPU accelerator is compatible. If you can find one, the
GURU ROM upgrade can speed these up a bit and allow for bigger drives.
A Kickstart 3.1 v40.63 chip is worth a look. As is Workbench 3.1 once you've upgraded.
WHDload is without a doubt the best software you can add to your A500. Registration is fairly cheap.
I wouldn't bother with kickstart switchers, unless you intend to use floppy disks. WHDload solves all incompatibility.
I wouldn't bother with Agnus upgrades. Unless you are sentimental I would just flog your old Amiga and get an A500+ (or an A1200!)
A 1Mbyte trap-door chip-ram expansion for A500+ (to bring the total to 2Mbytes) is always worth having.
Other mods that I like the look of are:
The
IDE68k. A modern device which replicates the A600 internal IDE interface. Plugs into the CPU socket (CPU goes on the card) and adds a 3.5"(?) IDE, perfect for CF card adapters. Perhaps the cheapest way to add a hard drive to the A500 (especially good if you already have a FastRAM upgrade). Incompatible with accelerators. Needs KS2.05+
If you want to go a bit mad, a bit different, then
A570/A690 CDTV adapters are VERY, VERY cheap. When coupled with a
2Mbyte FastRAM upgrade they come alive. You can play your WHDload games from CD :-) A note of warning, without the RAM upgrade it's a bit rubbish. You can also add a SCSI hard drive interface to the A570, but they are rare and expensive, and the 2.5" SCSI disks are expensive(but you can get SCSI->IDE adapters).
BTW: What FastRAM upgrade do you have?
