My A500+ Project

[darksun9210]

nope, the viper, being a 68k based accelerator, will only allow you to run OS3.9. so will the derringiner, and the GVP A530...

for OS 4.0 you need an A1200 or A4000 with a PPC cpu accelerator, and for OS 4.1, at the moment it seems you need a PPC based AmigaOne...

[sim085]

No I am just seeing the limits the A500+ has if 3.9 is the max I can install on it then I will try to get it till there and there only! thanks.

[Lockon_15]

What do you expect to get with 0S 3.9 compared with OS 3.1 ?

[sim085]

Lockon_15 wrote:
What do you expect to get with 0S 3.9 compared with OS 3.1 ?

I do not know the difference between the two. I only used Workbench 2.0 in the past and mostly just to access the games I had installed on the hard drive. If there is not a big difference between OS 3.1 and OS 3.9 then I do not mind sticking with the foremost.  

[alexh]

Without AGA or a graphics card you wont get the most out of OS3.9.

Economically you would be much better off trading in your A500+ for an A1200 rather than upgrading your A500+ beyond a hard drive. It has AGA, 020, RAM & accelerators are relatively cheap.

You'll not get change out of €500 for a Viper 530.

[sim085]

My hoped for a Viper 530 just vanished in a cloud of mist!! €500!? What was its price when it was released then!?

[alexh]

Using Google I have Discovered

Viper 530/40mhz IDE         $179
Viper 530/50mhz IDE/SCSI II $239

Those prices are 1998. Compensating for inflation in April 2008 they would have been:

Viper 530/40mhz IDE         $240.29 = €161.32
Viper 530/50mhz IDE/SCSI II $320.84 = €215.40

But of course those prices were when it was on sale. It's is now more sought after. Antique if you like

[Tenacious]

If you set your sights a little lower (Supra Turbo 25 and their HD/ram expansion) you could have a tricked out system for a modest investment.  It's a shame Supra never combined their accelerator with 500XP in one case!  The two can be chained together.

I agree with others above, if you really want to stretch the Amiga envelope, the 500 is probably not the Amiga to build from.

To answer your other question, WB3.1 was the last Commodore version of the operating system.   OS 3.5 and 3.9 were based on 3.1 but enhansed for top end Amigas (many improvements but lots of eye-candy).  3.1 can be improved with add-ons without bogging a 500 down with heavy graphics.

[sim085]

My project is not to build some type of Super Amiga but more to try and bring my A500+ to working form. My original idea was to stretch the A500+ possibilities as much as possible. If it is not possible then I don't mind

From the comments I got over here it seems obvious that I cannot have anything more then Workbench 3.1 on the A500+. This is not a problem for me and if Workbench 3.1 does not need an accelerator card then I'll not need an accelerator card either! However if Workbench 3.1 runs very slowly then I will consider buying one

[Chrome]

I did have A500+ (2MB CHIP) + A530 (030+882@50MHz, 8MB, 4GB) quite maxed out package. I was able to do almost everything I wanted; keypoint is to accepted limited resolution&color-combination on workbench.

Sad thing is that I had to sell it because of new amiga-projects.

[HyAmi]

However if Workbench 3.1 runs very slowly then I will consider buying one

Well, the point is that Workbench 3.1 itself will run quite ok on a relatively unexpanded (read 68000 processor) A500+. Especially when you have a harddisk and several MB fastram. If you want some programs to run nicely, then imho you want an accelerator

[cv643d]

Why not hack an A1200 motherboard inside the A500 shell?

[pyrre]

@ sim085

My project is not to build some type of Super Amiga but more to try and bring my A500+ to working form. My original idea was to stretch the A500+ possibilities as much as possible. If it is not possible then I don't mind

If i am correct you do already have a harddrive, meaning you only need kickstart, os and accelerator.
If you choose to buy the derrigner 030 i pointed earlier in this tread. it will be more than sufficient to run os 3.9 at an acceptable speed. And if you manage to squeeze in a network card as well it will surf internet just fine...
You will be able to do most work on that computer. and be quite happy about it.

And a future project could be to gather parts and build a greatly expanded A4000.

And the point i am trying to put out is; you already have the A500. you have a great accelerator available NOW. And at this point it will be the least expensive and best option. If you choose to do so you will have a great amiga up and running in notime. but if you sell it and go for the A1200 (which truly is a far better machine...) you will most likely end up "computerless" in the time you spend searching ebay for usable parts to expand your 1200 to usefulness...

[Lockon_15]

@sim085

IMHO, your stock A500+ already with 3Mb (1Mb CHIP + 2Mb FAST, not sure) and harddrive will make you happy while exploring Workbench and other apps. I suppose that GVP HDD controller you bought could accept even more FASTRAM, and also getting A501+ would max-out your CHIPRAM (maximum 10, but 5-6 is already enough).

I went through all of this several times, with both A500 and A2000 (have both machines, besides A1200) so be sure I'm talking about things happening when you realize you could move further. Games, for instance, are a bit troublesome to operate under KS3.1 since the large part of them are made for most compatible KS1.3 environment; floppy drive wear-out over time and floppy disks are prone to failures, read errors, not to mention proven lower quality of HD disks over ancient DD disks (could be also problem of medium electrical features or data read/write technology). For that matters, we have WHDLOAD, a real masterpiece of Amiga software development. In short, WHDLOAD allows good old games playable from harddrives, with complete installation procedures, game fixes/patches, removed copy protections, trainers and save game features. Of course, now you can exit game at any time and crawl back to host Workbench OS.

Minimum requirement for WHDLOAD is 68000 CPU, 2.0+ Kickstart, 2Mb of RAM and a harddrive. Some games need some more RAM, but generaly 1Mb CHIP and 4Mb FAST will cover almost 100% of all available WHDLOAD games.

I have a simialr setup on one of my A500s, have played many games with decent retro-feel, just the way I used to. However, a fair share of my favourite games were unstartable since their install procedure requires at least 68020 CPU. That's the part when I realize "step further" moment. I need an accelerator.

You might hit that mark even sooner, depending what are your biases towards Amiga games (what a stupid thought, at least brave stupid to post it on this forum).  

  :-D

Since your GVP HDD have no passthrough connector, you can write-off any side-car accelerator, so get a piece which sits on CPU on motherboard bellow keyboard. Derringer is a great one, you are lucky someone has offered you in public. If you have the cash, this is no-brainer.

Get it. A500 accelerators are rare, expensive and usually tend to change owners only in weird circumstances.

[darksun9210]

Mate, get that Derringer board, seriously :-)
they can be upgraded to be equivilent speed as the Viper530 if you really need to, and 32MB of ram will see you through most things you will do with this machine.
you already had a GVP hard disk, so thats good, you'll pretty much have the equivilent kinda machine to the viper right there.

if you don't go for it, at that price, i will! :lol: and i've got a supra turbo28, and a GVP A530!  :crazy:

3.1 is plenty fast enuff on a standard chipram only 7Mhz 68000, and on an accelerated amiga, it rocks.
3.5 and 3.9 require a 68020 and 4Mb ram at the base point, as they load more things into memory and try to be more "advanced" with the way they do things.

i used to run 3.9 on my A530 powered A500, but went back to 3.1, and it feels like another speed increase! :-)

with WHDLoad, i wouldn't worry about incompatabilites between 3.1 and 1.2/1.3, you can have the 1.3 rom as a file on your hard disk that WHDLoad will use for the game if it needs to. for a good WHDLoad machine you ideally want:-
020/030 cpu
1-2MB chipram
2-8MB fastram
harddisk
2.x or higher rom.
that will have pretty much every game you want running from hard disk...
and it should suit basic web browseing too :-)

[sim085]

So far I still don't thing I am going to bid on the Derringer currently on eBay. I have been weighing this a lot but I feel for the amount of time I will spend on the A500+ (very little) the Derringer Card is just to expensive. Maybe in the future I will consider buying one; if ever such card becomes available again and I am interested in upgrading my A500+.

At the moment (or when all things arrive) I have a 2Gb hard drive, 2Mb slow ram (1Mb on the A500+, 1Mb ram extension board), 4Mb fast ram and kickstart 3.1.

I do not plan to install loads of games; just the ones I used to play in the past and some small programs.

@Lockon_15
> would max-out your CHIPRAM (maximum 10, but 5-6 is
> already enough).

Is chipram slow ram? If so then what does maximum 10 mean? I thought that the A500+ could only have a maximum of 2Mb slow ram.