Amiga 500 Questions

[Super TWiT]

I just bought my first amiga (amiga 500) from ebay, and it was said to be in working condition. I haven't got it yet, but have a few questions about it. Do I need to remove the battery from it? I have heard of amigas dying from battery leakage but haven't heard much surrounding the 500. I want to upgrade the kickstarts in it too and was wondering if I had to buy special amiga 500 kickstarts or if the kickstarts from any amiga will do? And lastly is there anyway I can use my workbench copy from amiga forever on this amiga (it only came with the computer and psu):furious:  Thanks, and sorry about all the long questions.

[MozzerFan]

Only the A500 plus has a battery on the motherboard.
 
The A500 has it's own kickstart roms. Checkout Amigakit.com or Vesalia.de.
 
I suppose the wb copy of Amigaforever would work. Dunno if it would be legal to do that though.

[Super TWiT]

Thanks for clearing that up. If the amiga 500 doesn't have a battery, than how does it keep track of time?

[MozzerFan]

It doesnt. You manually have to re-enter the date and time. Or buy a (secondhand)hardware solution.

[Piru]

I want to upgrade the kickstarts in it too and was wondering if I had to buy special amiga 500 kickstarts or if the kickstarts from any amiga will do?

A2000 and A500 kickstart are interchangeable.

[lsmart]

Your A500 may have a ram expansion board installed. They typically include a battery backed up clock.
The problem with the AmigaForever Workbench is not the legality: How do you plan to transfer the files to a floppy? PC formatted diskettes cannot be used to boot an Amiga and a PC cant write Amiga-Format. So you pretty much have to have an already working Amiga to create the disks.
Harddrives could be formatted on a PC (at least theoretically) but a vanilla A500 has no HD.

[gertsy]

I think a Catweasle on your Amiga Forever PC is the only way to create (from ADFs) amiga format floppies.  Having said that I don't use amiga forever but guess it has full UAE functionality.
As ADFs are bigger than a 720k IBM format disks it is very difficult to get them onto an unexpanded A500.
An A590 hard drive is another option. But if all you want to do is run amiga format floppies on you A500 then a catweasel is a simple if "slightly" expensive solution.  A friend with one is cheaper.

PS: What's your locale super twit.?

Gertsy

[tone007]

Most of the twits I know are in the UK.

[spaceman88]

Yes, check the trapdoor under your 500 to see if it has a RAM board installed. I had one 10 years ago that leaked and caused major problems.

Your A500 may have a ram expansion board installed. They typically include a battery backed up clock.
The problem with the AmigaForever Workbench is not the legality: How do you plan to transfer the files to a floppy? PC formatted diskettes cannot be used to boot an Amiga and a PC cant write Amiga-Format. So you pretty much have to have an already working Amiga to create the disks.
Harddrives could be formatted on a PC (at least theoretically) but a vanilla A500 has no HD.

[gertsy]

@tone007; I've found twits to be an international phenomenon.  Funny that.

Gertsy

[save2600]

Most of the twits I know are in the UK.

Yes, but we have a never ending supply of twats here in the good ol' U.S.

[Super TWiT]

PS: What's your locale super twit.?

Gertsy

I am in the good ol' state of michigan

[Super TWiT]

I found kinda a round about way to transfer files from my pc to the amiga. I am on another kinda vintage piece of machinery an iMac G3 running linux great as my main machine (after my pentium 4 broke). However, this means that the castweasel is a no go since the imac has no pci slots. I found out that I can mount a directory as a hard drive in uae and then transfer the image files to that virtual hard drive in wb. I then can move these to a floppy. It won't work since I am using a 700 kb fat disk as my floppy on workbench disks though. However, I can transfer quite a bit of the stuff this way.

[TjLaZer]

I just bought my first amiga (amiga 500) from ebay, and it was said to be in working condition. I haven't got it yet, but have a few questions about it. Do I need to remove the battery from it? I have heard of amigas dying from battery leakage but haven't heard much surrounding the 500. I want to upgrade the kickstarts in it too and was wondering if I had to buy special amiga 500 kickstarts or if the kickstarts from any amiga will do? And lastly is there anyway I can use my workbench copy from amiga forever on this amiga (it only came with the computer and psu):furious:  Thanks, and sorry about all the long questions.

If it has the C= A501 card installed, remove it ASAP and unsolder the tin shielding on it and remove the leaking battery!  If it has a clone card it may have a leaky batt or not, and it should be easier to remove as there is no shielding.

[lsmart]

However, I can transfer quite a bit of the stuff this way.

Right, but it doesn´t help the OP, because he needs his initial Workbench disk to read anything that isn´t FFS or OFS formatted. You need PC0: to read FAT/MS-DOS and this is not in the Kickstart.

You could however use Public domain software to get there. There are many bootable PD-disks some of them even include a stripped down Workbench. And then there is (IIRC) e.g. MessyDos (MD0:) which will do the same thing as workbenchs PC0:.

If you want to go this way you should have at least 1M of RAM or better - a second diskdrive. It will take some time to get up and running.

It´s perhaps easier to get a preowned copy of Workbench on eBay.