Just Bought an Amiga 500...eek

[Sutty100]

Hi Everybody thought I would let you know how I happened to buy an Amiga then ask you all some questions! My girlfriend for Christmas bought me a book called 1001 computer games to play before you die. Reading through it I saw all these great games from the 80's I had never played (My earliest console was a SNES) so after a very quick bit of research I found that quite a few of these retro computers\consoles were available on E-bay still. I vaguely remember my cousin having an Amiga 500 when I was very young so I settled on one of those. I purchased one which comes with all the wires etc and a TV modulator (is that correct?). Its not arrived yet but its in the post. My questions are:
1) Will I need any special cables etc to connect it to a 19" LCD TV its quite modern so I don't know if thats a problem. Its got SCART, RWY, ariel socket and a connection that lets you plug in your computer monitor VGA I belive.

2) It doesn't come with any gamepads or joysticks is this a problem? It does have the mouse of course but no other peripherals.

Thanks in advance!

[spirantho]

Hi,

Welcome to A.org! This is probably the best place for questions about the old ("Classic") models!

You won't need any special cables to connect to the TV, but you might want to invest in a SCART cable for your Amiga - you can get them on eBay for about £10 usually. Otherwise connect it using the composite video (the yellow plug on the modulator - not the Amiga - and the yellow one on the telly). You can connect the sound up to the telly too but I prefer a proper HiFi.

You will need a joystick, though. Many people like the Competition Pro joysticks, but if you get one make sure it's the original, not a USB one.

Your biggest task will be finding working disks. You can make disk images if you download "Abandonware", but the original disks are best - at least as long as they're still working.

If you want to do fancier stuff you'll need a more powerful Amiga than the A500 (it is 24 years old this year!) but you can get a lot of fun from an A500!

Basically, get a joystick, and experiment, and have fun! And no, you can't write Amiga disks with a PC (not without trickery anyway), unless you have a "Catweasel".

Enjoy!

[Hattig]

I'd recommend a SCART adapter for the Amiga video output.

One thing you might want is a way to burn Amiga ADFs to Amiga floppies.

To do this, you could get the Hombre disk - http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=27704

You can burn compressed ADFs to a Double Density (720KB) PC floppy, then read them on the Amiga and write to a disk (again, Double Density). The Amiga fits 880KB on a 3.5" floppy disk.

Does the A500 have 1MB RAM?

[Sutty100]

Thanks spirantho an Hattig I am now looking for one of those joysticks. I did do abit of reading into creating floppys for it after seeing the prices on ebay for games! I found this tutorial: http://sandboard.50webs.com/tutorial/amiga_adf.html which seems to make it sound all quite simple perhaps to simple! Although do I need special floppy disks for the task or can a standard floppy disk be used?


EDIT: Oh and it is a 1MB version.

[psxphill]

You won't need any special cables to connect to the TV, but you might want to invest in a SCART cable for your Amiga - you can get them on eBay for about £10 usually.

I'd call that a special cable. It's scart at one end and 23 pin d connector  + 2 rca jacks at the other.
 

Otherwise connect it using the composite video (the yellow plug on the modulator - not the Amiga - and the yellow one on the telly). You can connect the sound up to the telly too but I prefer a proper HiFi.

If you're going to connect via composite then worrying about the sound is probably the least of your worries.
 
If you want a real retro experience then you should use something like this:
 
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hitachi-3D-Super-Woofer-Twin-Drive-TRK-3D80E-/150543223955
 
I think mine was a slightly later model, but these ones were everywhere at amiga exhibitions.
 

Many people like the Competition Pro joysticks, but if you get one make sure it's the original, not a USB one.

I was a huge competition pro fan back in the day. However I know they weren't everyones favourite and I'm not sure how well I'd cope these days. I remember the ball at the top made your hand sore after a while. You can get convertors to use modern pads on the amiga, these days I might be tempted to get one. However they will be expensive.
 

Your biggest task will be finding working disks. You can make disk images if you download "Abandonware", but the original disks are best - at least as long as they're still working.

There are not many games that can be legally downloaded from the net, however you're unlikely to get into any trouble from downloading a 20 year old game. You can get software for transferring images from a PC to a floppy on the amiga, but you need a crossover serial cable (I think you can bootstrap the software over the serial cable, but I never tried it). I used to transfer ADF's, but I had a high density amiga drive and used messydos or crossdos to read the PC disks on the Amiga.
 
There are also a couple of usb adapters that you can get now that do a similar job as the catweasel, which aren't all that expensive. One of them is read only at the moment though, I didn't look that closely at the other.
 
There are tons of Amiga games on ebay though.

[Cammy]

The page for Hombre is here by the way - http://wiki.abime.net/file_transfer/hombre

As for a controller, you can use any Sega Master System or MegaDrive or Atari compatible joystick or control pad if you can't find a Competition Pro.

The Scart cable would definitely be your best option if you can find the correct Amiga RGB-Scart cable online.

You may also want to clean the floppy drive out before you put any disks through it or you could have heaps of read errors from scum built up on the drive heads. You can get floppy drive cleaning kits on eBay too, they look like a floppy disk with a cleaning pad inside of them instead of the magnetic disc media.

If anyone is wondering about the Playstation to Amiga/CD32 adapters they should email Nathan at AmigaManiac.com asking him when they'll be out, let him know there's a demand for these things.

[coldfish]

If you just want to play a stack of Amiga games why not UAE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAE_%28emulator%29

[spirantho]

If you just want to play a stack of Amiga games why not UAE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAE_%28emulator%29

For a lot of people - myself included - playing a game on an emulator is never quite the same. You need the proper display, keyboard, joystick and everything. The real vs. emulated is an argument that's been covered on this forum several times already, given he's just bought an A500 I'd guess he also wants to use the original hardware.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Two very good and reliable Amiga shops for getting Amiga->SCART cables and joysticks
http://www.amigakit.com/
http://www.vesalia.de/

thereby, there are several solutions for transferring, I personally use AmigaExplorer. It's not free, but it's easy and reliable. Though, as with many of the transfer solutions (except Catweasel of course) you need a workbench floppy.

[psxphill]

thereby, there are several solutions for transferring, I personally use AmigaExplorer. It's not free, but it's easy and reliable. Though, as with many of the transfer solutions (except Catweasel of course) you need a workbench floppy.

This can read/write amiga discs on a pc.
http://www.discferret.com/
 
This can read amiga discs on a pc, but I don't think write support is implemented yet
 
http://www.kryoflux.com/
 
This allows you to use an sdcard for storing floppy disc images.
 
http://www.torlus.com/floppy/
 
If you want real floppies then you ill need an 3.5" external drive as well, you can boot xcopy off the sdcard and then switch to another adf to write it out.
 
You ought to get a 512k trapdoor expansion & an external drive though.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Buy the double density double sided (880k Amiga, 720k PC) floppy disks for it. Some people say they have no trouble with high density 1.44MB disk, but they are meant to be used with a stronger magnet found on PC high density drives.

[Sutty100]

Thanks for all the advice. I have ordered the joystick recommended by  spirantho. Just found out my Amiga will be arriving Friday so I will  have a play around and I am sure I will be back with more questions!

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Buy the double density double sided (880k Amiga, 720k PC) floppy disks for it. Some people say they have no trouble with high density 1.44MB disk, but they are meant to be used with a stronger magnet found on PC high density drives.

Indeed, I also experienced that 1.44mb are a bit less reliable than the 720kb ones.
What I mean is, if I can find 720kb floppies and it's not too much fuss, I prefer them. Don't hesitate to just put some tape on the hd disk hole and just transfer your adf image to it. The only thing is that the data deteriorates a bit faster (you only have to re-write the adf to it)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

This can read/write amiga discs on a pc.
http://www.discferret.com/
 
This can read amiga discs on a pc, but I don't think write support is implemented yet
 
http://www.kryoflux.com/
 
This allows you to use an sdcard for storing floppy disc images.
 
http://www.torlus.com/floppy/
 
If you want real floppies then you ill need an 3.5" external drive as well, you can boot xcopy off the sdcard and then switch to another adf to write it out.
 
You ought to get a 512k trapdoor expansion & an external drive though.

Ah yes, I've forgotten to mention the sd card option, which is, perhaps, the very best of all if you don't mind altering your Amiga.
Considering the Kryoflux and the DiscFerret, never heard of them at all! Thanks for the links!

[coldfish]

For a lot of people - myself included - playing a game on an emulator is never quite the same. You need the proper display, keyboard, joystick and everything. The real vs. emulated is an argument that's been covered on this forum several times already, given he's just bought an A500 I'd guess he also wants to use the original hardware.

Yup, I thought that might be the case, but there was a chance the OP wasn't aware of UAE even though he knows what an ADF is.  We've had more than a few people get frustrated with trying to get ADFs on to real Amigas, UAE is a hassle-free and inexpensive fix.