Newbie and a few questions

[dreddnought]

Hello all!  I'm not only new to this forum, I'm also new to the Amiga.  I'm 33 and grew up on the Megadrive and the SNES - being an actual computer, the Amiga was something for older kids and I've never owned one.  Until now!  Picked up an A500+ on eBay for £30 and now I'm excited to start exploring the Amiga world.

But I have a few questions.  The internet is full of stuff about the Amiga but could anyone suggest some good sites for a novice to learn more?  Personal recommendations are always better than just trawling.  Also, if anyone can point out some good areas of the forum, give me a bit of orientation, that would be great.

Unfortunately I have also encountered a problem with my new purchase - 1Meg RAM games won't run!  I thought the 500+ had 1Meg RAM and seing as I'm completely clueless I'm not sure what the issue is.  I'm hoping it's easily fixed.  If anyone can point me in the direction of some good resources, it would be greatly appreciated!

My name's Mark by the way.  Ta!

[VingtTrois]

Hi Mark and welcome.
First of all, check if battery has leak on your expansion memory. If yes remove and clean asap.
http://www.amiga.org
http://www.amibay.com
http://eab.abime.net/
http://www.amigaworld.net/

[Kronos]

There are plenty sites, and which you should visit depends on what you plan to do .... (doh)

Those "1MB" games are probraly not Kick2.0 compatible or stumble over aspects of the ECS-chipset. The 500+ has 1MB default and is often upgraded (via the trapdoor slot) to 2MB.

You might want name specific games and describe symptoms of "not working".

[dreddnought]

Hi Ving, and thank you!  Forgive me if this sounds stupid but where would I find that?  Will i have to open it up?  No problem if so, I know my way around a PC so I'm used to opening up hardware - there's a trapdoor in the bottom of the system where I assumed the expansion would be but that's empty.  I'm not being lazy by the way, I have been Googling, but there's so much out there!

[Kronos]

You do indeed need to open your Amiga. There is a bunch of screws at the bottom. One you removed the topcase and disconnected the keyboard your allmost there.

There should be an RF-shield covering the whole board hold in place by some latches.

If your down to the board you'll find the battery near the trapdoor slot (looks like a small barrel). If your lucky a previous owner has allready removed it, if not do it now and make sure you clean up all leaked acid.

There is the possibility that your battery has not leaked (as remote it may seem) you should still remove it now as it will leak sooner or later.

[dreddnought]

There are plenty sites, and which you should visit depends on what you plan to do .... (doh)

Those "1MB" games are probraly not Kick2.0 compatible or stumble over aspects of the ECS-chipset. The 500+ has 1MB default and is often upgraded (via the trapdoor slot) to 2MB.

You might want name specific games and describe symptoms of "not working".

Cheers Kronos.  Good point!  Well, to begin with I guess I want to learn about the hardware.  It's not like I could just drop into PC World for help so I will need to find maintenance info.  The issues I've come across though are many sites kinda assume some Amiga knowledge already and I have none.

Case in point - Kick 2.0.  What?  Haha, see, novice!  I will pick this stuff up though.

Interesting!  Just typing this when the post arrived - including a copy of Space Hulk - requiring 1Meg of RAM.  also noted on the box works with various versions of Kickstart.  Just popped it in and it works fine!  So, not a RAM issue . . .

Games like Formula 1, Silent Service 2, alien Breed 92 - None of these will run.  I get a "Software Error" message.  I'll have to check the specific code but I did look around the web last night and found a chap who had a similar issue and it was suggested to him it was a RAM problem.

Cheers guys, this is already shaping up to be a great forum.  Glad to be part of the community

[dreddnought]

If your lucky a previous owner has allready removed it, if not do it now and make sure you clean up all leaked acid.

There is the possibility that your battery has not leaked (as remote it may seem) you should still remove it now as it will leak sooner or later.

Again, thank you.  Just remove it?  Is it not needed?!

[Kronos]

Kick(start) is the base operating system found in a ROM chip onn the board.

Most games where coded while Kick1.2 and 1.3 were current and some of them are not compatible with Kick2.0.

The A500+ was a minor upgrade from the A500 as it replaced Kick1.3 with 2.0 doubled both onboard and trapdoor RAM (1/2MB vs 0.5/1MB) and came with battery backuped clock (thats why you only find those batteries in the A500+ and bigbox Amiga).

Removing the battery will stop the system clock being updated on boot, but even that can be solved by replacing it (just don't use another barrel-form rechargeable as that will leak sooner or later too).

Leaking batteries are the No.1 reason of dead Amigas.

[Cammy]

Here's a really good site which lists links to popular Amiga sites, it's well worth checking some of them out  http://brutalamiga.mikendezign.com/

I recommend Lemon Amiga for browsing through and discussing classic Amiga games. The link is on the front page of that site.

[TheGoose]

Here's a really good site which lists links to popular Amiga sites, it's well worth checking some of them out  http://brutalamiga.mikendezign.com/

I recommend Lemon Amiga for browsing through and discussing classic Amiga games. The link is on the front page of that site.

New to me,  thanks Cammy

Welcome dreddnought! Your A500+ is a classic !

[runequester]

You can use an application like relokick to boot into 1.3 kickstart and that will fix a lot of games that wouldnt work normally.

Not sure if it works well with only 1 meg of RAM though.

[bnice]

Hi,

I use to have an A500+ back in the day. I think a lot of your compatibly problems with 1 Meg games is that they are looking for fast ram and not chip ram. To fix this google and find  aminet and search for a program "degrader" try the it and tell it to fake fast ram. If it doesn't help try one called TUDE it looks good (I can't try them, I don't have an amiga here).

Regards,

Ben (fulltime Amiga user 1988  - 1998)

[amigadave]

Welcome Dreddnought!

Ask any questions you want here and you are sure to get multiple answers within minutes usually.  This is a very helpful and friendly site (except for all the fighting and name calling) and I am sure you will find it very useful.

Cammy is a princess of all things Amiga and will never steer you wrong, and she is also a very good source of info about most Amiga games.

Good luck and enjoy!