Tom Thul, 8 meg, A500 instructions please?

[AmmoJammo]

interesting... a piece of hardware that requires you to "hack" your motherboard... :p

I assumed you guys were talking about the mod where you add another 512k onto the motherboard in the spare spots...

[desiv]

Yeah, this is the link I had.
http://s2.postimage.org/8o0x83w69/A500_6a_1_MBCHIP.png
It's the same info..

You don't need the DKB Minimegchip for this to work.  Just that if you want to use the DKB, you need to do this first.

But you can do this just to get to 1M CHIP.
1M CHIP, for an A500 is plenty, and as long as you have FAST RAM, you'll never miss the slow 512k.

It was a bit nerve wracking for me to poke at my A500 with an exacto tho.. ;-)

desiv

[AmmoJammo]

before motherboard mod:


after motherboard mod:


I reckon I'd still like a bit more, 2 meg total maybe...

knives are fun... I work in electronics assembly, its no big deal cutting tracks :p

[djos]

So if you have a 500+ with Rev8a and 1mb chip ram already and you put in a trapdoor 1mb ram board (TomThul has a new 1mb battery backed board) do you need to do anything to enable 2mb chip-ram?

[Azryl]

I thought "dumba$$es" only owned Apple products


no, the Rev8a mobo should auto config the 1meg trap door expansion as CHIP ram because its made for A500+.. it is constructed different to the normal A500 512K trapdoor expansions.

Az

[desiv]

Great AmmoJammo!!
Looks nice (WB 2.x there?)...

If you can find a DKB MiniMegaChip, you can pretty easily get to 2M chip.
They aren't common, but they pop up fairly frequently.

So if you have a 500+ with Rev8a and 1mb chip ram already and you put in a trapdoor 1mb ram board (TomThul has a new 1mb battery backed board) do you need to do anything to enable 2mb chip-ram?

Not familiar with the 500+, sorry...
I think it already has the Agnus for 2M CHIP support, but I don't think the MiniMegaChip works on it (based on a quick google search, but that could be wrong)..

As for Tom's new board, I'm not that familiar with it yet...
I helped him beta test some of his other boards, and he asked me about this one, but I had already modded and MiniMegaChip'ed my A500, so I didn't have a good test machine anymore..

desiv

[djos]

no, the Rev8a mobo should auto config the 1meg trap door expansion as CHIP ram because its made for A500+.. it is constructed different to the normal A500 512K trapdoor expansions.

Az

Cheers.

[AmmoJammo]

Great AmmoJammo!!
Looks nice (WB 2.x there?)...

its WB3.1, which means it doesn't come with fastmemfirst.

I copied it from the WB1.3 floppy, to C.

added C:fastmemfirst to the startup sequence, then tried C:fastmemfirst >NIL:

neither left me with anymore free chip mem once WB had loaded. oh well.

[Azryl]

If you have a harddrive on your system, if you need more chip ram reduce how many addbuffers you have in the s/startup-sequence.

each buffer eats way 30k of chip ram if I remember correctly.

The buffers are there to speed up directory searching and loading of small files. If you have a CF adapter on your machine then you should only have a few buffers because the CF is much faster than older XT or AT harddrives which were common, or slow old scsi-50pin which the addbuffers command was there to help speed up.

Az

[AmmoJammo]

If you have a harddrive on your system, if you need more chip ram reduce how many addbuffers you have in the s/startup-sequence.

each buffer eats way 30k of chip ram if I remember correctly.

The buffers are there to speed up directory searching and loading of small files. If you have a CF adapter on your machine then you should only have a few buffers because the CF is much faster than older XT or AT harddrives which were common, or slow old scsi-50pin which the addbuffers command was there to help speed up.

Az

ah yes, this isn't my picture/info thread, so that would explain.. I didn't go into much detail in this thread :p

but I did in this thread!
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=61854

thanks for calling my scsi HDD slow

[Lurch]

Running an A500+ with the same 8MB board. Have 1MB in expansion, but no hacks needed as the A500+ will configure 2MB chip.

New battery has turned up but waiting on a better condition A500+ motherboard to turn up to solder it to :-)

I get 1.7MB chip with WB 3.1 and 1.9MB chip with 2.1. So might downgrade as all I do is play WHDLoad games :-)

[djos]

Running an A500+ with the same 8MB board. Have 1MB in expansion, but no hacks needed as the A500+ will configure 2MB chip.

Nice to know. :cool:

[Lurch]

The A500+ is like an A600 but cooler :-P

[AmmoJammo]

pfft! the A500+ is like the A500, but with corrosive stuff poured on the motherboard :p lol

[Azryl]

A600 has PCMCIA, you can add networking! It also has inbuilt IDE and 2meg chipram and FULL ECS chipset. So its MUCH better than an A500, and only slight better than an A500+

But I would love to own an A500+ because I know from experience that 2meg chip ram is always much nicer than just 1meg

It is why I like my A3000's so much!

Az

[djos]

The A500+ is like an A600 but cooler :-P

Indeed! :biglaugh:

pfft! the A500+ is like the A500, but with corrosive stuff poured on the motherboard :p lol

hehe, makes restoration that much more satisfying when complete. :cool: