How to test my Amiga, and did I get Amiga 500 or 500 PLUS?

[Saeid]

Hi all,
 
This is my first post here :pint:
 
When I was a little kido I had AMIGA 500 which I could only play games with it, I mean I was like 5 or 6 so I was not a hard core programmer back then! After a while we got a PC at home and sold our amiga away.
 
Anyway, my nostalgia made me to buy an Amiga 500 from ebay. It comes only with power supply, mouse and some disks (including workbench). It didn't come with A520 modulator and RF cable (I already ordered a modulator and on its way).
 
I also don't have any TV in my room (I live in my university campus room so all I got is a modern 23 inch LCD of my PC. When the modulator comes in, can I just buy a cheap USB TV dongle and plug the RF card in it and see the amiga screen on my LCD?
 
I got another question, I did open the Amiga out of curiosity. I found that its main board is market as 500+, altough the battery and clock IC and some of it's surronding components are missing. In wikipedia I read that commodore sold early A500+ as normal 500 models since they ran out of 500 in the christmas of 91/92/
 
Here is some photos:
 

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[darksun9210]

ok, that looks like a rev 8 board, which IIRC is an A500 plus.

not sure why you're missing the clock chip and battery though.
maybe the battery was clipped off to prevent damage if it started leaking

[Saeid]

I forgot to add: It also came with a memory board in the expansion bay, there is a rusted battery on that memory board.

[mongo]

It's a 500 with a revision 8A motherboard. A 500+ would have 1 Meg of ram and the clock chip and battery.

[mfilos]

I had exactly a bastard mobo like this which was an A500+ mobo with OCS Denise but with New Agnus and with Kickstart 1.3, 512KB soldered Chip and without the RTC circuit and Audio filter.

It's true that some Commodore A500's where shipped with the new mobo but without the extra stuff that actually categorize an A500 as a plus (RTC circuit, Kickstart 2.04, ECS Denise, 1MB Chip plus audio filter).

It's not so difficult to upgrade this mobo to a full A500+ but you need to put the ECS Denise, solder the rest 1MB Chip chips, and find some difficult to find decoupler for the RAM plus some RTC chip and some other caps/resistors for the audio filter circuit.

I tried to make this, but never actually made it. Imho it's easier to get an real A500+ mobo than try to make this a full one or keep it and treat is as an Rev6 mobo
Just keep it as it is as a rare bastard board from the Commodore era

[Saeid]

Thanks mfilos for clarification! I had the same guess as well.
 
I am an electronics student and have some good soldering/repair skills! I will try to mod it up to a 500+
 
Do you know those ram chips and clock chip are generic components that can be found in component stores or I should look for extracting them from other amigas?
 
Also, no one answered my question about testing my Amiga will the A520 modoulator output connected to a TV card show anything on my LCD monitor?

[AmigaClassicRule]

I had exactly a bastard mobo like this which was an A500+ mobo with OCS Denise but with New Agnus and with Kickstart 1.3, 512KB soldered Chip and without the RTC circuit and Audio filter.
 
It's true that some Commodore A500's where shipped with the new mobo but without the extra stuff that actually categorize an A500 as a plus (RTC circuit, Kickstart 2.04, ECS Denise, 1MB Chip plus audio filter).
 
It's not so difficult to upgrade this mobo to a full A500+ but you need to put the ECS Denise, solder the rest 1MB Chip chips, and find some difficult to find decoupler for the RAM plus some RTC chip and some other caps/resistors for the audio filter circuit.
 
I tried to make this, but never actually made it. Imho it's easier to get an real A500+ mobo than try to make this a full one or keep it and treat is as an Rev6 mobo
Just keep it as it is as a rare bastard board from the Commodore era

You seem to bash it for reason? I take it you had some bad experience with it? Or do you hate it because it could have being potentially an A500+ but it is not?
 
What is exactly your beef toward the A500 Rev 8 motherboard anyways?

[mfilos]

I don't have anything to do with Rev.8 mobos man (in fact I love a full Rev.8 mobo and I certainly prefer an A500+ from an A500 any day). I wish I could make my bastard board into one but I had some bad experience with it.

Mobo works, I putted the ECS Denise and Kickstart 3.1 and life was good.
I did all the neccesary jumper alterations and also soldered the new ram chips in place but hey... no extra RAM. I thought I'd need the decoupler chip, so I ordered one and still nada 1MB chip.
After those tries I stopped trying because maybe ram chips could be faulty or the decoupler so I couldn't tell nor had the time to try more combinations.

Good luck with your own mod mate, and keep us posted with your own experience.

[Saeid]

The chip rams are TMS44C256-80N, I found them on sale on some component stock company website for 10 Euros each! pretty expensive...got the amiga for 40 euros but that ram chips will cost far more than the amiga itself!
 
I am still looking for an answer to my main question! How to connect amiga 500 to LCD ?!

[AmigaClassicRule]

The chip rams are TMS44C256-80N, I found them on sale on some component stock company website for 10 Euros each! pretty expensive...got the amiga for 40 euros but that ram chips will cost far more than the amiga itself!
 
I am still looking for an answer to my main question! How to connect amiga 500 to LCD ?!

 
Oh um...hehe, you could buy an external TV tuner and hook your Amiga into the external TV tuner and the TV tuner into the LCD monitor. That is what I did for years and years until I decided that a Commodore 1084s is more fitting for me as a full experience
 
I preferred the 1084s over the LCD anytime...the colors and pictures are just delllliccious heh.

[Saeid]

Oh um...hehe, you could buy an external TV tuner and hook your Amiga into the external TV tuner and the TV tuner into the LCD monitor. That is what I did for years and years until I decided that a Commodore 1084s is more fitting for me as a full experience
 
I preferred the 1084s over the LCD anytime...the colors and pictures are just delllliccious heh.

Thanks, I dont care about quality at the moment, I really have no room in my room to put a CRT like thingy so using my PC LCD is the only option.
 
In case of TV tuner, will any kind of TV tuner do the job? I mean will a cheapo 20$ usb stick TV tuner (with antena in port) be OK? Or I should go for a expensive good quality BOX like ones?

[AmigaClassicRule]

Oh jeeze no. You can do a little research online for a good external tv tuner, I bought one for 70 bucks it supports: PAL/NTSC/SECAM and all combination of these...oh heck let me send you a link to the one I got that is A++:
 
YEAH BABY: http://www.opalia.com.au/product.jsp?id=SUPERA-HD
 
that is the one!! THAT IS WHAT I HAVE AT HOME NOW...TWO OF THEM IN FACT...YUP, YES SIR TWO OF THEM. And I aint using them now at all in fact!!

[amiman99]

Thanks, I dont care about quality at the moment, I really have no room in my room to put a CRT like thingy so using my PC LCD is the only option.
 
In case of TV tuner, will any kind of TV tuner do the job? I mean will a cheapo 20$ usb stick TV tuner (with antena in port) be OK? Or I should go for a expensive good quality BOX like ones?

You said you like to solder, then you should get one of the CGA-VGA converters from Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/ARCADE-GAME-CONVERTER-CGA-RGB-YUV-EG-A-to-1-VGA-HD-video-output-GBS-8200-/281028070157?pt=Video_Games_Accessories&hash=item416e940b0d and DB23 connector.
Works fine, there are many threads about it, even from me, showing which pins where they go etc.
Good project to start with.

[mongo]

Thanks, I dont care about quality at the moment, I really have no room in my room to put a CRT like thingy so using my PC LCD is the only option.
 
In case of TV tuner, will any kind of TV tuner do the job? I mean will a cheapo 20$ usb stick TV tuner (with antena in port) be OK? Or I should go for a expensive good quality BOX like ones?

If you're not concerned about the quality, a cheap USB one will work fine.

[darksun9210]

or pay a bit more and get an indivisionECS....