Obsolete technology?

[ChaosLord]

Stuff were incredibly expensive back then?

No it was super ridiculously cheap.

My A500 had 5 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a hard drive.

My A2000 had 9 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a ridiculous amount of HD storage.

And stereo DMA fed hardware double-buffered interrupt driven music.

And 32-bit multitasking.

Add up how much that cost to do on a Bill Gates compatible PC.  Around $8 billion (google translation: IMPOSSIBLE in 1989)

Now any price I paid was fantastically cheap.

[Iggy]

No it was super ridiculously cheap.

My A500 had 5 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a hard drive.

My A2000 had 9 MEGABYTES of directly addressable ram + a ridiculous amount of HD storage.

And stereo DMA fed hardware double-buffered interrupt driven music.

And 32-bit multitasking.

Add up how much that cost to do on a Bill Gates compatible PC.  Around $8 billion (google translation: IMPOSSIBLE in 1989)

Now any price I paid was fantastically cheap.

No, my A2000 was fantastically cheap ($45).
Now I have to spend idiotic amounts of money to upgrade it.
Indivision ECS, SCSI controller (not to mention that none of my more recent SCSI drives will work with it, like my SCSI Ultra 2 Wide drives or my U320s) obscenely priced accelerators, way over-priced compact flash adapter, the list just goes on.

For what I'm going to have to pay for all this I could buy a couple cheap X86 computers.
But hen, who says any of us has sensible spending habits?

[freqmax]

I mean back in 1988-1993..
(or around there)

[AmigaBruno]

I had a hard drive + 4MB ram expansion on my A500 in the 1989-1991 timeframe.  They were produced by multiple manufacturers and many thousands were sold.  Why didn't u buy one?

I'm not talking about whatever hardware I may or may not have had years ago, I'm talking about the situation NOW!

At this moment, there seems to be hardly any chance of getting a compatible hard drive for my Amiga A500 Plus, so I want to find an alternative. It seems the most likely alternative is an Iomega Zip drive, but I think it needs to be a certain type and that I need to get or make an adapter to get it to work. Can anyone tell me more about this?

[hese7]

At this moment, there seems to be hardly any chance of getting a compatible hard drive for my Amiga A500 Plus

How come it's that difficult?

[ChaosLord]

If you get a SCSI controller for your A500 then you can connect any SCSI 1 drive.  There is no reason to limit yourself to a ZIP drive.  The ZIP drives are not nearly as reliable as regular Quantum SCSI hard drives.

I have seen websites that sell old used SCSI drives for reasonable prices.

The only real trouble is waiting around for someone to sell your their old used SCSI controller.  I could sell you mine for cheap but it got stolen.  GRRRRRR!  A beautiful 4MB RAM + SCSI + Hard drive for Amiga 500 stolen by unappreciative thieves!  And they stole the A500 with 1MB chipram too! :evil:

If you just can't wait then you can buy an Amiga 3000 for a reasonable price.  They turn up for sale all the time.  They are just like an A500 except they have a much faster CPU and they have a free built-in superfast super high quality SCSI hard drive controller and they have a free built-in flickerfixer for connecting to cheap PC monitors and you can still connect it to your regular Amiga monitor at the same time.  And it has a detached keyboard.  And it has an FPU.  And it has expansion slots.  And it has a 135W powersupply.   And they have sockets right on the motherboard for 16MB fastram + 2MB chipram. :knuddel:

So if you really want an upgraded Amiga 500 all you have to do is buy an Amiga 3000.  Tada! :banana:

[ChaosLord]

In the event that you are dead set on expanding your A500 then you should keep an eye on this project:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047

Its an A500 IDE + other goodies expansion device that they are trying to make sometime.  Maybe it will get produced 6 months from now.  Maybe 2 years.  Maybe never.  You never can tell with these things.  But if they do get it into production then it seems like it is custom made just for you :knuddel:

[AmigaBruno]

If you get a SCSI controller for your A500 then you can connect any SCSI 1 drive.  There is no reason to limit yourself to a ZIP drive.  The ZIP drives are not nearly as reliable as regular Quantum SCSI hard drives.

I have seen websites that sell old used SCSI drives for reasonable prices.

The only real trouble is waiting around for someone to sell your their old used SCSI controller.  I could sell you mine for cheap but it got stolen.  GRRRRRR!  A beautiful 4MB RAM + SCSI + Hard drive for Amiga 500 stolen by unappreciative thieves!  And they stole the A500 with 1MB chipram too! :evil:

If you just can't wait then you can buy an Amiga 3000 for a reasonable price.  They turn up for sale all the time.  They are just like an A500 except they have a much faster CPU and they have a free built-in superfast super high quality SCSI hard drive controller and they have a free built-in flickerfixer for connecting to cheap PC monitors and you can still connect it to your regular Amiga monitor at the same time.  And it has a detached keyboard.  And it has an FPU.  And it has expansion slots.  And it has a 135W powersupply.   And they have sockets right on the motherboard for 16MB fastram + 2MB chipram. :knuddel:

So if you really want an upgraded Amiga 500 all you have to do is buy an Amiga 3000.  Tada! :banana:

I'm afraid one problem of mine is not having all that much money. This has prevented me from buying any of the SCSI controllers I've seen recently. I've also been outbid on various Amiga A1200 computers, so I couldn't afford an Amiga A3000. The A500 Plus and the A1200 are fairly different from each other. I've got the A500 Plus already, but I know things would be much more convenient using it if I had some kind of mass storage device connected to it. I've more or less given up trying to buy an A1200 now, but I may buy all the components from a certain eBay shop and assemble an A1200 using them. This has the advantages that I wouldn't have to buy all the parts at once and I'd learn something about the A1200 by assembling one.

[AmigaBruno]

In the event that you are dead set on expanding your A500 then you should keep an eye on this project:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047

Its an A500 IDE + other goodies expansion device that they are trying to make sometime.  Maybe it will get produced 6 months from now.  Maybe 2 years.  Maybe never.  You never can tell with these things.  But if they do get it into production then it seems like it is custom made just for you :knuddel:

Unfortunately, this device isn't available yet and may never appear. This means I can't buy one. I don't plan that far ahead, either. Yesterday I bought an external floppy drive from eBay. My plan now is to make sure which versions of the Iomega Zip drive are compatible with the Amiga A500 Plus, as well as what kind of interface I need to make it work, then get a suitable Iomega Zip drive instead of having to use floppies the whole time.

[ChaosLord]

There is a guy who is currently producing a "virtual floppy" device.  I can't remember what it is called.  We were talking about it here just a few days ago.

It is some sort of digital memory card (4GB I guess?) that stores a giant pile of virtual floppy disks.  It would work for you 128x better than trying to use real floppies.  As all the "floppies" are right there inside your Amiga ready for instant loading or saving.

For making music on Amigas I would still prefer a real hard drive but the virtual floppy thing is something you should take a look at since it is something that you can supposedly buy right now.

[bbond007]

There is a guy who is currently producing a "virtual floppy" device.  I can't remember what it is called.  We were talking about it here just a few days ago.

There is the HXC floppy. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about though. Its kinda expensive... Might be cheaper to get a IDE/RAM expansion and just use whdload.

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/

i ordered one but have not tried it yet.... looks cool

[ChaosLord]

There is the HXC floppy. I'm not sure if that is what you are talking about though. Its kinda expensive... Might be cheaper to get a IDE/RAM expansion and just use whdload.

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/

i ordered one but have not tried it yet.... looks cool

I guess that is the one...

Or maybe this one:
http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13

I am a little unclear on the whole thing.  I guess I need to really hardcore study them.  I am thinking of buying a couple "just because its a kewl idea".

It would be an easier sell if they supported .hdf files or some kind of unlimited size floppy files.

You can format a RAD: disk with giant number of tracks.

There is no reason why a virtual floppy could not have 100,000 tracks = over 1GB.  AmigaOS 3.0+ (or was it 2.04+?) allows formatting floppies with FFS so you could get good speed and use the hxc as a hard drive!  Much more useful!

If it supported .hdf files then you could format a .hdf file with PFS3 and really zooom!

[AmigaBruno]

I guess that is the one...

Or maybe this one:
http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13

I am a little unclear on the whole thing.  I guess I need to really hardcore study them.  I am thinking of buying a couple "just because its a kewl idea".

It would be an easier sell if they supported .hdf files or some kind of unlimited size floppy files.

You can format a RAD: disk with giant number of tracks.

There is no reason why a virtual floppy could not have 100,000 tracks = over 1GB.  AmigaOS 3.0+ (or was it 2.04+?) allows formatting floppies with FFS so you could get good speed and use the hxc as a hard drive!  Much more useful!

If it supported .hdf files then you could format a .hdf file with PFS3 and really zooom!

I already knew about that device. Unfortunately it has to be fitted internally and it replaces the internal floppy drive. I don't think I could fit this device. I wish it plugged into the external floppy port. This device connects directly via a Shugart interface, making it compatible with various computers, but also making it too difficult for me to install!

[Ral-Clan]

How is the shugart interface problematic for you?

[AmigaBruno]

How is the shugart interface problematic for you?

I thought I'd already explained. I know how to plug in an external floppy drive, but I don't know how to fit this device internally. Here's a blog entry about how to do it

http://www.amigalog.com/installing-the-hxc-floppy-emulator/

I don't feel that I could do that or should have to.

I've actually got one of these floppy emulator devices for the Atari 8 bit computer range, which just plugs in externally. The Atari 8 bit is the big or little brother of the Amiga, because Jay Miner worked on both of them and various concepts are similar. The plug is a special Atari SIO plug. If I could buy or make an adapter for the Amiga parallel or serial ports, then I may be able to use the same device with the Amiga, but with a different SD card.

[Ral-Clan]

Oh, I see.  I thought you were saying that the Shugart interface wasn't compatible with the Amiga or something.

Internal installation looks rather simple, in my opinion.  Rig up a few simple to make power and drive cables and install.

But I guess if you don't like tinkering with wires, etc, even with basic stuff like this, it could be a turn-off.

I'm sure that the drive could be made to work externally.  The external disk drive port on the Amiga is probably some simple variation of the Shugart interface over DB25, plus some extra lines for power....and maybe a simple circuit to identify the drive as DF1:

If you could figure that out you could probably make a cable that would allow this device to work externally.