help for amiga virgin!

[noely02]

hi to all out there, i'm not sure where to post, so i'm starting here.........

if any of you have seem my newby intro message, i've recently rescued a pair of a500#s but i have no software as yet, i've been told (thanks bloodline!) i've got one with 2.xx ROM and other has workbench v1.2, which i need disks to get things going.

sooo how do i get them going, how do i run games, can you get workbench v1.2 disks still, and whats the difference for the one with the 2.xx rom???

i'm not a total computer numpty, i've had c64's couple of beebs, i've built, modified and repaired 'modern' pc's and i've modded a few android phones, but these amigas are tottaly new to me

any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

[ChaosLord]

1. You need a large box of new DS DD floppy disks.   The reason I say "new" is because if you have 30 year old floppies laying around there is absolutely no reason to expect that they still work.

2. Download Workbench 1.3 for your 1.2 machine.  Download Workbench 2.0 (or maybe 2.1) for your 2.0 machine.  They are all over the internet.

3. Figure out how u will get the disk images onto your Amiga.
You have 3 main options:
3.A: DL on your pc and copy them over to your Amiga using a lame crappy super slow-motion null-modem (serial) cable.

3.B: DL on your pc and copy them over to your Amiga using an elite highspeed parnet (parallel) cable.

3.C: DL the images directly with your A500.  You will want to use a terminal program such as JR-COMM and access an internet "Amiga BBS" to do this.  Telnet BBS's are massively lower bandwidth than the WWW.  You can forget about real web browsing on a lowly A500.

I just now realized that 3A/B/C won't actually work for you until you have your first couple of floppies so u can at least boot up your machines.  Doh!

So to get u started I would say find a nice person in your country to mail you the basic floppies to get u started.

Once you have Workbench Disks, Parnet, and some kind of Terminal Modem program then things will get much much easier for you.

At that point u will need to buy 2,000 blank floppies so u can play a few of the best videogames ever created by an Earth-based civilization.  Many games take 2-4 floppies each.

There are over 10,000 Amiga games.  You won't live long enuff to play them all.  So u will just have to pick the cream of the crop.

Good luck!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hi, and welcome!

When I first got my A500 a few months ago (after being Amiga-less for the past 10 years) I used this product to transfer files from my PC onto my Amiga:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMIGA-PC-COMPLETE-ADF-FILE-TRANSFER-KIT-EASIEST-FASTEST-CHEAPEST-WAY-TO-DO-IT-/121075267094?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item1c30a5f616

Kit contained everything I needed with the exception of the blank floppies themselves, but fortunately I still had a ton of old ones from back in the day.  About 80-90% of them still worked.  

Then once I'd transferred myself some OS software I added a 3.1 ROM and a few other small hardware modifications, downloaded WB 3.1 and made disks with that kit, then installed a SCSI controller sidecar and an external SCSI CD drive.  Now when I want to transfer files from PC to Amiga I just dump them all onto a CD, but yeah.  That kit contained everything I needed to get started.  Next step for me: compact flash!!  ;-)

[TheBilgeRat]

3.B: DL on your pc and copy them over to your Amiga using an elite highspeed parnet (parallel) cable.

How is this done?  This is intriguing.

[Iggy]

Hi, and welcome!

When I first got my A500 a few months ago (after being Amiga-less for the past 10 years) I used this product to transfer files from my PC onto my Amiga:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMIGA-PC-COMPLETE-ADF-FILE-TRANSFER-KIT-EASIEST-FASTEST-CHEAPEST-WAY-TO-DO-IT-/121075267094?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item1c30a5f616

Kit contained everything I needed with the exception of the blank floppies themselves, but fortunately I still had a ton of old ones from back in the day.  About 80-90% of them still worked.  

Then once I'd transferred myself some OS software I added a 3.1 ROM and a few other small hardware modifications, downloaded WB 3.1 and made disks with that kit, then installed a SCSI controller sidecar and an external SCSI CD drive.  Now when I want to transfer files from PC to Amiga I just dump them all onto a CD, but yeah.  That kit contained everything I needed to get started.  Next step for me: compact flash!!  ;-)

Thanks Mike,
Some of that will work with my A2000 (bought with no hard drive or floppy disks).
I'm going with IDE instead of SCSI.
And I already have the 3.1 rom.
And I may skip straight to compact flash.

[desiv]

How is this done?  This is intriguing.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65213

desiv
(Might not be what the software/hardware he was thinking about, but it's parallel and fast...)

[DCAmiga]

Firstly Congratulations and Welcome to the nutty amiga community noely02, I will give you a basic run down.
The great thing is with the amiga you dont need to load workbench (the OS) first to load games/programs/utilities etc, but they can also load from workbench if you desire to do so.
The basic Amiga 500 set up will load everything from the 3.5" floppy drive, games, operating system (Workbench) and ulitities.
The basic 500 also had no Hard drive (as you probably noticed) but can be added a number of ways, most common way is via the left side expansion door.
You will also need a 9-pin (2 button) mouse and 9-pin joystick to play games and use utilities, if you do not already have them.
The Bottom (trap door) expansion is commonly used for memory upgrades, but there are many amiga 500 "hacks" for different expandabily options.

The amiga disk format type is not compatible with any other system IIRC, and uses a standard 3.5" double density floppy disk, also called an 880 KB disk in Amiga terms.
Most amiga disks are in ADF form on the net these days and google is your friend here and hope this helps.

[rvo_nl]

:|

As DCAmiga is saying, you don't need an operating system at all to run games on your Amiga 500. You just need to find someone who has some games (and a copy of workbench 1.x or 2.x) for you to try out. Many people throw away their old disks nowadays because they have hard drives installed with something called WHDLoad that runs games as 'virtual devices'.

If you like what you see, and/or want to dive deeper, dont mind fiddling around with hard drives, file systems, and the Amiga operating system, I think you should forget about your amiga 500 and go with either a a1200 + hd + 030 accelerator, or a4000 + hd.

Please dont take that the wrong way. Expanding your A500 into a usable machine (I mean something that does more than play some old games) is expensive and bound to frustrate you.

[desiv]

Expanding your A500 into a usable machine (I mean something that does more than play some old games) is expensive and bound to frustrate you.

Well, it has been.
But there are some things that should be released before too long (kipper2ks RAM/IDE68k combo, ACA500, Zeus68k) that should make that much easier...

Then there's the HxC floppy emulator too...
(and if you like floppies, Kryoflux so you can write ADFs to disks from your PC)

It's a good time to be an Amiga hobbiest...

desiv

[rvo_nl]

absolutely. but those developments dont come cheap and you'll still be stuck with ocs. you'll miss out on loads of great games and miss the possibility to ultimately upgrade to 060 and rtg graphics.

[desiv]

absolutely. but those developments dont come cheap and

My guess is Kipper's board won't be too spendy.

you'll still be stuck with ocs. you'll miss out on loads of great games

Well, OCS/ECS, depending on your Agnus/Denise, which are upgradeable (except for the 1000)
As for "loads of great games," I like AGA, but I'm not sure I'd say loads.
And a lot of the AGA versions have pretty darn good non-AGA versions (Chaos Engine) also...

and miss the possibility to ultimately upgrade to 060 and rtg graphics.

Totally true there, although now were talking expensive...  ;-)

desiv

[noely02]

hi, thanks for all the posts, all i realy want to do at the moment is have a bit of a nostalga trip an play a few old games, i've already got f19 stealth figher of ebay so i can pretend i'm 14 again

so i see that upgrading the a500 is really a no no

i have a couple of mice, an external floppy drive, and a gvp impact series 2 a500-hd8+ and am looking for a joystick

the thing is woth the gvp, i think the amigas have warped a bit with age, i'm afraid to force it into the slots its very tight, and on the one amiga that it did seem to fir eventually, when i powered everything up, lights came on but got nothing on the screen? any ideas

where do i post asking the kind folks in amiga land for workbench disks i can buy/borrow/copy?

[DCAmiga]

hi, thanks for all the posts, all i realy want to do at the moment is have a bit of a nostalga trip an play a few old games, i've already got f19 stealth figher of ebay so i can pretend i'm 14 again
 
so i see that upgrading the a500 is really a no no
 
i have a couple of mice, an external floppy drive, and a gvp impact series 2 a500-hd8+ and am looking for a joystick
 
the thing is woth the gvp, i think the amigas have warped a bit with age, i'm afraid to force it into the slots its very tight, and on the one amiga that it did seem to fir eventually, when i powered everything up, lights came on but got nothing on the screen? any ideas
 
where do i post asking the kind folks in amiga land for workbench disks i can buy/borrow/copy?

Sadly I don't own a real amiga and cant help you out for actual floppy disks sorry I only use WinUAE (Amiga Emulator) on my PC.
 
Well looks like you need to play the problem solving game .... does the amiga boot up if you disconnect the gvp impact ?
You should get a white screen with a hand holding a floppy disk labeled Amiga Workbench, if so yay the basic system boots up.
 
Next power down and make sure you have the gvp pushed in to the amiga correctly and the gvp power supply is connected correctly (yes you need 2 psu's - one for the 500 the other for the gvp).
Power up and see if it loads from the HHD into Workbench... if not power down again.
Open the gvp case and inspect the condition of everything (PCB board) and the physical connections (ram and HHD) are connected firmly.
Power up again and listen for the HDD to spin up I think it uses a 3.5" 50-pin SCSI HHD... if not the HHD might be dead.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

On the GVP Series II, that's the same model I have, and it was definitely a bit tight the first time.  I almost thought I'd have to take the A500 apart and see what was jamming, but after carefully applying pressure (and a lot of praying) I was able to get mine in.  After the first time it should be looser.  (okay, no perv jokes about that last sentence!)

If you're still having problems it might be that your power supply has gone bad.  Fortunately there's a real easy mod that allows you to ditch the external PSU and draw power directly from the A500 bus, provided you have one of the lightweight, higher-powered A500 PSU's.  Instructions here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a500hd.html

Bridge two pads and done.  I did this on mine because the only place I could find the controller for sale was Europe, couldn't find a North American power supply, did this mod and it works fine.

You might also check that the ROM chip and memory chips are seated properly, although changing out the memory on these things can be a real b****.  ;-)  You can buy copies of the latest 4.15 ROM from tjlazer on Ebay, Amibay, etc.

As for joysticks, keep your eye on ebay, I found a lot of a half-dozen for under $20 when I got my Miggy, now I've got more than I know what to do with.  Also keep your eye on ebay for other minor upgrades, I've bought all sorts of chips for in the $5-$20 range, extra memory, a 68010, 3.1 ROM, Super Denise, even my SCSI CD drive only cost $2.  Probably the most expensive part I purchased was my Indivision ECS, but was definitely worth it.  Heck, I only paid $40 for the computer + 1084 monitor in the first place!  ;-)  As was said above, now is definitely a good time to be an Amiga hobbiest.  

[gertsy]

hi, thanks for all the posts, all i realy want to do at the moment is have a bit of a nostalga trip an play a few old games, i've already got f19 stealth figher of ebay so i can pretend i'm 14 again

so i see that upgrading the a500 is really a no no

i have a couple of mice, an external floppy drive, and a gvp impact series 2 a500-hd8+ and am looking for a joystick

the thing is with the gvp, i think the amigas have warped a bit with age, i'm afraid to force it into the slots its very tight, and on the one amiga that it did seem to fir eventually, when i powered everything up, lights came on but got nothing on the screen? any ideas

where do i post asking the kind folks in amiga land for workbench disks i can buy/borrow/copy?

I think you wan'na get that GVP up and running on the best A500.  Probably the V2.0 one.  If you're a little bit ofay with electronics and opening stuff you can open them up and check the state of the MBs.  You mentioned warping and if the units were stacked in a pile with weight on top for years they could be warped an this could be a problem with plugging in the GVP. Best thing to do is open them up and check their state, or if you're not confident get a friend who has PC building experience.

Once you get the GVP unit up and running it will give you the platform to extract ADFs to disks. (A bit of work to set up your rig to do this but if you're lucky the GVP will boot on the v2.0 A500.)  
The problem with standalone A500s is there is no way to get them to do anything unless you have a way of creating floppy disks from ADFs.  You are reliant on buying disks off ebay/amibay or on someone's good nature to supply freshly cut ADFs too you.
Using something like WHDload isn't an option on a vanilla a500.

I'm happy to send you WB disks, but I'm in OZ and you're in the UK.  Other option is to relocate to OZ Seems to be a popular thing these days.

'Cummon UK Amigans.  Let's give noely02 a hand..