Amiga 500 Rev. 8a.1 mobo. Pro's/Con's?

[brostenen]

Anyway.... Reading up on revision models late last night. I came to the conclusion, that the regulair a500 with the 8a.1 board, was only produced in a timeframe of less than 6 month's. Probably more like 4 to 5 month's or something. I wonder how many of these were produced all in all, compared to other revisions.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I think I have read somewere, that trapdoor ram, used as chipram is not the fastest solution. Will there be differences in speed between upgraded chipram on the board versus chipram in the trapdoor?

I think you misunderstand the difference between chip ram and fast ram. True, chip ram is not as fast as fast ram (which, on an A500 typically sits under the CPU or in the expansion slot on the side), however it is directly addressable by the custom chips - which means you can (generally) load larger mods, open screens with higher resolutions and more colors, play games with more graphic objects, etc. A loose analogy is to think of it sort of like the difference between motherboard ram on a modern PC and graphics card ram.

Note that this is different from cards like the AdRAM, which add additional memory physically inside the trap door slot and call it "fast ram" but which don't actually provide the speed boost of real fast ram.

TL;DR. It's best if you can max out both your chip and your fast ram, budget permitting, of course.

[brostenen]

I think you misunderstand the difference between chip ram and fast ram. True, chip ram is not as fast as fast ram (which, on an A500 typically sits under the CPU or in the expansion slot on the side), however it is directly addressable by the custom chips - which means you can (generally) load larger mods, open screens with higher resolutions and more colors, play games with more graphic objects, etc. A loose analogy is to think of it sort of like the difference between motherboard ram on a modern PC and graphics card ram.

Note that this is different from cards like the AdRAM, which add additional memory physically inside the trap door slot and call it "fast ram" but which don't actually provide the speed boost of real fast ram.

TL;DR. It's best if you can max out both your chip and your fast ram, budget permitting, of course.

Stupid me... Got a lot to learn. :lol:
Think I will try and max this machine's memory out as much as I can, both trapdoor and motherboard. Then a kickrom switcher with the 1.3 that is sitting in it right now, plus the 2.0 wich I have in the closet. Finally some kind of IDE interface for a storage solution. Probably going for a CF card, in order to keep power consumption low.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Expansion slot ram will be "slow" fast ram. If you have a 2 mb Agnus, it's better to fill the mobo and leave the expansion alone.

A500+ should be able to address up to 1MB of chip through the motherboard and 1MB through the trapdoor.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=69106

(unless you do something "crazy" like piggyback chips hack, etc.)