A500 Classic520 Accelerator Review

[Kjmann]

Well,I just got my Classic520 in the mail the other day and I have to say that this is probably one of the BEST accelerator solutions I've ever seen.

This Board gives your A500....
1. Motorola 68EC020 @ 28mhz
2. 8 Megs of Fast Ram
3. Flash Rom ability
4. CF card slot for bootable HDD support
5. SD card Slot Hot Swapable with FAT32 Support
6. 40pin IDE support for CDrom Option

It's fast and smooth. booted right up from my already existing CF card (Originally made for the HC508)
Games run great and WHDload Compatibility is awesome. Obliterator by Psygnosis runs great.

Price for the USA was about $202.00 shipped.
Well worth the money in my opinion.

[+save2600]

Do you have a link to where to buy? Don't see it on Amigakit and Vesalia looks to be out of stock already...

[Kjmann]

amigastore.eu

[Kjmann]

https://amigastore.eu/en/722-classic-520-amiga-500-accelerator.html

[eightbit]

Ehh...Not buying it.

 

The ACA500+ does CF booting and CF Fat32. It doesn't have the IDE for CD-ROM but it does have the ability to add an A1200 accelerator to it for more speed. And you get more speed out of the box with it as well (OC up to 42MHz). And its $55 cheaper than this. And it has action replay and a ton of options to tweak when you power it on. 

 

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/produkt-details/product/ACA500plus.html

 

 

Even then, sold off my ACA500+ as I hate sidecar expansions. I wish someone would create a decently designed internal accelerator for the A500 that would fit *with* the shield in place. I know that might be a tall order but removing that shield for all of the available internal accelerators eventually ends up with a "saggy" keyboard

 

 

EDIT: Hmm...I wonder if using one of those A500 Zorro angle adapters with this new accelerator *would* allow it to fit with the shielding on. I doubt it, but if so that would be a selling point to me!

 

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by eightbit

[Daedalus2097]

You're not going to fit much in there without removing the shielding - certainly not anything that plugs into a Zorro angle adaptor. Even internal accelerator relocator cards (quite low profile boards that fit in the CPU socket to allow 68000-socket accelerators to be moved to the back of the machine) need the shielding removed. I haven't found saggy keyboard to be an issue on 1200s (I haven't used an A500 enough to be able to tell, but the keyboard is at least as rigid as the 1200's), but if you were concerned, perhaps a 3D printed support of some sort might be for you?

[eightbit]

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

You're not going to fit much in there without removing the shielding - certainly not anything that plugs into a Zorro angle adaptor. Even internal accelerator relocator cards (quite low profile boards that fit in the CPU socket to allow 68000-socket accelerators to be moved to the back of the machine) need the shielding removed. I haven't found saggy keyboard to be an issue on 1200s (I haven't used an A500 enough to be able to tell, but the keyboard is at least as rigid as the 1200's), but if you were concerned, perhaps a 3D printed support of some sort might be for you?

 

I have had a few A500's and mine had the shielding removed for some time and seems fine. But the last one I had (a co-worker purchased it) was definitely warped slightly (or sagging in) and it was most likely because the shielding was removed for a long time. You can just tell when you typed on it. Still worked, but yeah...

 

Maybe one day I will work on some sort of 3D print solution in order to better support that keyboard with a shield off. For now my A500 is stock (for the most part with minor upgrades) with the shielding in place. All I do know is that without that shield you are relying on the ends of the case left and right on the keyboard and while it "works" it just isn't enough in my book.

[+chue]

I used tin snips to make a cutout in the shielding for my accelerator.  I made room for the new caps as well - they were just slightly too tall.

 

[Daedalus2097]

Hmmm, well if you look at the relative thicknesses of the metal in the base of the keyboard compared to the shielding (and ignoring the added rigidity from the turned up edges of the keyboard tray), I can't see how it would make much difference at all. If something is exerting enough force on the keyboard to bend the steel tray, a thin bit of tinplate isn't going to have much hope. Especially since the keyboard itself shouldn't normally touch the shielding (hence the copper spring strip that was originally fixed to the top of the shield for grounding the keyboard), so the keyboard would need to bend by a couple of mm before any support offered by the shielding would be effective. Besides, I've seen plenty of bent A500 keyboards, most of which have still had their top shielding.

[eightbit]

Perhaps it is not the keyboard that is bending but rather the bottom half of the case is warping. All I do know is that every A500 I have used that had its shielding removed felt a bit weird on the keyboard at times.