Some Amiga 500 Advice

[bbking67]

I am an old Atari guy who owns an Amiga 500.  But I am in need of some advice with regards to repairs and upgrades.

 

The Amiga works when I remove the memory expansion/RTC board.  basically the battery leaked and seems to have damaged the board itself.  Is it worthwhile to have the board repaired?  Or are there better modern options that wont break the bank?

 

For video output I do have a couple of Amiga RGB monitors, but I would prefer displaying on an LCD monitor... what's the best way for me to do that (again within reason in terms of price)?

 

I do need to get system roms programmed for it.  Which version makes the most sense... I'm mainly interested in playing games and demos on the machine.

 

As for storage I have a Supra SCSI HDD (not configured) and the original floppy works... I've ordered a Gotek to try.  Is there an HDD equivalent that I should consider?

 

[+OLD CS1]

17 hours ago, bbking67 said:

The Amiga works when I remove the memory expansion/RTC board.  basically the battery leaked and seems to have damaged the board itself.  Is it worthwhile to have the board repaired?  Or are there better modern options that wont break the bank?

How big is the bank?  There are some RAM expansions to consider.  You can find options at https://amigakit.com and also check out second-hand stuff at https://amibay.com.  Most of the newer RAM expansions do not have clocks, but if you are only playing games and demos you have no concern with the clock.  Also, most games of the era for the 500 work just fine with the 512k RAM of the most basic Amiga 500.  The Amiga 500+ has 1MB of ChipRAM which can be upgraded to 2MB (1MB on non-Plus 500s.)

 

17 hours ago, bbking67 said:

For video output I do have a couple of Amiga RGB monitors, but I would prefer displaying on an LCD monitor... what's the best way for me to do that (again within reason in terms of price)?

You either need a monitor which can handle 15kHz video or get something to up the scan rate.  Scan-doublers have become rare commodities but not impossible to catch. There are external options like the Gonbes, RetroTink, etc. which will run anywhere from $20 to around $200.  There were some internal scan-doubler/flicker-fixers made in the day which pop up from time-to-time, or a modern option is the Invidison ECS (seems to be available from iComp.)

 

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/produkt-details/product/Flickerfixer_Scandoubler.html?flifi_type=OCS_ECS#filter=*

 

17 hours ago, bbking67 said:

I do need to get system roms programmed for it.  Which version makes the most sense... I'm mainly interested in playing games and demos on the machine.

Kickstart 1.3 is the best for games of the era.  Most likely, this is what your 500 already has.

 

17 hours ago, bbking67 said:

As for storage I have a Supra SCSI HDD (not configured) and the original floppy works... I've ordered a Gotek to try.  Is there an HDD equivalent that I should consider?

I believe there are some modern IDE interfaces which sit in the CPU socket.  ISTR one or two which also offer RAM expansion, as well as some full accelerators.  If you are just playing games from ADF on the Gotek or real floppy disks, then a hard drive is minimally useful.  Most of the games do not install to hard drive.

 

If you want to use the system with WHDLoad, which allows the installation of numerous games to hard drive, then you will want to expand the system: KS3.1.4 and AmigaOS 3.1.4 (available from Hyperion,) ChipRAM^* and CPU RAM expansion, as well as at least a 68030 accelerator.  The Supra SCSI will likely work in this configuration, but keeping it means SCSI devices like hard drives old enough to drive or SD2SCSI, SCSI-to-IDE-CF, etc.

 

I have been out of the 500 stuff for a long time -- my two 500+ are fitted with an original ACA500 and a Vampire.  I just took a quick look, the ACA500+ is currently selling. It is not a 68030, but the boosted speed of the 68000 appears to be perfectly adequate.

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

 

Good luck, and welcome to the Light Side of the Force

 

 

* ChipRAM expansion is limited in-board to 1MB with a non-Plus 500, or 2MB with a 500+. Non-Plus 500s can be upgraded to 2MB with a MegAChip or clone, the former which are ridiculously expensive these days when they pop up.

[bbking67]

Thanks so much Sold CS1, I'm thinking of just getting a new trapdoor memory upgrade (Ill probably get one with RTC).  I have a Gotek but it needs switches and a display so I'll have to make a little breakout box for that stuff I think.

 

the first order of business I think is to buy one of those VGA adapters and see if any of the LCD screens I have will work.  I have a few to try... none were listed in teh compatibility lists I saw though.  If I cant get one working I'll hunt for a used display... I also have an arcade converter that might work (gbs 8220).  I like the idea of outputting the VGA almost directly.

 

My supra hdd is missing a power supply so I'll have to rig something up for that.

 

I'm surprised that the memory upgrades to the amiga 500 seem to be limited to the factory 512K... I just assumed Id be able to slap in 4MB or something like that.  No big deal.. 1MB is enough for my use.  I dont remember if I have kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 roms... I don't have any system disks either so I have to figure something out.  The floppy does work though because it came with some games that boot right up.

 

Edited December 25, 2020 by bbking67

[RobertB]

12 hours ago, bbking67 said:

the first order of business I think is to buy one of those VGA adapters and see if any of the LCD screens I have will work.  I have a few to try... none were listed in teh compatibility lists I saw though.  If I cant get one working I'll hunt for a used display... I also have an arcade converter that might work (gbs 8220).  I like the idea of outputting the VGA almost directly.

I use a Dell U2410 LCD monitor which scans down to the Amiga's 15 KHz..  I bought it used from eBay for $109.  Dell AX510 add-on speakers cost about $10.  The Dell has HDMI, VGA, DVI, and composite inputs.  I use a buffered RGB-to-VGA cable to connect to the Dell.

 

The Dell has a sharp, beautiful picture with the Amiga, and it supports almost all of the Amiga's scanmodes... with no flicker!  A bonus is that I use the HDMI input for the Ultimate 64 and for a future Mega65 and A1222 Tabor.

 

          Merry Christmas,

          Robert Bernardo

          Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

 

 

[RobertB]

13 hours ago, bbking67 said:

I'm surprised that the memory upgrades to the amiga 500 seem to be limited to the factory 512K... I just assumed Id be able to slap in 4MB or something like that.  No big deal.. 1MB is enough for my use.

Two years ago Amigalove did report on the MKL 8MB ram expansion which plugs into the 68000 socket.  See

 

https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=520

 

Unfortunately, if you follow the Amibay link in that article, it appears that none are available right now.  You'd have to join a waiting list.

 

          Merry Christmas,

          Robert Bernardo

          Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

 

[bbking67]

On 12/26/2020 at 5:08 AM, RobertB said:

I use a Dell U2410 LCD monitor which scans down to the Amiga's 15 KHz..  I bought it used from eBay for $109.  Dell AX510 add-on speakers cost about $10.  The Dell has HDMI, VGA, DVI, and composite inputs.  I use a buffered RGB-to-VGA cable to connect to the Dell.

 

The Dell has a sharp, beautiful picture with the Amiga, and it supports almost all of the Amiga's scanmodes... with no flicker!  A bonus is that I use the HDMI input for the Ultimate 64 and for a future Mega65 and A1222 Tabor.

 

          Merry Christmas,

          Robert Bernardo

          Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

 

 

I have several Dell displays but not a U2410... I did find an old NEC Accusync 51V that I saw on some lists as compatible (Accusync Video.  I'd prefer a larger non-wide screen display like the Dell 1908 but I don't the the 1908 is compatible.  I'm excited to get this working!  Now to order a converter or cable.

 

[RobertB]

I have a friend who wants to give me a Dell ST2420.  He says that it syncs down to 15 KHz., but when I receive it, I'll have to test it out with the various Amiga screenmodes.  If it's like the U2410, it has a menu option in which you can switch it from 16:9 to 4:3.

 

          Happy New Year!

          Robert Bernardo

          Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

Edited January 1, 2021 by RobertB

[bbking67]

RobertB and Old CS1, thanks again for the advice!

 

I have ordered a trapdoor upgrade with RC and a buffered RGB to VGA adapter from Amiga Kit.  Cant's wait to try them!

 

I have a Gotek, but the one I ordered is missing switches and a display so that project might come later.

 

I have a SupraDrive 500XP that I may play with... it also claims to have 512K of memory... I guess this is the chip memory?  I'll have to get some kind of SCSI to CF or SD Interface.  I think the memory in the Supra interface may be very easy to upgrade as well... 2MB seems easy and apparently it can support up to 8MB (not sure what is needed for that, but seems like overkill).

 

I used an atari mouse adapter that I had and I found an older optical mouse that works with it!  I don't have an original Amiga mouse... I'm happy to have an optical mouse!

 

I don't have any system disks (games boot fine from the internal floppy), so I'll have to find a way to get those created.  I'm not sure if the original HDD (well the HDD which in in there--a Quantum that replaced the original Conner) works... I have to rig up a power supply for the interface.  It's 5V and 12V so basically I have to solder the appropriate DIN connector.

 

I guess the Amiga should be recapped... and that original power supply should be replaced too... but for now they work.

 

Much to do, but I think I should have a sweet Amiga 500 rig soon enough!

[Daedalus2097]

Replacing capacitors in the A500 is much less of a critical thing as it is for the 600 and 1200. The older-style capacitors used in the A500 are less prone to leakage, and when they do leak, they're less likely to damage the board. So I tend not to bother with A500 recaps myself unless there's an issue with audio or resetting that's down to their failure.

[youxia]

On 12/24/2020 at 4:37 PM, OLD CS1 said:

If you are just playing games from ADF on the Gotek or real floppy disks, then a hard drive is minimally useful.  Most of the games do not install to hard drive.

Actually, there's quite a few that do...according to HoL ~1270: http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_hardware=11&N_hd=yes

So if somebody has a HDD already it's probably worth loooking into getting it going, seeing as disk swapping can be a real pain, even on Gotek.

 

Otherwise I'd also recommend ACA500+ which is an incredible add-on, a true Swiss Army knife for the humble A500.

 

[desiv]

On 12/25/2020 at 1:01 PM, bbking67 said:

I have a Gotek but it needs switches and a display so I'll have to make a little breakout box for that stuff I think.

Most (all?) of the Amiga compatible firmware come with a disk image that runs an Amiga program to allow you to choose your disk image.

An LCD and buttons (or rotary encoder) are much nicer, but you can make it work without them...

[bbking67]

1 minute ago, desiv said:

Most (all?) of the Amiga compatible firmware come with a disk image that runs an Amiga program to allow you to choose your disk image.

An LCD and buttons (or rotary encoder) are much nicer, but you can make it work without them...

desiv that is very nice to know... i'll try and get it going without the buttons then because that sounds perfect to me!  Just need to get a serial flashing setup rolling here (should not be too hard).

 

 

[desiv]

3 minutes ago, bbking67 said:

desiv that is very nice to know... i'll try and get it going without the buttons then because that sounds perfect to me!  Just need to get a serial flashing setup rolling here (should not be too hard).

If you are using the Flashfloppy firmware, you can even flash with just a male to male USB cable (and the proper jumper settings).  There's some info online for that.  I did that with one of my Goteks, just to see and it worked...

Here it is I think:  https://www.binarydevotion.com/?p=228

Edited January 5, 2021 by desiv

[bbking67]

On 1/3/2021 at 3:55 PM, youxia said:

Actually, there's quite a few that do...according to HoL ~1270: http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_hardware=11&N_hd=yes

So if somebody has a HDD already it's probably worth loooking into getting it going, seeing as disk swapping can be a real pain, even on Gotek.

 

Otherwise I'd also recommend ACA500+ which is an incredible add-on, a true Swiss Army knife for the humble A500.

 

Yeah I have the HDD and I cracked into it... it originally shipped with a 512K memory upgrade but it looks like it was already upgraded to the maximum 8MB.  Even if the SCSI drive is bad Im sure I can dig one up that works... I was surprised how expensive the SCSI to SDS (or IDE, CF) are... if I dont get something rolling maybe the ACA500+ is the way to go.

 

I'm just starting off by getting everything I have working and going through the diskettes I have on hand.  I'm an old ST guy (haven't owned an ST since 1991 though), so I'll likely get some of the games going that I loved on the ST (but no Sundog port for the Amiga?).

 

Most of the games I am interested in appear to be compatible with WHDload or are directly hdd installable, so that seems perfect to me.

 

Thanks again!

[bbking67]

1 hour ago, desiv said:

If you are using the Flashfloppy firmware, you can even flash with just a male to male USB cable (and the proper jumper settings).  There's some info online for that.  I did that with one of my Goteks, just to see and it worked...

Here it is I think:  https://www.binarydevotion.com/?p=228

Yeah I have the male-male cable... plus I have lots of other possibilities as well.  Ill start by soldering in the header pins.  I see most guys using usb to serial devices... but Im assuming I could use a real serial port too?  I have some old machines that I use for this kind of thing.  But the male-male sounds easier to start with.

[Daedalus2097]

Be careful using a real serial port. Most people using USB-Serial adaptors for programming these things are using TTL-serial, which is like RS-232 but lower voltage and inverted, so using a standard serial port could damage it without a MAX232 chip or similar in between. TTL serial adaptors are pretty cheap though, probably as cheap as a small MAX232 breakout board.

[bbking67]

53 minutes ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Be careful using a real serial port. Most people using USB-Serial adaptors for programming these things are using TTL-serial, which is like RS-232 but lower voltage and inverted, so using a standard serial port could damage it without a MAX232 chip or similar in between. TTL serial adaptors are pretty cheap though, probably as cheap as a small MAX232 breakout board.

Ahh... did not know that about TTL serial.  yeah I'll have to get one... these are very cheap from China, but here in Canada pricey on Amazon for some reason.

[eightbit]

The ACA500plus is a great thing to buy and the price is reasonable. It provides later kickstart, full WB 3.1 disks integrated into it for install to a CF, a speed boost to the stock clock and hard disk functionality. I can wholeheartedly recommend that product.

[RobertB]

On 1/2/2021 at 1:51 PM, bbking67 said:

I have a SupraDrive 500XP that I may play with... it also claims to have 512K of memory... I guess this is the chip memory?

No, that would be Fast RAM.  As for upgrading the memory up to 8 MB, you can never have too much memory for an Amiga! 

 

     Happy New Year!

     Robert Bernardo

     Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

     Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[oracle_jedi]

16 hours ago, eightbit said:

The ACA500plus is a great thing to buy and the price is reasonable. It provides later kickstart, full WB 3.1 disks integrated into it for install to a CF, a speed boost to the stock clock and hard disk functionality. I can wholeheartedly recommend that product.

An enthusiastic nod of agreement on the ACA500Plus option.  It makes the A500 truly usable by adding 8MB of RAM and emulating hard disks through the CF cards, as well as the selectable WB options and much more. 

 

I got my first Amiga around 2017, and was really surprised how limited the basic A500 was.  The WHDLoad system is powerful but even with 2MB of RAM I found many game files just would not load.  I'd recommend you consider one of the case options for the ACA500Plus as the card is quite large and could be somewhat easily damaged. 

 

[Daedalus2097]

On 1/5/2021 at 4:52 PM, bbking67 said:

Ahh... did not know that about TTL serial.  yeah I'll have to get one... these are very cheap from China, but here in Canada pricey on Amazon for some reason.

I'm sure you could get one cheaply on eBay from a local source, they're generally cheap and easy to find.

 

The FlashFloppy Wiki has some good info on flashing a Gotek: https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Firmware-Programming

[youxia]

On 1/6/2021 at 11:46 PM, oracle_jedi said:

I got my first Amiga around 2017, and was really surprised how limited the basic A500 was. 

This perception was somewhat different in 1987 and thereabouts...

[bbking67]

10 hours ago, youxia said:

This perception was somewhat different in 1987 and thereabouts...

It the mid-to late 80's lower end 16-bit systems like the 520ST and Amiga 500 were the best possible gaming systems.  At that time, PC gaming was pretty terrible and hadnt caught up yet.  The Amiga was slightly more advanced graphically (games from this time are generally pretty close on both platforms) and I personally was completely blown away by the capabilities--this was years before the SNES and Sega Genesis were released!  Not to0 mention that computer gaming was still far better for RPG and strategy games.  I guess you had to be there.

 

As an Atari guy, I find the memory thing strange with the Amiga... on the Atari you had one kind of RAM... and it would seem that the Amiga has two or three and upgrading is far from Straightforward... so to me this seems more limited than I expected.  I thought I'd be able to buy a cheap trap door memory card with tons of RAM, but this is not really how it works.

 

 

[oracle_jedi]

1 hour ago, bbking67 said:

 

As an Atari guy, I find the memory thing strange with the Amiga... on the Atari you had one kind of RAM... and it would seem that the Amiga has two or three and upgrading is far from Straightforward... so to me this seems more limited than I expected.  I thought I'd be able to buy a cheap trap door memory card with tons of RAM, but this is not really how it works.

 

 

 

As I expect you already know, the Amiga was designed by the same guy that designed the Atari 400/800 systems - Jay Miner - and like the 400/800, RAM is shared between the CPU and video display processor.

 

Except that the video display processor - Agnus - can only see 1MB of RAM, so only the first 1MB of RAM is shared between the CPU and Agnus, and everything above 1MB is just for the CPU.  Hence the first 1MB is called "Chip RAM", and everything beyond that is "Fast RAM" - because the CPU doesn't have to wait to access it on a cycle interleave with Agnus.  Later Agnus chips upped the 1MB to 2MB, and some software titles will need that later revision, adding to the "why won't this software work on my Amiga!" challenge.

 

The stock Amiga allows for easy expansion to 1MB RAM via the trap door, and you really need that 1MB because a 512K single drive Amiga was pretty useless - yes even in 1987.

 

But beyond 1MB becomes more of a challenge.  BITD there was side car options like the Supra mentioned earlier.  Nowadays we have several easier options.  

 

 

[Daedalus2097]

Yeah, the 500 and 600 trapdoor options are basically just a cheap way of filling the complement of RAM available to the chipset. Anything beyond that needs more significant expansion. But the chip versus fast RAM explanation above is pretty good. I'll elaborate with some more information  The two main types are chip and fast (sometimes also referred to as graphics and other). The chipset can access chip RAM without the CPU, leaving the CPU free to go do other things and adding to the system's efficiency. Fast RAM is out of the chipset's reach, so the CPU can work on that while the chipset's working on chip RAM. This means the fast RAM is much faster, because it doesn't have to share the bus with the chipset. However, some fast RAM is faster than others - early A500s, for example, have the second 512K of RAM in the trapdoor assigned as fast RAM, but it's on the chip RAM bus. This makes it no faster than chip RAM of course, so it was a pretty common modification on later models to enable it for chip RAM use. That "slow" fast RAM is sometimes called "Ranger" RAM, and there are a couple of poorly coded games that are hard-coded to use it at its expected address.

 

From a coding / OS perspective, the RAM model's pretty simple. If your data needs to be used by the chipset (e.g. bitmaps, sounds), then you put it in chip RAM. Anything else you put in any RAM. The OS will allocate that RAM from whatever the fastest RAM is, moving onto the slower RAM as the faster RAM is exhausted, eventually using the slowest chip RAM for other data if no fast RAM is available at all. Some early games as I mentioned above unfortunately bypassed this elegant allocation system and assumed certain types of RAM were at certain addresses, resulting in instant crashes when you tried to run them on a different configuration (later Amigas, including the 500+, don't have Ranger RAM). I guess these coders were coming from the 8-bit world where you own the hardware and there's no OS memory management to speak of...

 

While it's true that a lot of games appeared very similar between the ST and the Amiga, unfortunately this was often because developers would simply write code that would work on both platforms with a minimum of changes. This of course reduced the work involved, but also meant the features unique to either platform were never used. Examples where the ports were developed separately tend to show a more dramatic difference. Pac-Mania is a good example, where the Amiga's overscan, blitter and sprites are used to good effect, while the ST lacked equivalent capabilities. The fairly recent port for the STe fixes some of these shortcomings, but of course won't work on the ST.