Getting to grips with a Rock Lobster.

Just to keep everything above-board. r0jaws and I have reached an agreement about the A500+ ChipRAM expansion I have and it's in the post on its way to him now. :)
 
That was the general idea, yeah ;)

And also, lobsters have limbs that are efficient grippers, which was the main reason for the pun...
 
Just to keep everything above-board. r0jaws and I have reached an agreement about the A500+ ChipRAM expansion I have and it's in the post on its way to him now. :)

Cheers buddy. Mmmmm, 2 MB Chip RAM. :)
 
Arrived this morning, mucho gracias! Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I'm sure it'll be fine. :D
 
Arrived this morning, mucho gracias! Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I'm sure it'll be fine. :D

Glad to hear it! It should work, but since I haven't owned a 500+ in years, I had no way to test. If it's DOA, let me know and I'll refund you the cash.
 
Just to keep everything above-board. r0jaws and I have reached an agreement about the A500+ ChipRAM expansion I have and it's in the post on its way to him now. :)


I'm a bit confused. R0jaws A500+ displays 1.5mb chip ram in the W/bench 2.0 screenshot, is the 2mb chipram expansion adding 1mb to the onboard 1mb?

And, on the topic, how did r0jaws acheive 1.5mb of chip ram, it seems like an odd number to have.

Cheers,
Matt.
 
The a500+ comes with 1Mb Chip RAM as standard, I had a 0.5Mb expansion already fitted giving 1.5Mb.

I'll remove the 0.5Mb expansion and replace it with the 1Mb exp giving 2Mb RAM, Simples. :)
 
Righto, so does this mean the A500+, out of the box, adds any ram added via trapdoor to chipram, or does a mod have to be done?
 
THe A500+ Trapdoor will expand the chipram to 2MB max using a 1MB expansion card, plugging in an A501 512K expansion will give you a total of 1.5MB Chipram.

TC :)
 
Finalizing the explanation: the stock A500+ comes with 1Mb of CHIP RAM and no Fast RAM at all.

Official RAM expansion for this machine will add one more Mb to it, totalizing 2Mb. Using a half Mb from normal A500 works.

No fast RAM expansions for A500/500+ where made from Commodore.
 
Righto, so does this mean the A500+, out of the box, adds any ram added via trapdoor to chipram, or does a mod have to be done?

The A500+ has a 2MB Agnus part (8375, I think) with 1MB of that on the motherboard and any RAM inserted into the trapdoor is added to the ChipRAM, to a maximum of 1MB more.

The card I sent r0jaws has the RAM as 4x256K SIMMs, so it seems reasonable that you can add RAM in 256KB increments.

@r0jaws: How is the old Rock Lobster, hopefully the RAM expansion is doing the business for you! :)
 
Official RAM expansion for this machine will add one more Mb to it, totalizing 2Mb. Using a half Mb from normal A500 works.

I could be wrong, but I think some unofficial original A500 trapdoor expansions do not work with the A500+. I think that may be the case with at least some revisions of the official Commodore A500 expansion as well, but I am not sure.

Also, I have a feint recollection that memory added via the trapdoor on an A500+ can be configured as fast ram via a jumper on the A500+'s motherboard (maybe near the Fatter Agnus?), but I could be wrong. That doesn't sound technically feasible, I would have expected the jumper to be on the expansion, but maybe there is an option for the first meg to be chip and everything else to be configured as fast?

Any ideas?
 
Finally got round to testing out Andy's expansion in my 500+.

He's obviously a man who takes care of his stuff, as the expansion and packaging are in tip-top condition! Cheers buddy. :)

This is an expansion that was aparently designed with the 500+ in particular in mind, so as long as the SIMMs are Ok, it should all be good.

A couple of photos of the case;
1MbRAMboard0.jpg
1MbRAMboard1.jpg


A lovely simple, no fuss expansion,

Front,
1MbRAMboard2.jpg


and Back,
1MbRAMboard3.jpg


Slide her in, smooth as silk. MMMMmmmmmmmm. :D
1MbRAMboard4.jpg


A lovely final screenshot, showing a fully pimped out 500+. 2 Throbbing Mb's of Chip with a sexh side of 8Mb Fast.
1MbRAMboard6.jpg


It does make a difference. All windows render that bit more quickly and she is much more usable thanks to that.
Definitely a good value purchase, and I'm loving it.
Now, to get KgLoad installed and I'll be a very happy miggy monkey. (y)
 
Awesome! I'm really glad it's working out for you. I had no FastRAM in my A500+ so that additional 1MB of Chip made a huge difference at the time. Enjoy your plus, they're lovely machines!

Also, I've never seen an available graphics mem that begins with a 2, it's always down to about 1.9 or 1.8 before I've even started! You must have a seriously lightweight Workbench setup there, particularly since the Fast looks pretty untouched too! What's your secret? :)
 
Some hints: don't put in the DEVS:/Monitors/ too much icons, they steal memory.

Don't add too much buffers for the partitions: they steal FAST memory. Or Chip, if no FAST is available.

Add the Fast RAM memory as soon as possible, so chip memory will be spared from resident programs.

Prefer to use autoconfigurable memory expansions, they make the FAST RAM available at cold boot (don't need to call some "AddMem" program).
 
Does the A500 have same battery leakage problem?

Does the A500 have same battery leakage problem?

Hi

I've just picked up a mint, boxed A500 along with a similarly well looked after A1200 in a pretty sweet eBay deal.

Is it possible the A500 will suffer the same battery leakage issue that plagued your plus machine?

The A500 still has its warranty seal intact. Is it worth breaking the seal (I'm guessing the warranty is no longer valid this far on... LOL) to check if the battery is contaminating the mother-board?
 
onboard battery is only in 500+ model, classic A500 can have battery on expansion ram board, so you can check it without breaking the seal
 
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