A500T/060

[czarek]

Hi there. After months of collecting hardware, trying many configurations out of which almost none really worked with Micronik's busboard, I've ended up with this:

* Commodore A500 rev 6a OCS without CPU (Micronik turns A500 into early A2000 made in Germany that need CPU removed to work with Blizzard 2060)
* A501 - gives RTC and 1 MB Chip RAM
* Indivision ECS
* Kickstart 3.1
* Blizzard 2060 - 68060/50 MHz, 128 MB Fast RAM
* Cybervision 64/3D, 4 MB
* Ariadne Ethernet
* HDD SCSI IBM 4.3 GB
* CD-ROM NEC 40x
* Black Amiga Technologies mouse
* Mechanical keyboard from the early A2000s, it uses NMI key switches, has left Commodore key and red Caps-Lock LED, I rehoused it into CDTV keyboard case.
* Dell 20" Display
* Cheap Creative speakers

As you can see this Amiga works nicely under AmigaOS 3.9 with BB2.

If you're interested how it looks inside here is a shot:

You can see it's quite tidy inside, only 3 cards visible (Turbo, RTG and Ethernet), you can see the new PSU and my ATX power adapter.

Here's closeup at the power adapter:

Indivision ECS partially covered by SCSI ribbon and HDD LED wire:

And closeup at cards:

Plans for future? Get Daneb USB 2.0 and probably replace Ariadne with faster USB NIC, maybe also some AHI Sound Card - we will see what can I find

 

[tokyoracer]

WOW! It's been a while since I saw your tower (it was white, well butterscotch last time I saw it). One question though, how come you havnt added extra chip ram on the motherboard?

 

[AndyLandy]

Wow! An A500T, there's something quite remarkable there! Not something you see very often, but still an awesome system. (Even if it does feel a little bit sick and twisted!)

Thanks for sharing, that's pretty awesome!

 

[fitzsteve]

Hey thats really awesome stuff

 

[stachu100]

Congratulation Czarek!

Finally you did it!
One of the most powerful A500 on this planet.

And it is clean mods without hot glue/duct tape everywhere - this is perfect example how mod should looks like!
+1 from me!

 

[mfilos]

Awesome work! I always loved A500T clean mods since you find them very rarely!
Thanks for sharing mate!

 

[Phipscube]

:wooha: WOW! That is Effing awesome! Very tidy mods inside there! Great work fella!

 

[gehtjanx]

Looks beautiful!!! Nice tower case, too.

HOT Hardware Have fun with it.

gehtjanx

 

[Kin Hell]

It's not everyday you see a pimped up A500 with an 060.

Most impressive.

Kin

 

[cosmicfrog]

nice A500 Tower

Its easier to add the extra 512k chipram via the trapdoor and cut a few traces
than solder in some new chips on the mobo, especial if the ram expasion dos`t have the right sized chips

Now that really puts my A2000 040 to shame hehehehhehe but I like it

 

[johnim]

very nice miggy mate great stuff

 

[salaxi54]

+1! A splendid job there mate

 

[Geraldine]

Congratulations indeed Czarek! Incredible and magical all at the same time, amazing work!

 

[Hell_Labs]

Puts the tower of power 500t to a bit of shame there.

But still, an A560T I like that very much.

 

[Countraven]

Simply great!!!!

 

[Zetr0]

Fantastic!

Although I am not a fan of towers - this has certainly given me pause for thought, the fact you have a B2060 is amazing and if I am honest I am (as is my a2000) a little envious =)

I am curious, why an A500 Rev6 when an A500+ could give you 2MB of CHIP as opposed to 1MB ?

either way - its truly a fantastic build and I hope you are proud of it, as you should be - its awesome =)

 

[czarek]

Thanks for very warm comments guys
There is no 2 MB Chip RAM because I simply don't need Chip RAM - all graphics related stuff is in RTG memory and everything else will surely fit in Fast RAM.
I didn't solder 512 KB directly on MB just because this MB is too precious for me and I don't want to break it - I had soldered RAM on Rev 6 and Rev 8 motherboards, and never broke any but still I don't want a risk of broken solder point or something like it.
Then the last question - it's Rev 6a just because it's my first computer ever given to me when I was 8 years old (1992). It was with me through all those years besides other Amigas, PCs and Macs. Shortly after purchase it was expanded with GVP SCSI and some RAM (much later full 8 MB) and 52 MB Quantum drive, then around 1997 it was replaced with GVP A530 and then most of it (all apart main unit) was traded for PeeSee. When I started work in 2003 I bought another miggy, then another etc. Last I found a guy in my town that has this tower kit which I traded for bottle of nice whisky. It was horrible condition, with broken plastics, yellowed and with holes in back, he didn't even know if it works. That was the start of this project

 

[Seaside]

Superb. A very beautiful A500 at last. I like also the whisky trade part !!!!!

I have few bottles of Blue and Green Johnnie is someone interested for a trade.

 

[Tuxon86]

I would like to know what is the name of your Zoro riser card/expansion board?

 

[czarek]

I would like to know what is the name of your Zoro riser card/expansion board?

It's this one:
http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1385
And the case is this:
http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1340
Just repainted black because my one was badly yellowed.

But trust me those are not as nice as they seem to be. Case doesn't really fit everything. You can see on my photos that busboard is not installed straight because there is no way to do it.
Speaking of busboard. It sucks badly too. There is no buster at all or if there is any, it's even worse than the worst earliest German A2000s as any DMA on any SCSI controller crashes the system (on GVP A2000 HC8+ and GVP A500 Impact Series) or refuses to boot at all (Commodore A590 and A2091), reset pins work on random basis, CPU slot is not really A2000 CPU slot, it's MMU slot from early German A2000s - most accelerators don't work at all, some of them partially work. Honestly I had hard times and spent fortune on hardware to try different configs. Blizzard is the best because its SCSI uses local bus of 68060 instead of Zorro and it is compatible with German A2000 (card itself is designed by phase5 in Germany), only needs 2 jumpers set and CPU removed. Apollo 2030 also worked quite ok (SCSI was flaky but that was even in my A2000). Same with Cybervision (also phase5) - works fine while Picasso II worked only in segmented mode unless there were no other cards. General rule was to pick German cards and avoid American ones (none of GVPs I tried worked, even when they worked perfectly in my A2000). Only American accelerator that worked for me was Commodore A2630 which with A2632 was making up for a nice combo . I'm slightly scared of investing more at the moment because of those compatibility issues. I will probably change mind when I sell out my stuff I collected so far (there is a thread on Amibay and more are coming soon ).
Wish list for near future (definitely not now yet): Daneb, Delfina/Tocata or USB Audio.