Hello World!

[kellylawrence]

Hello everyone! I'm a new Amiga owner from Manitoba, Canada, as of yesterday actually.

My parents used to have an old Tandy computer, which I grew up with, and was most likely the cause of my interest in computers, technology, and more. For a number of years now, I've been looking for a used Tandy to go with a lonely Monochrome monitor I found in my parents basement.

I asked around on my local online classifieds, and while no one seemed to have a Tandy, one nice gentleman mentioned he had two Amiga 500's in storage, each with their own monitor, appropriate cables, mice, etc., as well as some software and games.

So long story short, I picked up both of them yesterday for the price of one, and I've been enjoying the nostalgia so far. With that said, I did have a few questions, which I'm hoping this great community can help answer!

Specifically, they were about modding, upgrading, and what would be the best resource to begin learning about the Amiga 500, and anything I could do with it to better my experience!

Could I ask those questions in this thread, or would there be a better place to do so?

 

[Templar]

Welcome to AmiBay.

 

[Tajmaster]

Welcome to Amibay
A good start would be one of kipper2k's memory expansions, cheap and gives a nice performance boost:https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=32896&highlight=amiga+ram

You can also easily mod a rev 6a board to use 1MB of ChipRAM (normally only 512KB): https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4722&highlight=chip+ram+hack

A Kickstart upgrade is also good

 

[roy_bates]

hello

 

[johnim]

Hello and welcome

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[kellylawrence]

Welcome to Amibay
A good start would be one of kipper2k's memory expansions, cheap and gives a nice performance boost:https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=32896&highlight=amiga+ram

You can also easily mod a rev 6a board to use 1MB of ChipRAM (normally only 512KB): https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4722&highlight=chip+ram+hack

A Kickstart upgrade is also good

Thank you for the kind welcomes everyone, and thank you for those links Tajmaster!

As far as I'm aware, both of the 500's I picked up only have the stock 512 kB of ram. I'd plan to be using the 500 as a retro gaming computer, and from what I've read, 1 MB to 1.5 MB is definitely recommended for some games. Sorry if this is completely obvious, but would Kipper's Fastmem Expansion Boards be upping this to the 4 MB/8 MB? That seem's... like a lot more than I would need?

For the cheap price, and I'd imagine even cheaper shipping that most (Since I live in Canada as well), it'd definitely be something I'd be willing to get. Would you happen have one of these yourself? I'm not terribly familiar with soldering, nor do I have the proper equipment, so would that be required to implement the expansion board, or would it just be a matter of moving existing hardware inside the case, and using existing cables inside?