My A500+ & GVP530 setup on a tidy desk.

[Gouldin]

Finally got around to cleaning up and finding a couple of hours to build an A500+ from spare parts.

So far my A500+ is:

2MB Chip.
3.1 Kickstart - Could do with getting hold of a kickstart switcher.
GVP A530 - latest rom, 8mb ram, 50mb SCSI HDD
HP External SCSI CD Writer
Tank Mouse.

Things to do still:
SCSI to IDE - Has been delivered, just need to get it installed now!
Kickstart switcher. - TheCorfiot is making me the same one that Justin has in his A500
RGB Scart is needed.
2nd Floppy drive would be nice too.


Stealth desk, no miggy to be found here. (The pc is sat next to SackBoy)

Or here.

Or here. (Obligitory G-Shock pr0n here)

There it is.

Close up of my new precious.

The cobbled together A500+. Mobo was from WonkeyDonkey and is possibly the best condition A500+ mobo I've seen. Looks new. (Will do an internal pr0n shot later.)

My trusty Action Pad AM. Best Amiga/Atari controller ever. The D-Pad on this thing put's even the MegaDrive D-Pad to shame.

It's not a bad upgrade from an A500 68000 I guess

Drive speed from the GVP with a 50mb SCSI disk. Hopefully it'll improve once my SCSI to IDE adaptor turns up and I can CF it up.

 

[fitzsteve]

That's one beast of an A500+ setup mate, awesome pics and thanks for sharing.

Nice Watch collection too

 

[Gouldin]

Thanks, the G-Shock collection is my main tech collection and pride n' joy for the fact they need no maintenance and they're indestructable, unlike my miggie's. The one on the right is very collectible too :nuts: Never need batteries either, at worst I give them a sun tan once in a while and they're happy again

just trying to work out what other upgrades can be done to the setup to speed it up further, anyone know if a 50mhz crystal and chips work in these things?

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

just trying to work out what other upgrades can be done to the setup to speed it up further, anyone know if a 50mhz crystal and chips work in these things?

I wouldn't risk it.

There are various threads about the net with stories of all kinda things going wrong when folks have put 50 mhz parts in these. They were only ever designed for 40 mhz bits as far as Im aware.

 

[Damion]

just trying to work out what other upgrades can be done to the setup to speed it up further, anyone know if a 50mhz crystal and chips work in these things?

I wouldn't risk it.

There are various threads about the net with stories of all kinda things going wrong when folks have put 50 mhz parts in these. They were only ever designed for 40 mhz bits as far as Im aware.

Yup, in fact buried in the usenet archive is a post from an ex-GVP engineer warning against it. He claimed it would need re-programming and possibly other modifications to avoid frying it.

 

[Gouldin]

ah ok, well seeing as it's taken me close to 15 years to get hold of one, I won't risk it

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

ah ok, well seeing as it's taken me close to 15 years to get hold of one, I won't risk it

You could always follow my restoration thread and do that to get the absolute best out of it. Granted, its costing me a few quid but it'll be worth it in the end.

 

[johnim]

now thats a tidy desk and very clean 500

 

[Gouldin]

Give it week, someone will give me a computer to fix, or I'll open up the miggy to do some upgrades and it'll be back to it's usual state

Only took me 2 years to get it cleaned... :double

Also contemplating putting the N64 & EverDrive on the shelf next to the desk. All depends on whether the N64 controller cable reaches across the room from the TV :huh:

 

[CrashMidnick]

Mine is working @50Mhz, no problem at all (and I played for hours with it)... just more speed. Well, I have a SCSI/IDE with CF card and a Full ceramic 030. Compared to a real HDD, the CPU is not covered and it can breath

And if you want to contribute

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57893

You will not get more than 1.1mb transfer rate with this device
Maybe a Guru Rom can help...

 

[Gouldin]

1.1mb should be plenty for what I do with them. ie: not much other than load a few mods and games

So is speed still an issue for some games? I had similar issues with my old 520 accelerator, but got around with one of the tooltypes. If find the same issue, and can then remember the correct tooltype, I'll let you lot know on that thread

 

[CrashMidnick]

Yes still a problem. I have the very same problem with my combo GVP HD+8 + VXL*30.

My personal point of view : DMA access + 030 on A500 = slow chipram access. One thing I did not tried (and I will), is to avoid any DMA access by changing the mask stransfer on my HDD.

BUT : same games that have problems with GVP530 have problems with other accelerators : for example, Robocod has slowdown aswell on My BPPC060. It is the case for Jaguar too.

Thanks for your help mate !

 

[Gouldin]

Update: my SCSI to IDE adaptor just turned up at work today fresh from the city of Chicago across the pond.

Will try out some whdload madness tonight and report my findings. (Here's where I get home only to discover I have no CF2 IDE adaptors left )

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Nice setup! Thanks for sharing.

Heather

 

[Gouldin]

Thanks

Gonna have some questions for folks tonight once I've got it setup.

For starters:

1 - How do I setup the GVP maprom feature?

2 - How do I boot CDTV games direct from CD? Is this even possible?

3 - IDEfix still the best CD filesystem to use for ease of setup/use?

 

[CrashMidnick]

1) With the GVP's floppy (see amiga ressources), there is an utility to do that and to modify your SS

2) Noway (As far as know, only A570 can do that)

3) You can use IDEFIX, it works well enough.

 

[rkauer]

Both IDEfix97 & Squirrel SCSI packages have a "CD32 emulator" that is just a tool to mount the CD and skip the startup-sequence.

Of course this setup will work on A500 with a CD-ROM mounted, the principle is the same.

 

[Gouldin]

lmao, progress was so close, yet so far.....

Seems I no longer have any 3.5"to2.5" adaptors, no ide2cf adaptors, or any molex to floppy adaptors. :double