My Amiga 500

[LaFey]

Ok, so I had decided to open my Amiga 500 (which I own since 1992) and remove the battery from the trapdoor A501 expansion, which I did.

While I was at it I had to remove the insulation layer and I also cleaned the motherboard (which hadn't seen the light of day since 1992). Turns out it is a Rev 8 motherboard manufactured in November 1991 - with the Fat Agnus 8375 390544-01. It is Kickstart 1.3

The Chinon drive isn't working properly so I'll eventually buy a Gotek to replace it. Is it too hard to put in internally or should I opt for a DF1 external version?

Any other upgrades you'd recommend? Realistically I just want to do some retrogaming and watch some demos. I'd like to have 1meg Chip Memory - but it seems a hard for my soldering skills (solder additional RAM chips and fiddle with jumper blobs of solder...

Is it worth to upgrade the ROM to something more modern? Which ROM version?

Cheers and thanks for any advice/feedback!

 

[Watson]

Hi LaFey,

Installing a Gotek drive is a great option for a stock a500 giving you access to the entire game and demo library without the need for 100's of failing floppies, and in your case drives.. They're simple to install internally with a 3d printed mounting plate, and you can usually find a complete kit availalbe. If you were to go the external drive route, you would need to install a boot selector switch because a lot of the software will not boot from external (DF1). They're not expensive but it is another step which involves removing the EVEN CIA chip in your Amiga.

Upgrading the chipram would be difficult without any soldiering skills. Your Agnus 8375 is capable of 2MB of chipram and depending on the mod, the trapdoor expansion will no longer be usable. I would advise to let someone with the skills to sort that for you.

A500+ usually have 2.04 ROM, so someone has changed the ROM chip at some point. You could install a rom switch to have multiple ROMS giving you better software compatibility.

There's a A LOT of upgrades available for the 500+'s and there's LOTS of great help and services available if you are not comfortable doing it yourself.

 

[LaFey]

A500+ usually have 2.04 ROM, so someone has changed the ROM chip at some point. You could install a rom switch to have multiple ROMS giving you better software compatibility.

There's a A LOT of upgrades available for the 500+'s and there's LOTS of great help and services available if you are not comfortable doing it yourself.

Thanks for taking the time to reply Watson!

It is indeed a stock A500 Rev 8 motherboard - not A500 plus. This board can be populated to the Plus standard (+512k Chip Ram) and Battery Backed Clock. It is ROM 1.3 by default.

I also have a Rev 4. German Amiga2000 motherboard with a thin Angus and somehow expected my Amiga500 to feature such one too - was positively impressed to find a 8375 inside.

I am also planning on upgrading the thin Agnus on my Amiga 2000, so maybe I can just switch the Amiga 2000's thin Agnus with this one and use the "thin" one my Amiga 500.

 

[Watson]

@LaFey , my bad. The choice to upgrade the rom comes down to usage and compatibility. The v1.3 ROM has great software compatibility, so unless there's something specific to gain from an upgrade, it's kind of redundant.

If the Agnus is compatible then go for it

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Just ask https://www.tsb.space/ , he can upgrade your A500 board and clean it properly, then you would have a full revision 8