First post, by brostenen
- Rank
- l33t++
Hi all...
I want to share my Amiga500 upgrade result so far, and a bit of background information on this machine. The basic machine is the model Commodore released during the half year, in wich they also sold the Amiga500 Plus. That is why the PCB has A500+ silkscreened, and is basically a 500+ that they downgraded because they ran out of standard non-plus boards and still sold the normal old 500 model. And this is why my model has the full ECS chipset. What they did, was to sell with 512k ram, no clock circuit, no barrel battery and with kickrom 1.3. Other than that, it is a genuine 500+ machine. The revision of this board is "Rev. 8a.1", and to my knowledge, almost every single 500-Plus models have Rev 8a and not 8a.1 (Pretty rare board I guess....)
Now...
I have done a lot of upgrades on this baby, making it pretty snappy. It boot to full workbench in some 17/18 seconds. And benchmarks show that it is nearly 8 times faster than an stock Amiga1200, 18 times faster than an Amiga600 and 2 times faster than an Amiga3000 with 68030 25mhz CPU. Not bad at all, and I am happy.... Yay.
Parts that I used for the upgrade:
The big boy in this case... TerribleFire TF-530, and it gives 2mb FastRam:
I have it installed with an 68030 40mhz CPU and 40mhz FPU, that are both overclocked to 50mhz. They are low energy consumption CPU and are running cool enough for overclocking by 20%. Then I have a 4gb CF card in the adaptor, and boots to workbench really snappy. As well as transfering between 1.8 and 2.3 MB/s, depending the type of card and partition size.
www.amibay.com/showthread.php?89651-Say ... e-Fire-530
Scandoubler, for 50hz smooth scrolling:
I decided to install a scandoubler in my 500. Real CRT monitors have become rare, too unreliable and too expensive. TV's do not give a picture that I want, though they can be used for simple gaming. Just not for work that need concentration. And as mint-condition 15khz CRT monitors cost more than this scandoubler, in most cases, then I went for internal scandoubler. This exact scandoubler, combined with an Sony LCD monitor, gives the image quality of WinUAE emulator. Crisp, clear and perfect horisontal and vertical scrolling. Only issue, is that it can not output 62 to 68 HZ refresh rate like the IndevisionECS scandoubler. Anyway... I have a monitor that can sync to 50.
https://www.amedia-computer.com/en/accueil/29 … -a500-2000.html
Ram upgrade:
This one upgrades to 1mb ChipRam and 1.5mb SlowRam. The kit has an Gary adaptor, and I had to solder in a jumper wire on JP2 jumper pad. The process was removing the blob of solder, and solder the wire to the middle pad. Then simply connect the wire to the trapdoor memory module.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2MB-RAM-upgrade-KIT- … bLAKM:rk:2:pf:0
Floppy cable:
This is a special mod-cable for the floppy drive. This allow me to use any standard PC drive, as they were genuine Amiga drives. The PCB on the cable gives all the correct signals (Drive ready and Disk insert). This is cool, as there are more PC drives out there than genuine working Amiga drives....
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-internal-drive … agyil:rk:2:pf:0
The machine is working now, and I had trouble finding room for this two in one 1.3/3.1 kickstart rom switcher. So I need to find a real switcher and have genuine 1.3 and 3.1 kickroms in this. Or I might just find a 3.1 rom and use the Relokick 1.3 floppy diskette, if I need to play a game that requires 1.3 rom. And the last upgrade that I need to make in the future, are a BootSelector switch. That way I can have external Gotek drive and boot it as it was an internal solution.....
And now..... A few pictures of the machine, as it is now. I will be making a blog post, once I have this machine fully upgraded to what is my dream Amiga500.
Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....
My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen
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