Realistically you should asking these things on a dedicated Amiga forum such as EAB (https://eab.abime.net/)

'Hippoplayer' will work on a basic A500 setup (https://aminet.net/mus/play/hippoplayer.lha) for playing modfiles.

If you upgrade ROM, it pretty much breaks many original A500/kickstart games/titles (and you need something like relokick to work around it.... or a ROM switcher)

As for hdd on A500 ....I just sold my A590 sidecar, probably the way to go these days is an accelerator with sdcard storage....many options -- I use a pistorm/rpi3A+ to this end.

It would me remiss of me to not mention this --- the 512k 'trapdoor' memory module (under cover on bottom of A500 case) often came with a RTC and the dreaded Varta backup battery. These cards are often encased in a soldered tin RF shield, and the fact the varta is leaking all over the board goes un-noticed. I would obtrude upon you to check your expansion memory module ... here's an example of the carnage..

...corroded thru to PCB substrate in many places, entire RTC section needed replacing, fortunately the ramfield survived ...

thankyou but mines a 3rd party made board

will hippo play play XM / S3M / IT or only mod files i will try it out later i got protracker to load but it wont load any mod files i have on my goetek drive yes i have them mounted i just don't know how to use the software thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjGSMUep6_4

^Not quite on topic, but legendary - the song is an Amiga module. 🙂

Jo22 wrote on 2023-11-03, 09:29:

^Not quite on topic, but legendary - the song is an Amiga module. 🙂

... 🤣 ...I remember the days ~ he's not quite drunk enough yet, as he's still standing =)

vkcpolice wrote on 2023-11-03, 08:42:

will hippo play play XM / S3M / IT or only mod files i will try it out later i got protracker to load but it wont load any mod files i have on my goetek drive yes i have them mounted i just don't know how to use the software thanks

Ummm... I think hippoplayer does most all Amiga tracker modules ~ IT/S3M/XM are actually PC tracker modules, so you'd need use delitracker for those ... but iirc, the caveat is the amount of chip/fast ram the Amiga has -- some many PC tracker mods will fail due to this ... either not enough ram for the samples used, or, the number of tracks the modules themselves contain..

How do i use hippoplayer i cant find a adf of it. all i can find is a iha file.
i need a player that i can boot with my goeteck

vkcpolice wrote on 2023-11-03, 12:38:

How do i use hippoplayer i cant find a adf of it. all i can find is a iha file.
i need a player that i can boot with my goeteck

LHA is an old compression format. It was used before ZIP/RAR.
Similar formats are ARC, LZH, ARJ etc.

Freeware ZIP programs like 7-Zip may able to extract them (original ARC compression excluded).

On DOS, the utilities LHA/LHArc can handle LHA. They run in DOSBox, too.

On Amiga, you can use:
https://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

You can get delitracker in adf file --> https://retro-commodore.eu/files/downlo ... bWB%5d.zip

OCTAMed and Protracker 2.

Have a look a this Youtube channel / video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs
Awesome to learn about Trackers.

Here is my trapdoor expansion experience:

thx i got protracker to work and i have seen that vid many many times 🤣.
the problem was i was just dumping my mod files straight to my sd card and needed to put them into a adf
all good nice my Amiga is singing

vkcpolice wrote on 2023-11-04, 11:24:

thx i got protracker to work and i have seen that vid many many times 🤣.
the problem was i was just dumping my mod files straight to my sd card and needed to put them into a adf
all good nice my Amiga is singing

There's an ADF file transfer program for Windows 3.x that maybe can help (null-modem).
I've stumbled upon it a few years ago.
Screenshot here. It's called AmyXfer (in the archives on #1, I *think*).

For playing music on an Amiga 500, I've had a good time using DeliTracker and EaglePlayer. They work well for playing music files like MOD, XM, and others. They're easy to use and can handle many music formats, which is excellent for your Amiga.

About upgrading your Kickstart ROM, it's usually okay for playing games. Most games work fine with a newer ROM, but it's a good idea to check online for any specific games you like, just to be sure.

Putting in a hard drive and updating Workbench is a project, but you can. There are many guides and helpful people online who can help you.

And, for making music on the Amiga, I like using OctaMED. I learned a lot about it from https://faqaudio.com/. They have beneficial info on old-school music software and how to use them now.