29
votes
Accepted
Amiga 500 OCS/ECS vs Mega Drive VDP
The [pre-AGA] Amiga:
uses a planar frame buffer, stored in memory that is shared with the CPU (and which therefore reduces the CPU's speed);
provides dual-playfield hardware scrolling, but the total ...
- 36k
26
votes
Accepted
How did the Amiga 500 left-side expansion port work?
That expansion port exposes all the signals from the 68000 CPU, plus some other Amiga specific signals, such as the color CLK, ROM and RAM select signals, along with voltage supply lines, etc. It is ...
- 18.6k
26
votes
Should I use the internal or external drive for loading Amiga 500 games?
Amiga 500 1.3 machine only boots on drive 0 (DF0:) by default.
There are programs that make it able to boot on DF1: but they're not really interesting because a lot of games either:
have physical ...
- 10.7k
20
votes
Accepted
Why was it not possible to cost-reduce the Amiga 500?
'Jeff Porter realized it would not be possible to significantly cost
reduce the Amiga 500 to get it into the $250 retail price range'.
They could have cost-reduced the A500 - perhaps even to $250 ...
- 6,635
17
votes
Accepted
Change Amiga Shell keyboard layout in Workbench 1.3
Alright, you seem to already have the correct keymap file in DEVS:keymaps/, as you seem to be able to use the Keymap in Workbench programs. That's good (otherwise you would have had to copy it from "...
- 2,031
16
votes
Why was it not possible to cost-reduce the Amiga 500?
They did, with the A600. But in true late-stage Commodore fashion, they screwed it up and made it more expensive.
To cost-reduce an A500, you'd have to reproduce its spec on simpler silicon. The ...
- 20.6k
11
votes
Attaching a CD-rom drive for Amiga 500
A stock Amiga 500 doesn't come with any expansion port that would take a standard CD ROM drive (or hard disk) directly. Storage extension is limited to external floppy drives.
The option of the day ...
- 33.1k
11
votes
Should I use the internal or external drive for loading Amiga 500 games?
The Amiga 500 has a very console-like experience for the most part when it comes to games. Treat DF0:, the internal drive, like you would the cartridge slot of a Super NES or a Sega Genesis. Just put ...
- 246
11
votes
Amiga 500 OCS/ECS vs Mega Drive VDP
The Megadrive comes from an arcade machine lineage, it's cut-down Sega arcade machine hardware. The Amiga comes from a computer lineage, it's an evolution of the Atari 800, same designer, and many of ...
- 410
10
votes
Accepted
Any Issues with running Workbench 1.3 on a Kickstart 1.2 Amiga 500?
No, you can and, more importantly, it is fully supported to run Workbench 1.3 on a Kickstart 1.2 machine.
This was rather common back at that time, because Workbench 1.3 brought some nice new ...
- 3,716
8
votes
Is it possible to expand Amiga 500 rev 8 to 1.5 MB with a 1MB trapdoor expansion?
Multiple sources on the internet point out that Rev 8a is indeed an Amiga 500 Plus and not a regular Amiga 500. And your picture clearly shows A500+ printed on the board. So I guess it can be said you ...
- 3,716
8
votes
Practical differences between the three Amiga 500 rev 5 motherboards?
It is hard to find authoritative information about the differences between the various A500 PCB revisions but aside from what is already signalled in the Big Book of Amiga Hardware they essentially ...
- 388
8
votes
Looking for a multiline text gadget for Intuition on a 1.3 Amiga
I used Intuisup by Torsten Jurgeleit for my application when running under WB1.3 to provide the same functionality as was available with gadtools in WB2.x
I think V4.5 is the version I used and a ...
- 181
7
votes
Accepted
Alternative to Amiga 520A Video Adapter
Your first choice is to see if with a little modification, the A520 box can be used as a NTSC encoder. Open it, locate chip MC1377, take pin 20 (which will be unconnected) and ground it. That will ...
- 18.6k
6
votes
Accepted
PC Task performance
I have an A1200 with Blizzard 1230-IV (50MHz 68030/MMU/FPU) and 32 MiB of FastRAM. I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 into a 20 MB hardfile on a CF card in the PCMCIA slot. I ran it under PC-Task 4....
- 6,635
6
votes
Repairing/Lubing/Fixing Amiga 500 floppy drive
It is possible that the old lubrication on the sticking part has absorbed some fluff or grit and so is no longer working as a lubricant. The build-up of muck could be around the point where the arm ...
- 8,031
6
votes
I have two A500s which won't boot from Workbench 1.3
If the illustration disappears, the drive makes sound, but then the illustration comes back, either the drive is bad or the disks are bad.
Floppy drive maintenance for the A500 is as follows:
Unplug ...
- 61
5
votes
Accepted
Repairing/Lubing/Fixing Amiga 500 floppy drive
I managed to fix the floppy disk drive mechanism.
I completly disassemblied the floppy disk drive mechanical system and cleaned each part with lighter fluid.
Then I applied a very light lubrication ...
- 2,637
5
votes
Accepted
Fixing an ailing Amiga 500
After posting the question I got a lot of helpful responses. This made me purchase a DiagROM on eBay. The DiagROM initially ran all tests fine, but after about 15 minutes it would hang when starting ...
- 861
5
votes
Accepted
Why does Amiga 500 reset when reading a faulty disk
Syndicate uses a standard DOS format, and is completely OS compliant when it comes to disk operations. It also has no physical copy protection.
If the disk sectors where executable itself is stored ...
- 10.7k
5
votes
Amiga 500 OCS/ECS vs Mega Drive VDP
TL;DR:
For all of this it might be helpful and take a step back from bits and bytes and take a step back to look at the whole process of Game development. Doing so will show that quality is much more ...
- 214k
5
votes
Accepted
Can Alice be hacked to use more than 2MB Chip Ram
TL;DR The Amiga AGA Alice chip can only support 2MiB of CHIP RAM because it has 20 address lines, and thus allows 2^20 (1M) by 16-bit memory access.
The first Agnus chip found in the A1000 only ...
- 60.1k
4
votes
Amiga 500 OCS/ECS vs Mega Drive VDP
Let's assume your assumption "MegaDrive games are generally 'better' than Amiga games" was true - Which is a statement hard to prove and very probaby only backed by opinion:
Games Console vs. Home ...
- 33.1k
4
votes
Is it possible to expand Amiga 500 rev 8 to 1.5 MB with a 1MB trapdoor expansion?
Any memory card added to the expansion bay will only show up as slow RAM, by default. To increase the amount of chip RAM you would need to make modifications. To get more than 512KB of chip RAM you ...
- 4,517
4
votes
Accepted
Will US Amiga 500 work in UK with UK power supply?
An unmodified Amiga 500 provides two outputs:
analogue and digital RGB through its DB23M connector
monochrome composite through its RCA connector
Colour encoding is identical in both PAL and NTSC ...
- 118k
4
votes
Alternative to Amiga 520A Video Adapter
I think it really depends on what type of use you want out of your Amiga. If sharp text and sharp Workbench are important, then a high quality scan-doubler is going to be the best option...but, ...
- 8,441
4
votes
Amiga 500+ does not start up
When you switch on an Amiga, you should expect to see the following:
The power light will illuminate, slightly dimmed.
About half a second later, the power light will brighten.
Usually 3-4 seconds ...
- 5,271
4
votes
How did the Amiga 500 left-side expansion port work?
In addition to mcleod_ideafix' answer above: Commodore also made a CD-ROM drive that plugged in the slot (unfortunately without a feed-through slot on the other side): the A570 turned the Amiga 500 ...
- 41
4
votes
I have two A500s which won't boot from Workbench 1.3
The people who had these A500s most likely had a huge stash of bootable game diskettes, so you can use that to test the disk drives.
From what I remember about how the A500 drive works, you should be ...
- 301
4
votes
Amiga 500 WorkBench 1.2 Freezes
Workbench 1.2 is known to have some bugs, and it would be better if you could boot into Workbench 1.3 instead.
Based on your description, I suspect your mouse could be malfunctioning. It sounds like ...
- 60.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible