Hail!

[Galder]

Hi everyone, I am new here but not to the world of Amigas. My father bought my first one (A500) when I was 8 years old (back in 89) and until 95 (Playing on a CDTV too) it was my only concern years passed, my amigas are still abandoned in my parents loft (in another country) and TODAY I took the decision to buy one because the nostalgia grew up to the maximum level. I drove for an hour with the car to a nearby city where a couple was selling an A500 plus and to my surprise I saw that they were also giving with it a GVP A500HD+ (Along with disks, joysticks, boxes, programs, A520 etc.). The price was only 50 pounds for everything... I brought everything back to my place, connected them to my lcd TV but the A520 would not give colour to the TV so I am currently watching in black and white and I have already ordered an amiga rgb to scart. I hope I will see colours with that one. The very helpful guy who sold it to me there demontrated the amiga on a monitor and I saw colours there so I suspect that there is something going wrong with the A520. But enough with the introduction, I will proceed to some questions that I have and I hope you guys can help me:

A. The amiga has a metal switch one the right side, just before the disk drive. It clicks either left or right. Does anyone know what is it for?

B. I saw that amiga 500 plus have leaking batteries and i will soon open it and reap out its battery. Is it ok if i will leave it with no battery?

C. My kickstarter (firmware) is 2.0. Is there a list somewhere with compatible and non-compatible games for that? Can i run all of the A500 games?

That's all for now, more will definitely come soon the more i examine this lovely machine. See you guys around

P.s. I am in love again YEAH

[T_hairy_bootson]

A. The switch could be one of several things, a kickstart switch enabling 1.3 and 2.0, an internal / external diskdrive switch, making the external diskdrive df0: or extra memory disable/enable. Opening the machine will answer this question better than any of us can.

B. Fine with no battery, just the clock wont keep time/date after you turn the machine off and on again.

C. 2.0 is a bit of a pig with 1.3 games, maybe someone else can answer this.

Welcome to EAB Future boy.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Galder

C. My kickstarter (firmware) is 2.0. Is there a list somewhere with compatible and non-compatible games for that? Can i run all of the A500 games?

Simple answer: No, you can't run all A500 games.

KS 2.x (and above) does cause problems with games. It's surely more than a few games, but I don't think there's a list around.

[fryguy]

If the harddrive controller has some extra RAM, you might be able to use WHDLoad. A program which makes you run non systemfriendly games from harddrive.

[Galder]

Thank you all for the replies and for the warm atmosphere. My GVP A500HD+ gives 8mb of RAM to the Amiga yes. That's good to know fryguy. As T_hairy_bootson predicted the metal switch was indeed for either 2.0 or 1.3 KS activation. I was very happy to see again the old white screen with the hand holding the blue disk like in the old times when I was a kid. Games that I had and wouldn't run with 2.0, now run fine when I switch to 1.3. It seems that there are many incompatible ones with 2.0 after all. Are these games recognized as NHOS or something from the workbench or was that for something else? I remember seeing that yesterday when I was checking the disks in the operating system through the use of the HD.

After that I took the decision to open the amiga and take out the battery. Fortunately the battery was not in a very bad shape (blown up from one side though and all the acid was still stuck on it) and the motherboard seemed to be ok around there. With the use of a wrench I managed to take it out after a 4 minute fight (a metal side plate was a pain on the a** because it was well stuck on it) and vacuumed everything after that. I put everything together again and it is now fine. What a relief... I just hate it when it comes to dismantle things and then put them together again but in this case I really wanted to be a part of the amiga's well being. Now it is software exploring time again, laters

P.s. Does anyone need 2 screws that remained? ;p

[djukon]

Welcome Galder .

Originally Posted by Galder

C. My kickstarter (firmware) is 2.0. Is there a list somewhere with compatible and non-compatible games for that? Can i run all of the A500 games?

Originally Posted by TCD

KS 2.x (and above) does cause problems with games. It's surely more than a few games, but I don't think there's a list around.

If you find Special Reserve member catalogues from late 1991 forward (a UK store which closed some years ago), just look for "(NOP)" after the game titles for the ones that don't work on the A500+. NOP meant "NOt Plus". I might have some of the catalogues/mags of Special Reserve, which I poured countless hours dreaming into, somewhere in my parents' attic, which I won't be getting to soon unfortunately. For the moment, I think there are some Special Reserve limited list adverts in the Amiga Power magazine.

Eventually a neighbor provided me with a KS1.3 disk for loading into 2.0+ machines which loaded the 1.3 ROM into RAM, and stayed in memory until you cold rebooted the Amiga. This means the 500+ was left with probably around 768KB of available RAM, which should be enough for most games which required a 1.3 ROM. In the Special Reserve lists at least I remember Pirates! being one of the buggers that was both NOP and required 1MB, so I guess that one wouldn't work unless you get an A501+ (+1MB chipset memory expansion).

I don't know the KS1.3 rebooter disk's official name. I still have the disk with me, and curiously it was last week checked for errors with XCopy and it is imaged on two of my hard drives. Probably it is in the TOSEC archive, I never got around to figure out what it was. I did see "Relokick" in the archive, to eventually take a look at and confirm.

[Galder]

Originally Posted by djukon

Welcome Galder .




If you find Special Reserve member catalogues from late 1991 forward (a UK store which closed some years ago), just look for "(NOP)" after the game titles for the ones that don't work on the A500+. NOP meant "NOt Plus". I might have some of the catalogues/mags of Special Reserve, which I poured countless hours dreaming into, somewhere in my parents' attic, which I won't be getting to soon unfortunately. For the moment, I think there are some Special Reserve limited list adverts in the Amiga Power magazine.

Eventually a neighbor provided me with a KS1.3 disk for loading into 2.0+ machines which loaded the 1.3 ROM into RAM, and stayed in memory until you cold rebooted the Amiga. This means the 500+ was left with probably around 768KB of available RAM, which should be enough for most games which required a 1.3 ROM. In the Special Reserve lists at least I remember Pirates! being one of the buggers that was both NOP and required 1MB, so I guess that one wouldn't work unless you get an A501+ (+1MB chipset memory expansion).

I don't know the KS1.3 rebooter disk's official name. I still have the disk with me, and curiously it was last week checked for errors with XCopy and it is imaged on two of my hard drives. Probably it is in the TOSEC archive, I never got around to figure out what it was. I did see "Relokick" in the archive, to eventually take a look at and confirm.

Thank you for your feedback and nice to meet you This is very useful to know. Fortunately though the amiga has a 2.0/1.3 KS switch that plays everything (due to the 1.3 KS). Next step is to bring my CDTV where I live now. Last time I turned it ON was probably 15 years ago.

[djukon]

Originally Posted by Galder

Fortunately though the amiga has a 2.0/1.3 KS switch that plays everything (due to the 1.3 KS).

That is really an awesome treat . You are quite lucky to have bought an A500+ in those conditions, a real steal in this day of hyped up retro platforms in the second hand market.

This might seem ridiculous, but one never knows, as the Amiga has a monochrome composite output built-in. Regarding the A520, are you sure you connected the composite RCA cable to the side of the A520 (Video Out) and not by mistake connected the the yellow RCA output just beside the RGB port? If not, maybe a PAL/SECAM incompatibility between Amiga/A520 and TV set? I'm not that well versed on TV signals to debug from that angle.

[Galder]

Lucky indeed, I was in for a great surprise i never managed to give colour through the a520 though. I tried everything. I even opened it, checked that the circuit inside 'looked' ok and closed it again. It could be an incompatibility. After a few days I ordered a scart cable from ebay and fortunately it worked like a charm. Great colours and sharp signal. The only problem is that my lcd TV is very pixelated and the picture looks like an old painting made of dots hehe... It is not always bad though (some games look great like that) and to be honest now I am used to it.

[djukon]

Originally Posted by Galder

i never managed to give colour through the a520 though. I tried everything.

Oh well, at least the scart cable is working.

Originally Posted by Galder

The only problem is that my lcd TV is very pixelated and the picture looks like an old painting made of dots hehe... It is not always bad though (some games look great like that) and to be honest now I am used to it.

It is not just you. [ Show youtube player ]

I still have my old 1084S in my attic, and if weren't for the spousal approval factor, it would be down here with the A500+. If you are sharing the monitor/tv with other computers/consoles, the alternatives are getting a regular VGA CRT and place a flickerfixer in the Amiga, or get a multi-sync CRT monitor.

EDIT: BTW, on the emulator side, there is an excellent CRT vintage display mode filter(s) working with the [ Show youtube player ]. It would be awesome if the *UAEs of the world implemented such filters for doing the same thing for Amiga's. The current filters (2xSAI, Eagle, PAL and such) are not exactly the same thing. At least we are getting close.