New user with Amiga 500

[EA123]

Hello there,

What a nice forum.

I have come across a Amiga 500 with psu.

It has some dirty keys but looks decent otherwise. It has been stored for the last 25 years or so and I've been told it only had one owner.

How should I proceed now? What should I look for?

I have not found the dedicated cable for connecting a screen. So I have not been able to test it.

What cable should I get? I've found some conflicting information.

Should I try to find an old screen with scart or try to connect the computer to my Dell UltraSharp U2419H LED Monitor?

I prefer not to spend that much money before I know if the computer is working properly.

I also wonder a little about cleaning the keyboard. I have ordered a keycap puller tool. Is it preferable to use baking soda to clean the keys later on?

The plan would be to later buy a internal gotek floppy emulator and play some games.

[d4rk3lf]

Welcome to the forum.
Many of your questions have been answered numerous times, and on this very sub-forum, you can find very similar threads, but here is my opinion in short, as a happy owner of A500, that I use almost every day.

Keep in mind that what I say is just my personal preference, not a fact in any way.

I'd say, get a good ol' screen with scart, like I have. Yes, there is a ways to connect your A500 to new monitors, but I think the picture is too sharp, and these old TV's always blurs a picture a little bit, so it;s almost like you have a hardware antialias.

Your biggest issue would be how to transfer games from PC to Amiga. It's easy and cheap for A1200, and A600, but much harder on A500.
I personally don't like Gotek solution, because where is the fun without workbench, and all the great graphics and music apps? I don't want to turn my powerful A500 to a simple console.
So, there's a various accelerators that you can consider. Now, keep in mind, they are accelerators, and they will speed up your A500, but their biggest value is not acceleration (that most games won't use anyway), but ability to transfer apps from PC to Amiga, and ability to have a big HD with Whdload on your Amiga 500.
------
If you decide accelerator path, then ask yourself, what kind of games you'd like to play. If it's just ordinary A500 games, then pretty much any will do the work. Aca 500 plus (I have that one), Witcher, Terrible fire... etc
However, some people like to play Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake on their Amiga 500, and they are buying more expensive accelerators like Vampire, or, soon to be released Warp 560...

Anyway, good luck, and hopefully you will find best solution for you, and enjoy your A500 as I do.
When i made my A500 "operational", i thought I will be playing her, something like once in 2 weeks, but I play it almost every day, 2 years already.

[Nobby_UK]

For testing, a simple phono/composite cable should give a Monochrome output.

Then you can get an RGB + Audio to Scart.

[B2k_ad]

Hi and welcome.
I hope yo have a lot of fun.
For testing i would suggest get a Amiga to Scart cable they are around anywehre on ebay and various Qualities-
Since they are no more than Cables (no electronic needed) dont Pay a fortune for it and dont go over 3 meters.
A lot of modern LCDs still feature a SCART connector so you can use them.
But for the sake of Fun go for an CRT eventually.
If you have old Games on Disks, by NO means put them in your disk drive before you cleaned it!!!
Cleaning the Heads of an old Floppy drive with Alcohol and some new Q Tips is vital for your Floppies.
Otherwise they would most likely last only one try.
If you have an old sigle Core PC with Win xp and a parallel port lying around,
do not bin it!
You could, by making your own cable and using a PC Floppy drive, build your own .adf burner.
Thats how i restarted 3 Years ago because my old disks went bust.
And now i am writing this on an A2000..... yes i could get adictive this Amiga thing.

[mtb]

I suggest to take pictures of your amiga.

Does it came with only 512 Kb or 1 Mb ram?

I have used retrobright for my "new" 1.2 one (really nice results for case, not bad for keys), and i have installed a gotek inside (it's a floppy emulator that reads adf image from a usb memory) and i'm really happy i don't have to mess around with unreliable floppies, serial cable to transfer disk from and to pc and so on.

Here an article i think you can use google translate.

https://compvter.blogspot.com/2020/0...-su-amiga.html

I have an amiga rgb-scart cable (but i want to make some of them for other amigas we have in a museum) it's much better than an a520, and i would like to build a nice joystick with arcade components.

I'm quite sure you can find scart lcd tvs for free or nearly for free these times.