Quote:
Originally Posted by c0dehunter
Excellent! Now, how do I determine which A500 do I have? By opening it up, and checking the revision number?
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For the purposes of switching between NTSC and PAL, all you need is to know is if you have an OCS or ECS Agnus. You can determine this using SysInfo, WhichAmiga, etc. If you are using AmigaOS 2.0 or higher (I believe, I don't remember which exactly it was added in) the Tools/ShowConfig program will give you the info.
You can also just open the machine and look at the Agnus.
If your Agnus is model 8370/8371, it is OCS. Anything higher is ECS.
A really fast easy way to check without opening your machine is to look at the color of the power LED. If it's red it almost certainly shipped with an OCS Agnus. If it's green, it probably shipped with an ECS Agnus. This is not a certain way to check as there may have been green ones that shipped with OCS Agnus, and ones with red LEDs could have been upgraded later.
EDIT: You only need to know the motherboard revision of A500 you have for some hardware hack reasons or a few rare expansions. The revision is clearly printed on the motherboard. Rev 3s are extremely rare. The most common motherboard revisions are Rev 5 and Rev 6A, with Rev 5 being more common in North America and Rev 6A being more common in Europe.
Rev 3 and Rev 5 came with red power LEDs and shipped with OCS Agnus. Rev 6A had green power LED and shipped with ECS Agnus usually. Of course since people have since modified their systems there is no 100% guarantee what Agnus they have and you have to use an info program or physically look at the chip to be absolutely certain.
Rev 8A is the A500+, which is almost exclusively found in Europe, but a few North American A500s are actually downgraded 8As, which can be modified to be full A500+.
You can find pictures of all the motherboards here:
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a500