What is cheapest hard drive option for the A500?

[Fuzzball]

I am looking for a cheap option to add a hard drive to an Amiga 500. There seems to be a lot of options out there but where I am struggling is whether there are any that require no soldering at all. I have no soldering iron or soldering skills and there is no way I'd use one on a A500 as I would probably damage it. Also some seem to require accelerator boards and memory upgrades so it is all a bit of a minefield for someone who just had a vanilla A500 back in the day with an external hard drive (that just worked).

Are there any cheap options that require zero soldering?

[fgh]

You can add an ide controller to the cpu socket.
There are options with and without RAM.

Look up IDE68k or MKL.

(These cheap versions need a modified (or a600) kickstart to be bootable)

[Fuzzball]

Originally Posted by fgh

You can add an ide controller to the cpu socket.
There are options with and without RAM.

Look up IDE68k or MKL.

(These cheap versions need a modified kickstart to be bootable)

Thanks very much for that. I have seen so many mods but had missed that one. Although it uses 2 "pin grabbers" I see people do recommend soldering them as they often come off. So that is a concern.

I am actually considering a A600 instead as it will be less hassle. I don't actually own any Amiga at the moment and the A500 was the only one I owned back in the day so that's the one with the nostalgia factor. But a A600 may be less hassle as it has IDE built in and the A1200 is far too expensive for me.

[d4rk3lf]

I can really recommend Aca 500+ card, if your budget can afford it.

It has acceleration, but I couldn't care less about that, my main point of getting one is having HD on my Amiga 500, and have easy time transferring apps from my PC to my Amiga. Also, where important is that it fully supports WHDLoad (which is very rare option for Amiga 500).
Another very cool stuff is that it have Workbench 1.3 and 3.0 in the rom. So whenever you want you can install WB on an empty CF card with no hassle at all.
You get additional 7MB of fast Ram.
Processor is 68k, like in Amiga 500, but it can run up to 48Mhz (by default it's 14Mhz), and will make your Amiga 500 (when you play Frontier or Wing Commander, more demanding type of games), running on the speed something like A1200.

It's plugged externally, so you never need to open your Amiga.

[DisasterIncarna]

isnt the pistorm kinda the go-to for stuff like this with the extra benefits on top?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

TI am actually considering a A600 instead as it will be less hassle. I don't actually own any Amiga at the moment and the A500 was the only one I owned back in the day so that's the one with the nostalgia factor. But a A600 may be less hassle as it has IDE built in and the A1200 is far too expensive for me.

You can get A1200s cheap if you look long enough and are prepared to buy one that needs collecting and needs to be refurbished. I bought mine for under £200 and then spent another £60 getting it recapped and £100 on a Pistorm32 Lite.

A600s are highly collected these days compared to the number sold, you'll pay more for A600 than the price of an A500+HDD adapter. A600s also can be prone to needed a recap.

If you hunt, someone will be selling A500 HDD controller cheap because lots of A500 users upgraded to PiStorm. MKL interface is the cheapest but needs two solders / clips. Maybe look for an A590 or GVP HD8+ or maybe consider PiStorm.

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

isnt the pistorm kinda the go-to for stuff like this with the extra benefits on top?

Certainly is. They can be had for as little as £80. Fastest A500 HDD implementation (+20MB/s), 128MB RAM, 060 like acceleration, RTG 2D gfx card, Wifi network controller potential in the future for 3D gfx card, sound card etc. but it also transforms the Amiga into a completely different experience. If nostalgia is what you're after then maybe this isn't the right solution.

[dreadnought]

I can second ACA 500+ recommendation, it's an amazing add on. But at 160 Euros certainly not cheap. That said, if you factor in all the other expenses (A600 + some other solution) you might be not far off that price anyway.

Another thing to consider is that if you want to run WHDLoad to full effect, some simple solution might be not enough. ACA 500+ takes care of these things though. I'm not an expert though so maybe somebody else can explain it better (having enough chip ram, etc).

[Fuzzball]

Thanks for all the info. The ACA500+ is very pricey but I think that would be the best option especially as it is external. I would definitely want a case for it though. Just having that board hanging off the side looks terrible.

[Marchie]

If you have a parallel port Zip drive lying around you can use that.

You need a custom cable, but it’s still possibly the cheapest option…

[Jope]

Originally Posted by fgh

(These cheap versions need a modified kickstart to be bootable)

Only if you want to continue running 1.3.

A600 versions of 2.05 37.300 and newer releases have the driver built in.

[Tajmaster]

These will give you 8MB RAM and IDE:

https://amigastore.eu/929-ide68k-got...stram-8mb.html

Then you just need to add a Compact Flash card, configured as you like. There are loads of tutorials on YouTube on how to use a PC to set up the CF card such as:

[ Show youtube player ]

This will give you a basic Workbench install on your CF card. Just add WHDLoad and games and you're good to go. There are also tutorials on YouTube on how to do this too.

Probably best to upgrade your Kickstart ROM at the same time (I use 3.1 on mine, no point using the newer 3.2 on a standard A500 and if its just for nostalgia)