A500 IDE and/or Ethernet solution? OK, a crazy idea...

[rlake]

OK, so the 1200 solves both of these quite easily but how about retrofitting an A500?... What's the likelhood of adding IDE / 10BaseT / networking support to an A500, i.e. all things considered such as availability of hardware etc.? :theparano

ICD (http://www.icd.com/) seem to have a nice IDE solution without necessarily using the side connector, but alas it's quite expensive and are there any UK or European suppliers? Also, even without a shell to house it, a Buddha adaptor looks great value (autoboot from kickstart 1.3) but can anybody confirm it works with an A500? Booting, 3.5" drives, CD support all required.

For the ethernet, I've seen Zorro adaptors but again would these work on a A500? e.g. X Surf.

Overall, the best solution out of this lot will be fighting for a zorro slot so what about bus boards... and what about power? The fact a big box would need to be constructed and bolted on the side is not a concern!

Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

[RetroMan]

The X-Surf only works in a Zorro II Slot, the expansion slot on an A500 is a Zorro I Slot .... only solution : try to get a Zorro II BusBoard at Ebay perhaps .... I once had one, but my A500 died before I could box it in a PC Big Tower

[rlake]

A tower you say... now that's an idea...

[rlake]

Well, my memory was a little hazy as to precisely which type of connector was on the A500 so thanks for clearing that up! Seems like both A500/A1200 have a "pseudo" Zorro II slot => bus board needed for either.

I think I sourced a bus board... well, a ribbon cable type thing with 1 Zorro II and a pass through. So, it should be flexible enough to allow the construction of an external housing to accomodate the boards! I saw an A500 tower hack page but I think I'll give that a miss and knock something "special" up out of a few brackets and MDF, unless I can source an empty steel "wedge" housing. A bit of cream paint and it'll look the business.

From what I can tell from various sources, a Buddha Flash should work regardless of using the bus board so I can hook that up to the pass through and have a Zorro II free for the X Surf, is that right?

Oh, and which 3rd party TCP/IP stack (if any!) works best under kickstart 1.3?

[RetroMan]

Nope, the Buddha Flash is also designed for Zorro II so it won´t work sorry ! Anyway ... I never ever used a TCP/IP Stack in OS 1.3, I´m really not sure if it works

[rlake]

Never mind. The idea was to set up a networked A500 just to try out some assembler / C coding on a real Amiga with easy, efficient transfer of files. But, by the looks of it the only way to do that would be to have a combined unit comprising hard drive controller / kickstart-switcher with 3.1 ROMs (for networking support, and switchable compatibility). I don't think I'm likely to find any of those listed on http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ for sale anymore!

I have had another couple of ideas though:

1. Use the single Zorro II slot provided by this cable I saw to drive a Buddha Flash. Then, I could put both HD and CD drives on it and transfer files (one way) by burning a CD on my PC.

2. I just found a product at http://www.icd.com/ but it costs quite a lot in comparison to the Buddha option. However, I could get an externally housed / powered SCSI CD drive to plug into the back and it'd all look "neat".

At the end of the day, I'd be happy if I could make a bootable CD to bring the system up should the worst happen, i.e. all workbench floppys go bad etc. So, it'd have tools to prepare / format a hard disk and so forth.

It's a nice little project for the summer anyhow! :eek

SCSI controllers for the A500 are quite easy to find on eBay - at least on ebay.de (lots of amiga stuff there) - and they look neat indeed. Kickstart switchers can be found there for a few euros too.
I also recently saw people selling floppy-port network adapters, but they were bloody expensive.
The cheapest solution would be to network two machines by serial or parallel. Not really fast but sufficient for your average 68k.
Also keep in mind that ZII machines can't manage more than 8MB fast.

// RetroMan : Please do not use direct signature, use your UserCP instead ...

[RetroMan]

Originally posted by NoX
Also keep in mind that ZII machines can't manage more than 8MB fast.

Not really, my A2000 got 64MB Fast But it´s because of the Blizzard 2060 which can manage up to 128MB

[rlake]

Thanks guys. I have found a nice IDE controller on Ebay but haven't heard a response back from the seller if he'll ship outside continental europe (i.e. UK!). I may just have to bid anyway and claim ignorance, I mean I'm willing to pay a little extra for shipping! Also, it's a lot cheaper than getting a Buddha etc. and I don't have to worry about a case.

As for fast RAM I'm not sure if I'll expand the A500 at all, but yes I was aware of the limit since the CPU can only address 16 MB -all helps to get full on "classic" experience. I can't imagine a hard disk on its own interfering too much.

Still waiting to see what a real Amiga will look like on my LCD monitor though... I think interlace modes will be "interesting" but it may handle those quite nicely due to its composite / S-video inputs.

[RetroMan]

The A500 is limited to 2MB Chip and 8MB Fast

[jmmijo]

I have two A500's, both with GVP A530 Turbo expansions. These are the 030/SCSI combo's with RAM expansion. I was always wondering why they wouldn't allow larger RAM expansion on these things then 8MB, well because the A500 can address more then this even with a 32-bit accelerator I guess

@Rlake, if you can find one of these at a good price get one. It also has a separate power supply for the unit and an external DB25 SCSI connector for external SCSI devices or expansion boxes. Also note that you can replace the internal EC030 CPU with a full fledged 030 up to 50MHz as well as either a 881/882 math co.

[rlake]

Yeah, I've been trying really hard to find a GVP product -I may have found one but I'm really not going to pay this kind of price with shipping and duty on top also:

http://amiga-israel.hypermart.net/Products_1.html

19. GVP A500 Controller with HD : $179.95
98. GVP A500 040/25 SCSI-2 / RAM Controller : $374.95


I'll look it up properly on http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ and place a wanted ad on Amibench I think.

Alternatively, the best option I have so far is an A590 SCSI drive for sale. Failing that, I could have a word with a friend's dad to see if he'd give up his A500+A590 for a reasonable price -I doubt it though!

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by rlake
Alternatively, the best option I have so far is an A590 SCSI drive for sale. Failing that, I could have a word with a friend's dad to see if he'd give up his A500+A590 for a reasonable price -I doubt it though!

I hear you, not sure I'd want to give up mine either. Next project, get some more GVP RAM for these guys

If you've got a PC, you'd be far better off using its harddrive via a linkup program (AmigaToPC, anyone?).
ISTR there's an utility on aminet to boot from a remote drive. Or you can setup your own boot disk with the right assigns.

[rlake]

Originally posted by NoX
If you've got a PC, you'd be far better off using its harddrive via a linkup program (AmigaToPC, anyone?).
ISTR there's an utility on aminet to boot from a remote drive. Or you can setup your own boot disk with the right assigns.

Good suggestion, I really want to have SMB so I can set up a web server and use it with Linux etc. though. But, what I find interesting is that this made me think that I may be able to program a ROM to enable the card as a bootable autoconfig device (hey, I'm a computer scientist!). But, that'll need a small TCP/IP stack and a custom protocol, with supporting software on the PC. It could work... but a local hard drive is much easier.

The floppy network adaptors appear to use custom transmission by the way. With 10Base2/T there is at least hope of migrating to IPv6 easily.

[DrBong]

Originally posted by rlake
OK, so the 1200 solves both of these quite easily but how about retrofitting an A500?... What's the likelhood of adding IDE / 10BaseT / networking support to an A500, i.e. all things considered such as availability of hardware etc.? :theparano
ICD (http://www.icd.com/) seem to have a nice IDE solution without necessarily using the side connector, but alas it's quite expensive and are there any UK or European suppliers? Also, even without a shell to house it, a Buddha adaptor looks great value (autoboot from kickstart 1.3) but can anybody confirm it works with an A500? Booting, 3.5" drives, CD support all required.
For the ethernet, I've seen Zorro adaptors but again would these work on a A500? e.g. X Surf.
Overall, the best solution out of this lot will be fighting for a zorro slot so what about bus boards... and what about power? The fact a big box would need to be constructed and bolted on the side is not a concern!

OK, some good questions and I would have replied earlier in the week if it wasn't for the fact that I virtually slept at the office this week putting in 16+ hour days mostly in front of a PC (arghh!). Thank God it's the weekend......but I digress!!


Well, the availability of an ethernet card for the A500 that slots in on the side expansion bus would be virtually nil except for the fact that I have two such Hydranet cards sitting here gathering dust and doing nothing. If you or anyone else is interested in buying one of these then PM me (shameless sales plug I know!!)

Alternatively, you could try buying a Z2 slot card for the side expansion bus (like the Slingshot) and a Z2 ethernet card like X-Surf. Probably more expensive and Z2 slot cards are hard to find.

A third networking solution would be to do a serial link with the PC and use a TCP/IP stack to transfer files between the machines. An appropriate TCP/IP stack to use on A500/1.3/1Mb is Termite. I can upload Termite if you're interested. Otherwise there are PD programs that handle Amiga-PC file serial transfer on Aminet.

A final solution would be to transfer files via parallel link using one of the various (commercial/PD) programs available. Easylink (http://de.aminet.net/aminetbin/find?easylink), for example, is one of a handful of PD programs on Aminet that will do the job. You can find others on Aminet by doing a keyword search. Parallel transfer is kind of slow, though, and serial transfer is preferable.


If you're looking to go the pure Amiga route, then a GVP 530T is certainly a nice option. A wanted ad on AmiBench was certainly a good way to go about finding one of these nice beasties at a reasonable price. Just make sure it comes with 2/4/8Mb of memory since it uses custom 64pin GVP simms, which are hard to find and exorbitant to buy separately, even secondhand.

Otherwise, the GVP Impact Series II HD for the A500 is a nice alternative and can take 8Mb fastram (30 pin simms) as well as internal/external SCSI devices. The C= A590 really is a poor man's version of the GVP Impact and takes only 2Mb fastram max. using non-standard memory. The A590's SCSI/XT controller is very average also. Still, if you can get an A590 at a giveaway price it might be worth considering.

IDE options on the A500 are a little limited and quite expensive. I certainly wouldn't bother with ICD's IDE products for the A500 at new prices. Secondhand, they're hard to find unless you live in North America. The most popular IDE option in Europe was BSC's AlfaPower 500. It's quite a nice little side expansion HD unit that takes up to 8Mb fastram and draws power from the A500 itself (i.e. no external PSU unlike GVP Impact/530T, A590). Some models of the AlfaPower 500 took 72 pin ram and others took zips, which are rare and exorbitant. Either way, if you can find one at a reasonable price with enough memory it makes for a nice little unit.


Anyway, I've given a brief but detailed rundown of options here. Hope the info. proves useful. Good luck and let us know how (and which way) you go! 8-)

[rlake]

Yeah, that info is very useful thanks. I'll have to make a very considered decision or just try everything and see what I like!

[rlake]

OK, my initial hardware gathering phase is finally bearing fruit! I now have:

- 2 A500s, 1 A500+. All in very good condition, apart from a joystick port not working on an A500.
- 1 A500 memory expansion ("Power Board") -> for an A500 without an expansion already.
- 1 50Mb A590 hard drive.
- 1 broken (free!) hard drive. Once I have it I'll see what I can do.

...lots of other peripherals including disk drives, genlock etc. but most importantly...

- 1 Derringer 68030 @ 50MHz with 68882 FPU and 16 Mb RAM for £60 on Ebay from GVP-M of all people!

So, I think I'll make the fastest A500+ I ever saw and leave the A500's well alone for compatibility testing. I sure hope it all works, one step at a time I think... I'm only concerned about drilling the A500's box to make a switch for the 68000/68030 on the Derringer but I'm going to browse the RS catalogue tomorrow to see if can find a solderable jumper to make this task very straightforward.

All I need now is some time at home to build this machine and an ethernet expansion*.


*Shadowen, where are you?