Amiga 500 upgrade options?

[Doctor Clu]

So far I have added the 3.1 kickstart rom, added the Gotek floppy emulator, and look forward to adding the 8 mb with IDE soon to my Rev 3 motherboard Amiga 500.

I was curious what other mods would work well with the above?

I have heard the suggestion of upgrading to a Super Denise, and removing anything from the lower hatch ram bay as that slows down the Amiga 500 using that port.

My primary use for the Amiga would be calling BBS's, sometimes games, and occationally for writing (word processing.)

Truthfully the stock Amiga 500 was good for the above, but being in an Amiga club it is fun to push a computer to the limits.

What would you all advise?

[zipper]

Limits? Micronik A500 tower + Blizzard 2060 + Picasso IV
(well, Cyberstorm PPC developer board, too - but they are so scarce...)

[Doctor Clu]

Originally Posted by zipper

Limits? Micronik A500 tower + Blizzard 2060 + Picasso IV
(well, Cyberstorm PPC developer board, too - but they are so scarce...)

Yeh should probably add that I'm an Amiga user with a moderate to good budget, but not crazy budget.

[ajack]

I am waiting for Majsta's Vampire 500...

[alexh]

The vampire 500 has been replaced / succeed by the Apollo/Phoenix Cyclone 5 boards being produced now.

[ajack]

Still waiting for the Cyclone 5...

[Promilus]

Cyclone V? I mean Vampire 600 was on Cyclone II iirc so I guess they went with cyclone V because of higher speeds and more LE, right? Unfortunately I think it is kinda more expensive and less "solder by yourself" friendly (BGA) so no "outsourcing" diy kits like with vampire 600 (which I believe apart of Igor 2 or 3 other persons did assembly).

[majsta]

Just to mention BGA is much easier to solder by yourself than QFP, practically with BGA you don't need to do much just use pizza oven to solder it

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by majsta

Just to mention BGA is much easier to solder by yourself than QFP, practically with BGA you don't need to do much just use pizza oven to solder it

Disputable without x-ray machine to verify correctness - it works in past with lead based solder but now, with ROHS balls you never can be sure (and starting soldering from reballing BGA sound a bit odd).

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by majsta

Just to mention BGA is much easier to solder by yourself than QFP, practically with BGA you don't need to do much just use pizza oven to solder it

Really, don't even think about it.
1. you have absolutely no real component temperature control
2. you probably have also no control over heating time and absolutely no heating/cooling profiles for proper joints (yes, that's the big deal with BGA and so that's why automated machines for reflow process costs several hundreds of thousands euro).
For prototyping - no big deal, you can buy fairly inexpensive hot air station, buy some balls, masks, fluxes etc. and solder it just like ppl do reballing of xbox or nv cards. TQFP gives you easy visual inspection of joints (yes, that might be even automated one, look at TRI solutions) - BGA joints can't be observed unless you use xray and even then you lack 3D (so there are several shots on different angle and then all those pics put together with sophisticated algorithm to achieve pseudo 3D view of balls). For me, a person who actually repair both tqfp and bga populated boards using "cheap diy" approach equals a lot of wasted material and substandard quality of finished product. And defects like "head in a pillow" can pop up even few months after production! Plus BGA typically requires more layers of PCB. That said I'm really looking forward for your new designs.
regards
Promil

[Zetr0]

@thread

Cheap mods are the key here, I would urge a small modification to your motherboard to give access to 1MB of CHIP (as opposed to the standard 512kB).

With the Gotek, Kipper K508+IDE and Kickstart 3.1 I don't see anything else that A500 could want to be honest.

Of course you could go crazy with an ACA500 and an A123x accelerator or even B1260 but you might as well get an A1200 instead and benefit from 2MB CHIP as well


@Promilus

I have to admit that TQFP (Thin Quad Flat Packages) are simple for an experienced solderer. There are a few techniques like drag-soldering and hoofing that work well. These techniques are well represented on YouTube and should take a moderately experienced solderer little time to pick up IMHO.

In regards to BGA, if you are making a finished product then I completely agree that you need to have it professionally built, the tolerances are really too tight for the "solder at home" production runs. Reworking stations are OK, but to do it properly you need the better part of £1,000 of kit and it should mainly be used for prototyping or repair and not medium to large scale production.