A500 rev 6a or A500+ for use with ACA500+?

[butfluffy]

i'm looking to get an amiga setup again after using winuae for a number of years.
some modern solutions sound very good and i'm looking to get a ACA500+ but i'm not sure what amiga type is going to work best with it.
research suggest that i need to get a revision with agnus 8372A to be able to turn trap door expansion memory into 1MByte-Chipram.
does all revision of the 500+ contain the right agnus chip to be able to do this also or am i better off just byuying an amiga 500 rev 6 with 8372A?
shopping for used amiga can be a pain because a lot of sellers don't list any spec details and if all A500+ models are compatible with trap door chipmem setting i was thinking it could be easier just to buy a A500+
any hel would be great guys.

[Jope]

An A500+ is probably the best choice, since you can get 2MB of Chip RAM. The ACA500+ will provide the C00000 RAM.

[turrican9]

Like Jope said, A500 + is best since you can get 2MB chip. However, Rev 6A A500s have the 8372A Agnus and the ACA500 Plus will give you 1MB chip when having 512KB in the trapdoor on the A500. For whdload 1MB chip + some fast RAM is enough on ECS machines. Very, very few games require more than 1MB chip. The few that required more than 1MB chip has been updated to work with 1MB chip for the most part. Maybe sensible world of soccer has not been updated yet. But that game has slowdown issues anyway when running whdload version.

Another one that comes to mind is Dungeon Master 2. It was announced as an AGA game. But they say it will run on ECS Amigas as long as you have 2MB chip. I couldn't get the whdload version working on a A500 + with 2MB chip and ACA 500 Plus. It just told me I had to have an AGA machine or something.

As said, 1MB chip + fast RAM is really enough for whdload gaming on ECS machines.

[butfluffy]

thanks for the reply guys.
sounds like both options work good.
at least with the a500+ option i gather that i can just buy any a500+ and not worry about revision chips?
iwas going to throw a gotek in the machine aswell. i'm assuming the goteks work just as well with a500+ as as with a500?

[Jope]

OCS/ECS games probably won't need the 2MB, but what if you want to run many programs on their own screens and then decide to listen to a protracker module at the same time?

[butfluffy]

i find it kinda complicated when looking into using real hardware.
for example when running A500+ with 2mb chipmem and ACA500+ does picky games that require just the trap door expansion work ok?
also what about games that are picky and would not work with the trap door expansion installed? i know that the solution for those games was to either remove the expansion or get a switch wired that can enable and disable the expansion.

[Jope]

The ACA has a boot menu where you can adjust these things. As said, it provides the ram that goes into the c00000 trapdoor area for you in a chip only machine.

[butfluffy]

yeah the aca does seem to be very useful indeed.
being able to load different kickstarts for picky games is a great feature. there are some old games that don't seem to work without KS1.2.
thanks for all the help

[Jope]

You can load 1.2 in there and limit Chip RAM as well. Can't remember whether it actually ships with a 1.2 image already present.

[butfluffy]

seems it has ks1.2, 1.3 and 3.1 alreay ready in flash rom.
also more can be added to remaining slots it seems.
the ability to boot into other kickstarts is a strong selling point for me. even moreso if i'm going to get an amiga 500+ which will have ks2.04.
2.04 is known to have afair amount of compatibility issues with some good classics games.
really the device sounds like the answer to all my amiga woes whenever i have had it in mind to get a setup.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by butfluffy

seems it has ks1.2, 1.3 and 3.1 alreay ready in flash rom.
also more can be added to remaining slots it seems.
the ability to boot into other kickstarts is a strong selling point for me. even moreso if i'm going to get an amiga 500+ which will have ks2.04.
2.04 is known to have afair amount of compatibility issues with some good classics games.
really the device sounds like the answer to all my amiga woes whenever i have had it in mind to get a setup.

Yes, if you want to play floppy games you can configure an A500 + with kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 via ACA 500 Plus and have 512KB slow RAM added by the ACA 500 Plus aswell. And also run at standard clockspeed for full compatability. Basically making it into a standard A500 with kickstart 1.2/1.3 and 512KB/512KB Chip/Slow RAM.

ACA 500 Plus is by far the best upgrade for A500/A500 Plus computers in my opinion.

[butfluffy]

yeah it really sounds like what i've been wanting.
thanks for all the input guys.

[butfluffy]

ordered my ACA 500+ last night and lookinmg forward to it.
one more thing which i think is in regards to OCS games running on ECS machines. i stumbled upon this in a forum regarding compatibility issues.
"A lot of the older Amiga games will not run on an ECS Amiga because of the 1 meg of Chip ram. These games expect to find only 512K of Chip memory and Fast memory right after that 512K of Chip ram"
now i'm not sure if this issue of playing some OCS games on ECS systems is also circumvented by the ACA 500+ using options. as mentioned above by turrican9 or if this is a different issue entirely?
i apologise if this last question is repeating an earlier one but i don't know.

[Jope]

Should fix what needs to be fixed. There are some other OCS <-> ECS incompatibilities, but as far as I remember, games rarely suffer from those, it's more of a problem with ancient demos/intros.

[turrican9]

If you have 2MB chip it will stay at 2MB chip and the ACA 500 Plus will add 512KB of slow RAM at C00000 if you configure it like that. As far as I know it wouldn't matter if you have 512KB/1MB or 2MB of chip RAM for those old softwares. I think the important bit is that they look for 512KB at C00000 and that you use kickstart 1.2 or 1.3.

I could be wrong though. But the few tests I've done with games that require 512KB at C00000 they worked fine even if I had 1MB or 2MB chip RAM.

[butfluffy]

ok thanks for the info guys.
i was doing some more research into it last night and yeah it seems like a lot of stuff is controlled by the ACA 500+ settings compatibility wise.
do i just need one of these to make a standard a500+ 2m? http://amigakit.amiga.store/a500-mem...l?currency=GBP
i came across another memory upgrade which was 2m. it makes the chip 2m but then also adds slow ram when performing a mod and gary adpater.
i was thinking that the solder mod version will not be neede as the ACA 500 plaus provides the slow ram.
the amigakit 1m upgrade is just plug n play and i was hoping that this is all i would need?

edit: also guys when i get an a500+ if it still has the battery on the board. can it be easily removed without de-soldering?
and once the battery is rmoved how does the RTC work? does the ACA 500+ cover rtc clock functions aswell. looking at it i don't think it does without an accelerator which has an rtc attached.
i gather i'm probably better of finding an amiga 500+ which has already had the battery removed and replaced by coin battery holder?

[turrican9]

You only need the 1MB chip upgrade, for a total of 2MB chip RAM. The other one with the Gary adapter is not compatible with the ACA 500 Plus anyway.

You can cut away the battery with some sidecutters or desolder it. But if it has leaked you need to clean the area properly with some vinegear and then clean with some isoprop. Unless there is extensive damage. Then you need someone who is skilled with electronics to have a look at it.

You can either replace it with a coin cell holder or you could buy an RTC module for the ACA 500 Plus.

RTC module you can plug directly into the ACA 500 Plus

Coin Battery adapter to replace the varta battery on the motherboard

[butfluffy]

oh that sounds cool.
if i were to get the RTC module i wonder if they have them anywhere else.
i already ordered my aca 500+ from idividual computers and they have an issue shipping to the uk if the order is under 135 uk pounds so i had to get one or two otehr items i wanted to be able to check out.
so i will not be able to buy the module from them.
thanks for all the help. i'm beginning to have a better grasp of this lol.

edit. i found one on amigakit that looks the same but it does not mention if it is a500+ compatible or ACA 500 compatible
http://amigakit.amiga.store/real-tim...l?currency=GBP

edit 2 - i had a bit of luck with this and individual computers allowed me to add the rtc module to my order. now to buy a gotek and mount with oled and rotary on top mini box and 1m ram expansion.