Benefits of an 8MB Ram Expansion in A500

[paul2010]

I can pick up a DataFlyer expansion card with 8MB on it for my Amiga A500 for around £15 and I was wondering if it will provide any benefits other than being able to use WHDLoad on a hard drive.

Will it have any impact on my A500-only games?

I only use my Amiga for gaming and I could also type the occasional office document (although I do this on my PC).

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by paul2010

I can pick up a DataFlyer expansion card with 8MB on it for my Amiga A500 for around £15 and I was wondering if it will provide any benefits other than being able to use WHDLoad on a hard drive.

Will it have any impact on my A500-only games?

I only use my Amiga for gaming and I could also type the occasional office document (although I do this on my PC).

well...an A500 with 1mb ram is a complete system for old games
but if you have 8mb memory...it's a bit better cause
a few games make use of extra memory if present
I remember Mortal Kombat 2 have more sounds and another enhancements if you have more of 1mb memory....also Monkey island 1 and 2...make use of extra ram if found
also some games uses that extra memory to maintain certain parts of the game allocated always in memory.....specially large games...(3 diks or more)
but if you also have an A1200 with some memory you really don't need that expansion for your A500

[paul2010]

Does anyone know where I might be able to buy an outer casing for the card?

It's supplied on its own and I'm a bit worried about having an exposed card near my carpet and handling it etc.

I don't know if it ever came with an outer casing, as the seller says it was designed to go in the Zorro II slot of the 'bigger' amigas (e.g. A3000 and A4000).

[alexh]

Sounds like it is not the A500 version and so there is no outer casing. It's the A2000 version which is not usable with A500.

Although you could get it for swaps with someone else?

[paul2010]

Originally Posted by alexh

Sounds like it is not the A500 version and so there is no outer casing. It's the A2000 version which is not usable with A500.

Although you could get it for swaps with someone else?

I've just found the manual for it and it says you can only connect it to the A2000 or a DataFlyer 500 (i.e. piggybacking).

[Fabie]

Originally Posted by paul2010

Oh, so that's what the 'Plus/A2000' writing on the circuit board means.

The seller's written this in the description:


"This expansion card can be used with A500, A1000, A2000, A3000 and A4000 systems, on A500 it connects via the side expansion port and A2000 etc in a Zorro II slot."

check here
http://bboah.claunia.com/dataflyer.html
the A500 version of course is the first image

[Electra]

I had 2.3mb ram total in my old 1.3 A500 and the only real advantage (for me that is) was to load the contents of complete disks into ram for cracking, copying etc.

[deicidal]

I used to use the hardrive installation sometimes and do it to ram to save loading times, ie populouse 2.