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Best Upgrade for a A500+page  1 2 3 
Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
07 Apr 2011 17:55

I was wondering, might have to opportunity to do this as a project.
What is the best way to increase performance without doing extensive rework on the Main board?

(if you are wondering, yes i do a lot of projects at the same time)

André Jernung
Sweden
(MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
07 Apr 2011 18:03

I would say keeping your eyes open for a nice 030 CPU expansion.

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
07 Apr 2011 18:39

I currently have access to a PCB etching machine, so i was thinking in line of DIY.(proto boarding)

R. Leffmann
Sweden

Posts 16
07 Apr 2011 18:42

A hard drive side expansion with real fastmem, such as f.ex SupraDrive 500XP.


Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
07 Apr 2011 22:04

I would recommand also a turbo(&ram)card.
If you ask nicely Georg Braun ( EXTERNAL LINK ) may give you the schematics and eagle files of his accelerator for the phoenix board.
You can use it with a selfmade expansonportadapter on A500 or modify it to plug into the cpu socket.
 
And an IDE interface: http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/
But I guess your PCB etching machine is not good enough to get this working with original PCB size.

Jacek Rafal Tatko
Espania

Posts 607
09 Apr 2011 15:23

Hello Marcel ,

Back then , not so long ago , ... , I enjoyed fitting an Alfapower IDE HDD 500/500+ (enclosed external hd , also should be possible to put a CF with an adapter to IDE ) with upto 8Mb Ram on an A500 ,

Also , I should mention here the GVP SCSI Impact Series II A500-HD+ , another Great (and best looking ) External Hd solution for the Amiga 500 .

What else is cool to have at hand to connect to an Amiga ... well there is also the Good ... Cartridge : Amiga Action Replay MK III , interesting tool to have fun with and peek and poke inside the software guts .

Fitting a rather expensive 030 turbo board with memory onboard and also mount a kickstart switch ... in order to take advantage of the higher OS and make games and apps compatible ... might be an experience to have .

The one thing that will not improve is graphics , unless you use a 'piccolo' external graphic card (not sure at all about the name now , but some know ... ) , it will be either OCS A500 or ECS A500+ .

ok ... , if you do this in a extended nerdy fashion then of course one could add also the Digital Image IR Mouse and The Wacom Digitizer II Graphic Tablet with all the extra functions and having a cordless pen to move around th screen and also paint some pixels in Deluxe Paint III+ ... or a Digital Image Cordless IR Trackball .

Some external Floppies are also a practical extension and a datatransfer cable via parallel link helps too . Configuring the hd via pc and emulator software is a good idea , imho .

(Why not enjoy also some modified Industrial Grade Joysticks with killer microswitches ... that clicky sound which is reliable and gives rise to great fun ? :)

Lastly , I was wondering ... if I should get 'rid' of some of these remaining gems - via private offer or ebay - since they might be more useful and a source of special joy to yet another Amiga Lover .

I remember to have played stunt car racer with two amigas connected via null modem cable , it was also quite funny to play one of the first multiplayer games side by side without split screens .

Ciao , and please have All a Nice Weekend , Enjoy the Sunlight ...·*O

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
09 Apr 2011 20:07

I read all sorts of fun idea's here, I am contemplating some things.
The amiga 500 only has a 24 address bus this means i can place some of the hardware outside this address range when i add a 32 bit address capable CPU.

I am looking at scheets of the 600 and 3000 on howto cheat a expansion.

Adding a harddisk drive and such in a manner the system would think of it as a native part or is simply blind for it.(memory map wise)

This is going to be fun.

Jacek you have my address. ;)

Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
09 Apr 2011 20:31

If you want to be able to tranfere data also to chipmemory without using the CPU to copy it from the 32 bit fastram to chipram you should rethink your idea.

This "turbo" 32-bit fastram is nothing special all better turbocards have it.

Amiga is usually very DMA driven that is why it took so long till IDE got used instead of SCSI. Also the Commodore IDE interfaces are the worest/slowest you find on the market they can not compete with there own older SCSI designs.

When your Kickstart (>=2.05) supports IDE you can build a simple A600 like IDE interface without any autoconfig but as it is PIO mode 0 it is slow.


Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
10 Apr 2011 02:21

Stefan I could get my hands on a gayle you know. ;)

Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
10 Apr 2011 09:19

Hope not for much money as the logic inside is very simple.
But I guess you would be one of very few persons implementing a IDE in a A500 using an a600 gayle chip (Gayle 45 391155-01/-02).
Commercially it has been done on the Viper 520-33-CD turbo board.
Dunno about the differences of the AGA gayle AA-Gayle-R5 391424-02 A1200, but it looks like a faster clockable version with minor pin differences.
Have a look here: EXTERNAL LINK (png version here: EXTERNAL LINK )
As Gayle has all Gary functions the Gary socket maybe a good place for your gayle PCB.

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
12 Apr 2011 08:26

Hey I have a silly question how many version are there in existance of the GARY chip?

Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
12 Apr 2011 13:02

As far as I know only 2 or 3 versions:

1) the "dicrete version" used in AMIGA 1000 and 2000(a)
2) the Gary chip used in Amiga 500, 2000(B) and CDTV
3) the Fat Gary chip used in A3000 and A4000

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
12 Apr 2011 16:56

This means i need to look closely to the A1000 schematic's since i need to know how the internals work and place Gary in a CLPD.
  (GAYLE and GARY would conflict, my solution looks like a GARY crashed into a FAT GARY into a GAYLE)
 
  Effectively what i am currently looking at are ECS AMIGA's memory maps. :/
  Very dry stuff.

Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
12 Apr 2011 22:56

As there are atleast two commercial pcbs where a gayle is connected to the a500 the conflicts can be solved.
The Viper 520 / 530 is e.g. connected via CPU socket and does not replace gary.
You can use a CPLD to create an IDE interface i gave you schematics of a discrete version above.
You don't have to look at A1000 and A600 schematics unless you want to replace gary with gayle.
And you don't have to reinvent the wheel here is a complete solution http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/

Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
(Moderator)
Posts 1097
12 Apr 2011 23:17


Flickerfixer and chunky pixels (Graffiti compatible, hello Nemac IV :-)
EXTERNAL LINK 
As for IDE, you don't even need a CPLD, there is this extremely simple design:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~leinone3/ide/a500ide.html


Stefan  
Germany

Posts 75
12 Apr 2011 23:27

This version is simple but not A600 IDE compatible, what means no autoboot (you need a bootdisk).

Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
(Moderator)
Posts 1097
12 Apr 2011 23:37

Or a patched Kickstart image to include the driver. :-)

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
13 Apr 2011 06:52

If i use a CLPD i can add DMA to the IDE, Besides i need a Fat GARY because i am gonna use a 68EC030

Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
(Moderator)
Posts 1097
13 Apr 2011 07:07

If you are doing your own board, you could go crazy and put a cheap FPGA on the board instead. :-)

You don't need the 68k, you don't need the CPLD, at least one less chip.

EXTERNAL LINK tg68

since you are not emulating any of the Amiga chipset, only the 68k, it could possibly be clocked pretty high. Also with the FPGA you get more liberty to choose which kind of RAM you want.

Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands

Posts 3974
13 Apr 2011 07:16

tg68 gives less performance then a 68EC030 on the same clock since it was made for size not speed.
Besides Cheap FPGA's use internal capacitators and have some wearing DRAM VS SRAM based logic.

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