They certainly are much more reliable than their predecessor (the C64), but then by the time Commodore had got around to the C64C, the reliability of their manufacturing process had improved considerably. The reliability then started to go down again after the A500 when they moved to surface mount caps that had a much shorter shelf life, but then they are also easy to fix if you catch them before they leak and destroy your motherboard.
@@DavePoo2 Agree with that, only thing i have found commodore where going cheap on plastics, if u find a500 with the hong kong manufacturing, avoid the plastic is brittle and cracks all over the place.German version are built to last.
The 500 normally is the most sturdy and durable of all Amiga models. And the most sold model. But a few of them start to have tired/worn-out caps by now. I would say an RGBtoHDMI upgrade, 512k trapdoor and then a Gotek upgrade. Recap it fully, and you will have an 500 for the next 20 years, that are useable with modern monitors. Hence future proof'ed.
@@DavePoo2 Yup. Commodore skipped out of the cost of japanese, and went with chinese off brand when going smd. A few of the older 500's and even c64's need recap these days. Because all caps have an end of life.
Wow! You got a great deal on that one! I've got a Rev.5 too. I've tried some ram expansions but found out that I had to do one or two modifications to the motherboard, which I was reluctant to do because I want to keep my Amiga as pure as possible. So I went for the ACE2b from Individual Computers. That's a board which you put in the socket where the Fat Agnus is located and you need to place a socket between Gary and the main board. This module ups the chip ram to 2 megs.
I didn't think the A500 could address more than 1/2 Mb of chip ram, but i've not looked into it too much. Did you need a different Agnus chip to do that?
@@DavePoo2 No, this thing completely replaces Fat Agnus. I think it can be best described as a board which takes all memory related tasks over from the main system by taking over the role of Fat Agnus and hooking in on the signals from Gary. The complete description on what it is and how it works is on the icomp de website. This is far into the world of Amiga wizardry BTW. I can only confirm that it works. :-)
@@tfksworldoflinux Ok that at least makes sense. Agnus on the A500 only had 18-bit registers for the pointers to memory, and would never be able to access 2Mb of chip RAM. So it makes sense that you need to replace the A500 Agnus to do that,
Great vid. I’ve recently got my 500+ back from my mum’s loft clear out. It’s still in good condition but the drive doesn’t load any disks. It recognises the disk and tries to load it but then goes back to the load screen. Any ideas?
The drive might be dirty, that would be the first thing to check, or the stepper motor can get stuck if left for years. You might also want to check in the trapdoor to see if there is a battery on the ram expansion? if so you want to get it out of there before it leaks.
That looks like a nice A500 for the money. Sadly I sold mine a couple of years back, but it did fetch a lot more than £65! (I do have an A1200 though which I kept, but would like to get another A500 one day)
The A1200's are still worth a lot of money. I never owned an A1200 back in the day, but I've been wanting to get one. I've bid on quite a few on eBay, broken or faulty ones that i could probably fix, but they all went for well over £200 so i let them go. In the end I saw one for £280 buy-it-now that looked in reasonable condition but the floppy drive was not working. I made an offer for £240 and the seller accepted it, so I bought it. Hopefully it won't be Lemon when it arrives, but i was quite surprised that the seller accepted the offer, as even ones that wouldn't boot were selling for quite high prices.
@@DavePoo2 Wow, I didn't know they were that pricey! Mine cost me £30 complete with a box full of games and other software, but that was about 10 years ago 🙂. It does have rather yellow keys, but works well, and with the IDE built in it's easy to add an SD card hard disk.
@@MrJozza65 yeah the price is really high, probably because not that many were made compared to the A500. The one I am getting has very yellow keys too, but that can be fixed. I've got an SD card in my A600 as it has the same IDE on interface, they work really well. You got a bargain for £30, they all now go for around £200 or more.
L'A500 rev.5 quando disattiva l'audio filter,spegne il led power.secondo te si riesce a modificarlo in modo che il led power invece di spegnersi,ha il dimmer come la rev.6?,te lo chiedo perché il fatto che si spegne il led mi ha sempre dato fastidio,avevo un rev.5 e lo venduto per questo,e ho preso dei rev.6.se non ho risposta mi informerò in un'altro modo,devo saperlo
I've been playing a bit of Rainbow Islands & R-type recently. I went to play "Tiny Bobble" on it (a really good 2020 remake of Bubble Bobble), but it needs more than 1/2mb of memory. I've tried that ram expansion out and it doesn't appear to work.
@@DavePoo2 Try to clean or replace the on/off switch. Sometimes dirt keeps them to open/close the circuit properly. This kind of memory is quite simple and doesn't even include an RTC + battery, so unless any memory chip is faulty, it should work. Check the electrolytic cap on it too. If you already have another A500, try the memory there.
It's not that the memory doesn't do anything when turned on. The computer boots, but the floppy drive fails to engage at all, so i suspect that one or more the chips may have a fault. I've checked the switch with a multi meter and it's good, the cap visually looks good, is not short and is holding a charge.
If i remember right for some games you would have to turn off the ram expansion in the bay. I have a A500 sitting in the loft my aunt gave it to no idea where she got it from, I never turned it on powerpack did not look safe.
Totally was. I don't know if all A500's sell for this cheap on eBay. One thing i suspect is that because the listing picture had a joke "Panic" button stuck to the case above the escape key, it looked on the picture like the case had been cut and modded, so maybe some people ignored the listing because of that. Also it didn't come with a power supply so anyone who doesn't have one wouldn't be able to power it.
Now that's the stuff my childhood dreams were made of
a500 were the bullet proof of Amigas, great machines!
They certainly are much more reliable than their predecessor (the C64), but then by the time Commodore had got around to the C64C, the reliability of their manufacturing process had improved considerably. The reliability then started to go down again after the A500 when they moved to surface mount caps that had a much shorter shelf life, but then they are also easy to fix if you catch them before they leak and destroy your motherboard.
@@DavePoo2 Agree with that, only thing i have found commodore where going cheap on plastics, if u find a500 with the hong kong manufacturing, avoid the plastic is brittle and cracks all over the place.German version are built to last.
We had this in my home growing up, brings back a lot of memories.
Yep, it was and is a fantastic computer, I'm sure many feel the same way about it.
I now have an overwhelming urge to play R-Type.
I played up to level 3 on the Amiga the other day. It's pretty good. The c64 version is good too.
The 500 normally is the most sturdy and durable of all Amiga models. And the most sold model. But a few of them start to have tired/worn-out caps by now. I would say an RGBtoHDMI upgrade, 512k trapdoor and then a Gotek upgrade. Recap it fully, and you will have an 500 for the next 20 years, that are useable with modern monitors. Hence future proof'ed.
I was suprised the caps still work. But no surface mount caps in there, so it seems to survive better than the newer models
@@DavePoo2 Yup. Commodore skipped out of the cost of japanese, and went with chinese off brand when going smd. A few of the older 500's and even c64's need recap these days. Because all caps have an end of life.
@@brostenen I've also got a C64C with original caps (all through hole, some of them are Nichicon), and that works fine too (so far)
Wow! You got a great deal on that one! I've got a Rev.5 too. I've tried some ram expansions but found out that I had to do one or two modifications to the motherboard, which I was reluctant to do because I want to keep my Amiga as pure as possible. So I went for the ACE2b from Individual Computers. That's a board which you put in the socket where the Fat Agnus is located and you need to place a socket between Gary and the main board. This module ups the chip ram to 2 megs.
I didn't think the A500 could address more than 1/2 Mb of chip ram, but i've not looked into it too much. Did you need a different Agnus chip to do that?
@@DavePoo2 No, this thing completely replaces Fat Agnus. I think it can be best described as a board which takes all memory related tasks over from the main system by taking over the role of Fat Agnus and hooking in on the signals from Gary. The complete description on what it is and how it works is on the icomp de website. This is far into the world of Amiga wizardry BTW. I can only confirm that it works. :-)
@@tfksworldoflinux Ok that at least makes sense. Agnus on the A500 only had 18-bit registers for the pointers to memory, and would never be able to access 2Mb of chip RAM. So it makes sense that you need to replace the A500 Agnus to do that,
Great vid. I’ve recently got my 500+ back from my mum’s loft clear out. It’s still in good condition but the drive doesn’t load any disks. It recognises the disk and tries to load it but then goes back to the load screen. Any ideas?
The drive might be dirty, that would be the first thing to check, or the stepper motor can get stuck if left for years. You might also want to check in the trapdoor to see if there is a battery on the ram expansion? if so you want to get it out of there before it leaks.
That looks like a nice A500 for the money. Sadly I sold mine a couple of years back, but it did fetch a lot more than £65! (I do have an A1200 though which I kept, but would like to get another A500 one day)
The A1200's are still worth a lot of money. I never owned an A1200 back in the day, but I've been wanting to get one. I've bid on quite a few on eBay, broken or faulty ones that i could probably fix, but they all went for well over £200 so i let them go. In the end I saw one for £280 buy-it-now that looked in reasonable condition but the floppy drive was not working. I made an offer for £240 and the seller accepted it, so I bought it. Hopefully it won't be Lemon when it arrives, but i was quite surprised that the seller accepted the offer, as even ones that wouldn't boot were selling for quite high prices.
@@DavePoo2 Wow, I didn't know they were that pricey! Mine cost me £30 complete with a box full of games and other software, but that was about 10 years ago 🙂. It does have rather yellow keys, but works well, and with the IDE built in it's easy to add an SD card hard disk.
@@MrJozza65 yeah the price is really high, probably because not that many were made compared to the A500. The one I am getting has very yellow keys too, but that can be fixed. I've got an SD card in my A600 as it has the same IDE on interface, they work really well. You got a bargain for £30, they all now go for around £200 or more.
Lucky you.....Good game..thanks very much. Nice machine and video .
It is a very nice machine. I have been enjoying playing on it when I get a spare moment.
What a bargain man. What a great interesting video I loved my 500+
It was a great deal, really surprised that it had no faults.
L'A500 rev.5 quando disattiva l'audio filter,spegne il led power.secondo te si riesce a modificarlo in modo che il led power invece di spegnersi,ha il dimmer come la rev.6?,te lo chiedo perché il fatto che si spegne il led mi ha sempre dato fastidio,avevo un rev.5 e lo venduto per questo,e ho preso dei rev.6.se non ho risposta mi informerò in un'altro modo,devo saperlo
Enjoy your new Amiga. Excellent value!. Stop recording and keep playing :-)
I've been playing a bit of Rainbow Islands & R-type recently. I went to play "Tiny Bobble" on it (a really good 2020 remake of Bubble Bobble), but it needs more than 1/2mb of memory. I've tried that ram expansion out and it doesn't appear to work.
@@DavePoo2 Try to clean or replace the on/off switch. Sometimes dirt keeps them to open/close the circuit properly. This kind of memory is quite simple and doesn't even include an RTC + battery, so unless any memory chip is faulty, it should work. Check the electrolytic cap on it too. If you already have another A500, try the memory there.
It's not that the memory doesn't do anything when turned on. The computer boots, but the floppy drive fails to engage at all, so i suspect that one or more the chips may have a fault. I've checked the switch with a multi meter and it's good, the cap visually looks good, is not short and is holding a charge.
@@DavePoo2 Can't wait for your next video repairing the floppy drive ;-)
If i remember right for some games you would have to turn off the ram expansion in the bay. I have a A500 sitting in the loft my aunt gave it to no idea where she got it from, I never turned it on powerpack did not look safe.
Yeah, I remember something like that too, but when i had a 500, i don't remember ever having to turn the expansion off.
Check your 500 to see if it has a memory expansion with a battery on it. If so take it out as the batteries can leak and damage everything.
probably rev 5 borad....I have an A500 that had torx at well...
Correct, it is Rev 5
time to put pistorm in it LOL
bargin
Totally was. I don't know if all A500's sell for this cheap on eBay. One thing i suspect is that because the listing picture had a joke "Panic" button stuck to the case above the escape key, it looked on the picture like the case had been cut and modded, so maybe some people ignored the listing because of that. Also it didn't come with a power supply so anyone who doesn't have one wouldn't be able to power it.