Amiga 500 Rev 6a....Looking to upgrade with ACA500+ Genral Questions thread.

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hi all....managed to get a working Rev6a A500....yaaay Had a faulty Floppy drive.....but as we do i had a spare.


    ok As is....the A500 is super cool...but with only 512k chip.....i need more...With the OS1.3 rom i get 1mb as i have a awesome A512 in the trap door i dident need another A500 ram expansion but as It had a pass through port i thought it would be better than a normal 512k expansion.....and it has the all mighty Individual logo on lol With the os.3.1.4 rom i get 512k chip 512k fast/ranger ram.....ok i thought but i need more chip.


    Now....Ive been looking into the ACA500+ if im right the ACA500+ converts the trapdoor ram into chip ram....?....Also I dont think if i add another Chip ram card on the pass through of the A512 THAT also would become Chip ram....? giving me 1.5meg chip....?


    What would happen if i upgraded to a 2meg Agnus....?


    While I am here I would like to Thank EVERYONE on here and Jens for the Support and innovative products you make...Design.....Im very old school and have Brand Specific Loyalties towards Individual Computers and its products...Keep up the Great work.

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • Now....Ive been looking into the ACA500+ if im right the ACA500+ converts the trapdoor ram into chip ram....?....Also I dont think if i add another Chip ram card on the pass through of the A512 THAT also would become Chip ram....? giving me 1.5meg chip....?

    The ACA500plus will give you 1M Chipram in your config, but you cannot use the pass-through port, and no, you won't get 1.5M Chpi ram with a Rev.6 board.


    What would happen if i upgraded to a 2meg Agnus....?

    A Rev.6 board cannot take a 2M Chip ram Agnus, because the pinout is different from the 1M Chip ram Agnus that you currently have. NEVER insert a 2M Chip ram Agnus into a Rev. 6 board!

  • Huge thank you for the reply.....ok im stuck with only 1mb chip.......Super intrestind how you know all this tec info about our Amigas.


    Thanks for your acknowledgement of my compliment to you and your team ;-/

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • guess not then

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • Huge thank you for the reply.....ok im stuck with only 1mb chip.......Super intrestind how you know all this tec info about our Amigas.


    Thanks for your acknowledgement of my compliment to you and your team ;-/

    "While I am here I would like to Thank EVERYONE on here and Jens for the Support and innovative products you make...Design.....Im very old school and have Brand Specific Loyalties towards Individual Computers and its products...Keep up the Great work."


    Sorry its just me being old school...when someone pays you a compliment I acknowledge it .

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • Don't be sad. As this is a support forum we have the tendency to focus (only) on the technical aspects. Although I'm not responsible for the ACA500+ you did wrote "EVERYONE" in caps. So... thanks! I will continue to do my best on these innovative products for you and all other customers. Peace!

  • Peter is right - I do focus on solving tech problems here, and I quickly click on the next "open" thread if I don't see any work to do "here". I don't mean to be rude, just efficient. An honest thank-you also from my side. I do see all the eMails and forum posts here from satisfied customers, and it does influence my will to continue Amiga products. Although Cloanto is still constantly firing against fellow Amiga-related companies and us, they do seem to run out of ammo.


    Jens

  • Don't be sad. As this is a support forum we have the tendency to focus (only) on the technical aspects. Although I'm not responsible for the ACA500+ you did wrote "EVERYONE" in caps. So... thanks! I will continue to do my best on these innovative products for you and all other customers. Peace

    Thank you for your reply....now i understand.


    Peter is right - I do focus on solving tech problems here, and I quickly click on the next "open" thread if I don't see any work to do "here". I don't mean to be rude, just efficient. An honest thank-you also from my side. I do see all the eMails and forum posts here from satisfied customers, and it does influence my will to continue Amiga products. Although Cloanto is still constantly firing against fellow Amiga-related companies and us, they do seem to run out of ammo.


    Jens

    Yes I`m aware of your Battle against the Dark Side lol.....I admie what you do and sympathize with you......You sir are a living LEGEND and i wish there was something i could do to ease your pain.


    It wont be long before i order a ACA500+

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • Hi all...this project is still live.....but now i have a A500+


    my next question is....


    With the Current ACA500+(the firmware its shipped wih) firmware is it ok with a a Z500 zorro Adapter....?


    I have a Retina v1.1 Graphics card that 4mb but only uses 256K zorro address space....i want to use(only cost me £100)


    I have the Z500 and are saving up for a ACA500+


    Thanks Again


    Kind regards


    Mark Sealey

    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • With the Current ACA500+(the firmware its shipped wih) firmware is it ok with a a Z500 zorro Adapter....?

    It's not OK with any Zorro "adapter". The ACA500plus is built for direct connection to the computer. No other hardware should load the signals. This is clearly mentioned in the product description and in the manual. No exceptions. If you attempt to operate the ACA500plus in an unsupported configuration, you're either on your own (no support from us), or the vendor of your other gear is helping you.

  • Ok thank you for the Reply....i looked at the Description on the "shop page" and could not see anything stating nothing can be plugged in-between the ACA500+ but i can see That you cannot have anything plugged into the cpu slot "any internal expansion that uses the 68000 socket must be removed" so thank you again for bringing this to my attention....I can understand the battle you may have with Users having non standard Amigas and issues they may have.


    Kind regards


    Mark Sealey










    The ACA500plus is the successor to the popular ACA500. We've taken all our customer's suggestions, added more hardware and software, and turned an already-successful product into an Amiga user's dream.

    The existing concept of the ACA500 remains: It is your one-stop-shop tool for a quick and easy re-entry into the "hobby Amiga". We've looked at all the potential problems you might have when unboxing your A500 or A500+ after more than 20 years, and bundled all solutions into a single product that works on all A500 and A500+ revisions.

    The ACA500plus features an MC68SEC000 processor, 8MBytes RAM, 8MBytes Flash, two CF card slots, an Action Replay-compatible freezer and a stylish 7-segment display called "DisMo". Several expansion ports let you add even more functionality. If you already have a memory expansion inside your A500, you can continue to use that in most cases.

    The MC68SEC000 processor is clocked at 14.1MHz as standard, and is guaranteed to run at up to 21.2MHz.This will give your computer more than a double-speed boost. If that's not enough, you can choose overclocking to 21, 28 or even 42MHz. By attaching an ACA12xx or Blizzard 12xx accelerator, you make your A500 faster than a stock A3000.

    The ACA500plus comes with essential software pre-installed in it's large flash. This includes fully licensed Kickstart versions V1.2 and V1.3 for backwards-compatibility, and Kickstart V3.1 for running the final version of the OS that Commodore has published. You've lost your installation disks of the OS? Not a problem with the ACA500plus. A full installer for OS3.1 is included in the product. All you need is an empty CF card, and you can install OS3.1 with a few key presses. After that's done, you can use the second CF card slot to exchange data with a modern PC: The ACA500plus supports PC-formatted cards and long filenames out of the box, no special installation required.

    CF cards are handled like harddisks on the Amiga-side. You can use HDtoolbox or HDinsttools - whatever you prefer. Even the two popular 64-bit addressing modes are implemented: Both TD64 and NSD64 command sets are supported, so whatever your preferred filesystem requires, you can use it on your ACA500plus setup to access flash cards that are larger than 4GBytes. Speed-wise, the CF card slots are faster than most harddisk controllers that are available for other Amiga computers. The ACA500plus even outperforms the SCSI controller of an A3000!

    ACA500plus is an external expansion which is plugged to the left expansion port of your A500 or A500+. There is no need to open the computer at any time. This includes a new revolutionary method that can turn your 512k trapdoor memory expansion into chipram! If your Amiga is equipped with an ECS Agnus chip and said internal 512k memory expansion, you can turn your computer into a 1MByte-Chipram computer, just by selecting a menu item in the configuration menu of the ACA500plus! A lot of stock A500 computers with board revision 6 or higher have this exact configuration.

    Many users will want to use the ACA500plus with the popular WHDload software, which lets you install games on CF cards instead of swapping floppy disks if you want to play a different game. WHDload lists the 68010 processor as a minimum requirement for using the Quit-key and return to the Amiga's Workbench. The ACA500plus has special circuitry that lets you use the WHDload quit-key at any time, although you "only" have a 68SEC000 processor. This is supported by WHDload V17.2 and higher.

    Advanced floppy control: If your computer has a defective or even a missing floppy drive, the ACA500plus can handle this. With the built-in "bootselector" circuitry, you can turn an external drive into a fully-compatible df0: drive. In addition to that, the floppy control functions allow you to make external drives invisible, although they do not have an off-switch. This saves you the work of (un)plugging drives in order to make older floppy-based software compatible.

    The ACA500plus features three expansion ports:

    1. A1200-compatible clockport
    2. local 16-bit expansion port
    3. A1200 CPU card connector

    The A1200-compatible clockport can be used for expansions that were initially designed for the clockport of the A1200, for example Catweasel MK2, Delfina or RapidRoad. Please note that some drivers may require patching in order to work on a non-A1200 computer. Contact the vendor of your A1200 expansion to find out if they provide such a driver.

    The fast 16-bit local expansion port is reserved for our network expansion X-Surf-500.

    The A1200 CPU card connector is meant for further CPU and RAM upgrades. It is guaranteed to work with our ACA1220, ACA1221(ec), ACA1232 and ACA1233(n) models. Our older ACA1230 accelerators are not supported. We will therefore only answer support questions about ACA1220, ACA1221(ec), ACA1232 and ACA1233(n) accelerators.

    The same applies to old Blizzard accelerators by Phase 5: We've done our best to make them work, but there are limits to what we can do. Please keep in mind that the A500 is a 16-bit architecture, and the Blizzard accelerators have been developed for the 32-bit architecture of the A1200.

    Another new feature of the ACA500plus is it's capability to make use of the clock port(s) that an A1200 accelerator provides, even if the clock port of the ACA500plus is already occupied. A maxed-out configuration can use up to three clock port devices. Further, the ACA500plus gives you all possibilities to connect and use a realtime clock: Either on the trapdoor expansion of your A500, directly on the clock port of the ACA500plus or on the A1200 accelerator. This kind of flexibility was not available on the predecessor ACA500.

    With all these expansions, certain software may be incompatible. However, this is not a reason to unplug the ACA500plus, as it features an advanced cloaking mode that lets you downgrade the computer to standard memory configurations with minimal expansions (like Action Replay) or even no expansions at all, your choice of Kickstart ROM, running at the original 7MHz speed. Even if your computer does not have an internal 512k trapdoor memory expansion, the ACA500plus can not only add this, but even emulate the cycle-exact speed of the internal expansion with the same slow-down effects that an internal memory expansion has. In other words: There is no reason to unplug the ACA500plus at any time.

    Package includes:

    • ACA500plus with DisMo, 68ec000, 8MB RAM, 8MB Flash
    • short instruction manual German/English

    Software included in the flash ROM:

    • Kickstart V1.2, V1.3, V3.1
    • Full OS3.1 disk set with fully automatic installer
    • Action Replay 3 (patched for ACA500plus)
    • HRTmon
    • Thor's 040/060 libraries as resident modules
    • Thor's mmu and memory libraries
    • Network software, TCP/IP Stack for X-Surf-500

    Pictures vary. CF cards, A1200 accelerator and the A500 computer are not included with the package. For operating the card on an A500, any internal expansion that uses the 68000 socket must be removed. "Autofire" function of original Action Replay 3 cartridge is not supported. Chips on this card are used/refurbs and may have scratches.



    A600 Furia with 020/33 9.5 meg fast...32gb SD...Pi1 Dfo: Geotec DF1:....A604n...Indivision V2...RTC....Prisma card Wirless Keyboard

    A500 rev6a project

    Xbox Classic with WinUAEX

    Rasberry PI3/Amibian

    Dell Laptop Winuae

  • Use a A500 Rev6A with the ACA500Plus and got 2MB CHIP RAM. Use the ACE2 on it and you can force it to PAL with the ACA500Plus.

    AMIGA 500 Rev6A / ACE2 / Indivision ECS V1 (8373R3PD) / ACA500Plus V1 / ACA1221EC RTC

    AMIGA 1200 Rev1D.4 RECAP

    C64 Reloaded MK2 / C64 Breadbin 250425 RevA / C64C 250466 (1541UII)

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