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Pimped Amiga 500

pimyretro.org

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Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#31

Post by radicalbyte »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #19

Piling-on here: My A1200 and CD32 haven't been powered-on since 2001. They worked when they went into climate-controlled storage but need to be recapped. I haven't had luck finding anybody in the US with experience recapping these models who will do the work. The one person I found was unwilling to do the work w/o my verifying if they work now. I think it's a mistake to apply power to them in their current state sinc…

Try asking in the PiStorm Discord, or maybe ask EU based people who do Amiga repairs (like @linuxjedi on Twitter comes to mind) if they know anyone in the States who does it.

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#32

Post by Damogran6 »

merobin_hood wrote: post #6

If you want to experience the Amiga ecosystem in 2025 without touching hardware, the easiest path is: WinUAE (Windows) or FS-UAE (Mac/Linux) — great defaults, easy setup Install Workbench 1.3 or 3.1 plus: Directory Opus, Diskmaster, WHDLoad Use curated packs like Workbench 3.X ClassicWB so you don’t have to configure everything manually For games, WHDLoad bundles are a massive quality-of-life improvement over floppy…

Raspberry Pi emulation works well, too. (and is massively fast.)

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#34

Post by indigodaddy »

Damogran6 wrote: post #32
merobin_hood wrote: post #6

If you want to experience the Amiga ecosystem in 2025 without touching hardware, the easiest path is: WinUAE (Windows) or FS-UAE (Mac/Linux) — great defaults, easy setup Install Workbench 1.3 or 3.1 plus: Directory Opus, Diskmaster, WHDLoad Use curated packs like Workbench 3.X ClassicWB so you don’t have to configure everything manually For games, WHDLoad bundles are a massive quality-of-life improvement over floppy…

Raspberry Pi emulation works well, too. (and is massively fast.)

Yep was going to say for example PiMiga is an awesome project, and the maintainer puts his heart and soul and loads of time into it. Believe it works on amd64 now too (not just pi/arm).

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#35

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

bartread wrote: post #26

It's funny. I objectively know that 9MB of RAM is tiny by modern standards and, indeed, has been tiny for decades now. My friend's dad got a PC with 32MB of RAM in 1996, or maybe early 1997, to put it into perspective. But I can still look at a screenshot of Workbench 1.3 running on an Amiga 500 displaying "8831544 free memory" and it feels like an absolute ocean of RAM for that machine and that time and, most import…

one of my favorite long-forgotten benchmarks is the "3M Computer" [0]:

  - 1 megabyte of RAM
  - 1 megapixel display (1024x1024@1bit - black and white!)
  - 1 MIPS
... all for under $10,000. hey, a nerd can dream!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_computer

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#36

Post by mtillman »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #35
bartread wrote: post #26

It's funny. I objectively know that 9MB of RAM is tiny by modern standards and, indeed, has been tiny for decades now. My friend's dad got a PC with 32MB of RAM in 1996, or maybe early 1997, to put it into perspective. But I can still look at a screenshot of Workbench 1.3 running on an Amiga 500 displaying "8831544 free memory" and it feels like an absolute ocean of RAM for that machine and that time and, most import…

one of my favorite long-forgotten benchmarks is the "3M Computer" [0]: - 1 megabyte of RAM - 1 megapixel display (1024x1024@1bit - black and white!) - 1 MIPS ... all for under $10,000. hey, a nerd can dream! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_computer

I had an old Tandy and the instruction manual touted “10MHz of Intel processing power!”

Still makes me smile.

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#37

Post by erwincoumans »

radicalbyte wrote: post #24
erwincoumans wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, your comment made me buy the icode prebuilt preloaded MiSTer FPGA, 128mb ram, hope that is sufficient for Amiga Vision. I used to own an Amiga 500 with internal HDD, long ago. Guru meditations still exist? https://www.icode.com/product/mister-fpga-kit-terasic-de10-n...

Nice, congrats! Even the most basic models (the $99 + shipping + tax from China) can handle the Amiga. You get more bells whistles plus a better package with a MiSTer stack but I would recommend most people to either grab the Multisystem II or the Mister Pi (Turbo Pack) from RetroRemake. If you want to run Saturn fighters then getting a second stick of RAM is a must as it allows everything to run at full speed. I hav…

Yeah the Mister Pi makes more sense, financially. On the C64 side, there is the upcoming C64 Ultimate https://www.commodore.net, that looks almost identical to the original one

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#39

Post by sillywalk »

merobin_hood wrote: post #6

If you want to experience the Amiga ecosystem in 2025 without touching hardware, the easiest path is: WinUAE (Windows) or FS-UAE (Mac/Linux) — great defaults, easy setup Install Workbench 1.3 or 3.1 plus: Directory Opus, Diskmaster, WHDLoad Use curated packs like Workbench 3.X ClassicWB so you don’t have to configure everything manually For games, WHDLoad bundles are a massive quality-of-life improvement over floppy…

I'd also give a shout out to AmiKit.[0] It's pretty slick, and has a ton of software already setup. You still need to get the Kickstart ROMs from AmigaForever. The only thing is it's different from vanilla Amiga workbench.

https://www.amikit.amiga.sk/

Re: Pimped Amiga 500

#40

Post by 1313ed01 »

amiga386 wrote: post #21
boredhedgehog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the aim is to emulate games, Kickstart 3.1 or even 2.04 shouldn't be the first choice. Backwards compatibility must have been really poor back then; at least I've run into lots of software that will only run on 1.3.

One does not typically run games directly. That's fraught with the compatibility concerns you raise, and also the slowness of loading them from their disks, even when using an emulator, and needing a cumbersome UI to swap disks as needed. Instead you run them with WHDLoad , originally designed to install all games onto the hard drives of real Amigas. A lovely group of programmers have made WHDLoad installers for ever…

The a500mini plays those from USB drives. Seems to work well, but I mostly use mine to play Kick Off 2, so have not explored other features much.
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