Amiga 500

What can I do with an Amiga 500?
The Amiga 500 was one of the most popular Amigas of all time. Since they are low-cost and easy to use, they took the European market by storm and the U.S. market was successful as well. At one time, there were thousands of titles for stock Amiga 500's with OS 1.3 and 1MB of RAM, however, times have changed and so has the Amiga. This is the most common "second hand Amiga" you will find. Unfortunately, the A500 is somewhat limited in its expansion capabilities, because of the limited amount of "second hand" expansions. Most of the time, I recommend new Amiga users start with an A1200 and go from there. However, if you want to take the time and expense, the A500 can be upgraded to run a good portion of the modern software one piece at a time.

Can the A500 run modern software?
Yes, with some upgrading. Generally, I recommend the following upgrades:
A) AmigaOS 3.1
B) Accelerator card equipped with a 68030/40mhz or better
C) 8MB RAM
D) 1MB Agnus chip (with modification) Super Denise chip (if not so equipped, some were), the 2MB Agnus is more useful, but if you are at a really tight budget, the 1MB will work.
E) Hard drive controller (SCSI) hard disk (100Mb or more) & CD-ROM (if possible).
* Please note, that any software requiring the upgraded AGA custom chipset will not work with the A500.

Can I use an Amiga 500 for a connection to the Internet?
Yes, once again you'll need to upgrade. First off, it's imperative to have a hard drive and a good amount of RAM. With the 68000 CPU as stock, you'll be limited in what types of applications you can run. FTP, IRC, E-Mail, Telnet and a Webbrowser will work, albeit very slowly. You'll need at the very least AmigaOS 2.04, with 3.1 you'll be able to run a webbrowser in 16 colors. Even if you upgrade to a fairly quick CPU, you'll still be limited in colors, it may be possible to install a graphics card, through the expansion slot on the left side of the computer, but this will require some sort of tower modification, and hardware hacking.

How do I expand it?
The Amiga 500 though in a single keyboard case, like the old Commodore 64/128, has a few upgrade options. The left side expansion slot (zorro I), has many expansion products that use it. You can "HACK" this slot to handle up to THREE Zorro 2 cards. The belly expansion for memory is a good place to start, if you haven't already. The chips on the motherboard are almost all socketed, this allows great flexibility, and there are many options that take advantage of that.

There are empty slots for RAM, on the A 500. Can they be filled with RAM?
Yes. If you aren't using the belly expansion (A501) You can add 4 chips and get 1MB of RAM.

If your AGNES is capable of handling 1MB of chip RAM, open JP7A and reswitch JP2.

If you can't use 1MB of chip mem, shorten JP7A and you will have your new memory.