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Thread: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

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    Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Morning Don't know if anyone has tried this but.

    I am looking to take a trip down memory lane and going to buy an A500 with a Zipstick and have some retro fun. My question is what is the best way to display it??? I have a Dell 2405 which will take a number of different inputs (inc composite) or I have seen adaptors like this one:

    http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=183

    Would the quality be good?

    I do also have a couple of 19" 1600x1200 CRT monitors in the roof but TBH I would prefer not to use them as they take up soooooo much desk space!!!!!!





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    Herr Doktor Oetker, ja!!! pollaxe's Avatar
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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    I have no idea that can help I'm afraid but I loved my Amigas (500 & 1200) so (like your watercooling thread) I'll be following this with interest!

    I would imagine you'd need that adapter to get a signal out to your monitor (it'd be interesting to see it on a nice modern flat screen) but couldn't swear to it.

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    You could use it as a door stop, or perhaps display it in a cabinet.. but that might not be what you're getting at

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    I've tried this with another machine from the same era with mixed success ... have you tried using an input via a tv card?

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    I think the quality is quite poor with those.......IIRC you need a scan doubler to properly use a PC monitor.

    Best bet it to use an amiga emulator on your PC.....you can have an A4000 with all the bells-and-whistles then
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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    You could use it as a door stop, or perhaps display it in a cabinet.. but that might not be what you're getting at
    You didn't have a BBC did you...? (Probably too young.)

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by pollaxe View Post
    You didn't have a BBC did you...? (Probably too young.)
    I used BBC B's at school (well we had 1!!!) and had an electron as my first home PC - infact I was thinking of buying one of those as well for a quick game of Boxer, Swag or Repton The Spring of 1987 brought with it lots of snow and school closure - I filled that time with Repton!!!!!

    But re the Amiga - is it going to look a bit poo with that adaptor on an LCD monitor????

    I must admit that emulation never gives me the same feeling as the original computer - but saying that I have not had an Amiga since 1990!!





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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    if you do want to go down the hardware route a 1200 is the best bet as it takes a hard drive. I will try to get a friend to add his thoughts he still has a 4000. he also works designing video & audio mixing kit.

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by pollaxe View Post
    You didn't have a BBC did you...? (Probably too young.)
    Me? Of course I did - model B. I used to code up choose your own adventure type games into ceefax pages

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    I knew it!!!

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by Syd View Post
    Morning Don't know if anyone has tried this but.

    I am looking to take a trip down memory lane and going to buy an A500 with a Zipstick and have some retro fun. My question is what is the best way to display it??? I have a Dell 2405 which will take a number of different inputs (inc composite) or I have seen adaptors like this one (not allowed to post that yet )

    Would the quality be good?

    I do also have a couple of 19" 1600x1200 CRT monitors in the roof but TBH I would prefer not to use them as they take up soooooo much desk space!!!!!!
    I'm a bit hazy on those adaptors, they need a monitor that can sync down to 15Hz horizontal frequencies which is rare these days, but I think the kicker with them is that they don't allow display of PAL or NTSC through, so basically all the games will output something unusable since they force their output into these resolutions (as they normally write directly to the hardware and bypass all this fancy operating stuff ).

    For me I used something like the scandoubler they mention in the link

    Although that only works with the AGA chipset which means you need a A1200 or A4000, a little bit fiddly since you need to clip things over chips, but they work pretty smoothly, the A1200 even has a spare output port you can use for it. You will still need a monitor that can sync to various frequencies though, something that can handle say 30 to 60Hz horizontal frequencies should be fine, the old NEC multisyncs used to work a treat. The reason for the syncing is that these doublers just double whatever you feed them, so you get some odd frequencies out (and doubling DoublePAL isn't advisable! they do get hot Although it does work)

    There was an external version of it in a clear plastic case, the advantage of course there is that it works with the A500, the downside when I had it was that it overheated a little so I'd get lines on screen after a while especially doubling something that was already > PAL or NTSC Could add a fan to it ideally.

    One other option for display, if you have a big TV then hunt down a RGB scart cable (or make one up), it has to be RGB scart not composite scart, but that works well for games, my old Toshiba 32MWDB7 32" widescreen has one of its three sockets marked as RGB scart (its about 10 years old though!).

    Your last option is getting hold of a pucka frame rate converter, serious money then though at £200+ I guess for a basic unit.

    The easiest option really is just to emulate things, especially if the titles you want to play are all old A500 games early in the Amiga's life since the emulation is really good now, but if you want to play with the hardware then I'd recommend getting either a A4000 or a A1200 with a hard drive and build up your collection of hard drive installed games.

    If your interested, that A4000 I'm using has an internal scan doubler which works well, actually it has a 060/50Mhz, ultra wide SCSI and a 10k RPM hard disk and a CybervisionPPC graphics card (basically a diamond stealth S3 graphics chip which works wonders in something that old ) the SCSI is a bit of an overkill, but I came to the conclusion that drive made no difference in the PC performance years ago.

    And the 060/50Mhz card flies, the Amiga's operating system is small and very efficient, so a processor as powerful as this just gives raw speed, I've seriously never felt an upgrade with the PC that was as big since. There are all kinds of setups around, some using the voodoo cards via custom hardware etc, but I'd only go for that if you really want to get involved using the proper hardware.

    I hope that helps.

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    Me? Of course I did - model B. I used to code up choose your own adventure type games into ceefax pages
    ha ha.... same here. I once coded a picture of a pyramid, it took ages! I loved the orange / red break key.
    □ΞVΞ□

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by Eddie_lomax View Post
    I'm a bit hazy on those adaptors, they need a monitor that can sync down to 15Hz horizontal frequencies which is rare these days, but I think the kicker with them is that they don't allow display of PAL or NTSC through, so basically all the games will output something unusable since they force their output into these resolutions (as they normally write directly to the hardware and bypass all this fancy operating stuff ).

    For me I used something like the scandoubler they mention in the link

    Although that only works with the AGA chipset which means you need a A1200 or A4000, a little bit fiddly since you need to clip things over chips, but they work pretty smoothly, the A1200 even has a spare output port you can use for it. You will still need a monitor that can sync to various frequencies though, something that can handle say 30 to 60Hz horizontal frequencies should be fine, the old NEC multisyncs used to work a treat. The reason for the syncing is that these doublers just double whatever you feed them, so you get some odd frequencies out (and doubling DoublePAL isn't advisable! they do get hot Although it does work)

    There was an external version of it in a clear plastic case, the advantage of course there is that it works with the A500, the downside when I had it was that it overheated a little so I'd get lines on screen after a while especially doubling something that was already > PAL or NTSC Could add a fan to it ideally.

    One other option for display, if you have a big TV then hunt down a RGB scart cable (or make one up), it has to be RGB scart not composite scart, but that works well for games, my old Toshiba 32MWDB7 32" widescreen has one of its three sockets marked as RGB scart (its about 10 years old though!).

    Your last option is getting hold of a pucka frame rate converter, serious money then though at £200+ I guess for a basic unit.

    The easiest option really is just to emulate things, especially if the titles you want to play are all old A500 games early in the Amiga's life since the emulation is really good now, but if you want to play with the hardware then I'd recommend getting either a A4000 or a A1200 with a hard drive and build up your collection of hard drive installed games.

    If your interested, that A4000 I'm using has an internal scan doubler which works well, actually it has a 060/50Mhz, ultra wide SCSI and a 10k RPM hard disk and a CybervisionPPC graphics card (basically a diamond stealth S3 graphics chip which works wonders in something that old ) the SCSI is a bit of an overkill, but I came to the conclusion that drive made no difference in the PC performance years ago.

    And the 060/50Mhz card flies, the Amiga's operating system is small and very efficient, so a processor as powerful as this just gives raw speed, I've seriously never felt an upgrade with the PC that was as big since. There are all kinds of setups around, some using the voodoo cards via custom hardware etc, but I'd only go for that if you really want to get involved using the proper hardware.

    I hope that helps.
    What a detailed response, thank you

    After all this, just say I was going to emulate, what is the best way? I remeber you need to buy somthing a few years back - a rom from memory - is that still the case (BTW i do not have a floppy drive in my PC)





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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post
    ha ha.... same here. I once coded a picture of a pyramid, it took ages! I loved the orange / red break key.
    BREAK key - omg that takes me back





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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by Syd View Post
    BREAK key - omg that takes me back
    My PC keyboard still has a break key...

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    Re: Amiga A500 - Best way to use today????

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    My PC keyboard still has a break key...
    Thats pause/break and different to the break key on a beeb





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