My Commodore A500+ restore project

Man of Honour
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Time for an update.. Its been way to hot to be fiddling but I wanted to really get both the FDD fixed and whdload or ClassicWB working.

I've managed to get ClassicWB configured on my PC so just need to now get it on the CF card and then move it over to replace the HD inside the expansion.

For the FDD.. I bought a replacement and just tried it. The machine gave the same results as before - the boot screen came up (animation of the floppy disk going into the drive) and then after a second the screen would flicker on and off and the sound would buzz a bit and I could smell burning again so powered it off right away. The FDD has fried again. I wonder if its the PSU brick so tried my friends one and no joy, either its not that or the damage was already done to another FDD so doesn't make any difference. The smell is definitely coming from the FDD, it stinks. The motherboard and chips all look fine, nothing is burnt out or looks dodgy. I'm quite reluctant to power it on at all now in case it goes bang again or something :(

Annoying :(
 
Associate
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I went through something similar a couple of years ago! Back in the day I had an A1200, once I started my journey down memory lane I've ended up with 2 x A500+, 3 x A500 an A1200 and an A2000, as well as a couple ram expansions, an external FDD and a HDD (same as yours IIRC) for the A500/+, a few ram cards and a HDD card for the A2000 and the A1200 got a CF card and a new accelerator card. Most of them were spares/repair, both A500+ had pretty bad battery damage but I got them working, one of the A500 was smashed to pieces in transit so became a donor. I ended up buying the joysticks I used to use and tracked down a few of the games I used to play.

A few parts got the peroxide treatment, I was planning on doing all of the plastics but I lost interest and everything got put away, there's bits and pieces all over the house, I'll get back into it some day!
 
Man of Honour
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Pretty much confirmed my PSU was dodgy. Now working with a different one, a quick test on the first game I picked out :)

20180810_094833126_i_OS.jpg


Just need to put the keyboard and case back on, attach the HD back and leave it running with a few things to ensure its stable and working fine. Then onto finally getting the CF card loaded :)
 
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I have seen a couple of posts with folks preparing the CF card on windows then plugging into the Amiga, how is this done?

I think they use WinUAE, recently tried my A1200 i had stored in the loft only to find its dead it has been there over 20yrs lol, 1240 Apollo 16mb card with atx psu and 80gb hdd :0
 
Man of Honour
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Yeah can't say too much as I think it might be against the rules but yes as troops said, you use that with ClassicWB to create the files needed. I just need to find the time to then prep the CF card in the right format so it works when inside the Amiga.
 
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Been a while since I've done it and my stuffs in storage atm but using WinUEA was worth it to me for the speed difference - buy a copy of Amiga Forever to make life easier (and legal), well worth it for the licenses to use newer versions of Kickstart and Workbench on real hardware. You're less likely to get an annoying disk read error installing Workbench emulating than using real hardware and floppies which is frustrating.

Couple of things I recall for setting them up this way, to use a CF drive you want to first remove the file system with diskpart in Windows and leave it raw unallocated then go into WinUAE with a system setup the same as your target real Amiga. If you're using HDToolbox (the standard one in Workbench I think - I have used custom ones too so might be wrong) WinUAE will be using uaehf.device or something similar as the device driver which is fine for the PC but will stop your real Amiga booting, when you switch over to the real hardware load Workbench from disk the first time with your CF card installed, run HDToolbox again and swap uaehf.device to scsi.device or the GVP version of it (if you use that HD+) and the CF card should boot fine after a reset. This is the same for ppl using onboard IDE with CF adapters on 600/1200/4000's as well and is the main reason why the drives don't work swapping from PC emu to real Amiga. Try to keep partition sizes under 2 gig - its less of an issue in WinUAE especially with the newer versions of Kickstart but the original file systems and Kickstarts will have problems and lets be honest 2 gig for games is huge. You can use bigger drives than 2 gig, just keep each partition under 2 gig total size.

If you're still planning on using that GVP HD+ look for something called SCSI2SD, sold by a place that sells Amiga kit for ~£60. I have one and they work ok and they're one of the few SCSI adapters I've got to work on my A3000's onboard SCSI. Another thing I've got/used which is really nice is the Aztecmonster SCSI to CF adapter which really flies on the GVP SCSI cards, but buying a HC508 is cheaper than it if you could even find one.

I still have a soft spot for the 500+ cos it was my first Amiga but my fav is still my A3000 :D.
 
Soldato
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great thread, doing the same with my A600, but as you saw from my thread I have ran into some teething issues :(

Top half has now been retrobrite treated and looks amazing. Next step is to get the keys all removed and do them too along with the bottom of the case whilst she is in pieces anyways :)
 
Man of Honour
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Not much to report except I've decided to sell the A500-HD+ module. I get the most enjoyment from restoring and doing things up so will keep just the Amiga itself :)

I'll be keeping an eye out for any other Amiga bits I can buy, restore then sell on done up.
 
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