CompuServe Messages

Chris, I always speak for myself – never claimed anything else. 8) The A500 accelerators and other internal expansion hardware are very clever and some are quite well designed. The problem is that the A500 was not intended to be expanded to a large extent. Care to estimate the internal temperature of an A500 running a 50MHz '030 mod with 8 megs of extra ram installed? (No, I don't know of a 50MHz expansion – I'm just trying to make a point.) Heating/cooling cycles are a major cause of problems in electronic equipment. I have heavily expanded my A500. With the extra electrical load for the internal expansion, I'm now taking a 0.1v drop across the EMI filter. It may not sound like much, but when you include the voltage drop in the power supply cable, it starts to add up. Internally, my electronics are seeing about 4.86v. Yes, I do have an excess capacity power supply. That brings up another point. It's a never ending cycle. Start to add up the price of the extra capacity power supply, the accelerator board, the ram board, the ram chips, the external HD unit (which has its own power supply), … and it adds up fast. After all that, you still have an A500 that's sprawling out all over your desk. The A500 is a great unit for what it was intended. IMHO, one should seriously consider changing platforms before starting on the A500 expansion bandwagon. If after evaluating all the alternatives, the decision is to stick with the A500 and expand, so be it. At least it should be an informed decision, though. If I had it to do over again, I'd have switched platforms before major expansion efforts. I do think that it's worth it to add an external HD/memory unit to an A500. Going beyond should be carefully considered, though. David