#Help, LOTS of HELP!
3 messages in this thread
Any idea why my 512K memory add-on's clock doesn't work all the time and when
it does it's slow ? I'm assuming the A512 ram add-on has
the battery backed up clock, correct ?? I've left my Amiga on for extended
periods, thinking the capacitor on the Ram-board may need to be charged, but it
doesn't help. Sometimes my program, JR-Comm boots up saying, "Battery
Backed-Up Clock Not Found", and other times it boots up with the time and date,
but a few days slow.
Also, can you explain to me about hard drives ? Which ones are
compatible with the A500, what kind of adaptors do I need, what's the max size
of HD allowed on the A500, etc. And ROM upgrades, what's this all about ? I
keep reading, "…if your running 2.0 or higher, etc. Is there very many
mailorder magazines out for the Amiga's ? If so, where do I get'em ?
Is it legal to post ads from newspapers onto CIS, like If I saw an ad
for a A500 for sale in the local newspaper, could I post the number & info here
in the forum ? Probably a stupid question, huh? Thanks for the help!
Rich, some of your questions call for knowledge that I don't have. For
instance, I don't know why your clock might run slow. I know that you can set
the time with the DATE command, and you can often recover from a BATTERY
BACKED-UP CLOCK NOT FOUND problem by using the CLI or shell, and typing
SETCLOCK RESET. On some Amigas, there were a couple of bytes or so of memory
that were used for test purposes. Once in a while an errant program would
write to those few bytes of memory, and the system would not be able to find
the clock because of the unauthorized code being where the clock should be.
This was corrected a long time ago, but it is possible that your A500 was one
of those that had it.
I don't have a 500, so I'm not knowledgeable about drives that work with it.
So far as I know, there is no maximum size set for the size of your drive.
ROM upgrades: The Amiga was first released in 1985 with a very buggy 1.0
version of the ROM, which was then loaded from a Kickstart disk into the A1000.
Before very long, they issued a version 1.2 of the Kickstart disk (and
Workbench) that were far more stable. Later, 1.3 was introduced, which added
lots of capabilities to the operating system. More recently, the size of the
ROM has been doubled. Beginning with 2.04, more and more capabilities have
been built into the ROM, making it much easier for programmers to access the
system software and to do things that simply could not be done with earlier
versions. Each version has added new abilities to the machine, but 2.04 was
the major update. Since then, we had 2.1 and 3.1. The major addition in 3.1
was datatypes, I believe. You should have *at least* 2.1 in your machine – and
if you are buying an upgrade, get 3.1.
There are Amiga mailorder houses. I suspect Software Hut in Philadelphia is
one of the largest, but I think Safe Harbor in Michigan (I think it was
Michigan) is still available as well. I'd suggest that you get a copy of
Amazing Computing and look at the ads.
You are not supposed to post anything here that has been copyrighted by someone
else. Newspapers are always copyrighted, so you'd need their permission to
upload here. If you have the permission from the newspaper – or from the
person who posted the newspaper ad – I know of no reason why you couldn't post
it here. It should be plain, however, that you are posting an ad from someone
you don't know. People here are putting lots of trust in the people who post
ads. If they are members of our 'forum family' we have a bit of knowledge
about them. From newspaper ads, we don't.
—Betty
Thanks alot, Betty!! I appreciate your help, AGAIN. 🙂