A500 Expansion Options
6 messages in this thread
I'm looking to expand the memory in my Amiga 500 beyond the internal 1MB,
but would prefer not to use the side-car expansion box approach. Has anyone
had long-term experience with any of the third-party internal expansion
boards that can bring total RAM beyond the 1MB standard? When these boards
first came out, a lot of people expressed concern about potential problems
with excessive drain on the power supply as well as heat buildup. Now that
the Amiga has been around for a while, I was wondering if these concerns
have proved well-founded. As an alternative, are there any safe external
memory expansion units that sit either above or below the A500 (lateral
shelf space is the problem I have with the sidecar approach)?
Stephen,
First off, there's the obligatory "if you open the case and install xxx
you'll void your C= warranty" statement.
Now that that's out of the way, I can share a bit of my experience with
you. 8) I bought an EXP-8000+ memory expansion board early this summer.
(My warranty ran out long, long ago, so I wasn't particularly worried about
voiding it. 😉 I purchased the board with 2 megs supplied and have since
upgraded it to 8 megs. The Amiga World article about the EXP-8000+ has
been pretty much on target as far as I can see. The general consensus has
been that it works on some machines very well and won't work at all on
others. My installation falls close to the 'works very well' end of the
scale, but not quite. I find that my computer will crash when there's
heavy DMA activity. Most applications run fine, but, there's a few that I
can't get to run at all, like IntroCAD and UltraDesign. I've also got
problems with DigiPaint 3. I've talked on the phone to Progressive
Peripherals and Software, and they indicated that they discovered a timing
problem and are working on a fix at the present time. (The fix involves a
new PAL chip that will be user installable. They indicated to me that
their intention as of this time is to automatically ship the new PAL to all
registered owners of the EXP-8000+ board as soon as it's available.) For
the moment, I can't run graphics intensive programs – a situation that I
can live with temporarily. The general quality of construction is good and
I had no trouble installing it.
[continued]
Thanks for the very helpful reply! Unfortunately, the very reason I'm
looking to add memory is for graphics intensive work, so I think I'll do
more exploring.
Stephen,
You're welcome. 8)
I'll be posting a message here re: the EXP-8000+ fix as soon as I receive
it. If they can get it working, it will be a nice setup. I have to admit
to being disappointed, since I really wanted the ram for graphics intensive
work, too. (specifically CAD) I don't mind waiting for a fix that I know
is being worked on.
For now, I just have to be satisfied with room for lots of multitasking and
a _big_ ram disk. I guess I can live with that for a while. 8)
David
[continuation]
To answer your second question, yes, it is advisable to get an extra
capacity power supply. I wish that I could recommend one for you, but,
I've yet to see one that I can recommend. I'm looking forward to seeing
the new AE replacement A500 power supply.
One thing that I can strongly suggest to you is to evaluate getting an
A2000 or A3000 series at this time. Although an excellent entry level
value, the A500 loses its cost effectiveness very quickly as one starts to
expand it. Sometimes, one also has to make performance compromises as
well. For example, there are several other boards available to add memory
to the A500 that replace the A501 in its slot. These expansions do add
memory, but, unlike the EXP-8000+, the memory shares address and data lines
with CHIP ram. The additional ram does not give the speed advantage of
FAST ram that is isolated from the CHIP ram bus. The EXP-8000+, as
mentioned, has its own set of problems.
Hope this helps, and feel free to ask for additional information. 8)
David
Stephen,
External RAM expansion beyond 1MB is, in my experience, the best method
by far. I have also tried internal boards that plug into the CPU socket and
had miserable results.. They never lasted more than a day before acting up,
causing system failures, etc. Expansion in the A501 slot is OK, but it
requires you to open your case, pull chips, etc. and the RAM will slow to a
crawl under heavy video/sound use. External RAM can be had in very small
packages such as MAST's Mini-Megs and will no doubt be faster and more
reliable.