As title suggests, time to pimp my last 2 Amigas and then sell them ~ they go very much unused around here, and emulation (in either hardware or software) has come far enough, that I do really need real Amiga hardware anymore, to relive the way things were. There's always 2 schools of thought here (3, if you count those who would throw this stuff to the tip =) -- one is to keep the machines in original condition, the other is to mod the begeezuz out of the machines, adding any/all (modern) embellishments, to bring the machines as far as they can go with technologies that came into being 10years and more after the fact.

Realistically, if you're going down the original spec route, that infers you've got a 13" CRT monitor connected to these machines, which could do the almost-CGA video output signals Amigas used. Truth be told, I still have the original displays for both of of the machines I have left (the venerable 1084S monitor, and a 1942 bisync), but alas the EHT tranny is dead in both of them, and that's a battle I'm not interested in.

In fact, nowadays if I see any display less than 19" I expect it to be a touchscreen =) Usually I'm standing at an ATM having that thought. It's one of the technical aspects that helped kill the Amiga ; the advancements in VDU technology (and the fact C= never did the required R&D to keep up with it) -- if they'd at least got it to VGA standard, life would've been so much easier.

I actually started this project a few years ago, but got stumped when I couldn't source a new keyboard membrane for the A1200 (but I sorted other mods outs for storage/video before putting it away again), and the A500 although working fine with the A590 sidecar (and 50MB seagate scsi harddrive for old time computer sound effects =), still had the video output dilemma to deal with (ECS chipset not as capable as AGA), -and- apart from the 1meg chipram mod & fastRAM/RTC card in the trapdoor (+2meg fastram on the A590), it was still without an accelerator and the only thing fancy is it's got 2.04 rom, and I was umming and ahhing about what to do...I was thinking an ACA A500Plus might be the best way to jump, considering the facilities it offered, but going to buy one they were also out of stock with a long lead time, so that machine got put away as well. Years pass, I move house, 2 years after that I find the box full of Amiga stuff, so I try to pick up where I left off.

The A590 sidecar is really of no use to the A500 machine, once you decide which accelerator route you're going to take --- you no longer need the fastram or 50mb of coffee-grinder scsi storage. Indeed, the fact that old drive stills goes through the slow whining spindle spinup routine and actually still works, is a thing rare and worth preserving, because it 'no longer matters', and one day it will stop working, and when it does good luck trying to find a scsi I/II 50pin drive to replace it with, and there's buckly's on finding a working 8bit XT IDE drive. There is a way out, scsi->sata and scsi->cf-card, but why bother when there exists solutions that offer more fastram than you'll ever need, and as much storage as you want on cf/sdcard or USB sticks? SO to me, it makes no sense to do anything to/with the A590, and sell it in working condition, and let someone else not me face the day when Fred & Wilma stop blinking.

The A500 is the first target....



Guess =)