Amiga 500 - 04 |
In 1987 Commodore released the A500 - a cheaper version of the A1000 - which came in the "distinct" Commodore box. The basic system still used the 68000 processor, 512k ram, and OCS chipset but had got rid of the ZORRO slots in favour of a DMA slot at the side of the machine. The operating system had been upgraded to version 1.3, which included the Amiga Command Line Interface (Shell) allowing the user more functionality. This is the machine that kicked the entire Amiga world into focus and brought more people to the Amiga than has been done since. It was voted "Home Computer of the Year" (36.7) in 1991 by a selection of Greek and Italian publications There are two different revisions of the A500 motherboard: Amiga 500P (American) the 'Productivity' edition features 1Mb memory (512k Chip, 512k Fast). Amiga 500C (American) an improved version that incorporated the new Agnus chip, providing 1Mb Chip RAM (corresponds to the Amiga 2000C). (amiga.emugaming.com) The Commodore Amiga 500 is the low-end successor of the Amiga 1000 and the predecessor of the Amiga 1200. It was the main competitor of the Atari 520 STf (there was a great "war" between the owners of these two computers). It uses a special system for its RAM configuration: 512 KB of Chip RAM which can be accessed by the Paula and Denise custom chips (sound & I/O and video, respectively) and Fast RAM which can be accessed only by the CPU. An extension card can be connected to the 68000 bus (thanks to the external connector) and offers a battery-backed clock (the Amiga 500 doesn't have any - the 500+ does). The 68000 bus has two connectors: an external and an internal one. The Amiga 500 was followed with the Amiga 500+. The Amiga 500+ has the same characteristics as the Amiga 500 exept it has 1MB of Chip RAM and uses the AmigaOS 2.04, this version of Amiga OS needs a 512 KB ROM. (www.old-computers.com) |
Manufacturer | Commodore | Name | Amiga 500 |
Type | Homecomputer | Origine | USA |
Introduction Date | April 1987 | End of production | ??? |
Built in Language | ??? | Keyboard | Full-srtoke keyboard with seperated numeric keypad and arrow keys |
CPU | Motorola MC68000 | Speed | 7.14 Mhz |
Coprocessor | Agnus (MMU), Denise (video), Paula (Sound & I/O) | Amount of Ram | 512 KB (expandable to 9MB : 512 KB CHIP RAM + 512 KB Slow RAM + 8 MB FAST RAM) |
Vram | None | Rom | 256 KB (DOS 1.2) |
Text Modes | 60 x 32 / 80 x 32 | Graphic Modes | 320 x 256 / 320 x 512 / 640 x 256 / 640 x 512 |
Colors | 32 (for 320 x X modes), 16 (for 640 x X modes) among 4096 + 2 Special modes : EHB 64 colors and HAM 4096 colors on static display. | Sound | 4 voice 8 bit PCM |
Size / Weight | ??? | Built in Media | one 3.5'' disk-drive (880k) |
I/O Ports | Centronics, RS232, Mouse, Joystick, RGB, Composite, External Audio, Bus | OS | AMIGA WorkBench 1.3 |
Power Supply | External | Introduction Price | £599 (UK, 1988); £369 (UK, 1990) |
Sold | ??? | Serial Number | ??? |
Other Extras | Boxed, Magazines, Manuals, External Harddisk | Bought Where | Ieper |
Bought When | 2002/08/02 | Condition | Good |
Price Paid | - | Specs of my Model | - |
Setup Today | ??? |
Amiga500-04: Bought in Ieper on 02/08/2002 Paid 200€ for this: Boxed Amiga 1000 boxed Amiga 500 Amiga 500 External hard disk for Amiga Commodore 1081 monitor Boxed drawing tablet for Amiga Boxed Commodore CD32 with games Boxed Atari 1040STf Atari 1040STf Boxed Atari SM125 Monitor External HD for Atari 2x IBM PS2 486DX2/50Mhz Tandy Coco2 |