ScuzzBlog: Diaries January 2019
Entry 10th January 2019: Post 01: Amiga 500 - A5000 Solid State Leisure
Amiga 500 - A5000 Solid State Leisure
Man was this a long day. On my feet for the most part of it and
way too little tea for my liking. In the end though it proved as
ever very rewarding. Messing around with the Amiga is always fun.
A long while ago I purchased an A500/+ with an A5000 accelerator.
To be truthful it has never worked since the day I had it. I was
pretty loyal to the 500+ with the 3.1 ROM. I think it did fire
up just the once, but only the once.
I was going through all my paperwork and came across the small
leaflet that came with the card. I also dug the actual floppy disk
out for the card. Armed with these I thought I would check the
accelerator status plus an ATONCE emulator card. No monitor, just
see if the computer would boot. Basically just listen for the
floppy drive to kick in.
I had no joy with the A5000, though the ATONCE seemed to be working.
So I decided it may be time to remove the ground from the computer
and use this on another 590 machine I have. The ground is kinda rare.
I pulled down a GVP and struggled like mad to get it hooked up to
the A500+ with the 3.1 ROM. I was at it for ages trying to get the
sidecar in the slot. I did achieve this in the end. At first I fired
up the GVP on the 3.1 ROM and it looked kinda crap with the 2.04 OS.
So I booted on the 3.1 Workbench disk and it was so weird to have
the 3.1 OS, 2.04 OS and the 1.3 OS Workbench drawers all open
at the same time.
The computer was working just fine and I decided to leave her as
she was and not remove the ground.
I was more resolved than ever to see if this A5000 was working.
I dragged an old 500Plus that I had repaired from scraps which
included an A500 motherboard. So I pulled the CPU and clocked
in the A5000 board. Incredibly she booted first time. I didn't
seem to have any RAM though. SysInfo also couldn't make sense
of anything. Did a memory test and that said all was OK.
I then booted from the actual A5000 disk and was greeted with a
lovely purple screen or maybe lilac. Dunno. Anyway I read the blurb
and checked the card with the tests and discovered the card was
running without RAM. Whether intentionally or not. You have to
remember that this was not my card originally. I was mucking around
with the tests and then had a problem.
The mouse started acting very strange. The software uses its own
mouse cursor and I thought maybe that was the problem. The pointer
was jumping whole icons and preventing me from clicking them. I
booted into the normal OS but no different. I then lifted the 1.3
ROM and installed the 2.04. No difference. The early boot screen
still had the problem.
On screen was my scuzz drawer but I could not activate it. The mouse
simply jumped right over above or below it. So strange. I lifted
DENISE and reseated and I swapped the CIAs. Remember that CIAs
don't directly control the mouse movement. There are two and they
are identical.
I can't believe this is a capacitor issue. Surely not. Would be
my first. But then it could be a chip that is soldered in. It was
getting very late and I needed to give this up. So I put things
away. I am happy the card actually works. For the most part both
the computers I used are working. I will do some research on the
mouse and post on the forums a question.
I am almost sure that any response will say recap... whatever.
Deep sigh !!! Tomorrow is another day. Never a dull moment.
Maybe not obvious but I used two computers in this blog.
The first was a 500Plus in an A500 case and the second was an
A500 in an A500Plus case.... don't ask. It really doesn't matter
what case you use in truth.
Amiga 500 - A5000 Solid State Leisure
Enter the A500 computer number 2
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