A500 Models

[OLDGAMER]

As most of you all know there were A500 and a A500+ but what i didnt know was there are slight different models between the two i have a A500 with 1.2 and a early 1.3 Kickstart both have the red LED power light and i also got a 1.3 with a green LED power light.
Today i got another A500 this one has the same sticker on the case above the keys near the drive as a A500+ model but it just has Commodore A500 instead of A500+ and both with the green LEDs have a ECS Angus and the OCS Paula and Gary chips fitted was this a common set up towards the end of the A500 model before the A500+ was released ?




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A500 1 Mb 1.3 A500 512k 1.3
Re-building my destroyed collection bit by bit

[lifeschool]

Interesting! I wonder if there is a date of manufacture somewhere, like on the silver serial code sticker underneath the machines?

The short answer: - they constantly updated things and rolled out improvements - even between major redesigns.

The longer answer: - My guess is that they updated the Agnes chip as part of the 'Ranger' project - from which they had redesigned a lot of the existing OCS chips - including the Agnus - but which got "shelved" (Amiga slang: meaning, 'Shoved up the Rectum') by Commodore Germany; who prefered to keep the ageing OCS A2000 project alive - insisting the VRAM alternative was 'Too Expensive'. That meant that by 1990, a whole new set of chips had been created to solve many existing problems, some of which would eventually find their way into the ECS redesign specs.

By this time, the Agnes chip had already been updated several times. Much of the architecture surrounding the A1000 original had already been incorporated into a new chip called Fat Agnes. Fatter Agnus (eg 8372A) then appeared for A500/A2000 machines which was the first to allow up to 1MB chip ram. When the ECS redesign finally happened a new 8375 Agnus was issued; which could handle up to 2mb chip ram (sometimes called the 'Super' Agnus, and later the 'Obese' Agnus), before they junked the idea altogether and came up with Alice chip instead.

This all means that: "Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore CDTV. Notable improvements were the Super Agnus and the Hires 'Super' Denise chips." - so these were filtered into the older machines - along with the new LED colours and the newer sticker design.

Hope that was worth typing up.

[OLDGAMER]

Yes thank you i found it very informative thanks for that i will have a look and see if there is a date some were on the models
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A500 1 Mb 1.3 A500 512k 1.3
Re-building my destroyed collection bit by bit