What does it mean that the Amiga 500 is plug and play?...

[icbrkr]

So, how do you hook up an A500 to a CRT TV? I think you can.

 

You can get an Amiga 520 RF adapter that outputs RF, and -color- composite video.

 

It plugs into the video port.

 

You can use the 520 on any OCS (Original Chipset) and I believe the ECS as well. I'm pretty sure it would crap on AGA.

 

You can use any Amiga floppy drive on any other Amiga system provided it's not a HD drive. So if you wanted to, with some hacking to get it to fit, you could theoretically buy a 600/1200 floppy and use it. http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=106

[FastRobPlus]

I'd avoid any drive that isn't an FZ-357a or 354 for an Amiga 500 since even if you remove the outer housing the drive may not have the correct mounting points, eject location, or disk platen/guide height. It could work electrically but not fit elegantly into the 500's case.

 

You can use an FZ-357a High Density drive in a 500. The steps are:

 

Remove the existing 354 drive from the 500.

Remove the outer housing and eject button.

Remove the FZ-357a's outer housing and eject button.

Install the FZ-357a into the 354's housing, and install the 354's eject button onto this. - This step sometimes requires modification to the hosing, or just a mallet or sledgehammer.

Or superglue.

Install the modded drive into the A500. The cabling might be reversed.

If you want the drive to be seen as an Amiga HD drive, upgrade the 500 with a 2.04 or 3.1 Kickstart ROM. Otherwise the system will treat it as a DD drive only.

[SSG]

I have recently been interested in the Amiga 500. I might have to break down and acquire one

[Hatta]

I like mine. If you're not planning on going whole hog on a machine that can load from hard disk and play AGA games, it's a good buy. I treat mine like a game console that takes floppies instead of carts, and has a keyboard. No complaints. You do want at least 1mb of RAM though.

[ataridave]

Well in this video, the picture quality on the Amiga 500 looks a LOT better then it does on a CRT television!:

 

 

I don't know the model of that Commodore monitor, but it looks and sounds fantastic!

[Keatah]

That would be a 1084 or variant.

[+save2600]

That would be a 1084 or variant.

 

Yep, a Philips made 1084 to be precise.

[ataridave]

Yep, a Philips made 1084 to be precise.

 

Were the Philips 1084 monitors sold here in the USA? Or just in places like Europe and New Zealand?

[+save2600]

Were the Philips 1084 monitors sold here in the USA? Or just in places like Europe and New Zealand?

 

They were sold here, but the model had a few different manufacturers throughout the years.

[skaredmask]

Just Thought I'll throw up a picture of my Amiga 500!!

[+wood_jl]

Oh, the Amiga 500 is a nice machine!!!! Not exactly plug-and-play in the modern sense, but reasonably fool-proof, and a very fun machine! Have no fear, and get one!

[desiv]

Just Thought I'll throw up a picture of my Amiga 500!!

Nice..

That a GVP sidecar??

Always wanted one of those...

Did have a DataFlyer for mine BITD, which was great, but not as nice looking as the GVPs...

 

desiv

[skaredmask]

Yea it's the impact sires 2 HDD expansion. I have it with a 250 MB apple quantum drive. SCSI is connected to the NEC CD-Rom drive. Thanks to save2600 for selling me a Amiga 2000 than trade for the A-500 and getting me the GVP HDD expansion.

 

Also The Amiga isn't that hard to learn if you have any experience with DOS on older IBM PC computer it's pretty simple. A lot out there for help trouble shooting! Just remember that if something's not working you might be putting to much thought in to it!