Was given an Amiga 2500 and need some guidance.

[AaronTheYoung]

Hello,

 

A fellow classic computing geek here. I always loved Atari's and Commodore's products back in the 80's. Fortune has brought me an Amiga 2500.

 

It boots but clearly has some hard drive issues and stops at the insert Workbench 1.3 screen.

 

I can replace the drive, but I'm clueless how to go from there. If I get a Workbench 1.3 disk, does it have the programs to format and install the hard drive and make it the primary boot device?

 

Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

Aaron

~

[amiman99]

The A2500 comes with A2091 HD controller, you may need a install disk if you want to use WB v1.3. The v1.3 WB doesn't come with HD install or partition tools.

 

The first thing I would do is to upgrade the ROM chip to 2.1 or 3.1. The WB 2.1 and 3.1 come with HD install tools, so it's easy to prepare the HD.

[+save2600]

Yeah, I'd either keep it 1.3 or go straight to 3.1.

 

True that HD equipped Commodore computers came with A2091's originally, but it *may* be that you have a GVP or something else in there by now. Heck, you might not even have an 020 or 030 card in there (which is what made the system a "2500" and not just a 2000 back in the day. Best to have a look see, yank the NiCad battery and get back to us with more info or pics of the inside of the machine. I've seen more A2500's throughout the years that didn't have what they were supposed to.

 

btw: http://amiga.resource.cx has drivers for just about any card. The 2091 prep disk allows you to easily format a HD under Kickstart 1.3. If you're going to want to do some power gaming, look into getting a larger HD, Kickstart 3.1, Revision 6.6 or 7.0 chips for your A2091 card and this program called WHDLoad. Google or Yahoo! will be your friend for the most part that way and there's a seller on eBay that routinely sells 7.0 ROMS for reasonable...

 

Oh and a SCSI CD ROM drive or this Multi-card device so you can easily transfer stuff from your PC/Mac to your Amiga. With that SCSI CF Card reader though, you'd need to be running an Amiga emulator on your PC/Mac to drop files into it... think of it as a removable (not a hot swappable card formatted as FAT) alternative to a HD on the Amiga. In other words, the CF card gets formatted as an Amiga HD and you use it exactly just as that.

[Arkhan]

be sure to check for a MegaChip installation in that bitch too. Those things are awesome. You'll know it's there because there will be a weird clippy thing attached to Gary.

 

why did they name these chips after real people. It sounds wrong.

 

TBH though, I'd look at parting the thing out and use the money to buy an A1200 instead. Those A2500s take up as much space as a frikkin microwave. That's what I did with my A2500. People wanted all the crap in it, and I ended up with a hopped up A1200.

 

that I ended up hating and selling. -_-;

 

I don't like Amiga's too much really. lol

[Seob]

Thought that upgrading to higher kickstart caused some incompatibility with older amiga games. Our are you referring to workbench only?

[Arkhan]

WHDLoad the shit out of that thing. It's the best way to play games.

[Dauber]

Yes, upgrading the Kickstart WILL cause you to sacrifice some games...but just some of the really, REALLY old ones...even then there are ways around it...I know there are thingies you can put in Amigas where you can actually put in more than one set of Kickstart ROMs and switch between them. You can also load the 1.3 ROM via software -- I think that was called "KickSwitch."

 

Speaking of WHDLoad, I think WHDLoad actually patches some games so that they'll work on newer hardware...