Amiga 500 Newbie... Need some direction

[towmater]

So I ordered a Jerry USB mouse adapter and a GBS8220 RGB to VGA board. I have two Amiga monitors so I don't need to use VGA. I've always wanted the GBS board anyway so hopefully it works out... these things cost next to nothing so not much risk in it.Y

you might have to use the pin-header on the GBS, I could never get it to work properly with the 15-pin input (with the 500 only.)

Edited November 29, 2015 by towmater

[bbking67]

yeah ill use the header... seems to be the way to go.

[bbking67]

So i got my Amiga up and running... cleaned up some battery goo from the memory expansion (desoldered the battery). It seems to work. The floppy works (I have one bootable disk). JerryUSB was not liking my Microsoft optical mouse but it works ok with a Kensington.

 

Lots to learn. Haven't wired the GBS up yet (original monitor works perfectly though).

[desiv]

So i got my Amiga up and running... cleaned up some battery goo from the memory expansion (desoldered the battery). It seems to work. The floppy works (I have one bootable disk). JerryUSB was not liking my Microsoft optical mouse but it works ok with a Kensington.

 

Lots to learn. Haven't wired the GBS up yet (original monitor works perfectly though).

Congrats..

Yeah, I have a GBS on my A1200.. (Wired to the header)

Worked fine and I have it on a KVM (only switch the V part of that tho) with my PC to save some desk space.

It works pretty good. Higher res Workbenck looks decent...

 

That said, I prefer my 1084S on my A1000 for gaming usually.

Problem there is my A1000 doesn't do PAL...

 

I might go back to a 1084S (I have 2) for my 1200 eventually. Something about CRTs..

 

desiv

[towmater]

I bought one of those 1970VX lcd monitors that the AtariST group is raving about, and that with the $20ish Amigakit VGA connector ended up giving me a much better picture than GBS.

[RobertB]

bbking67 wrote:

 

> Is there a good way to interface with a modern LCD monitor or TV?

 

Instead of finding a scandoubler and installing one in each of my Amigas (except for the A3000, of course), I went the other way and bought a modern LED monitor that can scan down (multi-scan) to the 15 KHz video of the Amiga. I bought a BenQ BL912 VGA monitor. With the RGB-to-VGA adapter, the BenQ BL912 displays a beautiful picture on an A1000, A500, A2000, and A3000 (adapter not needed). I haven't tested it yet on my A600 or A4000 yet, because both are down at the moment.

 

Then there is the smaller BenQ BL702A cousin,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

Edited January 24, 2016 by RobertB

[Nebulon]

 

bbking67 wrote:

 

> Is there a good way to interface with a modern LCD monitor or TV?

 

Instead of finding a scandoubler and installing one in each of my Amigas (except for the A3000, of course), I went the other way and bought a modern LED monitor that can scan down (multi-scan) to the 15 KHz video of the Amiga. I bought a BenQ BL912 VGA monitor. With the RGB-to-VGA adapter, the BenQ BL912 displays a beautiful picture on an A1000, A500, A2000, and A3000 (adapter not needed). I haven't tested it yet on my A600 or A4000 yet, because both are down at the moment.

 

Then there is the smaller BenQ BL702A cousin,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

 

That is very cool.

 

Do you know of any other modern displays that support 15 KHz?

[bbking67]

So I haven't had time to wire up my GBS yet, but I do have some old NEC MultiSync LCD's that might work... one is an AccuSync. This would be neat if it worked.

 

I need to find a nice project box for my GBS as I don't want to leave it exposed. I think I'll wire it up with a fan of some kind.

[RobertB]

Nebulon wrote:

 

> Do you know of any other modern displays that support 15 KHz?

 

According to the thread on Amibay.com (where I found the info on the BenQ BL912 and 702A), other monitors are:

 

BenQ BL2205PT
Acer v226hql
NEC 1970NXp (for bigbox amigas you need buffered adapter.)
DELL Ultrasharp 2311h
DELL 2001FP (those made before June 2005)
Planar 1520M

 

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

[Laner]

Hm... I have a 2001FP at my desk at work. Might need to smuggle that home one night.

 

[Nebulon]

Hm... I have a 2001FP at my desk at work. Might need to smuggle that home one night.

 

Or you could bring your Amiga to work!

 

Yep, if I worked for a place that had Amiga-compatible flat-panels, I'd be sure to short-list myself for the time when they eventually replace their old screens with new ones.

[Nebulon]

Here's a pretty long list of monitors that scan to 15kHz:

http://15khz.wikidot.com/

[Nebulon]

So I ordered a Jerry USB mouse adapter and a GBS8220 RGB to VGA board. I have two Amiga monitors so I don't need to use VGA. I've always wanted the GBS board anyway so hopefully it works out... these things cost next to nothing so not much risk in it.

The Jerry mouse adapter is cool. I tested it out on an A500 some time ago.

 

Another similar product (but without the dual connection ability) is this one. It supports multi-button game pad controllers:

https://retro.7-bit.pl/?lang=en&go=projekty&name=rys_mkii