Subj : A500 versus A500+
To   : All
From : Ginger1
Date : Sun Aug 15 2021 19:47:18

I'm considering buying either an Amiga 500 or A500+. I'm an ex-1200 owner (+4 meg ram expansion, internal hard drive - such a nice usable machine back in the mid-nineties), current MorphOS user, but now want to get back into owning some real classic Amiga hardware. I was leaning more toward the A500s because they seem to suffer less from capacitor issues, and they are also decidedly cheaper than A1200s and beyond.

Originally, I was looking at the A500+ - my thinking being they are more recent machines, and more importantly they have the ECS chipset. My interest in the ECS chipset is I want to use it for productivity applications primarily, not games; when I owned the a1200, I used to use the multiscan productivty screenmode and that gave me a nice large screen to do real work on, and no graphics cards in sight. I think I read somewhere that the ECS+Workbench 2 machines have a productivity screenmode, so I was hoping this would give an equivalent Workbench desktop(?) when used with a mutliscan montior (well, an LCD TV now).

With the A500+ though, they have the issue of the on-board battery backed clock - which often means leakage it seems. The A500 then suddenly looks more tempting, hopefully being free of trace-destroying battery acid. I know I can upgrade the Kickstart ROMS (maybe just to 3.1) but can I also upgrade the A500 to give me an equivalent productivity mode?

Are there any other things I should be aware of in the A500 versus A500+ face off?

Many thanks all.
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