I have an old Amiga 500+ that has been in my possession since the early '90s. A few months ago, I thought it would be fun to see if the Amiga still worked and to revive a few memories.
When I unpacked my Amiga after 15 years of hibernation, it did not start. All I got was the insert Workbench screen. It did not boot from hard disk. Nor from floppy. After removing all expansions and buying a brand new floppy drive, it boiled down to my AdSpeed/IDE hard disk expansion. As I always hated floppys already 20 years ago, I had to find a hard disk replacement.
Some googling led me to Kipper2k and the A504IDE, an internal 4MB memory expansion with a CF card reader at a reasonable price. This is my review of it.
First of all, ordering the card worked really well. I emailed Kipper2k and quickly received a response that he could put it on the mail two days later. After paying through PayPal, it took less than a week before the card arrived in my mailbox. All the way from Canada to Sweden.
The card gives a very good impression. It looks like it is of high quality and it has some extra LED's and connectors. I have asked Kipper2k to add more documentation about the card on his web site. Hopefully, he will find the time to do this.
First part of mounting is to solder a 2-pin connector next to the expansion port. My soldering skills are... hrrm... semi-professional. And my soldering equipment is of the cheapest kind.
Cleaning the soldering holes from lead was quite easy. Soldering the connector back was a bit harder. The holes were a bit too small and I did not want to solder the cables directly onto the expansion port. So I had to widen the holes. Also, I would recommend cleaning the Amiga board carefully with isopropanol and using extra flux when soldering. I had neither. Anyway, I managed to get the connector into place without cold soldering or destroying anything. If I can do this, pretty much anyone can.
The rest of the mounting went like a breeze. I have heard that people have problems with the card popping out of the socket, but mine seems to sit tight. Remember to bend the capacitors under the card to the side, though. The only problem I had was that one of the pins of my CPU got a bit bent when I tried to put i back. Probably that is because I have removed and put the CPU back so many times. With a little extra patience and a pair of pliers, I got it into place. But be careful!
Beside mounting the A504IDE card, I mounted an old kickswitch with Kickstart 1.3 and a used Kickstart 2.05 ROM that I have bought. I had a 2.04 ROM and the A504IDE is said to only work with 2.05 or higher. I had planned to test the card with 2.04, but I didn't have the patience - I wanted to test the expansion card as fast as possible.
Everything in place. Time to boot the Amiga from the Workbench Install disk...
And it booted immediately! And it found the memory!
But it didn't find the disk. More about that in a later post.
After testing everything, I put the case back on the computer. I want to keep my Amiga as unmodified as possible, so was glad to see that it was not problem to close the casing afterwards. I only had to make a small hole in the RF shield, because the connector on the board was a bit too high. As far as I understand, Kipper2k has removed the shielding, but for me, it is part of the original case, so I want to keep it.
My case has a hole for the old drive LED, though - it was there when I bought the computer. Therefore, I was glad to see that the expansion, apart from an on-board HD LED, has a connector for external HD LED. So at a later time, I will reuse my old HD LED with the A504IDE.
All in all, a very well working expansion, easy to mount and with high quality. I am so impressed with people like Kipper2k who do these things just for fun and share them with the rest of us, probably more or less for free.
When I unpacked my Amiga after 15 years of hibernation, it did not start. All I got was the insert Workbench screen. It did not boot from hard disk. Nor from floppy. After removing all expansions and buying a brand new floppy drive, it boiled down to my AdSpeed/IDE hard disk expansion. As I always hated floppys already 20 years ago, I had to find a hard disk replacement.
 |
| A504IDE |
Some googling led me to Kipper2k and the A504IDE, an internal 4MB memory expansion with a CF card reader at a reasonable price. This is my review of it.
First of all, ordering the card worked really well. I emailed Kipper2k and quickly received a response that he could put it on the mail two days later. After paying through PayPal, it took less than a week before the card arrived in my mailbox. All the way from Canada to Sweden.
 |
| Before (yes, the clock battery is new) |
 |
| Connector in place |
Cleaning the soldering holes from lead was quite easy. Soldering the connector back was a bit harder. The holes were a bit too small and I did not want to solder the cables directly onto the expansion port. So I had to widen the holes. Also, I would recommend cleaning the Amiga board carefully with isopropanol and using extra flux when soldering. I had neither. Anyway, I managed to get the connector into place without cold soldering or destroying anything. If I can do this, pretty much anyone can.
 |
| Everything mounted! |
Beside mounting the A504IDE card, I mounted an old kickswitch with Kickstart 1.3 and a used Kickstart 2.05 ROM that I have bought. I had a 2.04 ROM and the A504IDE is said to only work with 2.05 or higher. I had planned to test the card with 2.04, but I didn't have the patience - I wanted to test the expansion card as fast as possible.
 |
| Time to boot! |
And it booted immediately! And it found the memory!
But it didn't find the disk. More about that in a later post.
After testing everything, I put the case back on the computer. I want to keep my Amiga as unmodified as possible, so was glad to see that it was not problem to close the casing afterwards. I only had to make a small hole in the RF shield, because the connector on the board was a bit too high. As far as I understand, Kipper2k has removed the shielding, but for me, it is part of the original case, so I want to keep it.
My case has a hole for the old drive LED, though - it was there when I bought the computer. Therefore, I was glad to see that the expansion, apart from an on-board HD LED, has a connector for external HD LED. So at a later time, I will reuse my old HD LED with the A504IDE.
All in all, a very well working expansion, easy to mount and with high quality. I am so impressed with people like Kipper2k who do these things just for fun and share them with the rest of us, probably more or less for free.
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