ai065@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Thomas Hill) (12/09/90)
I am an Amiga 500 owner with several questions and ideas as far as
expansion goes. I, at one time, owned an Expansion Tech Tool Box (2 2000
slot's with power supply) card cage with a Kronus hard card and 32 MEG
Seagate Drive installed in it. I sold that and am again looking to expand
my system. First, I love the new Bodega bay and would like to get one
some time in the future. Right now, however, I am looking to get another
hard drive and some type of CPU board. I'm leaning towards the new GVP
Series II 500 (30 or 40 MEG) hard drive which has an sockets for up to
8 MEG of RAM. Is this the fastest controller for the 500 that also comes
with up to 8 MEG of RAM? What is the experience of any people out there
who have this thing? Can you simply plug the RAM chips right into it? Will
it work with CPU boards and can it benefit from the increased speed? What
CPU boards (the ones that ride on the 68000 socket) for under $400 are out
there and how well do they perform? I'm interested in hearing more about
that new AdSpeed board. Will one of these be able to co-exist with that
new ATone IBM AT Emulator board which allows uses the CPU socket?
In the future, I'd like to add more serial ports to my 500 for use in a
BBS system. This is where it gets tricky. I would love a nice looking 500
specific hard drive system, instead of one for a card cage, but then how
am I to add more lines to the system without one? I hear the GVP hard drive
comes with a mini-expansion bus. While I hear this is a better pass-thru
then just passing the bus, I doubt that anybody but GVP will make anything
for this. Could this be a new third party agreed standard? I wish it was,
but don't think so. Does anybody make a serial board that plubs into the
expansion bus of the 500, or does GVP make one for that mini-port?
Finally, I want to hear from any and all 500 owners out there who have
their 500s decked out with CPU boards, drives, and whatever else you can
cram into the thing. I need expansion ideas! Let me lastly say that I am
amazed with all the new stuff they manage to fit under the 500's hood. That
entire hard drive setup that fits inside looks real cool. Open for ideas...
By the way, the expansion box by Expansion Tech I sold was VERY nice.
Never had a problem and I loved how cheap it was to build my own hard drive
setup using my own choice of 2000 cards and SCSI drives. I sold it because
money was short. It did make you feel like you were typing right next to
a mailbox though. It sat right on the port.
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