Please read an introduction to Amigas in the Amiga 1000 entry.

Commodore tried to make another stab at the home market with the $700.00 Amiga 500, and partially succeeded. The 500 was relatively compact (but only in the sense that the Commodore 128 is), had enough power to impress your neighbors, and was soon accompanied by hard drive and other "side-car" upgrades, eventually including the Amiga 570 CD-ROM drive in 1992.

In 1991, Commodore released the Amiga 500/Plus. In this model, they upgraded to the then-current 2.0 operating system, included the optional 512k expansion, and upgraded some of the audio/video chips.

Commodore Germany also released an Amiga 500 "New Art" series. These were simply standard plastic case A500s with a colorful outer design arranged by Stefanie Tücking of the German radio station SWR3.. There were two such designs released. Examples of both from this collection are shown.

Statistics, features, and A500 resources:

CPU: Motorola 68000

• 7.14mhz

RAM: 512 kilobytes

• Expandable to 9 megabytes

ROM: 256 kilobytes

Video: CSG "Daphne/Denise" chip

• Text: 60 X 32 and 80 X 32
• Hires: 320 X 200 through 640 X 512
• 4096 color palette

Sound: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip

• Four voice stereo Sound

Ports: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip

• 25 pin Centronics Parallel port
• 25 pin RS232 Serial port
• Stereo RF Sound plugs
• 9-pin Mouse/Joystick ports (X2)
• 25-pin Amiga Floppy port
• 23-pin Amiga Video port
• Composite RF Video port
• "Belly" port for memory expansion
• "Sidecar" port for other expansions (A570)

Keyboard: Full-sized 95 key QWERTY

• 18 key numeric keypad
• 4 direction cursor-pad

Extra hardware:

• Internal 880K 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive

Resources:

• Boot Issues

Personal Note: Another eBay find. This was actually my first Amiga, purchased in 1996 I believe. It signified my giving in to the Amiga line, a fairly bold step for me. It figures that step would be taken with the low end A500, which was still a lot of fun for the 5-6 months I kept it out and around. The A500/Plus was also an eBay find, bought for no good reason at all. Both Designers came from Stefan Walgenbach, a regular assistant in my illness.

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