Pimped Amiga 500
pimyretro.org
pimyretro.org
But I can still look at a screenshot of Workbench 1.3 running on an Amiga 500 displaying "8831544 free memory" and it feels like an absolute ocean of RAM for that machine and that time and, most importantly, for the software that was available in that era.
Back in the early 90s I used to, with 1MB of RAM, code, play games, make music, do word processing, create graphics with both DPaint III (or was it IV?), and create vector drawings with a CAD package, create spreadsheets, create fractal landscapes with Vista, not to mention a ton of other stuff as well.
It is crazy to think of how much you could do with so little back in the day. But even this was a massive step change compared to the 8-bit machines I'd been using up to that point. These I'd mostly used for programming and games (although I did do a bit of word processing on BBC machines, and a teeny tiny amount of spreadsheet stuff). I did have a light gun for my ZX Spectrum but, boy, was it tedious graphics with (although I did do it), as compared to DPaint.
A friend taught me how to use a device driver (ramdisk.sys I think it was) to split that into two, and use 320kb of RAM as a "fast" hard drive.
I will install games there, and play with only 320kb or RAM (actually less because DOS used some RAM).
I had a 20MB Seagate HDD. 20 Megabytes.
Nice times.
- 1 megabyte of RAM
- 1 megapixel display (1024x1024@1bit - black and white!)
- 1 MIPS
Still makes me smile.
WinUAE (Windows) or FS-UAE (Mac/Linux) — great defaults, easy setup
Install Workbench 1.3 or 3.1 plus: Directory Opus, Diskmaster, WHDLoad
Use curated packs like Workbench 3.X ClassicWB so you don’t have to configure everything manually
For games, WHDLoad bundles are a massive quality-of-life improvement over floppy juggling
You’ll get 90% of the “Amiga feel” without hunting vintage hardware.
It's amazing that a platform that's been dead since the early 90's is still getting so much love.
I haven't had luck finding anybody in the US with experience recapping these models who will do the work. The one person I found was unwilling to do the work w/o my verifying if they work now. I think it's a mistake to apply power to them in their current state since that could cause damage.
If anybody has recommendations I'd appreciate it. I'm not looking to cheap-out on this (particularly with the CD32, since I'm the original owner and have all the original packing material, etc). I just want them done right so they can be preserved and used again.
Email is in my profile.
One big issue is that these old electrolytic caps can leak and damage the motherboard and this is a common fail state for both the A1200 and CD32, as Commodore used some particularly low quality caps in the 1992-1994 era.
Even if you don't replace the caps they should be removed from the board before they go in to long term storage.
Powering up is unlikely to damage the machines. If the caps have already failed powering up won't cause any additional failure. A cap that hasn't been powered in a long time and is on the very edge of failure can be caused to fail by passing power in to it but that is a vanishingly rare edge case. The most likely issue for the caps, if they aren't working, is that they have already leaked.
I have to admit that it's better than using my A500/A1200s.
https://www.icode.com/product/mister-fpga-kit-terasic-de10-n...
Even the most basic models (the $99 + shipping + tax from China) can handle the Amiga. You get more bells whistles plus a better package with a MiSTer stack but I would recommend most people to either grab the Multisystem II or the Mister Pi (Turbo Pack) from RetroRemake. If you want to run Saturn fighters then getting a second stick of RAM is a must as it allows everything to run at full speed.
I have the Ultimate Mister kit with USB + AV boards but only a single stick of RAM (also 128MB) and a Honeywell PSU and it's awesome especially for the Amiga and C64 :)
ultimately it's hard to prescribe the "definitive" amiga experience in 2025 to a total newbie. At a surface level, for many people, amiga ownership was simply a console like experience -> Buy an amiga 500, and shovel game disks into it, play game, turn it off. Replicating that is super easy with either just a raspberry pi and the PiMiga distro (see the Chris Edwards youtube channel for details) or even retropie comes with support for amiga OOTB however it comes with the caveat of having a little background knowledge of the hardware combinations available. The ABSOLUTE easiest way of getting a taste of amiga is to get hold of a "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).
There is the WinUAE emulator for windows that's excellent (so good, you can use it to prep real-world Hard drives for actual physical amigas) but it's complicated without prior knowledge of the OG hardware combinations.
The most common setup back in the day (for UKers playing games at least) was an OG Amiga 500 with OCS (Original Chip Set) with 0.5MB RAM(ChipRAM - essentially shared system and graphics memory) and maybe an optional extra 0.5 MB upgrade (FastRAM - CPU only memory, though often known now as SlowRAM because it was directly accessable by the CPU only but had to share the bus with the chip RAM) and 1.3 Kickstart ROM.
This was later upgraded by the A500+ which came with ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) which gave a few added graphical modes, 1MB of Chip RAM (typically upgradable to +1MB fast RAM) and kickstart 2.0. it broke compatibility with some games and was a min spec for others.
This was replaced directly by the A1200 which came with an upgraded CPU (68020ec at 14 MHz) AGA chipset (16.7 mil colour palette, 256 on screen), internal IDE interface and kickstart 3.0 with 2MB ChipRAM out of the box.
The A500+ was also indirectly replaced with the A600. Essentially a A500+ mini - they updated the manuafcturing to surface mount, reduced the PCB size significantly and removed the numberpad from the keyboard and added the IDE interface from the A1200. it was supposed to be a cost reduced version but initially cost more to make than the outgoing A500+. It was hated at the time because it cost more at retail and had less features (lack of keypad broke a lot of software, IDE interface wasn't seen as beneficial at the time and the side expansion port was replaced by a PCMCIA port which again only had much more expensive peripherals at the time) The rest are the "Big Box" amigas - computers with a separate keyboard from the main box case: A1000 (the OG or just "Amiga" when it launched)
A2000 - The workhorse version of thw A500 with expansion, processor,video upgrade slots.
A1500 - a UK specific cut down version of the A2000 just launched to inflict trademark damage to a sole trader startup making aftermarket cases for the A500.
A3000 - the first fully 32-bit platform - ECS and 32-bit 680x0 CPUs available (IIRC both 68020 and 68030 though might be wrong about the '020)
A4000 - a big box equivalent to the A1200 - AGA and expansion
A4000T - towerized version of A4000 - the holy grail for collectors and rare as hens teeth.
However in 2025 getting involved with the amiga scene is a huge rabbit hole as the community is so large there are always wonderful projects (such as PiStorm) for enhancing and extending the life of these now very aged machines.
Sorry, this ended up a bit of an essay on what was only supposed to be a quick note...
With the RetroRemake and QMTech setup you're up and running for the 8/16-bits for under $200 all-in which for most people in tech in the US isn't a big ask. The experience is also much better than emulation IMHO.
https://retrogames.biz/games/thea500-mini/
I count to 26, plus one free download they provide for testing out the USB feature.
Amiga Forever in Windows (or in WINE) is about as easy to run, plus it comes with nice pre-configured system images to boot into Workbench. Not having much real Amiga experience I struggle a bit with making use of those. I tried to install some freeware Amiga applications (trackers and such) but not much success.
2. Consider buying AmiKit or using its free version: https://www.amikit.amiga.sk/ -- it needs the aforementioned Kickstart ROM and Workbench Disks, but again they've put together an Amiga emulation environment for you with lots of software pre-installed.
3. If you don't want to use those pre-made packs, install WinUAE (for Windows) or amiberry (for macOS/Linux) yourself, configure them yourself with the ROM... and use one of the ClassicWB (https://classicwb.abime.net/) hard drive images.
4. And if you don't like ClassicWB, you can also extract the Amiga hard drive image included with PiMiga 4 to enjoy an alternative pack. PiMiga is a Raspberry Pi image that includes an Amiga emulator for the Pi and a huge Amiga hard drive image -- simply use software to read the PiMiga Linux ext2 filesystem and extract that hard drive image to use it on your own emulator, no RPi needed (https://old.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/1dfcn8u/extract_amig...)
Instead you run them with WHDLoad, originally designed to install all games onto the hard drives of real Amigas.
A lovely group of programmers have made WHDLoad installers for every game you know of, that patch the game in just the right places so it runs correctly, regardless of Amiga model or OS version.
WHDLoad also lets you press a "QuitKey" that returns you back to Workbench. And if you have an emulated Amiga with lots of RAM, you get to preload all the disks into RAM so there's basically zero loading time.
People have made large collections of "preinstalled" WHDLoad installers, bundling games in a ready-to-run way for any Amiga.
AmigaVision is a carefully curated collection of game and demo configurations for the Amiga computer platform, as well as a minimal Workbench setup with useful utilities and apps, wrapped in a user-friendly launcher.
https://github.com/amigavision/AmigaVision
I run it on a Mister FPGA but there are multiple other ways to do it, including emulators running on your regular computer.
I find myself wishing for something like AmigaVision for e.g. the IBM PC.
The launcher should be in either classic text mode or VGA 640x480x16 colors with custom palettes like those cool disk mags. And of course tracker background music.
There is some similar effort called 0MHz based on the eXoDOS project, but I'm not sure I like it as much. Needs more work. And a lot more curation.
I'm also hoping that we start seeing USB external Amiga / C64 keyboards for the real enthusiasts. That might be a little too niche though.
Many of the Amiga's legendary games and graphics were specifically hand-crafted to look best on high-quality analog RGB CRTs. It's shocking how much better they look when properly displayed. The hard-edged, square block pixels on so many retro Youtube channels is not just technically incorrect - it's not what the original developers and artists created or ever intended their users to see.
Although this system will be somewhat hobbled by OS 1.3, I doubt OP will be bothered by that much. Have fun!
I have a A2000, and use Amiberry, but I'm looking forward to using this thing.