Memory Expansions on Amiga 500 and 600

This weekend I took a look at the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 memory expansion cards and A1200 real time clock port expansion module, all kindly supplied to me for review by AmigaKit.

Starting with the Amiga 500 memory expansion first, it is an auto-configured 512k memory expansion, which is much smaller than old Commodore A501 expansion cards from back in the day! It costs GBP17.80 and is available from here.

If you have an Amiga 500+ model, you can use this card to give you the full 1MB chip memory (rather than fast memory in the A500). There is a jumper on the card you can open to enable this functionality. If you have an Agnus 8372 chip installed on your older A500 this should also work but I have not tested this.

Here is the expansion port side view:

AmigaKit also sell a Amiga 1200 Real Time Clock (RTC) port expansion for GBP 14.77 as below.

It is designed to fit on the clock port expansion port on the Amiga 1200, but also can be used on the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 memory expansion featured here, to enable saving date/time on your Amiga.

According to AmigaKit the clock port expansion is usable for a number of accelerators, not just their own - it works on:

• Amiga 1200 Clock Port
• AmigaKit A500 Memory Expansion
• AmigaKit A600 Memory Expansion
• Individual Computers A604n Memory Expansion
• Individual Computers ACA 1220 128MB Accelerator
• Individual Computers ACA 1232 128MB Accelerator
• Individual Computers ACA 1233/40n 128MB Accelerator

Below is another view showing the CR1220 battery slot and battery on the RTC card:

Here it is installed on the Amiga 500 memory expansion:

The ability to switch the RTC between your systems is quite handy, especially if you don't need it on all your Amigas. Install time on the Amiga 500:

Seriously, this expansion card is very small once installed in the Amiga 500 - it slides in smoothly, using the plastic edges of the expansion bay to ensure it connects exactly:

Flipping back the A500 to it's rightful position, it boots and shows the extra 512k memory:

Next I moved onto the Amiga 600 1MB auto-configure memory expansion, which costs GBP19.99 and is available from here:

This card is a little more interesting - it has 1MB memory expansion for the Amiga 600, bringing it's total Chip memory to 2MB. It also has the RTC port for the Real time clock expansion card. In addition it includes a clock port for A1200 clock port expansions like subway USB, rapid road, etc.

Some closer views:

I installed the RTC card on the A600 expansion:

Next I opened up my A600 to install the expansion card. I realise that technically you can just open the expansion port to do this, but I wanted to photograph the expansion inside the system:

Installed in the A600 and ready to close up:

There is some useful instructions included with the expansion cards which you should check over prior to installation since they explain about the clock port usage among other things - there is an online Wiki for these boards too:

With the A600 powered on, I can now see the extra 1MB chip memory is working, giving me the 2MB chip memory on my A600.

The memory expansion gives the A600 enough memory now to run the newest AmigaOS 3.1.4:

Last, but not least, I decided not to run the A1200 RTC card in either expansion card. I decided to put it in my Amiga 1200, which I really do want to have a battery backed up clock for, given it is using my AmiKitReal 9 build now. 

I opened up the A1200 to install the RTC card in the clock port:

Here it is, installed, fits very nicely around the Kickstart roms:

Close up view of the RTC card installed:

I suppose thinking about it I could have installed it on my Individual computers A1233 accelerator too, but I elected to do it this way. I guess I just like any excuse to open the case!

It is great to have these new cards in 2019 to use on my Classic Amigas. They appear to be well made and are available from AmigaKit for purchase.

Enhancer Software 1.1 update on X1000

Recently I have been testing the final Release Candidate version of Enhancer Software V1.1 from A-Eon, the first major update to the Enhancer Software bundle since it was released earlier this year for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on AMIStore and physical CD purchase from AmigaKit and other dealers.

I have been testing the latest update on the AmigaOne X1000 and Sam460CR. This post covers the X1000 installation.

The v1.1 update can be downloaded for free for purchasers of the Enhancer Software bundle on AMIStore. Once downloaded and extracted this is the install drawer:

As always it is wise to read the Read_Me_English document under the Read_Me_First drawer to understand the changes that will be made to the system during the installation.

So, let's get the update installed:

The installer works the same as the original installation for Enhancer Software, so there are no real surprises here. I already walked through this installer previously here, so I will just focus on the major changes for this version:

The installer detects the SDK installation on my X1000, so it will give me the option to install the SDK files for the software being installed as the installation proceeds.

Important part is to backup your current files when prompted to do so, just in case you need them:

The new backup will be installed to a different drawer to the original Enhancer Software backup drawer, so both old replaced versions are still available on your system after the install completes.

I chose to opt for the Black icon colours for the new software being installed:

New for this updated v1.1 is some new sound and HTML Datatypes for use with Multiviewer (and Multiview) - to play back Amiga Sound files, WAV, MP3 and MOD files, and display Simple HTML pages in Multiviewer (included in the Enhancer Software bundle):

As per the original version you get the option to install the SDK files if the SDK is detected on your system, and then asked if you want it to do this automatically for all utilities and tools being installed:

Also updated is the Clock and other gadgets:

On the utility front, v1.1 includes newly updated versions of Multiviewer, AmiPDF, TuneNet and X-Dock, amongst others:

The new updated Clock (Replacing the original Clock included with AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition) can be started on boot up and I chose to do so.

Commodities, Systems components and Libraries are also updated, including Warp3D Nova and OpenGL ES 2.0 for Nova:

Warp3D Nova and OpenGL ES 2.0 libraries appear to have had quite a bit done with a big version bump for this update - from reports this update dramatically improves the performance of Warp3D Nova and OpenGL ES 2.0 under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition - I look forward to seeing upcoming games using these new libraries and new capabilities on AmigaOS4.1:

A reminder that you need Radeon HD v1 or v2 drivers (included in the Standard / Plus bundle) and a Southern Islands chipset graphics card to use Warp3D Nova.

The installation then completes:

A hard reset is then required for the changes to take effect. On reboot here is my AmigaOne X1000 with updated Enhancer software 1.1 installed, with the new clock appearing on my Workbench:

Since the new Clock is here, let's take a closer look at it first:

If we right click on the Clock, we can change a number of settings for it, including themes:

I can also choose skins for the clock, circle and square depending on the type of clock selected:

As you can see there are quite a few options included with the Enhancer Software bundle out of the box:

Here are some of the many skinned clocks you can have:

You have very granular control over the clock, even the hands colour, length, width and more can be modified to suit your preferences:

In the settings you can get the clock to automatically snap to the top, top right, bottom, etc:

You can also choose to have the digital version of the clock too:

In addition you can also set recurring and one off alarms to prompt you using Ringhio notification and sounds of particular events, for example Dinner time as I did below:

You can set the time by clicking on the clock hands and spinning them around with the mouse! Very nice.

For the notifications you can select sounds to use - the default being the Amiga 1000 boot up sound file - you can of course change it to whatever you fancy:

You can also modify the Alarm under the Action tab to run any command you want to, which is quite handy and flexible. You might for example run a music player to play music at a specific time in the morning to wake you up, etc.

Here is the clock snapped to the top right of my Workbench screen: - I really like it!

Ringhio notifications have also been updated in this release, supporting progress bars within the notifications, which should have some interesting uses for applications that need this functionality. There is a Notifications drawer in the Documentation drawer with an example progress bar Arexx script to try out:

When double clicking on the script be sure to prefix the command with "rx" before the script name, like I did below:

The example Ringhio notification with a moving progress bar then displays:

Also new for this v1.1 Enhancer Software bundle is an updated version of Multiviewer 2.5 and the new sound and html datatypes I mentioned earlier.

It is important if you have existing MOD datatypes and MP3 datatypes to remove them from your devs:datatypes drawer and sys:classes/datatypes drawer as they will stop Multiviewer using the new ones.

Here I have the new updated Multiviewer playing some MOD and MP3 files:

Amiga sound files work well also:

Although not updated in this version, I was glad to see the animation files work well in Multiviewer also - here is one I created back in 1991 (!!) for my Amiga 2000 while it was booting up:

As you can the Multiviewer has been updated from v2.2 to v2.5 with this update:

I also tested the new Simple HTML datatype included in this release with some test html files in Multiviewer which worked well:

TuneNet has also been updated to v2.4 with Arexx support. It also now has support for languages other than English, with Workbench locale support, which is of course a big improvement for those from non-English speaking countries running it!

AmiPDF has also been updated in this release with AISS icon NewMenus, window title bar gadgets (snapshot etc), Ringhio support, supports new TickBox Gadget and InfoWindowClass gadget.  It also has a new feature in Prefs to resize the window without redrawing - this makes the program much faster when resizing.

This v1.1 update is very welcome indeed and adds some neat new features and bug fixes. For Enhancer Software users you should update as soon as possible once this is released.

For those wondering whether it is worth taking the plunge to get Enhancer Software bundle, I can say I believe it is worthwhile for the amount of AmigaOS 4.1 software you are getting, and the fact that A-Eon is actively developing this software to keep the platform moving forward in 2016.