Dual Boot on Amiga? - Amiga 500 ACA500Plus

[@FarObserver]

Blows my mind that the Amiga scene is still so active with all these crazy mods and stuff. I absolutely LOVED my Amiga back in the day, having started with an A600 (still remember disk swapping Monkey Island 2) then further down the line, the A1200 which I added accelerator boards too, IDE HDD, CD-ROM, then the whole thing was transplanted into this MASSIVE case from Eyetech that looked like it needed planning permission. Fun times :)

[@piyushkhengar]

I agree - Workbench 1.3 was definitely the best looking one!

[@dadautube]

especially if one knows how to fine-tune the 4 basic blue, white, black and orange color registers the right way to create that heavenly 'white cloud fonts against a blue sky' looks! 🙂(have talked about this extensively in another comment of mine above already ...)

[@dadautube]

to me, personally, the said OS1.3 fine-tuned looks represents the 1950s, when there were advanced-enough computers made but no computers with color monitor screens were even invented yet, much less to be even available to the public at such affordable prices! but if it were, then that would possibly be how a beautiful multitasking OS screen, the Amiga's Workbench namely, would probably look in the 1950s / `60s!) ;-)

[@kasi7777]

Hi, I've doing also a dual boot on the ACA500 these days, but I'm doing this using the startup-sequence only. You don't have to select the boot drive in Kickstart 3.1, the script will detect the current kickstart and switches to the 3.1 drive automaticaly. In your case, edit the startup-sequence in DH0/Kick 1.3, and add following lines on the beginning of your startup-sequence: VERSION exec.library 40 IF NOT WARN ECHO "Found Kickstart 3.1" ASSIGN SYS: DH1: ; AmigaOS 3.1 drive ASSIGN c: SYS:c ; same with s:, l:, libs:, devs:, fonts: EXECUTE s:startup-sequence ELSE ECHO "Found Kickstart 1.3" ; your original 1.3 startup-sequence ENDIF You are done, hope it works correctly.

[@ShieTar_]

Basically, you could also just write that same script and run it from 1.3 to switch over to 3.1 without rebooting, right? Assuming you can also quit Workbench 1.3 from a script.

[@tfksworldoflinux]

I love the ACA500plus. I've got my Amiga 500 kitten out with all individual parts. I now have the ACA1221lc accelerator attached and upgraded the ACA with the X-Surf-500 for networking and the RTC module for a working clock. The ACE2b 2 meg memory upgrade and the flicker fixer/scan doubler. I choose all individual parts for compatibility reasons and because it just works. The ACE2b clips into the Agnus socket and by doing it this way I didn't have to alter the motherboard. Now I can revert the whole machine back to stock if I want to. Very nice experiment with the dual booting! I never dual booted with the Amiga as it it easier to just put an OS on another CF card and pop that one in. As mentioned below via F10 you can select the profile to boot. Individual has also a Amiga tool available to upload ROMs to the ACA which can be selected in a profile. On Linux the boot selector is called Grub2 but that one is installed into the EFI partition which is not available on the Amiga. The ACA start screen comes before everything else. The mouse buttons pressed action to get into early kickstart boot should work from there too. After booting with F1 or pressing enter in the F10 menu. One last thing: plexilaser dot de has an acrylic case in transparent or dark color for this device.

[@cross3fire]

You ARE the Wonder that you ARE! Always entertaining.I'm afraid to power anything of mine up for fear of damaging. Greetings and Regards from across the pond.

[@JimJimPlays]

Great video, Maddi ! I proper lolled when your trackerball was flipped onto the floor

[@johnwiesen4440]

Hi all the ACA 500+ is very good. I have one. I have got the X-Surf-500 with mine, I also use a ACA 1232 with a 68EC030 clocked at 40MHz (without MMU) on it. What I like is that you can have many kickstart ROM`s on it I now have 3.2.1 on it as well. If you want to overclock the onboard 68000, I put a heatsink over the chip. With all cards plug in my A500+ has got lots of RAM too play with.

[@jrherita]

Love my ACA500plus -- great upgrade for older A500's to add some chipram (512kb --> 1MB via trapdoor expansion only). Thanks for the video Lemon!

[@erwindewit4073]

I really like videos like this! It's interesting: I felt quite the same. Why they changed the very nice colours from the 1.1-1.3 Kickstarts to the incredibly boring grey of the 2 versions is beyond me. My biggest weakness is for 1.2, as I started with that one. I even used to run a hard drive on my Amiga with 1.3. For me, I only recently started playing around with 3.1... Quite useful then to have your videos ready to see how it works... Cheers Maddi!

[@RetroHawk]

I really like when you dual boot lemons !

[@tonybell7267]

Great video , always enjoy your content 👍

[@jasmijndekkers]

Nice content, keep up the good work!

[@JohnSheppard1]

The rest of the drive space wasn't used because the stock 3.1 ROM can only see and use partitions of up to 4GB. You'd need an updated scsi.device module (v43+) loaded at boot with loadmodule in your startup-sequence, or install or use a 3.1.4/3.2 ROM and their respective HDToolbox programs.

[@joacimwennerberg8310]

Thanks! Very interesting. 🙂

[@Christian-nr6xh]

Hi Maddi, i know of a video (sadly in german language) where MIG from MIG's yesterchips did a dual boot setup ("Kick die Workbench!"). He checked the version of exec.library and then if warn he executed 1.3 startup-sequence else another startup sequence. Also some assign magic, but could be worth a try. He shows the setup, maybe you can make sense of it only by the pictures.

[@dadautube]

post OS2.0, Commodore did change the color-0's register in Workbench, which made it very difficult if not impossible to change future Workbench palettes looks back into the 'original' default OS1.3 color scheme, which even at that, would NEVER work the same anyways ... the latter, the OS1.3's color scheme, was reportedly a 'copy' of NASA computers screens color scheme from the old times, where the blue background represented the sky and the white font, the clouds and so on ... one reason i can NEVER EVER say totally goodbye to my OS1.3's looks and feels is just that, especially after the little tweaks i did to the blue and white as well as to the red and black Wb color registers, making the whole thing of the loveliest / most beautiful Workbench screens ever! (i also managed to created icons that look like having at least 8 colors, using the same basic 4 colors of the Wb1.3 ... one day i'll share screenshots and videos of my Amiga stuff online, for which i am really proud ...) 🙂

[@JimmyHandtrixx]

can you tell me how to do this please? i will have an a500 soon with 1.3

[@dadautube]

@@JimmyHandtrixx sorry, to do what : tweaking the OS colors?

[@JimmyHandtrixx]

@@dadautube yes. do you need some extra software or just in workbench? how do you save settings?

[@dadautube]

@@JimmyHandtrixx well, i made a long comment here with links and stuff ... but can't see it anymore!? guess KZbin removed it because there was a link in it even though i had provided it as a broken link which you could stitch yourself later ... i'll give another link in the reply to this comment so at least this one remains intact ...

[@JimmyHandtrixx]

@@dadautube i guess YT deleted it again...🤷‍♂️ maybe you can give part of the name? or i can put my email here...

[@dadautube]

been ages since i did this but i remember when i wanted my A1200's boot screen to appear first, i had to click the left mouse button when turning the Amiga on ... (then just pressing the Space Bar would switch between NTSC and PAL modes ...)

[@exaturbo]

Any chance you could do a demo of how to install os 3.1.4 or 3.2 with the ACA 500 plus ? That would be very handy.

[@eesaeesaeesa9590]

Wonderful and very nice

[@MuzafferB74]

I don't know why it's showing up but what's on the green screen is hardware registers of the 68000 CPU.

[@milk-it]

You've got the quirks of the Amiga sussed out, Maddi 🙂.

[@generalkilbabathemadmansch3602]

Nice geeking out :P

[@moomah5929]

Right now I'm also thinking about getting an ACA500Plus. Got an Amiga 500+ with 512kB Trap Door expansion and 1.3 / 3.1 switch at the side, which I would love to use WHDLoad with as running RPGs of floppy disks is a bit of a pain. Don't need to relive the C64 Ulima 6 days. ;) Btw, my external floppy drive (same as in the video) just stopped working. Just before it stopped working (can't seem to read disks but powers on) I was loading from some old disks that might have slight mold damage even though they don't look as patchy as some of my old 5.25" disks. How high is the chance that the reading heads are simply gunked up and that a cleaning disk might help? Had similar problems on my PC's 5.25" drive where my cleaning disk helped but I don't have a 3.5" one yet.

[@georgealexander1338]

Hey Maddi, I'm so glad you got an ACA500+! I would love it if you could make a video showing exactly how to use the action replay functions on it. I have had one for a while and can't figure out how to use this feature. Especially I want to be able to slow down games like you could on the original AR cartridges, but ACA doesn't have the dial, so can you even do this on ACA? I hope you can figure it out better than I can. Love your videos! Especially SidBoomBox project! Inspiring!

[@MsMadLemon]

Actually, I didn't think about the action replay dial, that would be the only thing that's missing and i'd assume you'd need a real action replay cartridge for. I'm not sure if it's possible with the ACA, I assume not as it's purely hardware based and possibly not part of the Action Reply Rom image itself. With regards to Action replay, I can elaborate on it a bit more, however I have done a video in the past kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5iyhKaIbL2ehKs I hope this helps and thank you for your kind words :-)

[@leoc.9341]

Thanks for the additional ACA500plus video. It is amazing hardware that doesn't seem to get enough love and recognition. Is it the only modern option that uses the side expansion slot?? I am not aware of any other ones.

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

Check out the HC508 and the Classic 520, which are similar to the ACA500+, and the adapters from Edu Arana to let you use a PiStorm or TerribleFire slotted on the side instead of mounted in the CPU socket. I'd post links but any comments with links seem to get "held for review" by KZbin. And I almost forgot, there's also a side expansion board for the A500 that lets you use a A2000 board but I don't remember the name of it.

[@leoc.9341]

@@LeftoverBeefcake Thanks!! I forgot all about the 508 and 520. I was following them on the amigastore website, but they seemed to always be out of stock. Both are priced at 199 euros. The Classic 520 looks really nice, but the ACA500+ is comparable and around 50 dollars cheaper. I live in the USA and received my ACA500+ in 3 days.... I didn't know you could ship anything from Europe to the US that quickly. 😀

[@Yoritomo3800]

I would like to drink the same tea to be enthusiastic everyday like that 😀

[@gdclemo]

Do you have some sort of auto-detecting mouse/joystick splitter plugged in? That might be why you have to move the mouse on reset, so it detects it's a mouse and not a joystick.

[@MsMadLemon]

That could be possible actually. I have a Jerry + Adapter plugged in.. Though you'd think pressing the mouse buttons would be enough to trigger it. But there's no joystick plugged in which would trigger it off the mouse. I suppose the only way to test this would be to get a ball mouse, take the ball out and then try to use the buttons and see if it behaves the same.

[@johnseamons7455]

Hi Maddi. Great Video's on the ACA. So I have purchased on. I was able to do the quick install F7 F1 on a 16GB, but like you I found only a portion of the card used. So on their website I undated the Menu to 1.46 and also the Installer because thats what they recommended Quote "The automatic ACA500plus installer will partition and install your CF card with OS3.1, using a 64-bit compatible file system where applicable, and make preparations for installing WHDload, getting you started the easy way. Use with menu system v0.146 or higher; launch by pressing F7 in the main menu." I did both the Menu and Installer, but now when I F7 F1 or F3 I only get the 3.1 workbench screen Asking me to insert the 3.1 disk. It unpack the rom, but not the disks. Any suggestions tks. Also strugglying to get my head around WHDLoad onto the Aux CF Card for games to transer to the 2nd partition on the CF Boot cards. Tks again

[@arnoldimus5905]

I'm no Amiga owner, but there is some sort of software as it seems, don't know if it's what you're looking for. Amiga Boot Selector 2. There's some tutorial on amigafrance?

[@MsMadLemon]

Thank you, i will check that out!

[@7evenheaven]

It is possible to switch automaticly. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jmjIg3WJrdKZbNE The only problem, the Video is in german. You have to check the version of the exec Library and switch to different Startup-Sequences

[@HenrikG1963]

Good video. What does the maxTransfer change to 1fe00 do?

[@MsMadLemon]

It limits the amount of data to the CF card (or SD card). It stops too much data being transferred per request, resulting in errors.

[@tamerrafie9965]

first comment . great video . greetings from Egypt.

[@TuMalaCon100cia]

Hi Ms Mad Lemon! I'm new owner of Amiga 500, but unfortenelly the machine don't work... I connect all things in their correct place, but the Amiga don't have any life, the leds are off. I tested the original PSU and it seems work, I've the 12, 12 and 5 V, but it don't power on. Do you know any known bug? Sorry for my english, I'm from Barcelona! Thank you!!

[@MsMadLemon]

Hi there, it's difficult to tell what could be wrong exactly without being in front of it or testing it. Have you tried it with another PSU? because sometimes there may be voltage when you measure it with your meter, but if you try to take current from it then there is not enough, meaning the voltage goes down. Have you tried measuring voltages while its connected to the Amiga? does it still show 12, -12 and 5v? Did you measure any voltage from the motherboard itself? No hay problema, creo que olvide mucho de mi espanol porque no hay alguen aqui para hablar en espanol hace muchos anos. Tu ingles es mejor de mi espanol ahora jajaj I hope this helps in any way.

[@TuMalaCon100cia]

@@MsMadLemon Thanks for the reply! No, I don't have other PSU, but I think that I can mod a regular PSU from PC. And no, I tested only in PSU pinout, you say I need to test in back Amiga mainbord with energy, right? To test faster, I can test without keyboard and flopy drive? I should, in case it works, show me image in the monitor? Greetings from Barcelona ñññ

[@MsMadLemon]

@@TuMalaCon100cia yes you can test without the floppy and keyboard just fine. Modding a pc psu to test it should be fine also.

[@aaykut]

Hey, quick question: where can I find an Amiga mouse mat, like you have? On a side note, my mother has a friend called Mediha, which is the Turkish version of your name. Greetings from Turkey!

[@MsMadLemon]

Hey, I got the mouse mat from Rhayader computers: here's the link: www.rhayadercomputers.co.uk/browse/cat4866956_4178793.aspx Also nice to know there's a namesake out there, I havent come across that many people who have my name. Greetings!

[@markstevenson621]

Hi mad lemon could I request could yiu remotely on my pc to put 3.1 on my compact flash I'd appreciate it

[@Thiesi]

"En-TER!" -Ms Mad Lemon, June '22

[@przemyawukasik1745]

i fully agree , 1.3 was the best looking rest was simply ugly , i have no idea why they changed it

[@Error42_]

Your early boot menu problem reminded me of my little video on accessing the BIOS on a PC, which is just as much of a performance/annoyance! kzbin.info/www/bejne/j37aoHieeqeaaa8 That's a nice setup, the Action Replay Mk III was fantastic too. Many wasted hours with one of those 🙂

[@Pascaldema]

Please install OS 3.1.4 really bettes with ACA500Plus and You can install the Kickstart in Hardware then use F10 expert mode

[@MsMadLemon]

I will be doing as I explore the ACA500Plus more as time goes on, this video is just me experimenting with the Amiga and the dual boot concept itself.

[@googleboughtmee]

Ooh check out the pretty lady in that thumbnail! 😍

[@eadweard.]

Damn right.

[@jazzthief81]

14:04 it looks like a CPU exception occurred and it’s going into some kind of debugger that shows you the values of all CPU registers and the program counter. Not that any of this helps. 😂

[@bloxyman22]

Probably not entirely stable at max overclock.

[@eessaeesar5676]

Don't forget songs ALPHAVILLE

[@TeutonTwin]

The lengths I go to for 1.3...

[@RakaShar]

Hi Maddie, as Arnold Imus already mentioned, Amiga Boot Selector 2 is a great tool. You can see it working (and also how to customize it to your liking) in this video from Chris Skitch here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o5zcXn2Bi9pqbsk

[@herauthon]

if Amiga can Run NetBSD - will it see more then 4GB HD space ?

[@MsMadLemon]

I don't have any experience tinkering with NetBSD, but how much the Amiga sees depends on the kickstart rom it uses. The new kickstart 3.2 doesn't have the max 4gb partition limit.

[@herauthon]

@@MsMadLemon How much ram can one add to the system ?

[@MsMadLemon]

@@herauthon im not sure what the maximum is on an Amiga. However the max I've had is 2MB chipram plus 128MB fastram... Im figuring the Maximum would probably be 256MB

[@xsm5525]

ah yes, kickstart 3.1 the rom that hates trapdoor fastram and PCMCIA cards breathing in the same room :(