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Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that of the Commodore 128. Released in 1987, the Amiga 500 was the first computer for the home market capable of multitasking. As well, it featured rich color graphics at a time when most high-end computer systems like the Personal Computer and the original Macintosh either had limited color or were entirely monochrome.
Commodore announced the Amiga 500 at the January 1987 winter Consumer Electronics Show – at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000. It was initially available in the Netherlands in April 1987, then the rest of Europe in May. In North America and the UK it was released in October 1987 with a US$699/£499 list price. It competed directly against models in the Atari ST line.
The Amiga 500 was sold in the same retail outlets as the Commodore 64, as opposed to the computer store-only Amiga 1000. It proved to be Commodore's best-selling model, particularly in Europe. Although popular with hobbyists, arguably its most widespread use was as a gaming machine, where its graphics and sound were of significant benefit. It was followed by a revised version of the computer, the Amiga 500 Plus, and the 500 series was discontinued in 1992.
In mid-1988, the Amiga 500 dropped its price from £499 to £399, and it was later bundled with the Batman Pack in the United Kingdom (from October 1989 to September 1990) which included the games Batman, F/A-18 Interceptor, The New Zealand Story and the bitmap graphics editor Deluxe Paint 2. Also included was the Amiga video connector which allows the A500 to be used with a conventional CRT television.
In November 1991, the enhanced Amiga 500 Plus replaced the 500 in some markets. It was bundled with the Cartoon Classics pack in the United Kingdom at £399, although many stores still advertised it as an 'A500'. The Amiga 500 Plus was virtually identical except for its new operating system, integrated 1MB of Chip memory, different 'trap-door' expansion slot and slightly different keyboard, and in mid-1992, the two were discontinued and effectively replaced by the Amiga 600. In late 1992, Commodore released the Amiga 1200, a machine closer in concept to the original Amiga 500, but with significant technical improvements. Despite this, neither the A1200 nor the A600 replicated the commercial success of its predecessor. By this time, the home market was strongly shifting to IBM PC compatibles with VGA graphics and the low-cost Macintosh Classic, LC, and IIsi models.
Outwardly resembling the Commodore 128 and codenamed "Rock Lobster" during development, the Amiga 500's base houses a keyboard and a CPU in one shell, unlike the Amiga 1000. The keyboard for Amiga 500s sold in the United States contains 94 keys, including ten function keys, four cursor keys, and a number pad. All European versions the keyboard have an additional two keys, except for the British variety, which still uses 94 keys. It uses a Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at 7.15909 MHz in NTSC regions and 7.09379 MHz in PAL regions. The CPU implements a 32-bit model and has 32-bit registers, but it has a 16-bit main ALU and uses a 16-bit external data bus and a 24-bit address bus, providing a maximum of 16 MB of address space. Also built in to the base of the computer is a 3+1⁄2-inch floppy disk drive. The user can also install up to three external floppy drives, either 3+1⁄2- or 5+1⁄4-inch, via the disk drive port. The second and third additional drives are installed by daisy-chaining them. Supported by these drives are double-sided disks with a capacity of 901,120 bytes, as well as 360- and 720-KB disks formatted for IBM PC compatibles.
The earliest Amiga 500 models use nearly the same Original Amiga chipset as the Amiga 1000. So graphics can be displayed in multiple resolutions and color depths, even on the same screen. Resolutions vary from 320×200 (up to 32 colors) to 640×400 (up to 16 colors) for NTSC (704×484 overscan) and 320×256 to 640×512 for PAL (704×576 overscan.) The system uses planar graphics, with up to five bitplanes (four in high resolution) allowing 2-, 4-, 8-, 16-, and 32-color screens, from a palette of 4096 colors. Two special graphics modes are also available: Extra HalfBrite, which uses a sixth bitplane as a mask to cut the brightness of any pixel in half (resulting in 32 arbitrary colors plus 32 more colors set at half the value of the first 32), and Hold-And-Modify (HAM) which allows all 4096 colors to be used on screen simultaneously. Later revisions of the chipset are PAL/NTSC switchable in software.
The sound chip produces four hardware-mixed channels, two to the left and two to the right, of 8-bit PCM at a sampling frequency up to 28 kHz. Each hardware channel has its own independent volume level and sampling rate, and can be designated to another channel where it can modulate both volume and frequency using its own output. With DMA disabled it's possible to output with a sampling frequency up to 56 kHz. There is a common trick to output sound with 14-bit precision that can be combined to output 14-bit 56 kHz sound.
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Amiga 500 AI simulator
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Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that of the Commodore 128. Released in 1987, the Amiga 500 was the first computer for the home market capable of multitasking. As well, it featured rich color graphics at a time when most high-end computer systems like the Personal Computer and the original Macintosh either had limited color or were entirely monochrome.
Commodore announced the Amiga 500 at the January 1987 winter Consumer Electronics Show – at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000. It was initially available in the Netherlands in April 1987, then the rest of Europe in May. In North America and the UK it was released in October 1987 with a US$699/£499 list price. It competed directly against models in the Atari ST line.
The Amiga 500 was sold in the same retail outlets as the Commodore 64, as opposed to the computer store-only Amiga 1000. It proved to be Commodore's best-selling model, particularly in Europe. Although popular with hobbyists, arguably its most widespread use was as a gaming machine, where its graphics and sound were of significant benefit. It was followed by a revised version of the computer, the Amiga 500 Plus, and the 500 series was discontinued in 1992.
In mid-1988, the Amiga 500 dropped its price from £499 to £399, and it was later bundled with the Batman Pack in the United Kingdom (from October 1989 to September 1990) which included the games Batman, F/A-18 Interceptor, The New Zealand Story and the bitmap graphics editor Deluxe Paint 2. Also included was the Amiga video connector which allows the A500 to be used with a conventional CRT television.
In November 1991, the enhanced Amiga 500 Plus replaced the 500 in some markets. It was bundled with the Cartoon Classics pack in the United Kingdom at £399, although many stores still advertised it as an 'A500'. The Amiga 500 Plus was virtually identical except for its new operating system, integrated 1MB of Chip memory, different 'trap-door' expansion slot and slightly different keyboard, and in mid-1992, the two were discontinued and effectively replaced by the Amiga 600. In late 1992, Commodore released the Amiga 1200, a machine closer in concept to the original Amiga 500, but with significant technical improvements. Despite this, neither the A1200 nor the A600 replicated the commercial success of its predecessor. By this time, the home market was strongly shifting to IBM PC compatibles with VGA graphics and the low-cost Macintosh Classic, LC, and IIsi models.
Outwardly resembling the Commodore 128 and codenamed "Rock Lobster" during development, the Amiga 500's base houses a keyboard and a CPU in one shell, unlike the Amiga 1000. The keyboard for Amiga 500s sold in the United States contains 94 keys, including ten function keys, four cursor keys, and a number pad. All European versions the keyboard have an additional two keys, except for the British variety, which still uses 94 keys. It uses a Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at 7.15909 MHz in NTSC regions and 7.09379 MHz in PAL regions. The CPU implements a 32-bit model and has 32-bit registers, but it has a 16-bit main ALU and uses a 16-bit external data bus and a 24-bit address bus, providing a maximum of 16 MB of address space. Also built in to the base of the computer is a 3+1⁄2-inch floppy disk drive. The user can also install up to three external floppy drives, either 3+1⁄2- or 5+1⁄4-inch, via the disk drive port. The second and third additional drives are installed by daisy-chaining them. Supported by these drives are double-sided disks with a capacity of 901,120 bytes, as well as 360- and 720-KB disks formatted for IBM PC compatibles.
The earliest Amiga 500 models use nearly the same Original Amiga chipset as the Amiga 1000. So graphics can be displayed in multiple resolutions and color depths, even on the same screen. Resolutions vary from 320×200 (up to 32 colors) to 640×400 (up to 16 colors) for NTSC (704×484 overscan) and 320×256 to 640×512 for PAL (704×576 overscan.) The system uses planar graphics, with up to five bitplanes (four in high resolution) allowing 2-, 4-, 8-, 16-, and 32-color screens, from a palette of 4096 colors. Two special graphics modes are also available: Extra HalfBrite, which uses a sixth bitplane as a mask to cut the brightness of any pixel in half (resulting in 32 arbitrary colors plus 32 more colors set at half the value of the first 32), and Hold-And-Modify (HAM) which allows all 4096 colors to be used on screen simultaneously. Later revisions of the chipset are PAL/NTSC switchable in software.
The sound chip produces four hardware-mixed channels, two to the left and two to the right, of 8-bit PCM at a sampling frequency up to 28 kHz. Each hardware channel has its own independent volume level and sampling rate, and can be designated to another channel where it can modulate both volume and frequency using its own output. With DMA disabled it's possible to output with a sampling frequency up to 56 kHz. There is a common trick to output sound with 14-bit precision that can be combined to output 14-bit 56 kHz sound.
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