amiga clock

[gareth_2008]

hey, i have a amiga 500 how do i go about changing the time and date? sorry im a total noob but im learning :) cheers

[Harrison]

Do you have a ram expansion in the trap door under the A500? If so then it should have a battery backed clock built into the ram expansion. If you don't then the A500 doesn't have a way to remember the time and date while it is switched off.

If you do have a ram expansion with battery backed clock, the likelihood is that the battery is now dead after all these years so you will need to replace it.

To change the date and time, go into your Workbench preferences drawer. It will either be on the main boot Workbench disk if you are running Workbench from floppy disk, or on the harddrive in the DH0: partition or whatever your main boot partition is called.

BTW, which version of Workbench are you running? 1.3, 2.04, 3?

[Stephen Coates]

What kind of batteries do the RAM expansions tend to use?

My A500+ still has it's original battery on the motherboard and it still works.

[gareth_2008]

yeah i do have one under the door :) ! and the batt is alive :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
showing a healthy 2.4v :) !

any one have any idea what size this could be? does not say on it cheers

Image of card : Click me (http://www.dc10microsystems.com/ram.jpg)

[Tiago]

Hello gareth_2008 ,
it should be a 512kb memory card
You have 512KB of main machine + 512 expansion. a total of 1024kb

[gareth_2008]

ok thanks one other thing whats the switch for? cheers

[Tiago]

The switch is just to turn it on/off.
There is a really small number of games, that dont like expansion cards.... i think...
Just live it allways turn on.

[gareth_2008]

where does it display how much ram i have? because i have no idea if the board is on or off cheers

[Graham Humphrey]

The title bar in Workbench should tell you that.

[Tiago]

Do you have the "workbench disk" ?
Workbench is the operation system.
Workbench comes in 6 disk (i dont remember exact number), but with the main disk you are able to boot. Just insert the disk and reboot, your amiga will boot in around 15 seconds and you will have a bar in top of your screen, and will show you the total memory and the used memory

[Graham Humphrey]

Workbench doesn't take 6 disks for the earlier versions (if it's an A500 it'll probably be 1.3 or 2.04), it'll probably only come on three at the most.

[Tiago]

Workbench doesn't take 6 disks for the earlier versions (if it's an A500 it'll probably be 1.3 or 2.04), it'll probably only come on three at the most.

Yes Graham is right, 6 disks is earlier versions, for your A500 should be only 1 disk and 2 disk of fonts or extras.....

[gareth_2008]

im running the 1.3 workbench from the hd

[Tiago]

so, you should have a title bar in Workbench with ram info.

[gareth_2008]

oh yeah i did not know if it was the hd or the ram! with the bored off its 2379816 and with it on its 2904072

[Harrison]

I take it from that number that you also have a sidecar expansion connected to your A500 that has a 2MB fast ram expansion? I say that because a standard A500 with an extra 512KB trapdoor expansion would give about 864000 free ram in Workbench 1.3, so your's showing an additional 2MB more than that.

Also, back on topic, as you are using Workbench 1.3, to change the clock go into your Workbench disk or harddrive and open the "Prefs" drawer. Once inside open "Preferences". Once that has loaded you can change the time and date down the left-hand side of the screen. It's a little odd how it actually functions. You have to click each number of the time, or of the date and then use the up/down arrows at the side of the time/date to change them.

[gareth_2008]

yeah cheers i have done the clock! nope all i have is that board in the trapdoor and the harddrive on the side :)

[v85rawdeal]

If I remember rightly, which is not often due to my age ;). The Commodore hard drives could be expanded, memory-wise. I cannot remember if all of them could be, or whether it was just a particular model.

I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

The reason why I am uncertain is that my original A500 hard disk system was a 40mb Vortex system, and my only other experience of A500 add-ons is an Action Replay and the A570 cd-rom.

[Harrison]

There were many combinations of sidecar HD expansion for the A500. Some were just an HD, some also had fast ram expansions, and others, especially the GVP units, often combined an accelerator, ram and HD in one unit.

[gareth_2008]

oh cool, any way to increase the size it uses? or is it preset? my hd is the "Hard Drive Plus A590"

[Harrison]

2MB is the maximum that HD unit can have installed so it looks like your one is already filled to capacity. So if you bought it without realising that you got a good deal. :)

[gareth_2008]

the amiga was free :) and the harddrive cost me £5 :D