Amiga 500 revelation

[MrTrev]

After listening to David Pleasance's talk at the pre-Christmas do. He mentioned that a lot of Amiga 500's, actually contain 500+ boards, due to the high demand and lack of regular 500 boards.

So I'm guessing the only way to confirm which board is inside a 500 is by visual inspection only?

[AndyRCM]

I would definitely say no way externally that I can think of unless the serial numbers give it away?

[MrTrev]

Aren't they the 8A motherboard?

[Womble]

Depends if the board is fully populated, if it is then the board will have 1MB onboard, and a real time clock (and a time bomb battery).

I guess is this is true then the board would have those areas unpopulated, 512KB was too expensive to give away at the time.

[thepillock]

I understand they do have the full 1MB Chip so if you turn it on, you'll know for sure. A lot of them were fitted with KS1.3 ROMS though so you'll have to boot into Workbench to see, won't be obvious from the insert disk screen.

Or pop the trapdoor cover off and see if you can feel a battery? Can't remember if you can get a finger through there, but on a + board the clock battery sits right above the trapdoor so you might be able to feel/see it.