Backward Compatibility - Commodore Amiga 500+ User Manual

GARY – IO chip.
DRAM Chips – 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of Chip RAM included from NEC.
Expansion slot in trap door.
Mouse and Joystick ports

11. Backward Compatibility

Compatibility with older software can be done in two ways: Hardware and Software.
Hardware:
a) Install a Kickstart ROM Switcher to allow you to switch between Kickstart 1.3 and later
Kickstart
Software:
a) Use a SoftKicker program to load old Kickstart into memory E.g Skick.
b) Use Disk to Hard disk programs such as JST and WHDLoad to copy the games to hard disk and
emulate the older system.
12. Adding a Hard Disk to A500+
The Amiga 500+ supports Hard disks, as there is space for a 2.5" drive or you can use CF (Compact
Flash) cards as Hard Disks. Workbench 2.x can use up to 4GB Hard disks, due to limitations of the 32 bit
filesystem and the scsi.device that controls hard disks.
You can use larger Hard disks if you switch to a modern Filesystem such as SFS (Smart File System) or
PFS (Professional File System) and upgrade to Workbench 3.x which has a newer FFS (Fast File System).
Warning: If you use a large drive on Workbench 2.0/3.0 you must not partition the drive beyond the
4GB limit otherwise when you write data to the drive, it may overwrite the start of the drive!
To use your hard disk, you need to prepare the disk using HDToolbox, the program will create a
partition for use by AmigaOS. The program can be found on the Install disk in the Tools drawer, if you
do not have HDToolbox, you can download HDInstTools from Aminet instead.
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