Commodore Amiga 500

The Amiga 500 repackaged Amiga technology as an affordable keyboard computer. It retained the custom graphics and sampled sound while becoming far more accessible to home users.

It became the best-selling Amiga and a defining European platform for games, graphics, music and home creativity.

Notable Features

• Side and trapdoor connectors support hard disks, memory and accelerators.
• Its integrated case and television connectivity targeted home use.

Historical Significance

• It became the best-selling Amiga and a defining European platform for games, graphics, music and home creativity.

Collector’s Notes

• Chipset and motherboard revision, Kickstart ROM, RAM expansion, accelerator cards and original keyboard or mouse should be documented.
• Memory, storage, displays and expansion hardware should be documented because configurations often changed during a system’s working life.

Specifications

Technical Information
Name	Commodore Amiga 500
Manufacturer	Commodore
Launched	Thursday, January 1, 1987
Discontinued	1991
Country	West Germany
CPU	Motorola 68000 at 7.16 MHz NTSC or 7.09 MHz PAL
Units Sold
Form Factor	Keyboard computer
Power	Internal or external mains supply according to model
Networking	Serial, parallel, MIDI and third-party Ethernet or networking options according to model
Operating System	AmigaOS 1.x–3.x depending on ROM and memory
Expansion / I/O	Side expansion, trapdoor memory, serial, parallel, floppy, RGB and two controller ports
Keyboard	Integrated keyboard with numeric keypad
Storage	Built-in 880KB 3.5-inch floppy; external drives and side hard disks
Sound	Paula four-channel PCM stereo
Colours	Up to 32 colours normally, 64 in EHB and 4096 in HAM on OCS/ECS; AGA models support up to 256 indexed colours and HAM8 from 24-bit palettes
Graphics	OCS with sprites, blitter and Copper
Display	RGB, composite and RF-modulated television output
ROM	Kickstart ROM
RAM	512KB Chip RAM standard; commonly expanded
CPU Speed	Approximately 7.1 MHz