~--// AMiGA 500 \\--~

I am finally an Amigan again! Not that emulation hasn't worked the last 10-11 years 😛  almost native speed these days (with input-lag of course).

I have to admit though, having the original hardware cannot be beat.

Original Amiga 500 - Norwegian keyboard version.

512 KB memory-expansion PCB.

RGB>SCART converter cable with L/R RCA sound-plugs.

Getting an Amiga to display (correctly) on a big screen LCD TV (40-60" with decent built-in scaler), requires an RGB + RCA (stereo sound) > SCART adapter-cable, as shown in the picture above. The scaler in the TV also has to support sub-480p resolutions, as the Amiga outputs from 320×256 (mainly used for games) to 640×512 for PAL (704×576 with over-scan).

The video below shows the picture-output in 16:9-format, which is incorrect.

Video of the game "Jumping Jack 'Son", loading a "cracktro"

The video above (excuse the quality, I used my Google Pixel XL to record it 😛 I don't own any fancy capture-equipment / -cards) depicts what was (at the time) a very normal sight.

Back in the day (late 80s / early 90s) cracking crews left a "business card" on their cracked software distributions (3.5" diskettes).

Diskettes loading what is now called a "cracktro" (or "crack intro").

"A small introduction sequence added to cracked software. It aims to inform the user which "cracking crew" or individual cracker removed the software's copy protection and distributed the crack. Such intros grew very complex, sometimes exceeding the size and complexity of the software itself." (ref. wikipedia).

"Crack intros only became more sophisticated on more advanced systems such as the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and some IBM PC clone systems with sound cards. These intros feature big, colorful effects, music, and scrollers."

Kickstart v1.3 ROM installed.

Thank the powers that be for aspect-ratio control 😊 running the Amiga 500 at 16:9 did NOT look good (just look at the cracktro-video above for an example), 4:3 please! Thank you Sony!

"Cable-management"