The Commodore Amiga 500 model
Amiga 500 was the model which made the Amiga famous, it was also the most sold computer in the Amiga range from Commodore. Launched in 1987 together with the A2000 it was aimed at home users as an inexpensive home computer.
The Amiga 500 is physically a lot larger than traditional wedge type home computers. The shell is made of plastic which may yellow with time if the computer has been standing in the sun. On the right side there is a slot for the 3.5 inch floppy drive. On the back side there are the usual video and sound, joystick and mouse connectors.
On the left side is the 86-pin edge connector for peripherals as hard drive controllers and memory expansion. The 86-pin connector is almost pin compatible with the Zorro 2 slot in Amiga 2000 and later big box systems, however some pins are missing since true Zorro 2 slot is 100 pin.
The underside has a cover hiding the space for the traditional 0.5 MB expansion boosting an ordinary Amiga 500 from half a megabyte to one megabyte of memory.
Inside the A500 a huge RF-shield encloses the motherboard. Taking of the RF-shield reveals a relatively compact motherboard with few expansion possibilities built in. There is no hard drive connector, only a floppy connector. The board uses few components for its size, in direct comparison the A600 is much smaller than the A500 using more modern and smaller components. It is however more easy to modify and add hardware hacks to an Amiga 500.