Surfing the web searching for an Amiga 500 accellerator board, I’ve found a series of youtube videos about the TF530 project. TF530 is a Open Source Amiga 500 accellerator board with IDE interface made and published by Stephen Leary. You must build it by yourself, no one will sell you one, is not a commercial product, it’s kind of open source hardware project.
Characteristics:
- MC68030 CPU @ 25Mhz
- FPU MC68882
- 2Mb fast ram
- IDE interface
You can find basic information, PCB layout, bill-of-material and software on Stephen’s github account:
https://github.com/terriblefire/tf530
I’ve also made a zip with all the documents files, firmware exc. that I have. You can download it here tf530-master
I’ve ordered the PCB from dirty pcb website the V2. At the moment it’s no more avaiable except that I’ve 9 PCB’s for sale at 5€ each plus shipping. Contact me for info. I found also that the V3 PCB’s is for sale on Seedstudio website.
I’ve also downloaded the zip with the V3 gerbers D_714439_tf530v3
The assembly of the board is not difficult if you have a reworking station. The board uses SMD high pin count chips and soldering without proper equipment could result in a mess. The best think to do will be ordering the PCB plus a methal stencil and use soldering paste/reflow oven. Despite of my suggestions I’ve made mine using a standard soldering iron but is hard to do.
The installation requires, in my V2 PCB case, soldering to wires from the board to the A500 edge connector. Pins are OVR and INT2. The V3 don’t need this. The MC68000 must be removed and the board takes it’s places. You need to solder on the bottom of the tf530 board two rows of pins that will engage into the CPU’s socket.
The last think to do is flashing the CPLD’s with the correct firmware. The XC9572XL-VQ64 CPLD is an hard to find part because is non-rohs part. You can substitute with XC9572XL-VQG64C the rohs version (10€ each!). I’ve used Xilinx jtag programmer. 
The jtag chain must be like in this photo. The Amiga must be turned on because the chips needs to be powered.
After programming the CPLD’s you can disconnect your JTAG cables and reset the Amiga.
It works! Now, you can add an HDD to the IDE port. I ve tried to use an IDE/CF adapter but I’ve found all kind of problems with it. In the end I’ve bought an IDE/mini IDE adapter and connected the board with a short piece of standard IDE cable to the adapter+notebook HDD. It works! I’ve also added a “relocator PCB” from Leary that moves the board from under the keyboard to the more free of space top of the case.
And now, how it works? Uhm… terrible!!! Seriously it works terrible with counterfeit games. With some original, some counterfeit and all amiga OS it works great. Simply, the counterfeit games and a lot of games in general are not compatible with this 68030 CPU.
The board itself still suffers from some gliches like freezing keyboard or caps look led blinking randomly but it’s usable. Not that bad for 80€. This is the price I’ve paid for pcbs plus components. And now, the last but not the last, SYSINFO!
