A500 Mini Firmware 1.1.1 Update

So I recently reviewed the A500 mini, a mini console version of the classic Commodore Amiga home computer. I was really happy with the system at launch with only a few minor complaints.

The creators Retrogames have just release a firmware update that seems to address most of the issues I had and seems as the review video I made got a lot of interest I thought I’d make a quick follow up post update!

So the latest version of the firmware at the time of recording this video is version 1.1.1. I wasn’t even aware 1.1 had come out to be honest. I’m forever moaning about my playstation giving me notifications about updating every time I turn it on, but I guess the downside of a console that isn’t connected to the internet is you don’t get any notifications at all.

As the A500 mini doesn’t have wifi you have to go to the Retrogames website and download the update file yourself, then simple drop it onto a USB stick, plug it into your A500 mini then in the settings, select ‘update firmware’ and you should get a notification to start the update which only takes a few seconds… until the PS5!

There are actually quite a lot of very useful features in this update but I’ll mainly focus on the ones I think are most useful.

The first is .ADF file support. At launch the A500 mini supported the WHD Load format which to be honest I think is by far the most superior format, especially for plug and play consoles like this, but one of the most common formats used by amiga emulators is the .ADF format which is simply a dump of an amiga floppy disk into a file.

This is now supported on this mini console and is accessed in much the same way as the WHD load packages. Simply drop your .ADF files onto a USB stick, and select them from the A500 mini’s USB option on the menu. A downside to the .ADF format is when games came on multiple disks, you have to manually load subsequent disks into virtual drives. Retroware have implemented a pretty slick way of dealing with this. Simply select the first disc from the menu as usual, then tap “R” on the other disks in the program to build a play list and start the game. When the the next disk in the program is require, just hold the “Home” button and tap “R” again to cycle on to the next disk.

WHD Load is still the way to go in my opinion, but having the .ADF format supported natively is very much appreciated as not everything I’ve looked for has been available in WHD Load.

One piece of software I mentioned in the last video is the legendary music production suite OctaMED. And this brings me on to another feature I found in the update, the ability to change the model of Amiga you are emulating the software on!

When I first tried to run OctaMED, for whatever reason it was crashing on loading. I went into the settings menu and changed the virtual machine from A500 to A1200 and maxed out the memory, and when I tried to load it again it worked perfectly!

Another feature in the update I very much appreciated is the ‘hot crop’. In the original version of the firmware it was possible to auto crop games to fill the screen but it was a bit clunky to do. First you had to launch the game, then back out of it to the settings, select auto crop, then relaunch the game for setting to take effect. Now, at any point in the came you simply hold the “Home” button and tap “Y” and the screen auto crops in realtime.

I complained about the controller included with the A500 Mini and wanted to get a more traditional joystick. I heard the C64 Mini came with a joystick that is compatible and managed to pick one up for £30, just £10 more expensive than the joystick on its own. The problem with this is the default fire button was mapped right button which was unusable for right-handed players. The update has now swapped the default controls so the fire button is on the left. This is still remappable but I do feel sorry for any left handed games this has annoyed.

OK QUICK SIDE RANT - I was looking for the C64 joystick separately but it seems to be out of stock everywhere. The RRP was £20, so I thought I got myself a bargain picking up the C64 mini including the joystick for just £10 more…. The problem is it’s not the same joystick!!! The one that comes with the full size C64 and the one sold separately is apparently MUCH better quality with the clicky microswitches and a generally more robust build! The one included with the C64 Mini feels like a cheap mushy toy! This has annoyed me tbh, I guess it’s my fault for not doing enough research but there does seem to be a running theme with Retroware hardware releases where early adopters get the shitty end of the stick which I don’t think will serve them well in the long run. I guess thats why so many people are saying they’re waiting for the full-size Amiga that still isn’t confirmed.

Right back on track, another bug I noticed before was in some games it wasn’t possible to pop the virtual keyboard up for some reason. Apparently it was something to do with mapping which you could have fixed yourself on a game by game basis, but this update has fixed it so the virtual keyboard will now always be available with the menu button.

There are a few other features that don’t really affect me such as being able to map the joystick to keyboard keys if you’d rather play like that… who am I to judge but I can’t think why anyone would do that to be honest! You can now hot-swap joysticks, there’s native support for additional 3rd party joysticks and a few bug fixes for issues I hadn’t encountered.

All in all this is a great firmware update. I can’t remember the last time any of my modern consoles updated and actually game me anything useful, but this addressed pretty much all the minor issues I had just a month or so after launch. I honestly can’t think of anything else I would want in future updates. It’s great to see the post launch support so strong.