Amiga 500

Amiga 500

A500 with 1084S monitor and Amiga 1010 external second floppy drive
Developer	Commodore International
Product family	Amiga
Type	Home computer
Release date	April 1987 (Netherlands) May 1987 (Europe) October 1987 (US/UK)
Introductory price	US$699 (equivalent to $1,870 in 2023) £499 (equivalent to £1,770 in 2023)
Discontinued	1992 (1992)
Units sold	2.6 million[1] 1,160,500 units in Germany (including Amiga 500 Plus sales)
Media	880 KB floppy disks
Operating system	AmigaOS v1.2 – 1.3 (upgradable to current version if enough RAM is installed)
CPU	Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz (NTSC) 7.09 MHz (PAL)
Memory	512 or 1024 KB 150 ns (maximum 9 to 138 MB, depending on upgrades)[a][b]
Display	736×567i 4 bpp (PAL) 736×483i 4 bpp (NTSC) 368×567i 6 bpp (PAL) 368×483i 6 bpp (NTSC)
Graphics	Denise
Sound	4× 8-bit channels PCM at max. 28 kHz with 6-bit volume in stereo
Predecessor	Amiga 1000
Successor	Amiga 500 Plus Amiga 600

The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer, "redefining the home computer market and making so-called luxury features such as multitasking and colour a standard long before Microsoft or Apple sold these to the masses".^[2] It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that of the Commodore 128.

Commodore announced the Amiga 500 at the January 1987 winter Consumer Electronics Show – at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000. It was initially available in the Netherlands in April 1987, then the rest of Europe in May.^[3] In North America and the UK it was released in October 1987 with a US$699/£499 list price. It competed directly against models in the Atari ST line.

The Amiga 500 was sold in the same retail outlets as the Commodore 64, as opposed to the computer store-only Amiga 1000. It proved to be Commodore's best-selling model, particularly in Europe.^[4] Although popular with hobbyists, arguably its most widespread use was as a gaming machine, where its graphics and sound were of significant benefit. It was followed by a revised version of the computer, the Amiga 500 Plus, and the 500 series was discontinued in 1992.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).