We sell quite a few A500 goodies and as expected things don’t always go as planned, luckily WE put our customers first and work out these issues so people can enjoy their buying experience from Retro32.
To help those struggling with A500 mini issues we’ve put together our top Common Issues and fixes them for the mighty little Amiga.
A500 won’t detect USB Drives / USB Devices / Instability
The top issue we hear about is the A500 not detecting either USB drives or devices. This is (most often) due to insufficient power. Although the Mini comes with a power cable it doesn’t come with a power adapter. Many of the USB adapters found in a draw or collecting dust are often low-power (low AMP) USB adapters. We recommend using one with at least 2 AMPS for the best experience when using additional devices such as USB sticks, wireless controller adapters and peripherals.
Insufficient power can also cause system instability and issues reading from USB sticks reliably, we’ve seen lots of examples when people are using the software packages such as AGS or Aminimiga.
We would strongly recommend any power supply aimed at the Raspberry Pi 4. They are “most often” at least 2 AMPs with many of them 3 AMPs. You can find some below from Amazon.
Here’s a little email back from a happy customer. He was ready to return the A500 mini back to Amazon.
USB Hubs – devices not working / instability
Like the issue with the power supply, using an unpowered hub may render the devices plugged in pretty much useless. We’d recommend a powered hub to ensure they work as expected and also to ensure there’s enjoy power for the devices plugged directly into the mini. The first item below is the one we use on our mini
Poor USB performance
Be careful when buying cheap USB sticks from Amazon. Many are fake and not the speed / size advertised. We’d always recommend buying from a reputable supplier or sold and dispatched by Amazon. Also, be wary of sellers selling cheap A500 mini USB game sticks. These are often incomplete and do not support the developers. We work with the creators of the USB game packages and ensure a proportion of the sales go back to them.
Here are some examples of sticks we have used
If possible also use a USB3 stick. It makes copying to and from the stick from your PC much faster. USB2 can be quite slow.
USB Formatting – FAT32
The mini requires USB sticks to be formatted in FAT32. This can be a pain, especially for large sticks. We’ve covered it in more detail below
The picture doesn’t fit on the screen
It’s been reported by many users that the image displayed from the mini either doesn’t fill the TV screen or goes beyond its boundary – this is caused by overscan and screen scaling settings. Many TVs have a button on the remote that allows you to set the screen size/ratio. It’s sometimes called overscan. It’s not the same for all TVs but it’s normally in the picture settings in the TV menu.
If you have specific settings/options that resolved it on your TV then please let us know in the comments. It may help others with a similar issue with the same TV.
Our A500 mini product range
Lastly, it’s time for a plug of our A500 mini products. USB Joystick adapters, brackets, USB sticks and mouse mats. Enjoy!
https://www.retro32.com/product-category/amiga/a500-mini-maxi
Let’s hear from you!
Have you encountered an issue with the A500 mini that we’ve not covered above? Let us know in the comments below
My Amiga mini boots up completely one out of every 10-15 times.
Worked fine until about a month ago. Slowly got worse.
Starts playing the red intro screen and power just cuts.
Tried all different HDMI, power sources, cords, power bricks, different TVs. Same results.
But one out of 10-15 like I said will work and get past the intro screen.
Even tried the manual system reset by holding the power button in for like 30 sec.
IF it reboots, it goes into the system setup process.. Next time I reboot – power cuts again.
That seems very odd. I’d try replacing the power cable and supply if you can and see if that helps.
Failing that I’d look at returning it if you can. Something clearly not right there. Keep us updated
It happened to me too. Just when the warranty had finished.
As A500 mini is something I use a lot, I bougth another one and told Retrogames about the issue as I’ve seen online it has happened more times (so at least they avoid it in the future).
None of the games will run on my mini, I solved the power issue with a higher rated usb plug and leaving it connected for a couple of hours before turning it on but still not a single built in game will run
Have tried tons of power bricks and cables, made sure to boot with NO usb devices, tried different HDMI cables on different tv sources… same issue.. it is worse now to the point where I can’t even get one good boot in 15-30 tries. I’m afraid this is garbage now. I tried emailing support and have gotten zero replies on what to do, using my 2 year warranty support. Please advise.
I’m surprised you’re not getting any help from RGL. If all else fails I’d suggest returning it to your retailer or buying another from Amazon then return your faulty one. Not ideal really but you’ll get a new one.
Hope that helps. Cheers Karl
My usb stick was recognized every single time, and has gotten increasingly unreliable, now the a500 doesn’t read it, but the stick works fine plugged into a pc. Since it worked before I don’t think it’s a power issue. Any idea?
I’m having issues with the USB stick. It’s recognising the USB stick but is saying that there are no files on it.
The USB is a is a 16gb SanDisk that I’ve formatted to fat 32 and I’ve tried using both a Nintendo Switch power supply and a MacBookAir power supply The only deferent I see is from what I’m doing to what it says on like is I’m using a MacBook to put the files on to the USB. Any one got any idea ?
Hi ! my mouse and josticks is ok on most of the games (downloaded on usb) but sometimes my mouse doesn’t move on some games. Do you know why ?
I have formatted my Sandisk memory stick to FAT32 as per instructions and downloaded the latest firmware from Retrobiz to the root directory of this USB stick. When I then insert into the A500 mini and go to Advanced Options as per the instructions, the System Info screen is not showing that there is an update available? Please help!!