a600 and upgrades?

I'm looking at a a600 in dire need of retrobrite and a harddrive for whload of the fun stuff my cd32 is too cumbersome to run.

So in order not to be killed by my wife for the wrong reasons (I have mounted the cd32, snes, ps2 and xbox in my home office, and the space for her to work there is now very limited. less with a a600 in the collection unless I get my shelf-system in order). Can any a600 be fitted with an harddrive? or with minor modifications if not? I'd pass if it is disc only.

that it's only a 00 with ECS I can live with. Might cram in a flickerfixer if it fits as well.

If I recall correctly...

Kick 37.299 had problems with both PCMCIA and IDE, so it'll need a new chip to be any good for owt except floppy. Should never have been released, imo.

Kick 37.300 should work with PCMCIA and also IDE (depends on drive and capacity). Should be ok with most small drives (40MB or less), but some larger ones do work fine. Drives were not cheap then, and 40-80MB was quite a bit, so you might be able to understand why that one made it to market.

Kick 37.350 PCMCIA and IDE should be fine (same abilities as A1200, up to 4GB drive, up to 2GB partition).

If you are going to use SRAM in the PCMCIA and a hard drive and play WHDLoad games and use workbench you might as well go with a 3.1 Rom.

I've got a Rom switch on my A600 for 3.1 rom (Workbench) and 1.3 Rom that I use for Floppy based games.

However as Meega says if you have 37300+ you will be able to fit a hard drive and install workbench.

You'll need extra memory though if you want to enjoy WHDLoad.

Regarding the Flicker fixer you only need this on a VGA Monitor, if you are using a TV then RGB scart is a nice clear picture.

There are more options but lets see where you are going first...

Steve.

@moijk

Hello there =)

There are a couple of steps for the A600 to have an internal Harddrive -

Firstly the original Kickstart ROM on the first release of the A600 can not see the IDE port and the second revision of the Kickrom would only access upto 40MB.

So I would suggest you upgrade the Kickrom to Kickstart 3.1, this comes with other benefits like better disk preptools etc.


Memory

The A600 is a little low on the ground for any expansions when comparied to other Amiga's (except the CDTV/CD32 perhaps)

I would recommend upgrading the CHIP ram from 1MB to 2MB - these upgrades are quite common and some offer other features like

A real time clock,
Clock port(s)
Indivision ECS adapter

Now, to make the most use from any Amiga I would recommend WHDLoad, alas this requires a little more than 2MB IMHO to really.

With just 2MB you can use WHDLoad by removing the "pre-load" option although some games still wont be able to run.

Fast Ram is what is really needed, alas there are very few adapters to help out.

PCMCIA SRAM -
This can go-upto 4MB of extra memory, alas this can get quite expensivie, it also uses up the PCMCIA port so theres no option to use network cards, CF-PCMCIA adaters or other PCMCIA peripherals.

Accelerator
There currently exists only 3 accelerator cards for the A600 -

Apollo 630 (Viper 630) - 68030@ 33/50mzh
(Upto 32MB RAM, PCMCIA compatible)

E-Matrix 630 (T630 / Viper 630) - 40mhz
(4 or 8MB soldered to the board PCMCIA incompatible with 8MB)

Apollo 620 68020@25mhz
(upto 8mb 72pin - with 8mb conflicts with pcmcia)

*There exists the A608 project, which I am still waiting for the PCB's to turn up, I have been contacted by a Emily Wang from our PCB confirming the PCBS will be shipped tomorrow... so fingers crossed eh?


Hardisk size

Now this is upto to you, I would recommend anything upto 4GB 2.5" IDE HDD, theres quite common so relatively inexpensive, so shop around.

You could use a compact flash card as a Harddrive, but I would recommend that -

1. You buy branded media
2. You buy this from a reputable seller

Of course using compact flash as a diskdrive you will need to buy an IDE to CF adapter, SkyDivinGirl has put up a thread that links to very inexepnsive and compatible units


Hope that lot helps =)

Hi,

for my low power A600 (:D), i have build me at first a adaptor for a 68010 CPU. The only reason was that the quitkey now is working in WHDLoad.

The first version looks like this:http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....3&d=1227981223

Meanwhile it looks like this one, and you can switch between 68000 and 68010:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....7&d=1267535750

The reason for the second adaptor was the 2007 version of the lvd RAM Board. The Firmware and the PCB layout is free available at the homepage of the author. At a1k.org we started a little group buy for the PCBs.

And that looks so, RAM Board pluged over the 68010 adaptor:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....2&d=1267535217


A little SysInfo screen:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....4&d=1267535293

Sorry for the bad english...

The following page I wrote also details all A600 upgrade possibilities

http://wiki.classicamiga.com/A600_Upgrade_Options

wish ppl would stop saying theres a 2 gig partion limit, there may be good reasons to keep partions below 2 gig but to say its a limit is wrong

Quote:

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Originally Posted by meega

Kick 37.299 had problems with both PCMCIA and IDE, so it'll need a new chip to be any good for owt except floppy. Should never have been released, imo.

---

For those interested in this: 37.299 lacks scsi.device and carddisk.device, hence why PCMCIA and the IDE hard disk don't work.

...And that's why it is the perfect replacement for the A500/2000 mobos: inexpensive and reliable.

So, is it easy to get hold of 3.1 kickroms and the appropriate wb that is hard drive installable?

I think I'll grab the a600, and take it from there. hopefully it arrives a day the better half is away so I can spend some moments finding an excuse why it suddenly is one more computer in the office.