d0pefish's Amiga 600/030

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Awesome A600 there d0pefish! Love the pics :) The ACA630 looks class! Makes the humble old 600 look beastly.
 
@ D0pefish

I might have some 128Mb SDRAM modules here somewhere. Fancy maxing out or is the 64Mb surface mounted?

Kin

Hi Kin :)
The 64MB is a surface mount factory option, and the only removable component is the 68030, which is socketed.

The board itself, underneath all that heatsink, is very small!
Thanks for the thought though mate :)

@all:
Many thanks for your comments :)

I am currently playing with ClassicWB FULL edition now, and am just trying different drive configurations to see if there's any differences in speed (scsi.device version, filesystem, etc).

I decided against the more advanced CWB packages because I'll be using my 600 on the good old 1084S, and need the half-height icons etc to match the screen. For more serious business, I have my A4000 with a hi-res CGX desktop etc, so all that's needed on this machine is stuff that suits PAL:Hires in 8 or 16 colors :)

8 color mode with FBlit and friends is very quick, and even 16 colors is comfortable.

Also, softkicking Kickstart 3.1 with ACATune happens in about a second, you barely even notice the reset happen. This card really doesn't mess around, I'm having an absolute riot playing with it :D
 
@all:
Many thanks for your comments :)

I am currently playing with ClassicWB FULL edition now, and am just trying different drive configurations to see if there's any differences in speed (scsi.device version, filesystem, etc).

I decided against the more advanced CWB packages because I'll be using my 600 on the good old 1084S, and need the half-height icons etc to match the screen. For more serious business, I have my A4000 with a hi-res CGX desktop etc, so all that's needed on this machine is stuff that suits PAL:Hires in 8 or 16 colors :)

8 color mode with FBlit and friends is very quick, and even 16 colors is comfortable.

Also, softkicking Kickstart 3.1 with ACATune happens in about a second, you barely even notice the reset happen. This card really doesn't mess around, I'm having an absolute riot playing with it :D

Im currently running AmigaSYS4 AGA OS3.9 with softkicked KS3.9 BB4, :).
It runs decent at 16 colours.
 
@FOL:

Cool! :)

Question: In your BB4 Kickstart, are you using scsi.device v44.2? I am having trouble getting this version to work on my machine.
 
@FOL:

Cool! :)

Question: In your BB4 Kickstart, are you using scsi.device v44.2? I am having trouble getting this version to work on my machine.

Yep all working fine.

You need to make sure, you have altered the setpatch line to say NOROMUPDATE (if you have all the bb's in rom) or SKIPROMMODULES (then list each rom module, if you dont have all the bb's in rom).
 
Looking really nice.

I too was lucky enough to get the 30 Mhz one, and I have had the machine up and running over the weekend. Need to set up some switches for the jumpers to save opening the machine every time I want to disable it.

I was really impressed with the speed increase of the CF drive too. SOOOO fast now. Its a truely magnifficent bit of kit. I can't wait to add USB to that machine. Awsome games and productivity machine.

Was thinikning about haveing a second CF with a UNIX/Linux install. Can anyone reccomend a good place to start on that?
 
A600 plastic clips

A600 plastic clips

Hi, Thanks for your post on the Amiga 600 upgrade. I unfortunately snapped off all the back and side plastic brackets on my Amiga 600 cover taking it off. Is there a way to fix this without replacing the cover? Thanks!:thumbsup:
 
Thanks for your kind comments guys :)

Sorry to hear about your case, gencom4 - they are ridiculously delicate clips, mind you - a big oversight on Commodore's behalf IMHO. :(

I don't really know of any solid way to repair this well, you could perhaps get creative with some hinges and screws/bolts to give the case some strength, or maybe even some intricate plastic-welding to recreate the hinges.
If you come up with anything it's be well worth sharing with us, as this problem plagues these machines :(

@grahamit: Sounds like a fun experiment, Linux/m68k etc - perhaps check out the new NetBSD developments too - though I'm not sure exactly what the setup procedures involve on the Amiga, it's not something I've played with before.

As for the speed, with PFS3/020, scsi.device v43.45, and the SpeedyIDE patch from BlizKick, SysInfo reports an amazing 3.2MB/sec on the CF card! I'm not sure how accurate this benchmark is, but it goes up and down with various combinations. This is the best I've achieved so far, and I can't see any way to further increase the speed - but it feels very fast and I'm very pleased with it! :)

I ought to update this thread when I get a chance, I have a few new accessories hooked up to the A600 now :)

Cheers :)
 
Alright, I'll let you in on it :) But I have no pictures yet :P

An "APower" custom power supply made by m3ch of Amiga.org - an awesome, small-footprint, modern switching-PSU with plenty of oomph to drive the A600 and all its new accessories. It's like a laptop PSU, very small - I'll get some pictures :)

Joystick twin-extension lead courtesy of our very own imnogeek, which lets me attach Paul Willingham's PSX DualShock adaptor, and the Cocolino I bought from AlanH (also from here) :)

A Technosound Turbo II, courtesy of tokyoracer (:bowdown: thanks bud!)

And hopefully sometime this week, a Netgear ethernet card which should hopefully be compatible with cnet.device. Let's see. Will be nice to get the little beast online for easy AmiNet-leeching :thumbsup:

Cheers :D
 
Awesome stuff, I've seen the PSU you mention it is indeed a great development. I was tempted to get one for my A600.

Sounds like the project has really taken shape :thumbsup:

Steve.
 
Great thread!

I hate threads like this, it's making me want to source a 600 and aca630 now!

Nice bit of kit you have there :thumbsup:
 
d0pefish my friend you are a Haxz0rz!
How on earth you get 3.2mb/s using same shiz like me???
I tested both SFS and PFS3/030 (Normal and DS with 200 and 250 buffers) and also using ClassicWB AdvSP and OS3.9+BB3 both with SpeedyIDE patch and SCSI.device 43.45 (yours).
My best is 2.3mb/s on my 4GB 133x CF disk (On partitions DH0=256MB and DH1=128MB).
On the DH2=~3.4GB games partition (PFS3 as well with 250 buffers) I get an 3.2mb/s! WTF?
Why system partitions are slower than the big games one? lol
 
I don't think sysinfo reports correct values outside system partitions, if you notice the test brings back the result with no time to read the drive.

The same happens with my FastATA and Blizzard SCSI. DH0 give reading of 4.7mb/sec whilst DH1/2 etc give 6.2mb/sec but the DH0 takes some time reading whilst the DH1/2 etc bring back a result right away and I think this is not a correct value.

Maybe its due to partition size and sysinfo cannot deal with large partitions?

Steve.
 
Thanks for your kind comments guys :)

Sorry to hear about your case, gencom4 - they are ridiculously delicate clips, mind you - a big oversight on Commodore's behalf IMHO. :(

I don't really know of any solid way to repair this well, you could perhaps get creative with some hinges and screws/bolts to give the case some strength, or maybe even some intricate plastic-welding to recreate the hinges.
If you come up with anything it's be well worth sharing with us, as this problem plagues these machines :(

Thanks d0pefish. I will work on some of these ideas and post what I come up with. :ninja:
 
I added a 603 RAM expansion and an Indivision ECS to my ACA630 setup. Because removing the diskdrive wasn't an option for me I did some modifying.
 

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Hey Dale,

I got my ACA630 today, what do you find the best ACA Tune settings and what would be the exact startup entry for it?

Just getting to grips with mine. Managed to play Doom with the Chunky Graffiti malarkey through the IndiECS, that was a bit slow but probably because I've not setup ACATune.

Workbench seems faitly quick, again not the speed gain I was expecting until ACATune I'll save final judgement :cool:

Cheers mate!

Steve.
 
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