Worth getting an Amiga 600?

[Nick_66]

Well, the search continues. First I want to upgrade my A1200 and recap it myself. The A600 has been sold

Maybe in the future if I can find a very nice A600, I will purchase one.

For now, I am happy with my A500 and A1200 collection.

[AmiDude]

...Sure if you absolutely must have a small footprint amiga with a painfully slow and incompatible ide and pcmcia bus, or hate numeric keypads. Then an A600 is great. I wouldn't expect it to be the development mule for the next generation of vampire though.

Can you explain why the A600's IDE and PCMCIA bus is incompatible?
It's working for me without any problems.

[Jiffy]

Can you explain why the A600's IDE and PCMCIA bus is incompatible?
It's working for me without any problems.

Same here. What's incompatible with the A600's IDE and PCMCIA bus? I know the PCMCIA on the A600 predates the official specifications of the standard, but in practice, it works reliably with memorycards, networkcards, SCSI-controllers and mass storage devices. What more could you want from a 25 year old homecomputer?

Even 'slow' is relative. Yes, there are faster options to connect hardware to an Amiga, especially if you have a big box Amiga, but it's very nice to have both PCMCIA (which I use with a 3C589-card) and internal IDE (which I use with a 4 GB DOM flash drive) on board.

Plenty fast as far as you can call a homecomputer from the early 90-ies 'fast'. It's compact and it has plenty 'oomph' with my ACA630 and Indivision ECS on board.

I agree the A1200 has more options when it comes to turboboards and is an overall more powerful machine, but the A600 has become a very nice Amiga with plenty of expansion options.

When it just came out, there was no good reason for its existence, but in recent years it has gained a proud place among the other Amigamodels.

[Crom00]

I'd say the A600 is the hottest Amiga since the unreleased A3000+ we should have received back in 1990 the latest.

Why just look at this:

GASP! Photoshop.... your high school art teacher said it wasn't possible on an "outdated" Amiga.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5d_y7FcpdI

STAR WARS GAMES???!!! Yes game companies colluded /  conspired to create the false narrative that such stuff was impossible on the Amiga to drive more lucrative PC and Mac sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gumNvcrIOj0

UAE FAST PC emulator Workbench Installs on an AMIGA!!!??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgjRtPyMs5U

Gotta love the Vampire team. Where official "IP" holders fail to deliver even one product they deliver THREE fully developed upgrades in one product.

[WeiXing3D]

With the new expansions available to the 600, would it be possible too add USB port and usable Internet connectivity? If those were possible, and I think they are, they would set the 600 above straight hardware emulation such as the FPGA Replay and FPGA MiST.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

With the new expansions available to the 600, would it be possible too add USB port and usable Internet connectivity? If those were possible, and I think they are, they would set the 600 above straight hardware emulation such as the FPGA Replay and FPGA MiST.

With a clockport you can add a RapidRoad for great USB usability.  Many already have.  And with the PCMCIA port you have all kinds of options for adding a network card, so I think you're already covered on both fronts.  

[psxphill]

Can you explain why the A600's IDE and PCMCIA bus is incompatible?
It's working for me without any problems.

I don't know why, I just know that some IDE drives won't work properly.

Relatively few PCMCIA cards have ever had drivers written and when I tried to hook up some new hardware then I could access the tuples but not the rest of the card.

I think the way they hooked it up either violates the spec, or doesn't talk exactly like a PC. As IDE drives and PCMCIA cards were created for and only tested with PC's, then you sometimes get problems because the devices themselves violate the spec.

I'd say the A600 is the hottest Amiga since the unreleased A3000+ we should have received back in 1990 the latest.

Why just look at this:

GASP! Photoshop.... your high school art teacher said it wasn't possible on an "outdated" Amiga.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5d_y7FcpdI

STAR WARS GAMES???!!! Yes game companies colluded /  conspired to create the false narrative that such stuff was impossible on the Amiga to drive more lucrative PC and Mac sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gumNvcrIOj0

UAE FAST PC emulator Workbench Installs on an AMIGA!!!??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgjRtPyMs5U

Gotta love the Vampire team. Where official "IP" holders fail to deliver even one product they deliver THREE fully developed upgrades in one product.

That software isn't running on a a600, it's running on a vampire. The a600 is just being used for the keyboard and mouse.
Deciding to make it for the a600 first was essentially random. If you want an a600 and a vampire then great. However an a500 and a vampire, or an a1200 and a vampire will be just as good. Maybe they will do a Macintosh upgrade next.

The A3000+ was better than the A4000 but it certainly wouldn't have kept the Amiga going for any longer. It was always the cheaper amigas that made the huge sales and the A1200 was generally regarded as being a good design. It didn't have the DSP, but I'm not sure you'd get it at the price point that the A1200 sold at anyway. Launched in 1990 the A1200 would likely have cost a lot more, especially if it was better than what actually launched. The Archimedes A3000 had things that would have been nice on the Amiga, but it was twice the price.

[Crom00]

Hi in regards to the other models of the Vampire. The A500 version is being finalized and tested as there are more features being added from the version seen in videos and forum posts. The A1200 Vampire is being worked on too.

Emulation is always a good indicator for performance and speed. Would love to see this kickstart REAL Amiga development in the scene. I really thing the standalone unit will be something and it that someting is Amiga,  Mac, Atari, X68000 or a strange fusion etc then I'm cool with that.