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Author Topic: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?  (Read 1164 times)

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Offline amigappcTopic starter

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Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« on: November 22, 2019, 09:03:53 PM »
We all know that many A500 games required fast ram but despite that Commodore produced A600 without option for fast ram in trap door slot. Why?
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2019, 09:12:47 PM »
It was meant to be a transitional computer. Not an expandable.
Lead the former A500(+) users to the next generation (A1200) or the dead end if they were unwilling to move their ignorant arses to the future... :P
 

Offline CBH

Re: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2019, 10:48:55 PM »
There's no games that I know of on A500 that need fast ram. You can't add fastram to A500 trapdoor, so in that way 500 and 600 is the same.

What they do need though is more than 512kb. Like the 500+, 600 comes with 1MB already, the maximum normal 500 can take. And then you can double that to 2MB.

For fastram upgrade 600 can take a PCMCIA card, so there is no problem.

Regarding reason for 600 existence, it was originally supposed to be A300, cheap model to replace C64, but gayle chip increased costs too much. At least it is useful as a very small A500+ type machine with internal hard drive.
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2019, 10:51:48 PM »
One can also use 'fakemem'-like tools to split half of the ChipRAM off for SlowRAM.
 

Offline vince_6

Re: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« Reply #4 on: November 23, 2019, 12:51:34 PM »
The truth is that the A500 had no fast ram, at least the trapdoor one was chip of fake - slow fast.
My BBS : flashbackbbs.sytes.net:6502
http://partsfromthepast.blogspot.gr/ A1200 Black Project
 

Offline paul1981

Re: Why did Commodore produced A600 without fastram upgrade option?
« Reply #5 on: November 23, 2019, 08:16:36 PM »
There's no games that I know of on A500 that need fast ram. You can't add fastram to A500 trapdoor, so in that way 500 and 600 is the same.

He means Slow RAM really (trapdoor 512K in the A500), but it was known as Fast RAM because it wasn't Chip RAM. As OP stated, there were a few crappy games that only work with Slow RAM due to the programmers making assumptions about where the extra 512K actually is, address wise. For instance, if the extra 512K was configured as Chip RAM the game wouldn't work despite 1MB of RAM being available. The programmers are to blame, certainly not Commodore!

I suppose by the time the A600 was released, those games were old anyway and no-one were much interested in them, and programmers had learned from their mistakes. That Slow RAM was useless anyway by the time the A500+ and A600 were released because the Chip RAM could be expanded to 2MB via the trapdoor, and Chip RAM was what the people wanted (more sound, graphics, more open screens etc.)