Totally committed...... and new ☄ ♖

[JPondRobocod]

Hey there peoples of the Amiga internet-verse!! XD lol

overhappy hello out of the way, I've been an Amiga fan ever since I saw this ad:



It was in an issue of CVG and I was 5 then, and have since dreamt of owning it. I made a really cool version out of inverted colgate boxes complete with carefully cut-out heat sink vents and replaceable screens (two slots of cardboard that could hold paper which I wrote/drew fake monitor images of, such an a screen with pen-drawn DOS X-tree program)
to "emulate" a real Amiga by switching paper screens. Of course I knew nothing of Workbench back then and the X-tree DOS program was from my little exposure to moms boyfriend (back then) computer. My mom couldn't afford much for me back then as a single mom I didn't really have much.

Now, through the miracle of Ebay and being an adult, with money, I have myself my dream of all dream items, an AMIGA!!! 600!!! LIKE THE ONE IN THE MAGAZINE!!

TLDR version:
So its now 2014, and it was roughly 1991, so about 23 years later I am now a little too excited and frankly speaking, a little afraid.

I finally bought a working Amiga 600. Lifelong, really really lifelong dream of all dreams.

I haven't powered it up yet.

I have done the following:
1) Taken it apart, cleaned every bit carefully.
2) Sanded the very rusty metal back-plate (for operating board) as well as I can and sprayed multiple Clear-coat laquer layers over it.
3) Taken the Keyboard apart, cleaned immense caked on, well, brown cake?? and pencil shavings.
Done retrobright on the keys. Keys are nearly 100% white now, with just very little yellow (i ran out of hydrogen peroxide)
There is still a little rust on the springs.
4) Sprayed and customized the A600 Case. bottom case warped a little and now the board isn't sitting flat on it. Very depressing, but managed to make it fit. a little worried about stressing the Printed Circuit board as its not completely lying flat (though ive rectified as much as possible with some cardboard) and some of the ports are subjected to pressure from the case.
The clearcoat on the case is really well done and is really shiny not to mention no paint is coming off (the important bit)

I purchased the following a few months back :
1) Latest rom chip (3.1 i think?!?, can't remember but before I bought it I ensured it was the latest version)
2) ide to sd card adapter
3) 1MB ram upgrade via expansion

looking at buying a wireless or ethernet pcmcia card next.


What I think I need to do next:
This project has been two years at least in the making (from when I actually was reading up and buying the parts) and the Amiga has made its way from scotland to malaysia to australia, with me waiting here in Australia for it for a fair bit already.

In between work, daily life, and other commitments I have not been able to remember what I am supposed to do. I saved a bunch of .doc files in my computer(s) and with all my computers and backups of my files lying around I am sure where I kept them. Most were information I sourced from sites and forums (like this one), but now lost to the annals of hard drives and dvd backups containing vacation pictures, sporting records, family photos, old games etc etc.

Here goes:
After putting everything back together,
1) Remove old rom chip and put in the new latest rom chip
2) Plug in ide to sd card adapter (is a Sandisk 4GB Class4 the one to use?)
3) Format the 4GB SD card using appropriate software?!?! (winuae?)
4) Install winuae?
5) create partitions?
6) Reinstall workbench? possible from the sd card? (no floppy as ide will be adapter for SD card)
7) Copy games straight into the SD card?
convert games into appropriate format to play off SD hard drive?

so... help!
A list of what to do in my case for my setup would be great, in numbered steps of what I need to do and then I can source the appropriate guide myself for each step I need to do from google.

I am very set on using my IDE to SD card as my hard drive, and need guide on using the latest rom (I just plug it in and then set it up later, right?) I am not really fussed about pcmcia ethernet adapter cards or wireless network cards for now as I just need to get this setup up and going. And playing those games

Thanks for reading my crap lol but also thanks in advance for any responses!!

Have a great night!

[Dr.Bongo]

If I was you I'd be looking at getting one of these -

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43&products_id=1102

It would make your machine great for WHDload with the extra memory and speed increase.

Here's a guide to setting up classic workbench -

http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=25632&d...

All you need to do with your kickstart ROM is change it. No further setup is required.

[persia]

Hmmm, where are you?  It's 2012 here in Australia....

[CritAnime]

If I was you I'd be looking at getting one of these -

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43&products_id=1102

It would make your machine great for WHDload with the extra memory and speed increase.

Here's a guide to setting up classic workbench -

http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=25632&d...

All you need to do with your kickstart ROM is change it. No further setup is required.

I kinda wish that was out when I was buying the ACA 630/25. I do think I am under utilizing it and that would have probably given me enough power for whdload.

But then again I am happy with it. :knuddel:

[Dr.Bongo]

Hmmm, where are you?  It's 2012 here in Australia....

LOL, I missed that

[CritAnime]

As did I lol.

[JPondRobocod]

Wow, I didn't think anyone would read my long thread. Thank you for the reply Dr Bongo!

Thanks a pretty cool chip!! very expensive for me though.. im currently saving up for my home and family one day and every little bit counts...
ACA 620 Accelerator with 9MB RAM
will defintely keep it in mind when i've got a really large deposit down pat.

And to persia, thanks for the embaressing shout out! im tired from working long hours and doing my postgrad course, hence why I need the step by step of what I need to do to help simplify this. I've just done a 20 page written report with detailed look into years and correlation with health, vitamin levels, and projections so much so that I think im in 2014!!!! there was two pages I wrote on the projected data from that year, so I keep thinking 2014!!! lol!!

sorry if that confused anybody

and to those that missed it, thanks i feel less stupid that way

[Dr.Bongo]

Wow, I didn't think anyone would read my long thread. Thank you for the reply Dr Bongo!

Thanks a pretty cool chip!! very expensive for me though..

The name's Bongo... Dr.Bongo not Technoid :lol: (snip! ok, you've changed it)

Seriously though, I would look into getting more memory/speed in the thing before a network card. It would have limited use, especially on a 68000 cpu.

[CritAnime]

Thanks a pretty cool chip!! very expensive for me though.. im currently saving up for my home and family one day and every little bit counts...
ACA 620 Accelerator with 9MB RAM
will defintely keep it in mind when i've got a really large deposit down pat.

Thats not a bad price for an accelerator. The accelerator that is in my 600 was, give a few pennies, £147. So the price of the other is very reasonable. Although I don't know if you would need a new psu for it.

But like you I saved like mad for all the goodies in mine. The accelerator was the single most expensive bit. Followed by the scan doubler, the HxC then the memory expansion and finally the HDD.

[JPondRobocod]

Thats a cool name, Bongo! Dr. Bongo!

it reminded me of this one professor I knew of whose wife divorced him because he used to play bongo drums in the bed!!

and yes, sorry for making you "redundant". your post more specifically lol Im more tired than I think I am I think lol

Thanks again for the doc., Doc. With the document, Is it fine with an SD card of course? just to clarify. And the amiga specific file format, using the Winuae software on the pc, Do i still need to choose A1200 under emulated hardware although im on an A600?

I get it so far.... will get the courage to touch the damn amiga im just so paranoid about grounding myself and static as I am wearing a jumper thats so damn polysester and static inducing!!

[JPondRobocod]

Thats not a bad price for an accelerator. The accelerator that is in my 600 was, give a few pennies, £147. So the price of the other is very reasonable. Although I don't know if you would need a new psu for it.

But like you I saved like mad for all the goodies in mine. The accelerator was the single most expensive bit. Followed by the scan doubler, the HxC then the memory expansion and finally the HDD.

Wow... 150 quid. Thats a whole lot!! I'd love to justify it... but I can't look myself in the mirror after lol.

Yeah I do save like mad, first for my family and then some.

I spent about $35 AUD for my amiga ram and was pretty happy about it, and that was like a lot to me lol. I promise myself when i've put a roof over my wifes head for sure I'll buy stuff. Not sure if the family first save for rainy day mentality will go away anytime soon lol. plus I love a good bargain too lol

The accelerator basically ramps up the amount of cpu clock cycles, scandoubler creates double the scanlines for doubled resolution i am not that knowledgable but is that correct? and what does the HxC do?

are you using a pcmcia mem expansion?

[Rob]

Here goes:
After putting everything back together,
1) Remove old rom chip and put in the new latest rom chip
2) Plug in ide to sd card adapter (is a Sandisk 4GB Class4 the one to use?)
3) Format the 4GB SD card using appropriate software?!?! (winuae?)
4) Install winuae?
5) create partitions?
6) Reinstall workbench? possible from the sd card? (no floppy as ide will be adapter for SD card)
7) Copy games straight into the SD card?
convert games into appropriate format to play off SD hard drive?

so... help!
A list of what to do in my case for my setup would be great, in numbered steps of what I need to do and then I can source the appropriate guide myself for each step I need to do from google.

I am very set on using my IDE to SD card as my hard drive, and need guide on using the latest rom (I just plug it in and then set it up later, right?) I am not really fussed about pcmcia ethernet adapter cards or wireless network cards for now as I just need to get this setup up and going. And playing those games

Thanks for reading my crap lol but also thanks in advance for any responses!!

Have a great night!

1) You can remove the rom by sliding slat bladed screw driver, or similar, between the chip and socket.  Carefully lift each side a little at a time and you'll probably get it out without bending an pins.

2) I've never used SD-IDE but I guess it should be the same as CF-IDE.  Class 4 cards are faster than the 2.5Mb/s the A600 IDE can handle so should be fine.

3, 4, 5, 6) Install Win UAE on you PC.  Make sure you have The Workbench 3.1 adf files.  There should be Workbench, Extras, Fonts, Storage Locale and HD Install.

Start UAE with as 68000, 2MB, ECS system with a 3.1 rom and the SD card as a hard drive. Insert the HD install adf in the floppy drive to boot into workbench.
HDtoolbox should detect the SD card as a hard drive and partition it, once the disk (SD card) is setup it should force you to reboot the system.  
If everything worked as it should icons for your partitions should appear on Workbench.  You can highlight a partition by selecting it and then right on the screen title bar and select format.  Give the partition an appropriate name such as Workbench or Games and select "Quick Format".
After you done that can run the Installer from HD Install and it'll ask for the other disks as required.  You can have up to 4 virtual floppy at a time.

7, To run games from HD/SD Card you'll need a program called WHDload installed.  http://www.whdload.de/

Use Windows to Download and unpack it to a folder on your PC's hard drive since Windows won't recognize the Amiga formatted SD card as a writable drive.  You can set UAE to use the folder it's saved in as an additional HD in workbench.  From there you can install it to your Workbench partition.  You can download WHDload version from various sites from the links/Games downloads section of http://www.lemonamiga.com.  They can be unpacked and copied to your games partition/drawer on the SD card in the same way as above.

The accelerator card at Amigakit will be best to makes full use of WHDload since some of the games won't work without the additional memory on the card.

The Amiga 600 won't run AGA games.

[CritAnime]

The accelerator basically ramps up the amount of cpu clock cycles, scandoubler creates double the scanlines for doubled resolution i am not that knowledgable but is that correct? and what does the HxC do?

Check here for info on a flicker fixer. I got one and I can now use my Amiga 600 on an LCD monitor or even my 50 inch plasma without issue. Be aware that you need the A604 trapdoor expansion in order to get it to work on a 600. As for the accelerator...

Well I don't actually know enough on them to give you an accurate description. So I won't try to explain it. But I am sure someone with the technical knowledge will be able to explain how they work.

The HxC however is a floppy drive emulator that works on most retro computers. Essentially it reads a disk image, HFE format, from an SD card and then acts like a really floppy drive would have done. Clicks and skweals included. If your not too fussed about using physical media then this might be an option. It's pricey but compared to the price of the various bit you would need in order to play games via whdload it can be cheaper.

The accelerator card at Amigakit will be best to makes full use of WHDload since some of the games won't work without the additional memory on the card.

The Amiga 600 won't run AGA games.

Yup I learnt this the hard way. I tried running whdload on a pretty vanilla 600, just a 2mb trapdoor expansion, and ran into lots of issues. Some games worked, some would work then crash and others would refuse to load at all. Fitting an accelerator solved that by giving me 32mb of fast RAM along with the 2mb of trapdoor that came with the A604 and the obvious CPU boost from the 25mhz 030.

Basically I would say it like this.

If your wanting to load games from a HDD and take advantage of whdload you need and accelerator because your going to quickly run into brick walls. If your not too fussed about this then either stick to physical media or get an HxC and a 1gb SD card.

[Rob]

Wow... 150 quid. Thats a whole lot!! I'd love to justify it... but I can't look myself in the mirror after lol.

Yeah I do save like mad, first for my family and then some.

I spent about $35 AUD for my amiga ram and was pretty happy about it, and that was like a lot to me lol. I promise myself when i've put a roof over my wifes head for sure I'll buy stuff. Not sure if the family first save for rainy day mentality will go away anytime soon lol. plus I love a good bargain too lol

The accelerator basically ramps up the amount of cpu clock cycles, scandoubler creates double the scanlines for doubled resolution i am not that knowledgable but is that correct? and what does the HxC do?

are you using a pcmcia mem expansion?

The Amiga be a very expensive hobby and the ACA620 is actually quite cheap as far as Amiga CPU/RAM cards go.  If you can somehow scrimp together the money it'll make the system much quicker and you'll be able to make the most of WHDload as I mentioned in my previous post.

A scandoubler allows you to display Amiga screen modes on a VGA/DVI monitor.  If the Amiga works fine with your TV you don't really need one for playing games.

The HxC is an SD card based floppy emulator that will plug into the Amiga's internal floppy port and allow you to boot from ADF images images on the Amiga.  I think's about the same price as the ACA620 and WHDload + ACA620 would be my preferred solution for running games.

I don't know how easy it is to get a PCMCIA memory card but they were quite expensive back in the day.  If you can find a compatible one dirt cheap it may be an alternative to getting the ACA620.

[CritAnime]

The HxC is an SD card based floppy emulator that will plug into the Amiga's internal floppy port and allow you to boot from ADF images images on the Amiga.  I think's about the same price as the ACA620 and WHDload + ACA620 would be my preferred solution for running games.

Just need to mention the HxC does not read ADF images. You have to convert them using a bit of supplied software into the HFE format the reader uses. Because it's a multi system reader it can't read every available format. But it's simple enough to convert them and the batch converter did 70 ADF's into HFE in seconds. The HxC is also 82.40 EUR (£67.05 at time of writing) so it's swings and roundabouts. Depends what he ultimately wants to do with his miggy. But yes it's not a cheap hobby lol. But fun and rewarding.