Amiga.org
Amiga.org specific forums => Amiga.org Discussion and Site Feedback => Topic started by: ivibozic on February 09, 2005, 03:16:28 PM
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Are you a pro or a no
in:
getting a cheap A600, 2chip, 8 fast RAM, 1084s, 2 Pythons, a hard and some disq(-ettes).
If no, just pass..
i_b_
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Hey, if someone else asked this question, this is how you would answer:
What is A600? Is of no good. But I want happines. Lots of potential there. But what of the cute? If frustrated, please take note. Oh yeah!
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No.
I bought one of these when they first came out. I think that either I was completely out of my mind, stupid, or I thought that it would be better than an A500. What a peice of junk.
My opinion, don't buy an A600. If you are a beginner, you can get a nice A500 with lots of extras (games, joysticks, etc) from ebay dirt cheap.
Just my 2 cents.
-- Mike
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I disagree with Dr Who
The A600 is a great machine with much more potential softwarewise than an A500. For starters it has the Enhanced Chipset wich makes it like the A3000's little buddy. its got PCMCIA port to use Wireless PC ethernet cards and Sony Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SD and others. It can have 2 MB of chip ram much easier than an A3000, and can be upgraded with an Apollo 630 which I believe are being rereleased again (they are not too good....2 died on me)
And as far as games (people will tell you otherwise but its more compatible than an A500 if you install WHDload ( you cant run games thats use 2MB of ChipRAM on an A500 unless you install the MegaChip which is quite expensive.
Plus the A600 is super portable! But if you had to buy one Amiga.........I would go for the A1200..........even for portablility its beter than a CD32, because a CD32 you need to carry along a keyboard and floppy to make it complete.
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Apollo 630 which I believe are being rereleased again (they are not to good...2 died on me)
Where did you hear that?
So basicly you are saying that the only accelerator for A600 (more or less) aren't that good? I'd better get me one of those!
unless you install the MegaChip which is quite expensive.
And the Apollo 630 isn't?
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Btw. I agree with drwho.
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M four cents ;)
I think the A600 is a awesome little machine. Has 2MB Chip, can add a HD very easily (just drop in a PC laptop HD in it and go! Even larger ones with some tweaks or OS 3.5+) and it has PCMCIA so you can add upto 4MB Fast RAM, or a modem, or a LAN card. Only drawbacks are 1. Expensive as hell in the USA, 2. Cannot easily add a faster CPU or RAM, 3. Surface mount chips so very hard to repair. I have 2 bad units now that I cannot fix.
The A500 on the other hand is the classic. Very very cheap, robust, easily expandible, socketted chips for easy repairs, and you can also add a internal HD if you like. The AdIDE2 and Novia kit (got mine from eBay for $40) Only bad thing is trying to add more Fast RAM. Will also need a CPU upgrade or trapdoor upgrade (both very $$$) but overall cheaper than a A600 (here is the USA atleast)
Your call.
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doctorq wrote:
Apollo 630 which I believe are being rereleased again (they are not to good...2 died on me)
Where did you hear that?
So basicly you are saying that the only accelerator for A600 (more or less) aren't that good? I'd better get me one of those!
unless you install the MegaChip which is quite expensive.
And the Apollo 630 isn't?
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Btw. I agree with drwho.
Yes, but on A500 you'd need extra memory, and installing WB2.0, (cause the games that didn't play on 500 and needed 2mb ram, also needed - OS2.0). In A600 you get os2.0 and you're continuing only to the mb expansion. With A500 however, as I've written, the case wasn't that simple).
I'd go so far to say that in computer world the 600 is as the Alfa 156 in cars. CHEAP! ROUND WORTH(ness)! and a blaster. By the experience most certainly. It's only that it was bit sluggish back then, but hey, there's always that 'back then' to write and write about instead of skipping it.
i_b_
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cause the games that didn't play on 500 and needed 2mb ram, also needed - OS2.0
Please let me know which these games are so I can check it out. To my knowledege there isn't any games that run on A600 that doesn't want to run on A500.
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given the opportunity, I would pick a A600 over the 500 any day.. ease of expandability make it a no brainer.
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I prefered my a500 over the a600 anyday... little noisy thing with no numeric keypad to play flight sim's!
One of CBM's mistakes imho ...
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Some of you must have had seriously Messed up A600's or something...........its defintely nicer to have an A600than the A500.....a behemoth thats too difficult to expand these days. Especially with modern stuff such as ethernet and Compact Flash, and IDE drives.
For games played with ease without having to load from floppy.its ten times easier to have an A600, as all you need s WHDload and a HD.
Who the heck wants to go through the trouble of upgrading and even carrying that HUGE behemoth around. I used to have my A600 inside my Cars Dashboard back in 1994 and Had DSS8+ attached to it with a Mic and to my Sound System to yell at passer buys "GET OUT OF THE WAY!!" try that with an A500 in a car...............also had scratch and DJ samples that I would hit keys while driving...........playing my own music :-)
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The A600 is a very nice machine.
Surface mounted chips may be a hassle to replace but it is possible to do so if you have a good soldering iron, magnifying glass, a solder remover and a very steady hand.
As for expandability; I think they are hopeless! Sure you could add PCMCIA RAM, and/or an accelerator. But it's easier finding a dodo egg.
The harddisk is nice but most whdload games need fastram. Which is a problem as stated above.
The network card possibility is nice and gives it an edge. You can make a perfect ADF writer from it.
The footprint is nice. The ugly A500 slab takes up a huge ammounth of space. One thing...A500 tend to be less sensative to yellowing.
I'd go (and went) for an A600. Also because theyre cheap and easy to come by here in good old Holland ;)
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Meanwhile, back in reality...
Whichever machine you get is likely to come with a sh1tload of games anyway, all of which will have been tested. Any that didn't work will have been copied over with tacky HAM6 public domain porn collections.
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WHDLoad usage with A600 is only neat if you have an accelerator installed.
Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this. :-(
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@Doppie1200
PCMCIA memory is SUPER easy to find............problem is that there are many A600 and PCMCIA Nay Sayers.........never listen to them.
See most people arent aware that many PCMCIA cards from Apple Newtons work on the A600 with no need for drivers or anything. Go on ebay and watch as they show up. Type "Newton Flash" and you have yourself enough Memory to run WHDLoad :-)
Sometimes you find the 2MB ones for 15 bucks....not too bad.
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@x56h34
Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this.
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In that case just load it from Floppy as you would on an A500 anyway...............or.........just install it with JST :-) which needs much less ram than WHDload and works on the 68000 CPU just fine.
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Some of you must have had seriously Messed up A600's or something...........its defintely nicer to have an A600than the A500.....a behemoth thats too difficult to expand these days.
Id never run an a500 nowadays.. im talking back in '91 :-D
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@leirbag28
You are clearly an Amiga 600 fan, and I have no problems with it at all.
However, the cost of upgrading the Amiga 600 to a usable machine with WHDLoad will be more expensive than getting a Amiga 500 with harddrive and fast ram already installed, and which plays those old games right away. I think that even with an accelerator in the Amiga 500 the Amiga 500 setup will be cheaper.
The only thing you mention that can not be connected to an Amiga 500 is a ethernet card; the rest should be fairly simple.
As for upgrades available for both computers; I would bet you that for every Apollo 630 board you find, you will find 5 or 10 harddrive controllers for Amiga 500.
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@doctorq
As for upgrades available for both computers; I would bet you that for
every Apollo 630 board you find, you will find 5 or 10 harddrive
controllers for Amiga
500.
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Yes probably true, but these hArddrives just make your A500 all the more of a Huge beast.........I despise external HD's these days...........maybe cuz I like lugging along my A600 nice ands small...............I like internal tiny HD's
and as far as compatibility....I can run 95 % of games, and I said.you dont need an Apollo board. Plus you can add the Kicstart switcher if need be with KS 1.3 and 3.1
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@leirbag28
I like internal tiny HDs as well....in an Amiga 1200.....
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Sloooooow laptop HDD's....
Not that they make any difference on the !super Fast! amiga IDE bus ....
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Well, if you can find a Viper 520, you can easily add an internal 2.5" IDE drive in the A500. The Viper also adds KS3.0, 8Mb Fast RAM and a FPU. I'll admit that the Viper 520 is hard to find though.
I don't find the A500 ugly. I think it looks much nicer than the A600.
Who the heck wants to go through the trouble of upgrading and even carrying that HUGE behemoth around. I used to have my A600 inside my Cars Dashboard back in 1994 and Had DSS8+ attached to it with a Mic and to my Sound System to yell at passer buys "GET OUT OF THE WAY!!" try that with an A500 in a car...............also had scratch and DJ samples that I would hit keys while driving...........playing my own music
What an odd thing to do. I wouldn't consider any Amiga portable. It doesn't matter how small the thing is, you still need the monitor, mouse, joysticks, etc. But if I REALLY wanted to, I could easily put an A500 behind my 1958 VW dashboard....right on top of the gas tank. ;-)
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I have a 2GB HD in my A600HD. Runs great.
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x56h34 wrote:
Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this. :-(
I've found quite the opposite. Out of the 200 or so WHDLoad games I've tested, only about 10 refused to work. Several didn't exit, but they worked perfectly during gameplay.
Besides the reasons already stated (IDE, PCMCIA, small form factor), the A600 is a great portable because it has composite video output. The A500 has mono out, or requires an A520 dongle to do this adding to the bulk.
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@adolescent:
It could be related to my rev 1.5 motherboard perhaps. I am not sure. My tests were conducted with A600 rev 1.5 mobo, 3.1 rom, 2MB chip / 4MB fast ram, OS3.1 installed on the hard drive.
I can confirm that a lot of working games wouldn't exit, and a lot of wouldn't work at all (and yes, I know that I need to tweak the tooltypes when trying WHDLoad games between different Amigas...e.g. tooltypes that were good for A1200 don't necessarily work with A4000 with 060, etc.). :-)
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adolescent wrote:
Besides the reasons already stated (IDE, PCMCIA, small form factor), the A600 is a great portable because it has composite video output. The A500 has mono out, or requires an A520 dongle to do this adding to the bulk.
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Well said adolecent :-)
@Mr a500
Well no, I dont carry around a monitor..........I use 5 inch LCD screens as the A600 has Color Composite OUT. and I use a small SEGA master sytem joypad...and the command Jaymoose19...........so I dont need a mouse.
The A500 is really not Ugly......I just find it so when its yellow and damaged....I guess I see alot of that...........plus its real Big...but I see it that way because I desire to carry it around..............if its a stay at home machine..........it can look nice if you got the matching monitor and mouse and Floppy drives :-).........................I have seen your Workbench..................nicest I have ever seen when it comes to an A500 :-) If everyone had their A500 set up like yours in software and in nice condition like TJLazer's, then that would be excellent.............i wish Commodore shipped them out like that.
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I had no idea that the A600 had colour composite output. So that is definitely a bonus and makes it more portable.