Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: hppacito on October 31, 2005, 11:49:50 AM
-
Hallo,
In my quest to expand my A500 with a joystick and mouse ;-), i got an A600 (will arrive in a week or so...) with a broken floppy.
I hope somebody can answer this:
Which kind of PCMCIA devices can be plugged in an A600 ?
Harddisks, flash disks, RAM cards (where the *ç&% find I those).... ??? (I know about the etherlink III). Do they need drivers to work ?
Is the A500 floppy compatible with the A600 ??
Thanks !
-
On my own A600, i use a compactflash pcmcia reader with 128 MB card, a squirrel SCSI, a LAN card, a Wifi card. This PCMCIA slot is much usefull :-)
The floppy drive is compatible but may not physically fit.
-
Thats sounds cool !
And can you boot from the 128MB card ? (I will not have more than a 68000 for a while...), do you use a driver to access the flash in the PCMCIA ?
thanks !
-
At first you need to check out these excellent sites
www.amiga600.de (by Christian Krenner) and
www.amiga600.net (by Mike Parker)
The can clear your mind about a lot of things in upgrading you miggy!
I used a compact flash to ide adapter so a compact flash card can be used as a regular Hard Disk. The only problem are the limited read/write cycles. So you should concider using a cf card only for storage purposes. Good luck mate and feel free to PM for any questions!
Greetings from GREECE!
-
@mfilos:
Your A600 seems close to mine but you have a mtec board?
How much do you get in Sysinfo?
Mine got an Apollo 630@40Mhz with FPU and 32 Mo FAST and makes it at 7746 Dhrystones. I have too a 10GB hardrive and of course the 1 Meg ChipRAM + clock expansion.
I think my A600 is better than the one at www.amiga600.de except i don't have usb (but no need for it) :)
-
So,
sorry for being repetitive... but can you boot from a Flash or harddisk attached to the PCMCIA ?
thanks !
I would love to get one of those apollos... I hope they show up in ebay soon. sadly I lost the MTec 020 for A500... but >50 Euro.. is a bit too much :-(
-
Greetings dear Xanxi!
I haven't installed SysInfo yet but I'll let you know when I'll have the specs.
I couldn't find an Apollo anywhere, so while I searched on Google I found out this site www.animart.pl which had the M-Tec board I have now, with (only) 4MB RAM. The bad thing is that even if you find an M-Tec with 8MB soldered, the PCMCIA is disabled, which is something I didn't wantfor sure! With the 4MB I'm happy for now! Sure 32MB are GREAT man but Apollo is too rare! The CF Disk works like a charm in the slave IDE port letting me share files with my Laptop's CF Writer using UAE. I'm very happy some people having an A600 share the same enthusiasm upgrading their miggy like me! Keep up the good work guys!
P.S. Dear hppacito I believe that you can boot (althought I don't know the way) from CF using PCMCIA Adaptor
-
That people (animart) list an Apollo 030, but as I hardly understand any polish ! (I was told that with german and russian you can read polish.... russian am learning now, german I think I can read it ;-) )... difficult to know what is all that about :-(, I'll see if I can make it boot.
-
Hi,
I've been playing around with a number of Compact flash adaptors and found one that works well in the A600/1200 slot, used loads of different CF cards.. not actually bootable but automounts/dismounts with my modded s/w ,
from HD or floppy.. its really is the dogs with PC to Miggy file moving.. just treat like any amiga device.
C..
-
You can boot from them
-
You can't make an order from animart's site. You can mail them as I did in plain English. I'm very satisfied with Animart. They don't have the Apollo, just M-Tec with 4MB.
With my order the sent me 2 Boing stickers and a CD-ROM with some Amiga software. I totally suggest them.
As for the CF adapter I bought one 44pin CF to IDE adaptor from eBay (5 Euros) that fitted like a slave (Yes it has a jumper for Master-Slave mode) to my 2x44pin IDE cable like a glove! HD Toolbox read it as a SCSI drive and formated the 256 Sandisk card very easily.
You can make the CF bootable and work it like a HD.
In my avatar you can slightly see the CF in the top left corner as it gets out from the miggy.
Don't forget about the write/read cycles though.
-
hppacito wrote:
I would love to get one of those apollos... I hope they show up in ebay soon. sadly I lost the MTec 020 for A500... but >50 Euro.. is a bit too much :-(
dude, A600 accelelerators go for much expansive cause they are maybe the rarest accelerators for the amiga. You'll never find a 030 board for less 50 € I can assure you (cause I'll bid at least 75 € ehehehehe *eevil skeletor grin*)
having said that, I just noticed an auction for a apollo 630 at ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-600-Apollo-630-accelerator-33mhz-030-fpu-8mb-ram_W0QQitemZ8230033740QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
but the seller only accepts money order or personal check so its kind of fishy. I would not suggest buying this kind of expensive items if the seller doesn't accept paypal (the auction starts from 70 pounds (where the heck is pound sign on my keyboard?) ( about 125 $))
-
@mfilos
What did you pay for the M-Tec630 ?
I did take a look on this polish site,
but couldn't find any link to mail them.
Do you know how to contact them?
I own a A600HD myself with an MTec/Viper a630
with 4MB, but I want another one for my other A600HD.
I once had an Apollo with 32MB, but they're very
unstable, even with a cooler-fan installed.
So, I sold the Apollo, and now I'm very satisfied with
the MTec/Viper 630. It's very stable.
Take a look at this sysinfo picture I up-loaded for the CM345S SD/FF thread I posted:
www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1163=38
:-)
-
@mfilos
Never mind the email address...I found it!
:-D
-
70 pounds !?! :-o , that is much more that what I am willing to pay. I already spend quite a bit... and don't have something satisfactory to play with.... :-x
-
My Apollo 630 is perfectly stable for hours with the same kind of fan arrengement as seen in amiga600.de. I have too another fan on the 68030 itself.
However it is a bit noisy.
This accelerator is a pure marvel to me, i am very happy with it :-)
As for booting on CF, of course it is possible over IDE, it should be possible too over PCMCIA but the driver that everyone us with the CF-PCMCIA Adaptater is not made for that.
-
@Amidude
Thanks for the screenshot :-)
Now i have seen my 40Mhz Apollo beats the 42Mhz Mtec :-p :-D
-
@Xanxi
Yes, I know! That's because of the 32MB RAM you got
on that apollo-card. I used to have one too! But it
was unstable in my system-setup, and I thought why
the heck do I need 32MB for in this A600 anyway?
That's a little bit excessively! I used it only for
gaming and some programming in Amos.
So I sold it, and got myself this M-Tec/Viper 630!
:-D
-
I'm very happy with the M-TEC myself.
I wish it had another 4MB of RAM (without loosing the PCMCIA port)... Anyway!
I bought it expensive but it was the only place I found a board for the A600 since I was looking on eBay for the last couple of months. It cost 140 Euro. It was 90 Euro for the board, 15 Euro for the shipping cost and an optional 35 Euro for the FPU @ 40Mhz.
I know that it's expensive but it was a dream come true so I didn't care a lot.
Hmmm, I tried to run Sysinfo but it doesn't run.
It wants MUI installed?
Cheers
-
@mfilos
Thanks for the info. I'm also very happy with the MTec630.
I mailed that polish online-shop, but didn't hear from them until now.
It's strange that Sysinfo doesn't run on your system.
It doesn't need MUI, that's for sure...
:-)
-
Hmmm, I tried to run Sysinfo but it doesn't run.
It wants MUI installed?
Perhaps you tried SysSpeed?
-
@mfilos
You have mail...
:-)
-
Thanks a lot!
Well, I'm very happy with my specs!!!
Dhrystones : 8315
In comparison with classic A600 : 15,7
I believe that it's pretty good for an A600 right???
Also I solved my problem with networking via PCMCIA NIC in OS 3.9. I just needed CardPatch in Startup-sequence.
P.S. The program I was running before was indeed SysSpeed!!!
-
@mfilos
You get so much Dhrystones in sysinfo?
Weird! You can't outperform your fellow Amidude who have the same board, and that's too much compared to my 40Mhz.
What is your version of Sysinfo? And what is your kickstart?
-
Please excuse my ignorance here... very recently pulled the amiga 600 HD out of the loft after 10+ years... now an avid PC user... things have certainly changed ! - what i would like to know is:
I have a PCMCIA CARD (CF ADAPTOR) the cf card slots into the above card... I have plugged this into the A600 today but alas the 600 didn't seem to show it/recognise it... can someone shed any light on this 4 me.. does the cf card need pre formatting ? - are driver of some kind needed ?
Paul (UK)
-
@kvfive
In order to use the CF-adapter, you will need
a driver for it. You can download it from here:
www.aminet.net/search.php?query=compactflash
:-)
-
Thanks for the link... another question DOH! - This '.lha' file... Im assuming here its some kind of zip\rar file compression... what do i use to upack this file ?
-
Windows decompression tools should do it
-
Yep.. thanks very much :)
-
@Xanxi
my friend I downloaded yesterday from Aminet the 3.24 version of SysInfo. The specs are indeed strange but true. It finds my board as 45,2 Mhz!!!
I have an 68882@40 FPU also (I don't know if that makes a difference).
As a kickstart you can see in my Signature that's 3.1 :-)
What kind of screen grab utitity to run just send you a pic?
-
hi folks,
I have an old 2MB PCMCIA RAM card that I need to run Deluxe Galaga on my A600. If I don't use it Galaga crashes at level 10, and if I do it crashes at level 13!!
Bad memory problem in the way the game was made/designed.
I got the PCMCIA RAM card from www.amiga-deals.com , but they do tend to have expensive stuff there - however it's all tested before they ship items out and they have been in business for about a decade now, I think.
I have had many items off of them with no problems :)
Regards,
Lonewolf10
A600
------
CPU: 68000
MMU/FPU: None
Memory: 2 MB (1MB RAM extension in trapdoor) + 2 MB PCMCIA RAM card
Harddrive: 4 GB SCSI Hitachi HD
2 External disk drives (only 1 works)
Kickstart 37.300
Workbench 2.04
-
having said that, I just noticed an auction for a apollo 630 at ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-600-Apollo-630-accelerator-33mhz-030-fpu-8mb-ram_W0QQitemZ8230033740QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
but the seller only accepts money order or personal check so its kind of fishy. I would not suggest buying this kind of expensive items if the seller doesn't accept paypal (the auction starts from 70 pounds (where the heck is pound sign on my keyboard?) ( about 125 $))[/quote]
FISHY!? Charming! what about my 100% feedback!? I'm reluctant to accept paypal on more expensive items because of the fees involved. I will by prior arrangement however.
-
Has anyone managed to contact the people from that polish website? Have they still got any accelerators for the A600? Even a 68020 would do fine for me. :-)
How did you pay? Do they accept credit cards?
Thanks.
-
@alenppc
Yes, I've asked them if they got any accelerators
for the A600 in stock. After 2 days they mailed me
that they didn't. The last one was send to someone
in Greece. I think it was mfilos that was lucky!
If they got their hands on 630 turbocards in the
future, they will contact me.
:-)
-
I regret not buying one when I had the chance in the late '90s... :-(