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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: tridion on August 23, 2007, 10:00:19 PM
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What is the largest capacity 2.5 inch hard drive that can be installed in an A600?
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4GB with no OS upgrade.
Upto ~180GB? with OS patches/Upgrade.
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If you partition only 4GByte of space it's safe to use any size of hard drive I think even without OS updates.
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Though it also depends on ROM revision 37.350 or higher is needed to assure trouble-free operation.
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You can install as large a harddrive as you want, but the max you will get out of the controller with all available patches is 127 GB.
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What do people mean by patches/upgrades? Sorry if this is a silly question but I haven't touched an Amiga for about 16 years.
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I have a 40GB 2.5" drive in my A600, kickstart 3.1. So far, I have only had the need for two partitions (2x2GB). Still haven't managed to fill them up.
Ah, the wonderful world without MP3 and DivX and..
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:lol: Three answers, all different and none really helpful to someone who has not touched an Amiga in 16 years.
tridion, it really depends on what you plan on doing with your A600, but here are some facts to consider.
An unexpanded A600 has 1mb RAM and runs a 7mHz CPU speed. In that configuration it is not much use except to play classic Amiga games and run some early productivity programs that are not too RAM hungry, Final Copy, or ProWrite comes to mind for word processing, D-Paint III for paint and simple animations (not sure if D-Paint IV, or V would run well on only 1mb RAM).
A600 accelerator boards are hard to come by and expensive.
You can probably fit all the classic Amiga programs you are likely to want to use on a 1gb HD, so a cheap 2gb, or 4gb drive partitioned into two 2gb partitions should satisfy your needs indefinitely. Keeping partitions to a maximum of 2gb will keep you out of trouble with any of the Amiga OSes and file systems (IIRC).
I hope this info is helpful. If on the other hand you are just asking the question to get a technical answer about the absolute limits of Amiga hardware and software, see the other answers and guess which one is more correct.
:-D
As for patches, they are probably referring to additional code that is installed to alter the original Amiga OS so it can handle larger HDs and file, or partition sizes than was possible with AmigaOS 1.3, 2.04, 3.1, etc. Some of those patches are included in AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9, which was the last official AmigaOS released. Your A600 probably has the 2.04, 2.05, or 3.0 Kickstart ROM inside of it. To run OS 3.5 and 3.9 you will need to upgrade the ROM to the 3.1 Kickstart ROM which was the last Kickstart commercially produced by Amiga.
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Thanks amigadave ;) That was the first reply that made any sense to me.
I would only want it for old nostalgia stuff so I am sure the standard A600 will be fine. I guess a 4Gb 2.5inch drive is pretty hard to buy these days so is it true you can but any size and just partition 4Gb of it?
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The Kickstart ROM, if you dont know, is an actual physical chip (or 2 chips in some models). You can buy the latest (3.1) versions off ebay or sites like AmigaKit for pretty cheap. Be sure to get the right kind for your computer.
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Sorry, didn't realize you were such a n00b! ;)
Welcome back!
If you plan on getting a drive larger than 1GB you might need to get a 3.1 ROM chip. You *may* be able to get it to work with your 2.0x ROM, so just grab the smallest/cheapest 2.5" HD and see what you can do. I think I got a 2GB drive working in my A600HD. On my other 600's I got a 4GB and 6GB working.
Yes if you got a 10GB drive, you can just partition 4GB and leave the rest of it unpartitioned and you will be fine. Problem is you *may* need later HD Tools to get a larger drive recognized/working. Get HDInstTools from Aminet, that works great.
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the Amiga 600 came with roms ROM 2,05 v37.299 (can use hdd) ROM 2,05 v37.300 and ROM 2,05 v37.350, you can only use HDD with 40mb max. you need to upgrade to ROM 3,1 v40.63 to use HDD 4gb max :P.
view in Amiga.kit the prices.
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I believe I have v37.350 and I was able to install a 1.2 or 2GB HD fine...
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Are they really that hard to come by? What are they going for when they sell. My father seems to come by a lot of them when he is refurbishing equipment, and I was thinking that Amiga users might be a good outlet for him to sell some. Right now he is talking recycling them for the metal.
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The A600's ROMs versions are:
37299 or less: no support for IDE (although there is a funccional IDE on the motherboard);
37300: up to 40Mb IDE hd (I had one A600 with this exact ROM and a 2Gb hd running in it, don't ask how);
37350: up to 2Gb hd.
Those up are ORIGINALS. 3.0 (39106) 3.1 (40.068) are later upgrades (you buy one of those babies easily on Amigakit, Vesalia or SoftwareHut).
3.0 recognise up to 4Gb, 3.1 the very same (other programs on ROM makes this late kickstart more usuable for today's).
I strongly sugest you look at the "purple screen" when your Miggy is turned on with no floppy in drive. What version of kickstart is on the screen?
If the version is 37300 or up, you can install a "new" IDE hd easily. Those "low profile" hds can be easily found on Ebay for almost nothing.
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You may also be in for an unpleasant surprise when physically mounting the drive - the position of mounting holes on drives has changed since the A600 was built, meaning you'll either need to drill new holes in the mounting bracket or find an older drive.
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rkauer wrote:
37300: up to 40Mb IDE hd (I had one A600 with this exact ROM and a 2Gb hd running in it, don't ask how);
same here.
recently my old original hd in A600HD (30MB WD TidBit) stops, ive installed 500meg drive from powerbook (apple marked) with 2.1 workbench and everything works like with 37.350 8-)
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Belial6 wrote:
Are they really that hard to come by? What are they going for when they sell. My father seems to come by a lot of them when he is refurbishing equipment, and I was thinking that Amiga users might be a good outlet for him to sell some. Right now he is talking recycling them for the metal.
Yes they are, I gave up trying to find small HDs here, the smallest I could find was 40GB. I even have an old Toshiba Laptop PC that needed a new HD, it has an 8GB limit, I ended up with a shop pulling a unit from an old Laptop just to get rid of me! (and that HD is noisy already so it won't last long)
I am sure that if you list some drives for sale on this site you will be able to shift them (don't let your father destroy them!)
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tridion wrote:
Thanks amigadave ;) That was the first reply that made any sense to me.
I would only want it for old nostalgia stuff so I am sure the standard A600 will be fine. I guess a 4Gb 2.5inch drive is pretty hard to buy these days so is it true you can but any size and just partition 4Gb of it?
You are welcome and also welcome back to using Amigas and to Amiga.org, the greatest Amiga website community on the planet.
A lot of good info regarding exact Kickstart version numbers followed my message. Here is some more info for you to add to theirs. If you want to get the whole use of any HD larger than 4gb, buy a v3.1 Kickstart ROM chip from one of the few remaining vendors (my preference is Amigakit) and purchase AmigaOS 3.9. This should allow you to format and use almost any 2.5" drive size you want.
Again, with the relatively small Amiga file sizes, I suggest getting the smallest, cheapest HD size you can find.
Again, good luck, welcome back and don't hesitate to ask questions on these forums. There is a great wealth of educated talent here and 99% of them are very friendly and willing to help. :-D
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amigadave wrote:
If you want to get the whole use of any HD larger than 4gb, buy a v3.1 Kickstart ROM chip from one of the few remaining vendors (my preference is Amigakit) and purchase AmigaOS 3.9. This should allow you to format and use almost any 2.5" drive size you want.
Ermm.. on a stock A600? I don't think telling him this is very helpful.
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I've been looking for a 2.5" small HDD for a while, too. Bought one 207MB drive from a radio rally - Never worked. Bought a IBM Travelstar 4.86GB for £5 - Click of death.
I have a spare laptop drive, but its a Quantum Go Drive 42.9MB SCSI-II - So not much use.
I've also got a Toshiba laptop with a HDD, except the drive keeps on going clunk...clunk...clunk... so its probably not very well.
I'd also say save the low capacity 2.5" drives. I've got a stack of IDE ~2GB drives, except that they are all 3.5". A bit difficult to mount in A1200's or A600's.
Hodgkinson.
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amigadave wrote:
Your A600 probably has the 2.04, 2.05, or 3.0 Kickstart ROM inside of it.
The A600 was never released with a 3.0 ROM.
3.0 ROMs where only made for the Amiga 1200 &
4000. However, I believe there's a A500
accelerator which was delivered with a 3.0 ROM.
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I've had similar experiences with secondhand harddisks as Hodgkinson. For what it costs, I'd buy a new over-capacity drive and just format the required 4Gb.
Take a look here - 2.5" 40Gb Seagate (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/95606)
For thirty quid and a five-year warranty - it's damn good value. :-D
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Patches for Wb3.1 - 3.5 - 3.9
http://os.amigaworld.de/index.php?lang=en
You'll also need the latest sfs or ffs.
http://strohmayer.org/sfs/
You'll need to repartition and format the drives after the fs drivers are patched in.
I recommend that you make copies of your installation disks and patch them and not the originals.
I've used a 60 gb hd with my a600 myself.. Still i've only used about 800 mb or so.. The idefix97 software will also help unload the cpu a bit and add support for larger hd's. And a replacement Hdtoolbox tool might be needed. This is on aminet i think. Any data you write above 4gb on a stock install will get corrupted btw.
As far as accelerators go, you should try mailing http://ami.ga and be put on the list for the new 68030 600 accelerator.
Good luck
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@mike-
Any data you write above 4gb on a stock install will get corrupted btw.
Actually it's worse, it will overwrite the data below the 4GB mark, causing both to get corrupted. It's also likely that RDB is overwritten, and if this happens you lose all partitioning info.
Needless to say, if you attempt >4GB usage, doublecheck everything to make sure it works properly...
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Well, I just talked to my father, and he said he sent off a huge stack to be recycled already, but that he has several still around. I'll go by his house this weekend and see what he has. If it looks like he has something useful, I will get him to log on and post what he has here.
Just so I know what to look for, what are the kinds of drives most to least desired? The last time I looked at hard drives for the Amiga was when I got my A500 soon after it's release. At that time, everything was SCSI, but it seems IDE is prevalent on the... um... newer... machines. So, if you tell me what can be used, I will try to stop some of these drives from going to salvage.
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tridion wrote:
Thanks amigadave ;) That was the first reply that made any sense to me.
I would only want it for old nostalgia stuff so I am sure the standard A600 will be fine. I guess a 4Gb 2.5inch drive is pretty hard to buy these days so is it true you can but any size and just partition 4Gb of it?
I have a 4gb hitachi drive (model DK239A-48) you can have for $10.00 plus shipping. I can take paypal or money order. I don't know where you live so I do not know if it is worth it. Pm if interested.