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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: som99 on March 20, 2010, 05:02:19 PM
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Well i recently bought a A600 for about 100€ and it had a compact flash harddrive and now im looking to expand it.
I just bought a 2MB SRAM pcmcia fastram card for the good proce of 40€ and I will soon order a A603 trapdoor card for a extra megabyte chip ram.
So will this be enough to run WHLoad games?
Also I want to use the amiga to a 20" LCD monitor I have but since it do not support 15KHz mode I cant use it at the moment so im thinking of buying a flixer fixer/scan doubler tho how does this work? As i understand I will need the clockport from the A603 card and put it directly on the agnus chip (dont remember if it was the agnus or gary chip but that ofc i will read before installing) then the real question about this is will I only when using it be able to use 16 color mode in low res?
I have also thought about another solution, I made a scart cable for the amiga, will i then be able to use a scart to vga converter, it only cost about 40€ in a store near me, and if it works how will it look?blurry as on a TV or sharper? Also will it be able to show fullscreen on the 20" (without any black borders) LCD screen that is not widescreen but 4:3 format?
those are my main questions.
sorry for my bad spelling but im writing this from work on my Nokia N97 :/
EDIT: Sorry I wrote wrong, the LCD monitor is 19", a Eizo LCD FlexScan S1932SE that I have used on my cad computer but its free now when I bought a bigger monitor and I need the A600 on this because I do not have space for a CRT monitor :(
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Well i recently bought a A600 for about 100€ and it had a compact flash harddrive and now im looking to expand it.
I just bought a 2MB SRAM pcmcia fastram card for the good proce of 40€ and I will soon order a A603 trapdoor card for a extra megabyte chip ram.
So will this be enough to run WHLoad games?
Also I want to use the amiga to a 20" LCD monitor I have but since it do not support 15KHz mode I cant use it at the moment so im thinking of buying a flixer fixer/scan doubler tho how does this work? As i understand I will need the clockport from the A603 card and put it directly on the agnus chip (dont remember if it was the agnus or gary chip but that ofc i will read before installing) then the real question about this is will I only when using it be able to use 16 color mode in low res?
I have also thought about another solution, I made a scaer cable for the amiga, will i then be able to use a scart to vga converter, it only cost about 40€ in a store near me, and if it works how will it look?blurry as on a TV or sharper? Also will it be able to show fullscreen on the 20" LCD screen that is not widescreen but 4:3 format?
those are my main questions.
sorry for my bad spelling but im writing this from work on my Nokia N97 :/
Ok well done for getting a 600, though 100 Euro is top dollar for one IMHO.
WHDLoad in my experiance should work ok even on 2Mb so you shouldn't have problems there.
The scan doubler / flicker fixer is exacly what it says, it will double the scanrate to 30Khz so you have alot more compatability with monitors.
Anything more then 4 colours on the Workbench is a bit of a choppy affair (on my old 2mb 600 anyway) so you maybe limited with colours.
As for your clockport, I know not enough about it but I doubt it will fit on the Gary as it's the Bus controller.
VGA to Scart in my experiance is utter s***e, I think your better off with a Philips or C= 1084 monitor though i'd get one quick, last monitor I saw went for £74+ and they are rising in value fast! A scan doubler is getting more viable as I type this.
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Well thank you for your reply, tho I got no space for a CRT monitor because of all other systems takes up alot of space ;)
I think you missunderstood me a bit with the clockport, as far as I know using a internal scan doubler/flixerfixer needs the clockport on the A603 also needs to be attached directly to the gary or agnus chip (cant remember wich of them). Also I was talking about the number of colors used in a game because there I do not want 4 or 16 colors :(
Also, as said I was hooping to know how a scart to VGA adapter would look on a LCD monitor, if the picture will be way to bad I will have to use a scandoubler. but since the A600 was in quite nice condition I dident want to open it to much and tinker with it.
But good to know WHLoad will work nice on 2MB SRAM and 2MB chip (A total of 4MB memory on the machine)
So now I only need someone to tell me how it will be using a scart to VGA converter and using a quite good 19" LCD monitor.
Thanks to all for taking your time answering my questions :)
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I'd recommend a PCMCIA SRAM card(though it's not very fast), as WhdLoad preload's all game data to chip/fastram. In my case, even 8 MB fast was not enough for some games with many floppies, but since you have a ECS Amiga, 4 MB card should be fine.
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I think you missunderstood me a bit with the clockport, as far as I know using a internal scan doubler/flixerfixer needs the clockport on the A603 also needs to be attached directly to the gary or agnus chip (cant remember wich of them). Also I was talking about the number of colors used in a game because there I do not want 4 or 16 colors :(
Oh yes sorry I get you now, you on about the Indivision thing, if you don't mind not having a floppy drive to fit it then go for it.
As for colours, in game you should get 256. I think that is the standard number but don't back me up on that.
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Thank you both for your reply, I dont realy want to loose my internal floppy :/ Thats also a reason why I hoped for decent quality with a scart to vga adapter.
lauri you said 4MB should be enough, but can WHdload use both the chip and SRAM at the same time since I have not gotten my hands on a 4MB SRAM card yet and if and when I can get my hands on the a608 I will get it but it feels quite far away at the moment.
so will the 2MB SRAM pcmcia card plus a total of 2MB chip ram be enough for ECS games like monkey island 2? (Its 10 floppies or if it was 11) same goes with flashback and other multidisk games.
also since 1MB ram is needed for the game to run itself it means I will only have 3MB free for WHDLoad.
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Hi som99, I have two Amiga 600s and I use one of them as my main system every day, so I can tell you the honest truth here and not just speculate. Sometimes people try to help, but they might just end up confusing you more with misinformation and false memories.
Running WHDLoad games with only 2MB ChipRAM on an A600 is next to impossible. You will barely get any games to work at all from Workbench, and only a few will run if you boot with no Startup-Sequence, but since you're going to have a 2MB SRAM card as well, this won't be a problem for you. Still, not all WHDLoad games will run, many seem to have incompatibility problems with this setup (I have a 2MB+2MB A600 also). I have had many games crash when I tried to save them, and many have problems with the second fire button. Many can't be quit with the QuitKey, although rebooting the A600 doesn't take that long anyway. Once you filter out the games that won't work properly, you'll still have hundreds to choose from, and the ones that don't work might just have to be run from floppy disk.
If you get an Indivision ECS, it needs to be plugged into the extra socket that's attached to the A603, but not the Clockport. The Clockport will still be free for you to add another expansion card, like USB, 16bit Sound, Fast Serial or MP3 decoder. The Indivision will have a VGA plug on it, which you will have to cut a hole and mount somewhere on your A600's case, or have the ribbon hanging out somewhere with the plug on the end. Your monitor will then plug into this, and all Amiga screenmodes will be scandoubled to display on your monitor. The added advantage of using an Indivision over a VGA converter box is that you get the sharpest output possible, you never get Interlace flicker anymore, and you can run your Workbench in 800x600 in 16 colours (which doesn't look as bad as it sounds if you do it right).
Your Amiga itself will not be limited to 16 colours, not in low-res modes. The ECS chipset can display a maximum of 16 colours in High Resolution modes (640x256, 640x512, 800x600) and 4 colours in Super High Resolution (1280x256, 1280x512, 1024x768), but it can display 32, 64 or 4,096 colours in Low Resolution (320x256, 320x512) depending on which mode you have it set to. Using a flicker fixer won't reduce any colours, but it will let you use extra modes you couldn't use before!
ECS Amigas have no 256 colour mode, although using the Copper and a few tricks, some games can display more than the standard 32 colours.
Depending on which VGA converter box you go for, you may or may not be able to fill the screen of your monitor without black borders. Some of these boxes have controls to stretch and centre the screen on your monitor, but many don't, so choose wisely and test them first if you can. You won't get as sharp a picture as you would from an Indivision, but it should still give you an image sharp enough to keep you happy, and will definitely be less blurry than Composite.
When using a PCMCIA SRAM card in an A600 you WILL get a speed increase! Contrary to popular belief, these cards are only slow on the 32bit A1200, but not on the 16bit A600! If you run a benchmark program like SysInfo you will see the truth. SRAM on an A600 is fast enough, and increases the overall speed of the computer slightly!
Flashback works provided the PRELOAD option is disabled, and Monkey Island 2 works fine too.
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RAM isn't the only issue 500s and 600s have running WHDload, some WHDload utilities/tools seem to need more than a 68000 as far as I've seen, so there are certain games that won't run no matter how much RAM you have. Plenty will work just fine, though.
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Hi som99, I have two Amiga 600s and I use one of them as my main system every day, so I can tell you the honest truth here and not just speculate. Sometimes people try to help, but they might just end up confusing you more with misinformation and false memories.
Running WHDLoad games with only 2MB ChipRAM on an A600 is next to impossible. You will barely get any games to work at all from Workbench, and only a few will run if you boot with no Startup-Sequence, but since you're going to have a 2MB SRAM card as well, this won't be a problem for you. Still, not all WHDLoad games will run, many seem to have incompatibility problems with this setup (I have a 2MB+2MB A600 also). I have had many games crash when I tried to save them, and many have problems with the second fire button. Many can't be quit with the QuitKey, although rebooting the A600 doesn't take that long anyway. Once you filter out the games that won't work properly, you'll still have hundreds to choose from, and the ones that don't work might just have to be run from floppy disk.
If you get an Indivision ECS, it needs to be plugged into the extra socket that's attached to the A603, but not the Clockport. The Clockport will still be free for you to add another expansion card, like USB, 16bit Sound, Fast Serial or MP3 decoder. The Indivision will have a VGA plug on it, which you will have to cut a hole and mount somewhere on your A600's case, or have the ribbon hanging out somewhere with the plug on the end. Your monitor will then plug into this, and all Amiga screenmodes will be scandoubled to display on your monitor. The added advantage of using an Indivision over a VGA converter box is that you get the sharpest output possible, you never get Interlace flicker anymore, and you can run your Workbench in 800x600 in 16 colours (which doesn't look as bad as it sounds if you do it right).
Your Amiga itself will not be limited to 16 colours, not in low-res modes. The ECS chipset can display a maximum of 16 colours in High Resolution modes (640x256, 640x512, 800x600) and 4 colours in Super High Resolution (1280x256, 1280x512, 1024x768), but it can display 32, 64 or 4,096 colours in Low Resolution (320x256, 320x512) depending on which mode you have it set to. Using a flicker fixer won't reduce any colours, but it will let you use extra modes you couldn't use before!
ECS Amigas have no 256 colour mode, although using the Copper and a few tricks, some games can display more than the standard 32 colours.
Depending on which VGA converter box you go for, you may or may not be able to fill the screen of your monitor without black borders. Some of these boxes have controls to stretch and centre the screen on your monitor, but many don't, so choose wisely and test them first if you can. You won't get as sharp a picture as you would from an Indivision, but it should still give you an image sharp enough to keep you happy, and will definitely be less blurry than Composite.
When using a PCMCIA SRAM card in an A600 you WILL get a speed increase! Contrary to popular belief, these cards are only slow on the 32bit A1200, but not on the 16bit A600! If you run a benchmark program like SysInfo you will see the truth. SRAM on an A600 is fast enough, and increases the overall speed of the computer slightly!
Flashback works provided the PRELOAD option is disabled, and Monkey Island 2 works fine too.
I.. but.. ohh.. All i can say is WOW, you did answer all my questions and your answers are clear as the day!
Thank you, now I have decided I will give the Scart to VGA adapter a shot since I do not want to loose the internal floppy, also I can't seem to find the external Scan Doubler anywhere to be bought :/ So ill give the adapter a shot and Iw ill post pictures on how it went :)
Also thanks for clearing out the "color" dilemma :)
Thanks alot, atm im formating floppies and putting games on them with TSGUI :)
Ill keep in touch how it goes when all parts arrive!
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For some reason, I thought you had to remove the A603 in order to use the Indivision ECS.
It's good to hear that I can keep my RAM in and use this video board!
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You need to remove the floppy drive in the A600 to use the Indivision ECS though :(
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Not a problem, I ordered one of these to use instead:
http://www.mmj.pl/~lotharek/atari/www/hcx.html
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Ooh, nice one!
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I'm considering "carefully" cutting a spot in my case to fit a female USB plug, then desoldering the USB connector from the HCX board, and in it's place run wires to the plug that will attach to the Amiga casing.
This way, I should, in theory be able to relocate the HCX Board to an out of the way location inside the 600. My hard drive will be a CF card, so it does not take up much room itself, and I should be good.
In the end I should have an A600 with a place to plug in a USB cable that will network to the PC, which I will use to load ADF files, not unlike APE and the SIO2PC for the Atari 8-bit line of computers. :)
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That's going to be a really interesting project, make sure to take photos once you've done the work! I found the best place to add a USB slot to the A600 was just above the PCMCIA slot, or possibly just above the joystick if you're using a smaller USB plug. You can see how the USB slot might look if you cut it above the PCMCIA slot if you have a look at these old photos of my A600 http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=49670
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Nice!!!
Is that a Numeric Keypad and USB Joypad hooked up to your 600?!
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Yep, sure is! The numeric keypad is a USB hub also, which has the USB mouse and USB joypad plugged in, and they all work of course!
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I'm considering "carefully" cutting a spot in my case to fit a female USB plug, then desoldering the USB connector from the HCX board, and in it's place run wires to the plug that will attach to the Amiga casing.
This way, I should, in theory be able to relocate the HCX Board to an out of the way location inside the 600. My hard drive will be a CF card, so it does not take up much room itself, and I should be good.
In the end I should have an A600 with a place to plug in a USB cable that will network to the PC, which I will use to load ADF files, not unlike APE and the SIO2PC for the Atari 8-bit line of computers. :)
Did you consider getting this one instead? I just pre-ordered one and like the idea of the SD card slot being available right at the floppy entrance. This way I won't feel too bad about getting rid of the floppy to install the 603 + ECS Indivision.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180482035120&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
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I saw that, but am in a hurry to get my A600 up and running. I will probably order one of those as well in a couple weeks after I finish ordering more upgrades for my Atari 8-bits. :)
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Hmm,I see alot of people are saying 2Mb isn't enough, looking back I only ran single disk games so maybe that explains why I said it was fine for me.
There was a RAM upgrade that plugged onto the 68k CPU that gave you either 4Mb (PCMCIA active) or 8Mb (PCMCIA disabled). Though if you want one of these things I doubt they are still being made. I really would like one myself if im honest. :(
Best of luck with the project.
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Hmm,I see alot of people are saying 2Mb isn't enough, looking back I only ran single disk games so maybe that explains why I said it was fine for me.
There was a RAM upgrade that plugged onto the 68k CPU that gave you either 4Mb (PCMCIA active) or 8Mb (PCMCIA disabled). Though if you want one of these things I doubt they are still being made. I really would like one myself if im honest. :(
Best of luck with the project.
It shouldnt be too difficult to create a ram expansion, a bit pricey, but certainly doable as a home hobby project. I am thinking on sram attached to a cpu socket converter and using the addmem command to add this memory to the system.
Yes, it doesnt sound difficult at all.
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There have to be some RAM hacks on Aminet somewhere. I'm pretty sure I'd seen some before.
Personally I'd like to see more hacks that involve a good old fashioned soldering job, instead of relying upon the expansion ports for everything. It's been great fun with my Atari 8-bits!
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Just to comment: My A600 currently have a 1Mb SRAM card hooked in the PCMCIA slot and I use it with WHDLoad games!
All I did was disabling the "preload" option in games that requires more than 256kb of FAST RAM. My A600 have the original A601 from C= era (I bought it NOS from a brazilian seller 2 years ago).
Most games that "requires" 512kb of FAST in truth will work with only a bit more than 256kb available. A500 OCS/ECS games, of course. They ask for the 1.3 ROM (or even pre-1.3 ones), which are 256kb only.:D
BTW: my A600 have a 4Gb CF instead the HD and I'm using a LCD TV which can handle 15kHz native modes.
Also for HD-installable games intended for the humble 68000 CPU will work (like Syndicate) with no effort.
But one thing I concur with our Amiga princess: PCMCIA will boost the A600 speed by something around 33%! Not much, but still an improvement.:)
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There have to be some RAM hacks on Aminet somewhere. I'm pretty sure I'd seen some before.
Personally I'd like to see more hacks that involve a good old fashioned soldering job, instead of relying upon the expansion ports for everything. It's been great fun with my Atari 8-bits!
Not for A***i machines :madashell:, but a russian guy made a reconfigurable RAM expansion for the A600! You can choose from 1.5/4/5.5Mb (all PCMCIA-friendly!) and 8Mb (ruling out the PCMCIA port).:):):):):)
Same speed gain as the PCMCIA SRAM cards, but in a more comfortable way (internal), and keeping the PCMCIA slot free for an Ethernet card or other hardware. Mine is paid and awaiting assembly.:)
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Amiga princess, funny. :)
I did forget to mention (and we can thank the Amiga Princess that I even know about this), is that I recently contacted Zetr0, and he is currently asking that people show interest in a second run of 100 A608 boards. These boards will have the 8Mb of RAM that we are hungry for.
You can sign up on the A608 forums, and show your interest here:
http://www.guildserver.co.uk/forums/AmiDev/index.php
Now just imagine that coupled with an 8Mb PCMCIA card and 2Mb of GFX RAM!
I'd be in OctaMED heaven!
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If you replace 68000 cpu with 68010 quit problem should disapper
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I did get some 5 floppy games to work with only 2MB Chip also(without preload), but the constant flickering between the game and WB was too much for me ... And I like my WhdLoad experience as a smooth ride :)
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rkauer: Is this guy taking more orders? Does he have a project page?
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Now just imagine that coupled with an 8Mb PCMCIA card and 2Mb of GFX RAM!
PCMCIA port only accept 4Mb SRAM cards as memory RAM. Any card with more than this will only act as media storage.
So only 512kb (never see one of those, but I think they exists), 1Mb, 2Mb & 4Mb SRAM cards will run.
@XDelusion: search for LVD A608 in Russian pages. I think the guy(s) can sell you one.
But money transfers to Russia costs a lot, no Paypal support and then the options are Moneygram and Western Union. Both companies charges absurd taxes to send money to Russia. Be warned.
That's why my very good friend Zetr0 bought the rights to make some boards for the community. But he is banging his head to solve design problems, like the very tight space between traces the card demands. Just a few companies in the world do this job and they want mass production scale, which is not the Amiga situation nowadays.
The few companies that can make a board in low scale charges too much.
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Zetr0 has sorted out those issues now and already found a PCB manufacturer for the first batch of A608s, so once those are finished the second batch should be 100, we just need to put our names down on the list at the A608 forum. Unless I dreamed that...
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rkauer: Aghh, you are talking about the A608. Alright, yes, I'm on the forums eagerly awaiting Zetr0's announcement. :)
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A last question here, if I as said should use a Scart to VGA converter, should I use a RF to Scart cable or a RGB to scart cable?
I guess RGB to Scart gets alot better quality?
Please tell me the pros and cons about both of them :)
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Well thank you for your reply, tho I got no space for a CRT monitor because of all other systems takes up alot of space ;)
I think you missunderstood me a bit with the clockport, as far as I know using a internal scan doubler/flixerfixer needs the clockport on the A603 also needs to be attached directly to the gary or agnus chip (cant remember wich of them). Also I was talking about the number of colors used in a game because there I do not want 4 or 16 colors :(
Also, as said I was hooping to know how a scart to VGA adapter would look on a LCD monitor, if the picture will be way to bad I will have to use a scandoubler. but since the A600 was in quite nice condition I dident want to open it to much and tinker with it.
But good to know WHLoad will work nice on 2MB SRAM and 2MB chip (A total of 4MB memory on the machine)
So now I only need someone to tell me how it will be using a scart to VGA converter and using a quite good 19" LCD monitor.
Thanks to all for taking your time answering my questions :)
I'm going to try this SCART->HDMI adapter with my minimig...
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22846
let you know hoe it goes.
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I'm going to try this SCART->HDMI adapter with my minimig...
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22846
let you know hoe it goes.
Thanks, please tell me how it goes :)
If possible a picture if you can :)
anyone know if RGB to scart or a RF to scart works best with a VGA converter?
Edit: also the amiga RGB output is 15KHz so I do not know if it works with the scart to VGA converter?
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That's why my very good friend Zetr0 bought the rights to make some boards for the community. But he is banging his head to solve design problems, like the very tight space between traces the card demands. Just a few companies in the world do this job and they want mass production scale, which is not the Amiga situation nowadays.
The few companies that can make a board in low scale charges too much.
Maybe in UK it is expensive, but i didn't saw any company in Poland that require super extra payment for 6ms spaces.
Zetr0 had to bought the rights to deliver those boards for hungry A600 users.
I don't need to do the same, because i picked his open source project from 2007 and adjusted it for my needs (thanks to LVD few tips though). I made it 9.5MB, added configuration jumpers and possibility to configure it temporarily by joystick (override jumpers configuration till reset, 2 wires required to be soldered into A600 board though, but it isn't hard) and for the last option i am trying to add switching between pcmcia friendly mode (5.5mb) and full memory mode (9.5mb) when reset hold about 2s (actually this option is working but is not tested for stability yet). there is also a reset pins that could be driven out by some hardcore amiga modders :)
Maybe next time i'll try to make it 14/28MHz compatible or even add 030 cpu for (yet only a dream :) ).
Here is a picture:
(http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/3037/rama6095.th.jpg) (http://img163.imageshack.us/i/rama6095.jpg/)
If somebody is curious, that thing below expanison is a 2MB flash replacement with 4 kickstarts programmed in (1.3/2.05/3.1/3.5).
I have 4 boards of that ram expansion to assemble, if somebody is crying to the blue corn moon for that very badily, maybe i could exchange it for something.
As for whdload, some games don't work, even those ECS/OCS ones. Maybe it's only me, but i was able to run more games with whdload using kickstart 3.1.
Good Luck for those awaiting A608 from Zetr0.
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Wow, that is awesome! To be switchable between 5.5 and 9.5 MB is a brilliant idea!
Oh boy, I would love one of these things, but I'll let other people ask for them instead.
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I'm interested in one, but at this very moment the boards are travelling from Japan(!) to UK. More two weeks (tm).
On a real life, this means the first new batched boards will start to flow in in 45 days.
But I'm really interested in your design!
I also have enough skills to mount a board myself.
I'll PM you my e-mail if you want to sell a bare board with the programmed CPLD.
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I will answer soon when i catch some free time.
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I just got a scart to VGA converter, I tho got quite disapointed :(
Nothing wrong with the output, it looks quite clear but that was on my 24" Benq LCD monitor, same with a 20" monitor but when I try it on a 19" monitor I will use I just get a message on the screen saying the screen input is not supported :(
I have no clue whats wrong, it was that monitor I was going to use and had spare :(
I do not know how to check the output on the converter but I think it might be the output resolution that aint supported, I will investigate further before I give up and sell the A600 and buy a SAM440.
I will keep you all up to date :)
(ill try if changing the resolution on the amiga and see what that does, but as far as I understand the converter is scaling it up, I cant find good documention on it)
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The Video output of the converter is 720x576 in 50Hz, so the problem must be that my 19" monitor do not support that resolution, the problem is that I do not know how to change it :(