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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: mrmoonlight on August 22, 2014, 09:35:14 AM
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Hi,i have just read an old post that said,according to Amiga CU magazine, the Amiga 600 is the worst Amiga model that you can buy.
Now whys that then ? as its the first one I turn on in a morning and I have five to choose from but the A600 does its job very well
as in
1 It will surf the net all day as long as I keep the colour down a little
2 It will play wav pop music all day and multitask very well at the same time'
3 It will play Games until the cows come home .
4 It will paint,Draw and more than amuse me.
so is there more ?
best wishes Brian.:):):)
(http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww301/scarrabri/0f0d8573-be57-41f7-a83d-718ab5bd55d1_zpsa65ab1a8.jpg) (http://s730.photobucket.com/user/scarrabri/media/0f0d8573-be57-41f7-a83d-718ab5bd55d1_zpsa65ab1a8.jpg.html)
(http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww301/scarrabri/1eab765b-e37b-4d37-80e5-9bc80b236de6_zpsc9170e3a.jpg) (http://s730.photobucket.com/user/scarrabri/media/1eab765b-e37b-4d37-80e5-9bc80b236de6_zpsc9170e3a.jpg.html)
(http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww301/scarrabri/22bd4649-1cc1-477a-921d-a2de51407a15_zps9a47f4d1.jpg) (http://s730.photobucket.com/user/scarrabri/media/22bd4649-1cc1-477a-921d-a2de51407a15_zps9a47f4d1.jpg.html)
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It was the low-end member of the Amiga range for a while, so I suppose it was "the worst Amiga model that you can buy" new at that time. The same could have been said of the A500, A500+, A1200, etc. at other times.
But certainly a decent machine. The worst Amiga in terms of capabilities would be the A1000. In terms of price/performance, I would propose the A2000: an extra thousand or two dollars (compared to A500) basically just for a few card slots.
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-A600 is harder to expand than most other Amiga variants. (CPU, fast RAM)
-It's the least compatible with non AGA games
-it does not have numeric keypad
+it does have HDD interface as standard
+you can easily have 2MB chip ram with it
+it's small
+it can do flixer free hires
+it's compact, no tv-modulator needed
I like A600, also I have one, but A1200 is the ultimate low end classic Amiga (I want one).
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-A600 is harder to expand than most other Amiga variants. (CPU, fast RAM)
-It's the least compatible with non AGA games
-it does not have numeric keypad
+it does have HDD interface as standard
+you can easily have 2MB chip ram with it
+it's small
+it can do flixer free hires
+it's compact, no tv-modulator needed
I like A600, also I have one, but A1200 is the ultimate low end classic Amiga (I want one).
HI, thanks for reply and I agree with all that you wrote,infact it nearly has it all,and I have the A1200 as well but the Amiga 600 is the one that gives me the greatest joy as in small and beautifully put together and even goes on holiday with me,simply the best best wishes Brian.:):)
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It was the low-end member of the Amiga range for a while, so I suppose it was "the worst Amiga model that you can buy" new at that time. The same could have been said of the A500, A500+, A1200, etc. at other times.
But certainly a decent machine. The worst Amiga in terms of capabilities would be the A1000. In terms of price/performance, I would propose the A2000: an extra thousand or two dollars (compared to A500) basically just for a few card slots.
Hi thanks for reply seems A600 not so bad as first thought then but there again I never doubted the capabilities of this beauty, and interesting reading my friend best wishes Brian.
:):)
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Good thing that there are many RAM Expansions/Accelerators these days for A600 that makes other Amigas watch with envy :)
A600 is an awesome Amiga and despite being rather crappy back in the days due to the reasons that KimmoK explained, nowadays is the best imho.
A nice setup @ 8 colors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXp9c-BapXw) is blazingly fast for Workbench and via WHDLoad, there is no incompatibilities with old games. Hard drives or CF disks are awesome and cheap as most expansions these days for the A600.
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It was the low-end member of the Amiga range for a while, so I suppose it was "the worst Amiga model that you can buy" new at that time. The same could have been said of the A500, A500+, A1200, etc. at other times.
But certainly a decent machine. The worst Amiga in terms of capabilities would be the A1000. In terms of price/performance, I would propose the A2000: an extra thousand or two dollars (compared to A500) basically just for a few card slots.
Why did the A2000 cost so much more than everything else? I have always wondered about this because as you said it offers nothing more than a few extra slots...
I'm guessing it's because chickenhead was trying to make a profit so they marked up the price? Or maybe the A2000 price was right but the wedgies were under priced? Maybe it is because of the better PSU?
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There's another +:
+ PCMCIA slot. Very handy for data transfer between PC/Amiga
and you can also use it for 2mb or 4MB SRAM FastRAM expansions
without opening the A600 case.
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It was the low-end member of the Amiga range for a while, so I suppose it was "the worst Amiga model that you can buy" new at that time. The same could have been said of the A500, A500+, A1200, etc. at other times.
It wasn't that much better (or at least more powerful) than A500, but way less compatible. Many of the old games failed to run on it and I guess that's why it's been said as the worst model. It's quite clear from gamer's perspective, especially before there was anything like WHDLoad and decent upgrades to A600. Many games also had keyboard shortcuts to numpad, which was missing on A600. So, in any case, you lose compatibility with old games and won't get any new games either (like you get AGA games on A1200).
And for productivity use it's was slightly better than A500 (IDE, PCMCIA, newer OS), but then again, it didn't have better CPU or enough memory to be really that much better. And at that time there wasn't drivers for PCMCIA network cards etc, so PCMCIA was quite useless at first.
A1200 on the other hand was much better on all those areas, with new AGA chipset and all.
These are the points why I also consider A600 as one of the most useless Amigas around, if I'd have to pick one. No matter how cute it is :/ A1000 would compete for that title too. I think even A1000 is more compatible with the games than A600, but worse in productivity use.. so it depends which is given more weigth.
But of course you can get it more useful with accelerators and PCMCIA stuff nowadays, but then again, A1200 will still be better for features and compatibility.
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Frankly, the A2000 is one of our current best buys.
They are bullet proof (except, of course, for the battery) and can still be found cheaply.
I just put a $50 passive ISA PC SBC in mine to use dual purpose with Windows.
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...I just put a $50 passive ISA PC SBC in mine to use dual purpose with Windows.
Iggy, could you give details about this?
Nice screen shots Mr Moonlight. I have always enjoyed the portability of the A600s. ;)
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Iggy, could you give details about this? ;)
Me too!
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Me too!
And me too as it sounds interesting :):)
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Not as interesting as it sounds guys.
Its just a VIA based SBC that does occupies an ISA slot, but provides all its own functionality.
So I am using separate monitors, keyboards, and mice until I figure out the needed adapters and switches to unify those.
Plus most of my other Windows hardware runs circles around it (even my Atom based laptop).
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...
I just put a $50 passive ISA PC SBC in mine to use dual purpose with Windows.
I did that too: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=68952&highlight=sbc
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I did that too: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=68952&highlight=sbc
I considered that with mine. Got about as far as thinking if I really wanted to do it right, I'd need to turn the other 8-bit ISA slots into 16-bit by soldering on the additional connectors, so I could use video card, sound card, etc. The connectors can be bought all day long on ebay for like a buck, but all that extra soldering... ugh! Dang you cost-cutting Commodore! :(
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Oh, and the A600 is awesome now, with all the upgrades you can buy for it that are still being developed/produced. Way more than for the A2000 at this point, unfortunately. C'mon, somebody make some new A2000 accelerators with all these modern goodies on 'em! ;)
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I considered that with mine. Got about as far as thinking if I really wanted to do it right, I'd need to turn the other 8-bit ISA slots into 16-bit by soldering on the additional connectors, so I could use video card, sound card, etc. The connectors can be bought all day long on ebay for like a buck, but all that extra soldering... ugh! Dang you cost-cutting Commodore! :(
The hardest part wasn't the soldering, it was the disassembly and assembly of the A2000.
Most SBC come with Video card and LAN and all IDE, floppy controllers, so you only need a good Sound Blaster sound card, and also I wouldn't bother with a 486 SBCs, it's just too slow.
As far as the A600 for being the worst, I think it was back then, when compatibility was important and HDs were expensive.
Now, A600 is one of the more desirable Amigas, because includes the IDE, PCMCIA, color video out and it's compact. You can get fairly priced accelerators, mem expansions, run WHDLOAD games, etc.
One problem I have with A600 is the crappy CAPACITORS :furious:
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With upgrades, if you are looking for a compact system, the 600 is really the way to go in my book. I got mine recapped and I'm loving it!!!
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With upgrades, if you are looking for a compact system, the 600 is really the way to go in my book. I got mine recapped and I'm loving it!!!
Hi and I think I should start thinking about having mine recapped although she still blasts out a good tune
.best wishes Brian.:):)
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Bro that opinion was written when a600 was the worst amiga as they werent any PCMCIA drivers for internet, compact flash to ide and all that. IMHO nowadays A600 is one of the best amigas as you get ECS, 2mb chip easy, IDE interface standard and cool accerator boards (which didnt exsist before)
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Hi and I think I should start thinking about having mine recapped although she still blasts out a good tune
.best wishes Brian.:):)
Brian you didnt take my advice before please do now DONT FIX IT IF IT AINT BROKEN. Dont replace the caps unless the machine fails.
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Brian you didnt take my advice before please do now DONT FIX IT IF IT AINT BROKEN. Dont replace the caps unless the machine fails.
Hey Magnetic you are right my friend it took me hours to sort the last mess out and you said it was not a good idea to install the other two Boing bags so I will leave having the caps replaced until they begin to fail, as for the worst Amiga being the 600 it was wrote many moons ago
but I just found it outrages that anyone could even suggest that the A600 was the worst at anything, but like folk have pointed out we have a wealth of add on accessories and kippers ACA620EC Accelerator sure did take her from a Mini to a RollsRoyce and boy what fun the nearly forgotten little A600 turned out be, very best wishes Brian.:):):)
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When the A600 was new it wasn't a very good machine. It was my first and I bought it with a massive 40MB harddrive but after upgrading it with 2MB chip I was pritty stuck. Sure there where PCMCIA fastmem you could expand with but it was very expencive.
Many years later we got drivers for PCMCIA NIC and CF. We got clockport for further expansion with sound and/or USB, with A603 and later we also have scandoubler possibilities with the IndivisionECS and lets not forget that after ACA630 there have been a wave of CPU and FastMem solutions in it's wake to fill the void after dead Apolloboards. So today it's a realy nifty little machine and certainly doesn't deserv the branding it once received due to lack of expandability.
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A600 and CD32 are my all time favorite machines.
And yes, I absolutely love the CD32 Joypad.
A600 is just so sexy, ;).
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When the A600 was new it wasn't a very good machine. It was my first and I bought it with a massive 40MB harddrive but after upgrading it with 2MB chip I was pritty stuck. Sure there where PCMCIA fastmem you could expand with but it was very expencive.
Many years later we got drivers for PCMCIA NIC and CF. We got clockport for further expansion with sound and/or USB, with A603 and later we also have scandoubler possibilities with the IndivisionECS and lets not forget that after ACA630 there have been a wave of CPU and FastMem solutions in it's wake to fill the void after dead Apolloboards. So today it's a realy nifty little machine and certainly doesn't deserv the branding it once received due to lack of expandability.
Hi I think the more I read of the wonderful posts that have come in the more I can understand why the 600 was tagged with worst of the Amiga's as it seems it lacked quite a few ingredients to give it that wow factor and I think we should be very grateful to the dedicated folk who have toiled over all the software and hardware they have created to give us the brilliant little Amiga 600 of today , my very best wishes and thanks for your post Brian.:):) ps below is my Amiga Beatle screen. sad or what lol
(http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww301/scarrabri/d999afd1-5338-4ad7-beb6-b50f6f6a3a31_zps62bf54af.jpg) (http://s730.photobucket.com/user/scarrabri/media/d999afd1-5338-4ad7-beb6-b50f6f6a3a31_zps62bf54af.jpg.html)
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1: A4000T
2: A1200
3: A4000
4: A3000T
5: A3000
6: A600
5: A500
7: the rest
So in my book it's not the worst. :)
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You need to be mindful of not reading things out of context. You appear to be making a generalisation based around what you are using the machine for today. In the days of the A4000, A1200, A600 and CD32 the A600 was the worst. The one I had was not even capable of supporting a hard drive. Yet my A1200 was accelerator friendly out of the box and ran rings round the A600. The A600 was really never one thing or another. It was not really suited as a games machine and was just not able to be expanded with ease. It really was a bit of a toy generally and used by those that didn't really treat their computing seriously. And if you were giving advice in the day there is no way you would suggest to anyone that wanted a machine that would last to consider anything other than a 1200 or 4000 which were the current best machines for the period. The A600 was pretty much dead in the water the day they released the A1200.
And for the comments from another about the 2000... different era.
When I bought my 1200 the shop was split into two halves. On the left was Amiga and on the right was PC. When greeted at the door the shop attendant would always point me to the more fun and entertaining Amiga section. There was only A1200s and A4000s on show. If you wanted an A600 you would have to go to Dixons or Jessops where they sold them with their cameras and video players. My sister had an A600 just to play Pictionary. The A600 just was not treated seriously, sorry.
As for today, well that is a different story. A great tool and fun to dabble with. Just get one that supports hard drives. No amount of creative mount lists ever got my first 600 to work with a hard drive. So I bought another that did. I must have a dozen 600s. Don't use them. The 4000s and 1200s still rule here.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz93.htm
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You need to be mindful of not reading things out of context. You appear to be making a generalisation based around what you are using the machine for today. In the days of the A4000, A1200, A600 and CD32 the A600 was the worst. The one I had was not even capable of supporting a hard drive. Yet my A1200 was accelerator friendly out of the box and ran rings round the A600. The A600 was really never one thing or another. It was not really suited as a games machine and was just not able to be expanded with ease. It really was a bit of a toy generally and used by those that didn't really treat their computing seriously. And if you were giving advice in the day there is no way you would suggest to anyone that wanted a machine that would last to consider anything other than a 1200 or 4000 which were the current best machines for the period. The A600 was pretty much dead in the water the day they released the A1200.
And for the comments from another about the 2000... different era.
When I bought my 1200 the shop was split into two halves. On the left was Amiga and on the right was PC. When greeted at the door the shop attendant would always point me to the more fun and entertaining Amiga section. There was only A1200s and A4000s on show. If you wanted an A600 you would have to go to Dixons or Jessops where they sold them with their cameras and video players. My sister had an A600 just to play Pictionary. The A600 just was not treated seriously, sorry.
As for today, well that is a different story. A great tool and fun to dabble with. Just get one that supports hard drives. No amount of creative mount lists ever got my first 600 to work with a hard drive. So I bought another that did. I must have a dozen 600s. Don't use them. The 4000s and 1200s still rule here.
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz93.htm
Well I have just read a passage out of your retro link above lol and it does not get any better does it
quote
Machines like the A600 were used by kids as a games
console so they would have generally been constantly bombarded
with disks, and further, the ports would have been plugged in
and plugged out many many times. The A600 did not expand easily
and only certain A600s supported the hard-drive so the floppy
usage is a killer
lol nice read up my friend very best wishes Brian.:)
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1: A4000T
2: A1200
3: A4000
4: A3000T
5: A3000
6: A600
5: A500
7: the rest
So in my book it's not the worst. :)
Well that's that then lol :laughing: best wishes Brian.
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Many of the old games failed to run on it and I guess that's why it's been said as the worst model.
The same applies to every single Amiga model ever except the A500. Properly written games will work, badly written ones may not. It's not fair to blame Commodore for lame third-party game programming techniques.
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The same applies to every single Amiga model ever except the A500. Properly written games will work, badly written ones may not. It's not fair to blame Commodore for lame third-party game programming techniques.
Wasn't the whole reason for compatibility issues due to a 2.X ROM? I always wondered if a ROM switcher with an added 1.X ROM would bring better compatibility to the A600...
Love the Beatles backdrop Brian! :)
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Wasn't the whole reason for compatibility issues due to a 2.X ROM? I always wondered if a ROM switcher with an added 1.X ROM would bring better compatibility to the A600...
Love the Beatles backdrop Brian! :)
Hi gizmo350 thanks for the Beatle thumbs up, I have been a huge fan from the age of 4yrs old and never get tired of listening to them and I have to say I fell off the chair watching your cat lol brilliant, thanks for looking in best wishes Brian.:laughing::laughing:
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Wasn't the whole reason for compatibility issues due to a 2.X ROM?
Yes, that's the reason for the vast majority of the compatibility issues.
I always wondered if a ROM switcher with an added 1.X ROM would bring better compatibility to the A600...
Yes, or you can use eg. ReloKick to soft-kick it.
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Hi thanks to everyone for posting I never for a moment thought the A600 would have generated so much interest and indeed have quite a following for some thing that started off as the worst Amiga lol so thanks again and this is the last Beatle pic of my set up, best wishes Brian.
(http://i730.photobucket.com/albums/ww301/scarrabri/eb348105-9d83-46d0-a6ac-6a59be3f0a66_zps3d93b628.jpg) (http://s730.photobucket.com/user/scarrabri/media/eb348105-9d83-46d0-a6ac-6a59be3f0a66_zps3d93b628.jpg.html)
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At that time you could get an A500+ with a lot of expansions. In comparison the A600 had little expandability. Both the same spec.
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At that time you could get an A500+ with a lot of expansions. In comparison the A600 had little expandability. Both the same spec.
Hi I wonder why Commodore bothered to release,what I suppose must have been a really low spec machine compared to what else there was to choose from. very best wishes Brian.:)
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...No amount of creative mount lists ever got my first 600 to work with a hard drive. So I bought another that did. I must have a dozen 600s. Don't use them...
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz93.htm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there were two reasons, maybe more, that some A600s were not HD compatible out of the box.
1 Some A600s shipped with versions of the ROM (37.299?) without HD or PCMCIA support. Incredible! Version 37.350 and later support large HDs and the PCMCIA port. It's a simple chip swap.
2. For reasons known only to Commodore, they included the IDE HD connector on all A600s, BUT, took one pin (the one that carries the BUSY signal to the HD LED) out of the header on those machines without the "A600HD" label. It probably cost them extra money to disable some A600s in this fashion.
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Why did the A2000 cost so much more than everything else? I have always wondered about this because as you said it offers nothing more than a few extra slots...
I'm guessing it's because chickenhead was trying to make a profit so they marked up the price? Or maybe the A2000 price was right but the wedgies were under priced? Maybe it is because of the better PSU?
It really was not that much higher a price. 2000 came out at about $1500. The Amiga 500 was about $600 at its debut. So less than a grand more to get a large case, double the RAM (and this was when RAM was very expensive. That A501 to bring the 500 up to the 2000 RAM was almost $200 alone), better power supply, just a few more slots (try 4 more slots), a video slot, a cpu slot, ISA slots, and space for drives inside. No centipede working its way along your desk if you wanted to add more than one additional expansion.
Were it "just a few extra slots" it might not have been worth it, but all things considered it did offer quite a bit more than a 500. To compare one would have to look at prices of things that added as much to the 500 like the Bodega Bay (which still did not add RAM, video slots or CPU slots) on top of the 500 price. If it was anywhere close to $900 to add less, then the 2000 still ends up a better deal. Then don't forget to also add the $180 for the 501 RAM expansion.
The 600 was not very good at that time and considered the worst Amiga because the 500 market was so large. There were a ton of expansions both using the expansion slot and the CPU slot that the 600 could use none of. Instead the 600 had built in hard drive but at the time 2.5" drives were very expensive. PCMCIA cards were also very expensive at that time. Both being parts used in laptops. The laptop tax on prices made these expensive for a budget Amiga purchaser.
Today, the 600 is a great machine. IDE 2.5" drives and CF or SD adapters are inexpensive and the PCMCIA cards you can get for Ethernet, wireless and CF cards to transfer files to PC are cheap.
For compactness, you cant get better than the 600 today without running emulation on a laptop. 1200 running a close second and honestly, the 1200 I think is the best Amiga for actual Amiga hardware.
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Hi I wonder why Commodore bothered to release,what I suppose must have been a really low spec machine compared to what else there was to choose from. very best wishes Brian.:)
The A600 marked the move to surface mount technology which improved reliability and lowered production costs. Due to it's smaller footprint, there would also have been savings on raw materials, storage and shipping.
Limited expansion capability would more likely mean a customer would buy more powerful machine in the future when it became too limited for them.
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First pilot production run of the Amiga 600 computer system with photos!
http://dustlayer.com/blog/2014/8/16/lost-treasures-the-commodore-production-line-in-hong-kong
Also, here's Robert Baker's website...
http://www.bobnj.com/cbm/index.htm
chī hǎo hē hǎo!