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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Motormouth on September 07, 2015, 04:33:16 AM
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Which is better???
ECS vs ECS
upto 2 meg chip in both
Zorro I vs A600 trapdoor expansions
scsi options? vs ide on board
number pad vs small keyboard
opinions???
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Which is better???
ECS vs ECS
upto 2 meg chip in both
Zorro I vs A600 trapdoor expansions
scsi options? vs ide on board
number pad vs small keyboard
opinions???
I believe the Warren Commission was too quick in overlooking the grassy knoll!
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Neither is better. They both had their merits back then (with the A500+ slightly more expandable back then), they both have their merits right now (with the A600 being slightly more expandable right now).
They are quite alike and 'suffered' from the same incompatabilities when it came to software.
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I prefer the A600, but I haven't played enough games to know if the lack of numeric pad becomes annoying. You can upgrade them to be almost identical.
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I would argue that the A500+ is probably still easier to expand, what with the ACA500 now available and the motherboard having socketed chips rather than surface mounting. I haven't owned either but i've heard of people having a lot of problems with boards overheating in the A600 or just coming loose intermittently.
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I have an expanded A500, and an expanded A600...
The A600 takes up about 1/5th the desk space as the A500, that alone give the A600 the win ;)
Of course, they are expanded in different ways, so the A500 could be made smaller, but its always going to be twice the size of the A600.
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I have an expanded A500, and an expanded A600...
The A600 takes up about 1/5th the desk space as the A500, that alone give the A600 the win ;)
Of course, they are expanded in different ways, so the A500 could be made smaller, but its always going to be twice the size of the A600.
Back in the day I had an A500 (rev 6A) with a GVP A500 HD and a slingshot pro with an A2065, the thing was really long.............. Plus you needed extra room on the right side for floppy access. It was difficult finding a "small" desk to hold it.
Even the A2000 was small (in length) compared to this beast.
Neither is better. They both had their merits back then (with the A500+ slightly more expandable back then), they both have their merits right now (with the A600 being slightly more expandable right now).
They are quite alike and 'suffered' from the same incompatabilities when it came to software.
With either of these 3.1 should probably be the goal for configuration and not attempting to run older 1.3 games.
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I would argue that the A500+ is probably still easier to expand, what with the ACA500 now available and the motherboard having socketed chips rather than surface mounting. I haven't owned either but i've heard of people having a lot of problems with boards overheating in the A600 or just coming loose intermittently.
It looks like the ACA500 out of stock at AmigaKit, Is Jens going to be making more of these?
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Zorro I vs A600 trapdoor expansions
A500+ is better. The a600 trapdoor is essentially ram+rtc only, the same as the trapdoor in the A500. It's only the A1200 trapdoor that is equivalent to the expansion port on the A500+.
However the A500+ does not support Zorro I, those are used by the Ranger add on (and also the third party versions that were actually released) for the A1000 and are just a different shape to Zorro II cards.
Officially the slot on the side of the A500+ is called the "86-Pin Slot Expansion" and it's roughly compatible to the A2000 CPU slot, some accelerators were compatible with both. http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/supra28 The A2000 board is shaped like that because it's the same one used in the A500 version, it's just in a box and has a pass thru. AFAIK you can use the A500 version in an A2000 as well.
Personally a 1.3 A500 and a 3.1 A1200 is the way to go.
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The A600 has crappy smd capacitors which are leaking and wrecking boards as we speak.
The A500 is more desirable in that aspect (providing the barrel battery has been removed before motherboard damage).
You can't have a DMA connected hard disk on the A600. So another feather in the A500's cap.
I read somewhere though that you can't have graffiti emulation for Doom on the A500 with the IndivisionECS. Maybe I'm wrong... Can anyone clear this up?
Size, well if size doesn't matter then it makes no odds. I prefer the A600 size wise. If you want an 80's feel, then go for the A500.
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A500+ is better. The a600 trapdoor is essentially ram+rtc only, the same as the trapdoor in the A500. It's only the A1200 trapdoor that is equivalent to the expansion port on the A500+.
However the A500+ does not support Zorro I, those are used by the Ranger add on (and also the third party versions that were actually released) for the A1000 and are just a different shape to Zorro II cards.
Officially the slot on the side of the A500+ is called the "86-Pin Slot Expansion" and it's roughly compatible to the A2000 CPU slot, some accelerators were compatible with both. http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/supra28
There was a PC emulator card for the A600's trapdoor, but it is very rare. The IndivisionECS can be mounted in here too on top of one of Jen's chip ram expansions (A603, A604).
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There was a PC emulator card for the A600's trapdoor, but it is very rare. The IndivisionECS can be mounted in here too on top of one of Jen's chip ram expansions (A603, A604).
Was there not also a PC emulator card for the A500's trapdoor?
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Both are 2nd class choice for gaming and 2nd class choice for productivity work (whatever this would be in 2015).
IDE (PATA) drives used to be cheaper and easier to find but now it is obsolete technology just like SCSI.
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My mate had an A500+ at the same time as me and his was faulty (random crashes on s/w which worked for me) and when it came to an exchange, he got the A600 instead.
At the time he wished he'd tried to get an A500+ again as the lack of numeric keypad caused him issues with DPaint 3 and some games (a flight sim especially).
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I have both.
A500+ 2MB chip, 2MB fast (below 68k) and 2MB fast ACA500
A600 ACA620.
A500 is better for me, A600 is too hot and hard to repair.
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I have both.
A500+ 2MB chip, 2MB fast (below 68k) and 2MB fast ACA500
A600 ACA620.
A500 is better for me, A600 is to hot and hard to repair.
I have a little hot A600 as well. It runs a bit on the warm side mind you. :)
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What part of the A600 gets hot?
Mines hot, but that's my own fault xD
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With either of these 3.1 should probably be the goal for configuration and not attempting to run older 1.3 games.
Agreed on the 3.1 roms.
And WHDLoad for the games... ;)
I really do like my A600: ACA630/25, KS3.1, Indivision ECS, 4 GB disk-on-module, 3C589 NIC... Really nice system.
And I also like my A500: A508IDE, KS3.1, Indivision ECS, Power PC Board, 256 MB CF, 68010 cpu. Also really nice.
My much 'heavier' machines like the A1200 and A2000 are put away in boxes, I prefer the A500 and A600 for normal use. Maybe that'll change in the future, but for the time being I prefer using my 'small' Miggies.
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I believe the Warren Commission was too quick in overlooking the grassy knoll!
Nah, Oswald did it.
Although...made not without help.
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Both are 2nd class choice for gaming and 2nd class choice for productivity work (whatever this would be in 2015).
IDE (PATA) drives used to be cheaper and easier to find but now it is obsolete technology just like SCSI.
I thought, even for the diehards out there, that the amiga is primarily a hobby (at this point) and a little bit of gaming. I personally just like to tinker around with a computer I know something about :D.
Oh for the hardware junkies it is also a fun computer to collect. This is reflected in the crazy prices that hardware goes for on ebay. Supply and Demand at work :)
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I read somewhere though that you can't have graffiti emulation for Doom on the A500 with the IndivisionECS. Maybe I'm wrong... Can anyone clear this up?
I tried this on mine, it didn't work. When I looked into why, it had to do with even though the Indivision hardware is exactly the same, the way it interfaces through the system is different (A500 it fits underneath Denise, A600 it fits on a card in the trapdoor slot, for anyone who didn't know). It's this interfacing difference... that makes all the difference, so to say. ;)
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There was a PC emulator card for the A600's trapdoor, but it is very rare. The IndivisionECS can be mounted in here too on top of one of Jen's chip ram expansions (A603, A604).
That board was available for all the a500/a2000 as well.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/powerpc
The a600 slot is also hoked up to the chip register bus, which is how the indivision ECS can be placed there. AFAIK there is no equivalent to that on any other Amiga.
There are some signals on the a600 slot from the 86 pin expansion. However if it is possible to use it for an accelerator or scsi host adapter, either nobody knows how to go about it or there isn't enough room for that and the chip ram (and for jens it would make sense to still allow the IndivisionECS in the slot).
On the other hand you can get 86 pin expansion peripherals, so the a500 is more expandable than the a600. Although I wouldn't buy either of them to expand them that much (although I did back in the day). An action replay cartridge for the a500 is a pretty cool retro thing to have, but I'm not really into WHDLoad. I'd rather run off floppies (or at least virtual floppies).
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There was a PC emulator card for the A600's trapdoor, but it is very rare. The IndivisionECS can be mounted in here too on top of one of Jen's chip ram expansions (A603, A604).
There also was the Vortex ATonce classic 286 (http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=346) for the CPU socket of the A500...
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What part of the A600 gets hot?
Mines hot, but that's my own fault xD
All of it. Custom chips run hot, 68000 runs hot.
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There also was the Vortex ATonce classic 286 (http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=346) for the CPU socket of the A500...
The PC286 from GVP that fit inside the 530 Turbo.
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I think A500 is always useful for compatibility with games and the possibility to use Action Replay cartridge: don't know if A500+ is compatible with without a ROM switcher.
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I think A500 is always useful for compatibility with games and the possibility to use Action Replay cartridge: don't know if A500+ is compatible with without a ROM switcher.
Some of the older 1.3 game expect chip ram to be at one memory location and fast ram to be at another low "slow" fast ram memory location. Many of these games don't work with even 1meg chip ram A500s and 1.3. Some really old game don't even work with 1.3 and need 1.2. The original old rom switchers had three dip socket one for 1.2, 1.3, and 2.04 (or 2.05 in a pinch) from back in the day, obviously the 2.04 would be switched out for 3.1 today.
The ACA500 actually help with this by providing for "slow" fast ram memory locations that is actually faster than "fast" fast ram and it works great with WHDLoad. I would love to have an A500+ with 2meg of chip a ACA 500 with very fast "slow" fast ram and an ACA 1233 with 128 meg of 32 bit ram and a 40Mhz 68030 (of course). This would blow even a stock A3000 away. Alas, if you could only get RTG graphics with the config.......
I don't know if the A500+ would have problems with a 1.3 rom. My guess (and only a guess) (someone out there knows the answer to this) is that it would not be able to address the second meg of chip ram. Can A2000s or a500 with a megachip address 2 megs of chip ram with 1.3 roms?
What about the old softbooting A3000s, are they able to address all of its chip ram in 1.3? I use to have one of these at work almost 25 years ago, but cannot remember.
I would guess that the A600 would be more incompatible with 1.3 rom particular the IDE controller and PCMCIA controller. Even the original A600 roms were incompatible with IDE controller (ie necessitating 37.300 to 37.350 roms).
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The PC286 from GVP that fit inside the 530 Turbo.
The PC286 also fits inside the original GVP A500HD8+, I am fortunate to have one of these, that is the A500HD8+ and PC286. (back in the day I wanted an A530)
It basically is an At Once Plus. It actually work very well except for the slow graphics, and no access to high density floppy (which were standard on PeeCee's even back in 286 days).
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Being honest, when the A600 was released, i don't liked. But late 90s, i start to like the system.
Nowdays, both models could be head to head, because the ACA500 for the A500, on other side the A600 have PCMCIA port, IDE HD, and maybe is easy expand for use WHDLOAD games, and others things.
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Being honest, when the A600 was released, i don't liked. But late 90s, i start to like the system.
Nowdays, both models could be head to head, because the ACA500 for the A500, on other side the A600 have PCMCIA port, IDE HD, and maybe is easy expand for use WHDLOAD games, and others things.
Good points Drummerboy... I think the only reason I never bothered with an A600 with, like you said, PCMCIA & IDE, is that to use it as a WHDLoad machine you may probably still need an accelerator and quit a few games need additional ram. And then the obligatory scan doubler and memory expansion! Starts getting pricey then. I think the A600 shines as an expanded A500 though.
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I don't know if the A500+ would have problems with a 1.3 rom. My guess (and only a guess) (someone out there knows the answer to this) is that it would not be able to address the second meg of chip ram. Can A2000s or a500 with a megachip address 2 megs of chip ram with 1.3 roms?
Even Kickstart 1.2 could detect 2mb of chip ram.
http://wandel.ca/homepage/execdis/exec_disassembly.txt
; Having figured out the end address of expansion memory (in A4),
; and the value to use for ExecBase (in A6), we now check how much
; chip memory we have. Any memory in the first 2 megabytes of
; address space is considered to be chip memory. Less than 256K
; of chip memory is considered a fatal error.
FC0208 lea 0,A0 Start looking at location 0.
FC020C lea 200000,A1 Don't look past 2 megabytes.
FC0212 lea FC021A(PC),A5 Set the return address.
FC0216 bra FC0592 Go check the memory.
FC021A cmp.l #$040000,A3 Do we have at least 256K of chip memory?
FC0220 bcs.s FC0238 Bomb if not.
However reset resident programs won't work if you have more than 512k because of this validity check (which wasn't fixed in Kickstart 1.3 either).
; We come here if the cold start capture vector was zero, or
; upon return from the cold-start capture code. We continue
; to verify the ExecBase structure.
FC0184 bchg #1,BFE001 Flip the power light to bright.
FC018C move.l FC0010(PC),D0 Check the version/revision numbers
FC0190 cmp.l $14(A6),D0 stored in ExecBase against those in ROM.
FC0194 bne.s FC01CE Go reconfigure memory if no match.
FC0196 move.l $3E(A6),A3 Get end address of chip memory.
FC019A cmp.l #$080000,A3 Greater than 512K?
FC01A0 bhi.s FC01CE If so, it must be invalid.
FC01A2 cmp.l #$040000,A3 Less than 256K?
FC01A8 bcs.s FC01CE If so, it must be invalid.
There are a couple of solutions to that problem:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=78932
I assume 1mb agnus showed up (or at least the first time someone tested 1mb chip ram with RAD: was) after the Kickstart 1.3 mask roms had been ordered but before the Workbench 1.3 floppy disks and Manuals were. I don't know if the official workround helps with 2mb chip ram. Burning a modified EPROM is the best option, but unless you use RAD: then you might not be that bothered.
The 256k minimum chip ram would make it unusable on an unexpanded http://scacom.bplaced.net/Collection/velvet/velveten.php
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...
It basically is an At Once Plus. It actually work very well except for the slow graphics, and no access to high density floppy (which were standard on PeeCee's even back in 286 days).
AFAIR, I could use HD floppies with the Vortex AtOnce 286 classic, as I had the registered Version of CrossDos 7 Gold installed...
But it could also be that I confuse it with using PcX on my A4000PPC Tower...my A500 time is too long ago...
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I generally use a 5001.3 and 1200 with all the bells. I do keep a 600 to hand cus its light and easy to store. I used it the other day to check a dead brick. The 500 Plus suffers if you forget about the battery. Never really seen the purpose of the Plus to be honest. I have a tray support for a 500 with a monitor and I just like the 1.3 for my ancient games. Everything else I can generally play on the 1200.
I too think the 600 suffers in terms of expanding. Plus they can be a pig with the hd. I always think that if you're tempted with a 600 you may as well get a 1200. And for the 500 size I would stick with the red power light. Anyway back to Manic Miner .... so addictive.
PS I tend to think both models suffered from being stop gaps between the 500 and the 1200 historically. They were never developed significantly by the user base as most were using 1200s and 4000s in the end. Just my thoughts.