Pros - Cons: topic: wanting an A600

[leirbag28]

I disagree with Dr Who

The A600 is a great machine with much more potential softwarewise than an A500.  For starters it has the Enhanced Chipset wich makes it like the A3000's little buddy. its got PCMCIA port to use Wireless PC ethernet cards and Sony Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SD and others.  It can have 2 MB of chip ram much easier than an A3000, and can be upgraded with an Apollo 630 which I believe are being rereleased again (they are not too good....2 died on me)

And as far as games (people will tell you otherwise but its more compatible than an A500 if you install WHDload ( you cant run games thats use 2MB of ChipRAM on an A500 unless you install the MegaChip which is quite expensive.

Plus the A600 is super portable!  But if you had to buy one Amiga.........I would go for the A1200..........even for portablility its beter than a CD32, because a CD32 you need to carry along a keyboard and floppy to make it complete.

[leirbag28]

Some of you must have had seriously Messed up A600's or something...........its defintely nicer to have an A600than the A500.....a behemoth thats too difficult to expand these days. Especially with modern stuff such as ethernet and Compact Flash, and IDE drives.  
For games played with ease without having to load from floppy.its ten times easier to have an A600, as all you need s WHDload and a HD.  

Who the heck wants to go through the trouble of upgrading and even carrying that HUGE behemoth around.  I used to have my A600 inside my Cars Dashboard back in 1994 and Had DSS8+ attached to it with a Mic and to my Sound System to yell at passer buys "GET OUT OF THE WAY!!"   try that with an A500 in a car...............also had scratch and DJ samples that I would hit keys while driving...........playing my own music :-)

[leirbag28]

@Doppie1200

PCMCIA memory is SUPER easy to find............problem is that there are many A600 and PCMCIA Nay Sayers.........never listen to them.

See most people arent aware that many PCMCIA cards from Apple Newtons work on the A600 with no need for drivers or anything.  Go on ebay and watch as they show up. Type  "Newton Flash" and you have yourself enough Memory to run WHDLoad :-)

Sometimes you find the 2MB ones for 15 bucks....not too bad.

[leirbag28]

@x56h34

Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this.
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In that case just load it from Floppy as you would on an A500 anyway...............or.........just install it with JST :-) which needs much less ram than WHDload and works on the 68000 CPU just fine.

[leirbag28]

@doctorq

As for upgrades available for both computers; I would bet you that for
every Apollo 630 board you find, you will find 5 or 10 harddrive
controllers for Amiga
500.
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 Yes probably true, but these hArddrives just make your A500 all the more of a Huge beast.........I despise external HD's these days...........maybe cuz I like lugging along my A600 nice ands small...............I like internal tiny HD's

and as far as compatibility....I can run 95 % of games, and I said.you dont need an Apollo board. Plus you can add the Kicstart switcher if need be with KS 1.3 and 3.1

[leirbag28]

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adolescent wrote:
Besides the reasons already stated (IDE, PCMCIA, small form factor), the A600 is a great portable because it has composite video output. The A500 has mono out, or requires an A520 dongle to do this adding to the bulk.
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 Well said adolecent :-)

@Mr a500

 Well no, I dont carry around a monitor..........I use 5 inch LCD screens as the A600 has Color Composite OUT. and I use a small SEGA master sytem joypad...and the command Jaymoose19...........so I dont need a mouse.

 The A500 is really not Ugly......I just find it so when its yellow and damaged....I guess I see alot of that...........plus its real Big...but I see it that way because I desire to carry it around..............if its a stay at home machine..........it can look nice if you got the matching monitor and mouse and Floppy drives :-).........................I have seen your Workbench..................nicest I have ever seen when it comes to an A500 :-)  If everyone had their A500 set up like yours in software and in nice condition like TJLazer's, then that would be excellent.............i wish Commodore shipped them out like that.