Weird issue with Amiga 600

[walterg74]

For A600 hard drive support (scsi.device in ROM) you need Kickstart 37.300 or above.
There is supposed to be a harddrive size limit (bug) with 37.300 though, so 37.350 is recommended. 37.350 is normally expensive though, I suspect getting a Kickstart 3.1 chip would be cheaper (and easier) to obtain.

Yes, don't remember the number right now but I do know it had the minimum needed to support those CF solutions being sold that are loaded with whdload.

So would you all prefer to upgrade all your Amigas, or keep them original?

[walterg74]

I've seen A600s which develop a problem where they won't boot up after being switched on, but if left for 5-30 minutes they will eventually boot. It's caused by bad capacitors, which nearly all A1200s, A600s and CD32s suffer from these days.

Try turning them on and just leaving them for half an hour, see if anything changes. I'd advise you to change all the capacitors as soon as possible if it seems to be the same problem I've encountered before.

What do you mean with turning "them" on? I only have one computer with this issue. While the time it takes is variable, it's not nearly that long I believe.
In any case, I just bought a replacement drive for the 600 (since it was faulty anyway) and when I get back home next sunday I'll see if that fixes the issue...

So the capacitors go bad even without any sign of leakage?

[walterg74]

Personally I prefer to keep my A600 as a Kickstart 2 machine with a real hard drive as opposed to CF. But, there's no doubt you'll be needing a 1MB trapdoor expansion upgrade to take the chipram to 2MB because if you don't do this you'll not have enough memory to do anything useful from Workbench.
However, Kickstart 3.1/Workbench 3.1 eats a lot less ram, so would be better suited for an A600 with a hard drive.
 
My A1200 is a different story, and the A1200 with it's AGA to me is a machine worth upgrading. Not sure if there is anyone who actually uses a stock 1200 though. I think all the stock 1200's are in peoples lofts or garages, unused. The machines getting use are probably all upgraded, with a hard drive and fast ram/accelerator card in the trapdoor.

So what exactly would the advantage be of having a "real" hddinstead of a CF based one besides space...? I take it if you don't need that much space, CF is more silent, less prone to mechanical errors (no moving parts!) and still seen as an hdd.. So what's so good about a reald hdd?

[walterg74]

It fits in the original bracket and looks the way it did in 1993. Thats about all. BTW you forgot to mention it also uses more power and heats up your mainboard more.
 
4 GB SANDISK ULTRA(not a copy) rools.

It "looks the way it did in 1993"..?  What, you have x-ray vision to see the insides when using it? :laugh1:
 
more power and heat is the hdd I assume you meant, right...?

[walterg74]

I never said there was an "advantage", I was just stating my personal preference that's all. I like to hear it "whirr up", I like to hear when it's accessing, I don't mind the slight heat and slight noise and extra power consumption. Amigas aren't battery powered so I don't see why that should be important.

If you want one real advantage of hard disks, then data security springs to mind.
Let's say you had to back up gigabytes or terabytes of family photo's. If it was me, I'd have them on 3 hard disks (3 duplicates).
I would never back them up to dvd's or cd's as they only last 10-20 years, sometimes a lot less.
I wouldn't back them up on flash devices either, because they only retain their data for 10-20 years (according to specs) and no one even knows in reality how long this will really be yet. And I'm talking about copying the data to flash device, and then leaving it for 20 years (not using it every day...).

Take music for instance. In 100 years time, will there be any compact discs around that are still functioning? It's very doubtful.
Will there be any vinyl records around that are still functioning? Yes. Guaranteed, even the one's manufactured during the 1950's will still be alive and well, as crisp and beautiful as the day they were pressed.

Will your hard drive still work if left for 100 years with those photo's you backed up? Possibly yes, much higher chance than with any flash device or cd/dvd rom.

My point is, just because a new technology comes along, it doesn't necessarily mean it's better in every single way.

I could be wrong, but i believe the failure rate of hard drives is much higher than that for many different factors.... Don't know many that lasted more than 10 years, and definitely not 100..

Vynilrecords? Think about the scratches you hear, and imagine if thise were digital data bits... :banana:

[walterg74]

Read ALL the posts next time! Like I mentioned before:
"I use a 40Gig 2.5" HD in my A1200 + Apollo1260 + IndiVisionAGA + IdeFix-Express."
Oh, and just plain ol' FFS Int DirCache (except one backup partition; that's PFS3).

Yeah, I guess it depends on what you want to use the machine for in the end... I just want it for gaming, and for that, the setup is overkill... My 4GB CF card is way more than enough...

[walterg74]

I know, but someone stated that CF rules... Guess not! :p

Again, it depends on your needs... I get ALL the games I want, for ~40, no need to hunt down hdds, or worry about anything else, silent, etc. For me it TOTALLY rules...  :uzi:

[walterg74]

well.. lot of time has passed but I'm finally back from Europe!
 
So yeah, brought back my spare floppy drive, replaced the one in the 600 and it boots up almost instantly (normally in a word), so seems that was the issue after all!
 
Also managed to bring back a CD32 to add to my collection