A600 questions.

[som99]

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

[som99]

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

[som99]

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.

[som99]

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!

[som99]

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

[som99]

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?

[som99]

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)

[som99]

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