Amiga 600

[ToddH]

After selling my beloved Amiga 1200 back in the 90s, it looks like I'm back in the Amiga game. Just picked up an Amiga 600. What brought me back? The Vampire 2 of course.



It is super clean and white (ceiling light doesn't do it justice). It even still has the plastic over the badge  and the warranty sticker looks intact. Even came with a brand new mouse. Only problem...power supply is 220V! Looking at Amigakit's site they seem to be out of replacement power supplies. So I need to track down a power supply. Any ideas?

Also am going to open her up and get the motherboard to ASCII for recapping. So I'll post updates as I go along. Looking forward to upgrading the old girl.

[ToddH]

That sounds like a plan. Just broke the seal and looked inside. RF shield is a bit discolored but everything else looks fairly clean. Was in the process of removing the shield when you replied so I just pushed the tabs back down and put it back together (sans the 2.5" drive tray). Definitely want to remove the modulator since I want to use that space for the Vampire 2. And without a usable power supply and test floppy disk I have no way to know if it even powers up or if the floppy drive works.

[ToddH]

Yeup, if you send me the UK power supply I will open it up and convert it over for you using a pico ATX. Its not a bad job. Having the original so I can reuse the cable is a big help. Those are hard to find these days!

Sweet! I'll put it in the box.

[ToddH]

The Vampire2 is a really nice upgrade for the A600. The A600 has never interested me until now. Unfortunately, this is another Amiga that is priced higher than expected and the V2 will surely increase its value. I did like that the A600 came with built in IDE and has a smaller footprint than the A500, though.

 It will be very interesting to see how far the Vampire2 core development will go.

I originally wanted a 1200 or 4000 but finding one at a decent price is getting harder and harder. The 600 sort of fell into my lap so to speak. I do like the smaller footprint as I don't have a ton of space on my desk. Plus the Vampire 2 will be adding AGA to the core eventually.

The Amiga and the Commodore 64 were the machines that got me really interested in computers as a kid. Back in the early/mid 90s I used an Amiga while attending the University of Georgia as a Computer Science major. Spent a lot of time dialing into the school's mainframe and writing code. Also remember attending meetings of the local users group. Had some great times.

[ToddH]

Why not use a power converter? They work fine. Unless the psu needs its caps replaced of course.

Have had a few bad experiences with converters so I don't have a lot of trust in them.

[ToddH]

My 600 is fixed and on the way back. Got a stack of Amigakit upgrades ready to install. Now if they would hurry up and get to my name on the Vampire 2 list I'd be set.

Edit: Looks like my ACA 620EC arrived today as well. It should hold me over until the Vampire 2.

[ToddH]

Well, she's recapped and upgraded (thanks Ascii). Installed a 604n chip ram expansion, Indivision ECS, real time clock module, 3.1 ROM, 4GB CF IDE hard drive kit, Workbench 3.1, and ACA 620EC accelerator. Only thing I'm waiting on now is for my number to come up on the Vampire 2 wait list.

Configuring Easynet and getting online was a pain and took some trial and error but I managed to get it working.

I'm loving the Indivision. Got her hooked up to an old Dell monitor I had sitting around. Here's what she looks like now.



Still haven't started customizing 3.1 yet so it looks a little stock. Also, a few of my keyboard keys work intermittently. I'm wondering if it might be time to buy a replacement membrane. And is the disk light supposed to flash when the hard drive is accessed?

Other than that having a blast reliving my younger years.

[ToddH]

Dont forget about that single custom KS Rom chip with 1.3 and 3.1 on the same chip!! That a great upgrade hack! Love that one on them. Oh and to nifty new PSU!

Glad you are enjoying it too. I am very jealous of that machine. It was so much fun to build and sad to mail it back!!

Yep, forgot about the ROM switch. And I'm loving the power supply. The little Pico unit is working great.

Cool ! How did you get Easy Net to work ? tried it with three different adapters until I gave up and used Miami, which works fine with the latest Individual network card, although speed isn't all that great, getting at most 400 kbytes per second via ftp.
 
 would you mind posting your easy net settings which worked ?

Sure. When I get off work I'll try and post up my settings and how I got it working. It wasn't easy I can tell you that.

Yes, the DISK light (bottom one) should illuminate on hard disk access. This is likely your CF IDE adapter at fault.

Looks like it's time to put a ticket in with AmigaKit, since I purchased it from them. Thanks.