Weird issue with Amiga 600

[paul1981]

As far I know the HD version was just a 600 with the hdd already inside. The rom version is true, but acordong to the listing I have the minimum needed one (I think it was 37.33 or something like that, dont remember off the top of my head). So should be good to go and have fun

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.

[paul1981]

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

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.

[paul1981]

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?

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.

[paul1981]

That's what I'm talking about. It's the Read/Write speeds that makes the overall usage of HD's faster. It's also confirmed by different benchmark programs. The "noise" of an 2.5" HD is hardly noticeable.

I don't want to get involved in any arguments, but I suspect that due to faster seek times on CF drives then they would be faster when used on a heavily fragmented partition, whereas a hard drive would suffer more in this situation due to lower seek times. Of course, large hard disks or ones that have been defragged and optimised will perform just fine.
Amiga's don't really have problems with fragmentation, at least not on the grand scale as Windows does (just speaking from my own experience here).

[paul1981]

You're using IDEFIX!
2.1MB / Sec is about the max you'll get out of the standard A1200 IDE.  And yes IMO "all round" CF Cards rool.  

If you're still around WalterG74 and havent been scared off, a vanilla A600 is probably gonna be less than half the IDE speed of an A1200 probably around 700-800KB / Sec I guess..

Just last week I did a test using sysinfo and got a raw read of 2665871 bytes/sec (2.54MB/sec) on my A1200 with Apollo 1240/40. This is the standard IDE port with just an 80GB Hitachi 2.5" HDD attached.
So it is capable of more than 2.1MB/sec.

[paul1981]

If you're still around WalterG74 and havent been scared off, a vanilla A600 is probably gonna be less than half the IDE speed of an A1200 probably around 700-800KB / Sec I guess..

That would depend heavily on the presence or absence of fast ram.

Just tested this on my vanilla 600 (no fast ram, again...using sysinfo)
702171 bytes/sec 685KB/sec.

I wish I could just order a fast ram expansion from amigakit that slots on the motherboard...it would help the A600 so much. Surely they would be easier to produce by Jens than a full blown accelerator card (which isn't available anymore anyway).

[paul1981]

Sure, if you are only ever sequentially reading through one big file.
 
Being perfectly defragmented doesn't help if you are reading a lot of small files all over the drive.

Yes, true. Amiga software generally doesn't have a million small files to be read though, it normally makes do with just a few or sometimes even just one file. MUI programs use the most I suppose, but they don't use that many in reality.

I'm not for or against CF. At the beginning of this thread I just said I liked real hard drives because of the sounds they make, I'm nostalgic....
Then it turned into this huge argument (which I didn't participate in).

As far as I'm concerned people should use what they are happy with. Classic Amiga's are slow by comparison anyway, so this whole discussion is hardly relevant at all.