Hello and a couple of questions

[redfan]

Hi,

Firstly as I mentioned in my first post I am so pleased that the Amiga community is still going strong after all this time.

My current desktop is a MacMini, which I have to say is a fantastic machine and using OS X is such a relief from XP ...

Using an Amiga started for me back in 1987/8 with an A500 and I can still remember being utterly amazed at the amazing games such as Xenon 2, Batman the Movie and Beast !! not to mention the awesome demo scene (Coma and Rebels Megademo II to name but a few) and ended with an A1200 in 2000 when I got married.

Anyway,  I am shortly to receive a A600 via an Ebay auction and I have a couple of questions as the stuff I have read online differs from my impression of the machine back in the day.

From the screenshots it has Workbench 2.04 and Kickstart 37.299.

1) I intend to add a 2.5" 180MB HD in the internal slot, will this work?  If not what do I need to do to be able to do so?

2) I need to be able to use CrossDos to read 720k PC formatted disks (in order to copy compressed adf's at work) does my workbench have this?  If not what can I do to be able to do this?

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this.

Cheers
Red
 

[Thomas]

From the screenshots it has Workbench 2.04 and Kickstart 37.299.

1) I intend to add a 2.5" 180MB HD in the internal slot, will this work? If not what do I need to do to be able to do so?

You need Kickstart 37.300 or 37.350 to use a HDD. The 37.299's IDE driver is not able to boot from HDD. When changing Kickstarts, you should consider to upgrade to the latest version (3.1 / 40.63).

2) I need to be able to use CrossDos to read 720k PC formatted disks (in order to copy compressed adf's at work) does my workbench have this? If not what can I do to be able to do this?

Insert the Extras disk, open Extras/Storage/DosDrivers and run PC0.

Bye,
Thomas

[redfan]

Thanks Thomas,

Does this therefore mean that the HDD would be recognised, you just cannot boot from it (in other words I would need to use the workbench floppy to boot workbench to use the HDD)?

Also, how hard is it to actually change the ROM as I am not good at soldering things at all.

Cheers for your help.

Red

[Thomas]

Does this therefore mean that the HDD would be recognised, you just cannot boot from it (in other words I would need to use the workbench floppy to boot workbench to use the HDD)?

Probably, yes. I don't know exactly (never had an A600 myself). See this page for details: http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_205.html

Also, how hard is it to actually change the ROM as I am not good at soldering things at all.

The ROM chip should be in a socket. You should be able to lift it easily with a screw driver. Just make sure you do it equally on both ends so that none of the legs is bended.

Edit: see this picture: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a600mbrev1_big.jpg
On the left bottom the big socketed chip is the Kickstart ROM. You can see that the third line printed on it reads "(c)1991 V2.05 (37.300)", this is the ROM version.

Bye,
Thomas