Pros - Cons: topic: wanting an A600

[leirbag28]

@Doppie1200

PCMCIA memory is SUPER easy to find............problem is that there are many A600 and PCMCIA Nay Sayers.........never listen to them.

See most people arent aware that many PCMCIA cards from Apple Newtons work on the A600 with no need for drivers or anything.  Go on ebay and watch as they show up. Type  "Newton Flash" and you have yourself enough Memory to run WHDLoad :-)

Sometimes you find the 2MB ones for 15 bucks....not too bad.

[leirbag28]

@x56h34

Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this.
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In that case just load it from Floppy as you would on an A500 anyway...............or.........just install it with JST :-) which needs much less ram than WHDload and works on the 68000 CPU just fine.

[Linchpin]

Some of you must have had seriously Messed up A600's or something...........its defintely nicer to have an A600than the A500.....a behemoth thats too difficult to expand these days.

Id never run an a500 nowadays.. im talking back in '91 :-D

[doctorq]

@leirbag28

You are clearly an Amiga 600 fan, and I have no problems with it at all.

However, the cost of upgrading the Amiga 600 to a usable machine with WHDLoad will be more expensive than getting a Amiga 500 with harddrive and fast ram already installed, and which plays those old games right away. I think that even with an accelerator in the Amiga 500 the Amiga 500 setup will be cheaper.

The only thing you mention that can not be connected to an Amiga 500 is a ethernet card; the rest should be fairly simple.

As for upgrades available for both computers; I would bet you that for every Apollo 630 board you find, you will find 5 or 10 harddrive controllers for Amiga 500.

[leirbag28]

@doctorq

As for upgrades available for both computers; I would bet you that for
every Apollo 630 board you find, you will find 5 or 10 harddrive
controllers for Amiga
500.
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 Yes probably true, but these hArddrives just make your A500 all the more of a Huge beast.........I despise external HD's these days...........maybe cuz I like lugging along my A600 nice ands small...............I like internal tiny HD's

and as far as compatibility....I can run 95 % of games, and I said.you dont need an Apollo board. Plus you can add the Kicstart switcher if need be with KS 1.3 and 3.1

[doctorq]

@leirbag28

I like internal tiny HDs as well....in an Amiga 1200.....

[Linchpin]

Sloooooow laptop HDD's....

Not that they make any difference on the !super Fast! amiga IDE bus ....

[mr_a500]

Well, if you can find a Viper 520, you can easily add an internal 2.5" IDE drive in the A500. The Viper also adds KS3.0, 8Mb Fast RAM and a FPU. I'll admit that the Viper 520 is hard to find though.

I don't find the A500 ugly. I think it looks much nicer than the A600.

Who the heck wants to go through the trouble of upgrading and even carrying that HUGE behemoth around. I used to have my A600 inside my Cars Dashboard back in 1994 and Had DSS8+ attached to it with a Mic and to my Sound System to yell at passer buys "GET OUT OF THE WAY!!" try that with an A500 in a car...............also had scratch and DJ samples that I would hit keys while driving...........playing my own music

What an odd thing to do. I wouldn't consider any Amiga portable. It doesn't matter how small the thing is, you still need the monitor, mouse, joysticks, etc. But if I REALLY wanted to, I could easily put an A500 behind my 1958 VW dashboard....right on top of the gas tank.  ;-)

[TjLaZer]

I have a 2GB HD in my A600HD.  Runs great.

[adolescent]

x56h34 wrote:
Try using a vanilla setup with 2MB Chip / 4MB PCMCIA Fast ram, and you'll see that plenty of games refuse to work as they should, due to the 68000 cpu. It is missing some WHDLoad needed instructions, that only come with 68010+ cpus. Lots of games don't work due to this. :-(

I've found quite the opposite.  Out of the 200 or so WHDLoad games I've tested, only about 10 refused to work.  Several didn't exit, but they worked perfectly during gameplay.

Besides the reasons already stated (IDE, PCMCIA, small form factor), the A600 is a great portable because it has composite video output.  The A500 has mono out, or requires an A520 dongle to do this adding to the bulk.

[x56h34]

@adolescent:

It could be related to my rev 1.5 motherboard perhaps. I am not sure. My tests were conducted with A600 rev 1.5 mobo, 3.1 rom, 2MB chip / 4MB fast ram, OS3.1 installed on the hard drive.

I can confirm that a lot of working games wouldn't exit, and a lot of wouldn't work at all (and yes, I know that I need to tweak the tooltypes when trying WHDLoad games between different Amigas...e.g. tooltypes that were good for A1200 don't necessarily work with A4000 with 060, etc.). :-)

[leirbag28]

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adolescent wrote:
Besides the reasons already stated (IDE, PCMCIA, small form factor), the A600 is a great portable because it has composite video output. The A500 has mono out, or requires an A520 dongle to do this adding to the bulk.
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 Well said adolecent :-)

@Mr a500

 Well no, I dont carry around a monitor..........I use 5 inch LCD screens as the A600 has Color Composite OUT. and I use a small SEGA master sytem joypad...and the command Jaymoose19...........so I dont need a mouse.

 The A500 is really not Ugly......I just find it so when its yellow and damaged....I guess I see alot of that...........plus its real Big...but I see it that way because I desire to carry it around..............if its a stay at home machine..........it can look nice if you got the matching monitor and mouse and Floppy drives :-).........................I have seen your Workbench..................nicest I have ever seen when it comes to an A500 :-)  If everyone had their A500 set up like yours in software and in nice condition like TJLazer's, then that would be excellent.............i wish Commodore shipped them out like that.

[mr_a500]

I had no idea that the A600 had colour composite output. So that is definitely a bonus and makes it more portable.