Which one shall I keep?

[doctorq]

Is there anyone who know if the A600 has for example faster bus speed and that sort of things than the A500? I figure it must be better at something since the A500 is much older.

If you plug in a Kickstart 2.0 chip in the A500, I believe that the only difference between the two is the integrated hdd controller and the PCMCIA slot. Technically I think they are more or less the same.

[Karlos]

Is the SCSI controller in the A500 expansion DMA based?

One thing the A600 lacks (even with an accelerator) is decent HD access.

[x56h34]

Things I don't like about the GVP A530:

You need to get rid of the GVP SCSI Rom and get a GuruRom v6+ in order to get any decent SCSI performance and compatibility with newer (larger) drives and AmigaOS 3.9.

The GuruRom for A530 is not the same as the one for A2000 GVP cards. If you use the A2000 GuruRom (more common) version, you can't close the A530 case as the A2000 version is too tall. The A530 version is very rare. The actual rom dump is freeware nowadays (thanks Ralph!) :-), however the PCB that hosts the eprom is a custom made piece, thus we still have a problem. :-(

The on-board memory of A530 is 8MB ram maximum and yes, it's the good ole' GVP custom made ram. :-(

The SCSI termination on the GVP A530 is passive and the termination resistors are soldered to the board (for your convenience) :-( and you need to desolder them or break them off in order to be able to get any decent active termination for your chain.

To summarize, good effort by the GVP guys, but too bad that Viper 530 is so damn rare and expensive. :-)

@Karlos:

Yes it is, however you need to update the firmware to GuruRom if you want any decent SCSI performance with more modern/larger drives.

[Amigaz]

Karlos wrote:
Is the SCSI controller in the A500 expansion DMA based?

One thing the A600 lacks (even with an accelerator) is decent HD access.

yep, "hi-tech"  :-D

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?dir=a500proc#gvp530

[fx]

@Dan

I'm a swede and I like A600's =)

[Amigaz]

fx wrote:
@Dan

I'm a swede and I like A600's =)

Mee too but I need dough and I have to sell one of my babys  :-(

[Brian]

If it comes down to a "MUST sell one of them" situation I would sell the A500. There's so many reasons why but I won't bother you with that.

If it was me I would probably keep both and shaft the A3000 though... it's not nearly as rare as 030 cards for A500/600 and with a 040/40 in it I'm thinking heat issues and an uppgrade to 060 hanging in the air. Also you have an A4000 and an A1200 both with 060/50 so another "powerhouse" probably isn't realy needed.

What might be a good idea is to write down as many reasons as you can think of for keeping every machine, then read it and try justify keeping every machine. I currently only hve 1 machine that I can't truely justify keeping and that's my A500, rest I have reasons for keeping if ever so slightly.

But most of all... follow your heart and ask yourself what hurt the least to get ridd off.

[Amigaz]

Brian wrote:
If it comes down to a "MUST sell one of them" situation I would sell the A500. There's so many reasons why but I won't bother you with that.

If it was me I would probably keep both and shaft the A3000 though... it's not nearly as rare as 030 cards for A500/600 and with a 040/40 in it I'm thinking heat issues and an uppgrade to 060 hanging in the air. Also you have an A4000 and an A1200 both with 060/50 so another "powerhouse" probably isn't realy needed.

What might be a good idea is to write down as many reasons as you can think of for keeping every machine, then read it and try justify keeping every machine. I currently only hve 1 machine that I can't truely justify keeping and that's my A500, rest I have reasons for keeping if ever so slightly.

But most of all... follow your heart and ask yourself what hurt the least to get ridd off.

Actuall my A4000 feels warmer than my A3000  :-o
I can use my A4000 as a radiator but my A3000 is pretty cool, on the other hand..I only have one zorro card in the A3000..a Cybervision 64

[adolescent]

I've always loved the A530.  Back in 1992 I was actually going to buy one ($1099.99 with 8M RAM IIRC).  Of course when I got to the local Amiga shop, Creative Computers, I fell in love with, and bought, an A3000 which only cost $200 more.

[Noster]

Hi,

@Brian

> If it was me I would probably keep both and shaft the A3000 though...
> Also you have an A4000 and an A1200 both with 060/50 so another "powerhouse" probably isn't realy needed.

In this case I would sell either the A1200 or the A4000, the A3000 is so much "cooler". It was the best Amiga made ever. Maybe he should sell the A4000, placing the 060 accelerator into the A3000? With the graphics card there is no need for AGA and so he would have both: a high performance AGA machine and a high performance ECS Amiga. I personally own an A3000T and never missed the AGA chipset.

Noster

[Amigaz]

Noster wrote:
Hi,

@Brian

> If it was me I would probably keep both and shaft the A3000 though...
> Also you have an A4000 and an A1200 both with 060/50 so another "powerhouse" probably isn't realy needed.

In this case I would sell either the A1200 or the A4000, the A3000 is so much "cooler". It was the best Amiga made ever. Maybe he should sell the A4000, placing the 060 accelerator into the A3000? With the graphics card there is no need for AGA and so he would have both: a high performance AGA machine and a high performance ECS Amiga. I personally own an A3000T and never missed the AGA chipset.

Noster

The CS MKII I have in my A4000 doesn't work in my A3000 due to that it's one of the boards which had the DMA bug but I have a CS MKIII at amiga centre for repair which I'll probably put in my A3000 but I have to do the INT2 mod on my A3000 so I can use the SCSI controller on the CS MKIII but I'm a complete rookie when it comes to soldering
My A3000 is my favourite computer at the moment, I just love it...rook solid and nice looking and I can play whdload games since I have a Cybervision 64 which passes thru the native gfx modes.
Would like a CV64 for my A4000 to so I can put in my scandoubler card and use it for AGA games.
Anyway, my A600 wil be on Ebay son...keep tuned  :-)

Brian wrote:
If it comes down to a "MUST sell one of them" situation I would sell the A500. There's so many reasons why but I won't bother you with that.

If it was me I would probably keep both and shaft the A3000 though... it's not nearly as rare as 030 cards for A500/600 and with a 040/40 in it I'm thinking heat issues and an uppgrade to 060 hanging in the air. Also you have an A4000 and an A1200 both with 060/50 so another "powerhouse" probably isn't realy needed.

What might be a good idea is to write down as many reasons as you can think of for keeping every machine, then read it and try justify keeping every machine. I currently only hve 1 machine that I can't truely justify keeping and that's my A500, rest I have reasons for keeping if ever so slightly.

But most of all... follow your heart and ask yourself what hurt the least to get ridd off.

If it helps, I gave away my A500+ for free to a bloke at work.