PCMCIA devices in A600

[hppacito]

Hallo,

In my quest to expand my A500 with a joystick and mouse ;-), i got an A600 (will arrive in a week or so...) with a broken floppy.

I hope somebody can answer this:

Which kind of PCMCIA devices can be plugged in an A600 ?

Harddisks, flash disks, RAM cards (where the *ç&% find I those).... (I know about the etherlink III). Do they need drivers to work ?

Is the A500 floppy compatible with the A600 ??

Thanks !

[Xanxi]

On my own A600, i use a compactflash pcmcia reader with 128 MB card, a squirrel SCSI, a LAN card, a Wifi card. This PCMCIA slot is much usefull :-)

The floppy drive is compatible but may not physically fit.

[hppacito]

Thats sounds cool !

And can you boot from the 128MB card ? (I will not have more than a 68000 for a while...), do you use a driver to access the flash in the PCMCIA ?

thanks !

[mfilos]

At first you need to check out these excellent sites
www.amiga600.de (by Christian Krenner) and
www.amiga600.net (by Mike Parker)
The can clear your mind about a lot of things in upgrading you miggy!

I used a compact flash to ide adapter so a compact flash card can be used as a regular Hard Disk. The only problem are the limited read/write cycles. So you should concider using a cf card only for storage purposes. Good luck mate and feel free to PM for any questions!
Greetings from GREECE!

[Xanxi]

@mfilos:

Your A600 seems close to mine but you have a mtec board?
How much do you get in Sysinfo?

Mine got an Apollo 630@40Mhz with FPU and 32 Mo FAST and makes it at 7746 Dhrystones. I have too a 10GB hardrive and of course the 1 Meg ChipRAM + clock expansion.

I think my A600 is better than the one at www.amiga600.de except i don't have usb (but no need for it)

[hppacito]

So,

sorry for being repetitive... but can you boot from a Flash or harddisk attached to the PCMCIA ?

thanks !

I would love to get one of those apollos... I hope they show up in ebay soon. sadly I lost the MTec 020 for A500... but >50 Euro.. is a bit too much :-(

[mfilos]

Greetings dear Xanxi!
I haven't installed SysInfo yet but I'll let you know when I'll have the specs.
I couldn't find an Apollo anywhere, so while I searched on Google I found out this site www.animart.pl which had the M-Tec board I have now, with (only) 4MB RAM. The bad thing is that even if you find an M-Tec with 8MB soldered, the PCMCIA is disabled, which is something I didn't wantfor sure! With the 4MB I'm happy for now! Sure 32MB are GREAT man but Apollo is too rare! The CF Disk works like a charm in the slave IDE port letting me share files with my Laptop's CF Writer using UAE. I'm very happy some people having an A600 share the same enthusiasm upgrading their miggy like me! Keep up the good work guys!

P.S. Dear hppacito I believe that you can boot (althought I don't know the way) from CF using PCMCIA Adaptor

[hppacito]

That people (animart) list an Apollo 030, but as I hardly understand any polish ! (I was told that with german and russian you can read polish.... russian am learning now, german I think I can read it ;-) )... difficult to know what is all that about :-(, I'll see if I can make it boot.

[ceedy]

Hi,

I've been playing around with a number of Compact flash adaptors and found one that works well in the A600/1200 slot, used loads of different CF cards.. not actually bootable but automounts/dismounts with my modded s/w ,
from HD or floppy.. its really is the dogs with PC to Miggy file moving.. just treat like any amiga device.



C..

[_ThEcRoW]

You can boot from them

[mfilos]

You can't make an order from animart's site. You can mail them as I did in plain English. I'm very satisfied with Animart. They don't have the Apollo, just M-Tec with 4MB.
With my order the sent me 2 Boing stickers and a CD-ROM with some Amiga software. I totally suggest them.
As for the CF adapter I bought one 44pin CF to IDE adaptor from eBay (5 Euros) that fitted like a slave (Yes it has a jumper for Master-Slave mode) to my 2x44pin IDE cable like a glove! HD Toolbox read it as a SCSI drive and formated the 256 Sandisk card very easily.
You can make the CF bootable and work it like a HD.
In my avatar you can slightly see the CF in the top left corner as it gets out from the miggy.
Don't forget about the write/read cycles though.

[countzero]

hppacito wrote:
I would love to get one of those apollos... I hope they show up in ebay soon. sadly I lost the MTec 020 for A500... but >50 Euro.. is a bit too much :-(

dude, A600 accelelerators go for much expansive cause they are maybe the rarest accelerators for the amiga. You'll never find a 030 board for less 50 € I can assure you (cause I'll bid at least 75 € ehehehehe *eevil skeletor grin*)

having said that, I just noticed an auction for a apollo 630 at ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-600-Apollo-630-accelerator-33mhz-030-fpu-8mb-ram_W0QQitemZ8230033740QQcategoryZ98928QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
but the seller only accepts money order or personal check so its kind of fishy. I would not suggest buying this kind of expensive items if the seller doesn't accept paypal (the auction starts from 70 pounds (where the heck is pound sign on my keyboard?) ( about 125 $))

[AmiDude]

@mfilos

What did you pay for the M-Tec630 ?
I did take a look on this polish site,
but couldn't find any link to mail them.
Do you know how to contact them?

I own a A600HD myself with an MTec/Viper a630
with 4MB, but I want another one for my other A600HD.
I once had an Apollo with 32MB, but they're very
unstable, even with a cooler-fan installed.
So, I sold the Apollo, and now I'm very satisfied with
the MTec/Viper 630. It's very stable.
Take a look at this sysinfo picture I up-loaded for the CM345S SD/FF thread I posted:

www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1163=38

 :-)

[AmiDude]

@mfilos

Never mind the email address...I found it!

 :-D

[hppacito]

70 pounds !?! :-o , that is much more that what I am willing to pay. I already spend quite a bit... and don't have something satisfactory to play with....  :-x