EBay - Amiga 600.. No Hard drive, easy to install one?

[cbrkelly]

Hey folks,

This is my first post here, discovered this AWESOME place via google. I've been an avid Commodore / Amiga fan for many yrs, but reluctantly sold my Amiga 600 40MB HD in 1995 for a 486 DX2 80.

Want to get right back into it and happy to lay good dollars down for a 600 (or even a 1200, though i hear they're incompatible with a lot of older games? - true / false?) ...

Ebay seems to indicate that Amigas are EXTREMELY hard to source.. either someones collected them all and kept them in a huge vault somewhere or people are simply holding onto them because they're such a great piece of computing history.

BUT!! I just discovered this on ebay, went up today i think?

Amiga 600 - No HDD

Questions :-

1) Chances its not busted / dead? Whats your feelings on this?

2) No power supply or any other cabling? How hard is it to get this stuff.

3) How hard is it to source a hdd compatible for it, format it so the amiga understands it? Is there a guide anywhere that anyone knows of? I really dont want an Amiga unless it has a hdd..


But given their rarity.. (this is the only a600 up for sale at the moment), i'm still keen.. as long as i can add the hard drive, find a mouse/joystick for it and power supply etc...

Oh, and is his asking price a little steep or right on the money?


Thanks for your feedback folks.

[countzero]

That price is too high for a stock A600. You can use almost any 2.5 laptop hdd (<4gb . less than 2gb is even better) with an a600 so no hdd is no problem at all. However, he didn't state the kickstart version. if it's not 3.1 or 37.350, it may have problems using the hdd. However that's not a big deal too, you can find compatible roms easily (infact I can provide you 37.350 roms very cheaply).

a600 was most popular in the UK. So you may check UK if you want an a600, they're cheapest there. I saw them going for as low as 20-30$. But shipping would be a problem. This auction also has a shipping price of 50$ so I think buying from a UK auction would be much better.

Also please bear in mind that this is a PAL amiga. You can't use it with your regular NTSC tv or 1084. You need a multisystem tv or a multisync monitor.

[countzero]

see this one for example.

[cbrkelly]

Ah right... thanks for that...

Oh, and PAL is what we use here also by the way (i'm based in Australia) .. so shouldnt need to convert anything?

[countzero]

Ah, ok I thought you were in the US. Ok, all is perfect then.

[cbrkelly]

Well, would be .... only i've looked at several 1200s up for grabs in the UK as well, and it would appear noone wants the trouble of shipping overseas (dont blame them either) ... but i could be sheer out of luck unless something pops up locally?

damnit!! I'm desperate for one of these babies  :-(

[Astral]

I am in Australia, and can help you out if you wish. Check your PM's cbrkelly.

[pyrre]

Want to get right back into it and happy to lay good dollars down for a 600 (or even a 1200, though i hear they're incompatible with a lot of older games? - true / false?) ...

FALSE!

I have an A1200 and the only game i have problems with is "Oil Imperium". It is programmed to sync with the M68000s cpu speed..
And you get to play the great AGA games...

I would go for an A1200 if I could find one...(or better an A4000T, but those are RARE and expensive if you find one)

[itix]

Want to get right back into it and happy to lay good dollars down for a 600 (or even a 1200, though i hear they're incompatible with a lot of older games? - true / false?) ...

It is true. A1200 is incompatible with lot of old games. But you can use WHDLoad (if you have HD and more RAM) which helps A1200 to load more games. Amiga 600 is not more compatible than A1200 and I would choose A1200 if there is no A500 option.

[arkpandora]

Hi,

Amiga power supplies and cabling can be found easily.

If you are sent your Amiga by post, because of the shocks the floppy drive may arrive damaged, so it may be a good thing to ask your seller to ship the Amiga with a floppy disk inserted.  As I'm not a specialist, I count on other posters to confirm this.

Some games of the 80's (and maybe the early 90's) won't work properly or work at all on the Amiga 600 and 1200, even with tools like WHDLoad or degraders.  So if you want any old game to work properly, you must use an Amiga 500 (not 500+), 1000 or 2000 with Kickstart (the ROM) version 1.3.  If you want to play AGA games, that is games designed for the Amiga 1200 and 4000 graphic chips, which are in a minority, then you must have a 1200 or a 4000.  If you want to play AGA games and as many older games as possible, then I recommend you to buy a 1200, because it is usually much cheaper than a 4000.  In addition, the 1200 is not much more expensive than a 600, compatibility issues are not significantly more numerous than with a 600, and it is more powerful and upgradeable than a 600.

[cbrkelly]

OK thanks a heap for all the feedback on this folks... given i once owned an A600 with 40MB hdd (after selling my amiga 500) and had little to no compatibility issues with the games that i played, seemed the A1200 is indeed the way to go.

oh, one more question, is the a1200 capable of playing .mp3 files?


Cheers.

[countzero]

cbrkelly wrote:

oh, one more question, is the a1200 capable of playing .mp3 files?


Cheers.

no. not without a processor upgrade (at least a 68030 for low quality 64Kbit encoded files. 68060 for 128Kbit files)

edit : well actually it seems possible to play mp3s on a 68020 after all with some juggling. here

[jimbo100]

countzero wrote:

cbrkelly wrote:

oh, one more question, is the a1200 capable of playing .mp3 files?


Cheers.

no. not without a processor upgrade (at least a 68030 for low quality 64Kbit encoded files. 68060 for 128Kbit files)

edit : well actually it seems possible to play mp3s on a 68020 after all with some juggling. here

In all honesty why would you bother!