A600 maximum (stock) performance and PAL/NTSC

[Tenacious]

Okay here's the low down.. I achieved 1.66MB (1666656 bytes) free RAM (from 2MB Chip only) with a fully usable 8 colour MagicWB desktop with most of the frills:

To do this I've:
...

• Installed Ordering
• Installed lha, lzx, unzip and configured it with Ordering

...

If anybody else can help me better this I'd like to see 1.7 MB free ;)

It's fun to see that some one else has discovered and appreciates the efficiency of Ordering.

I must have missed something, what's magical about 1.7 MB free?  You seem to be sacrificing much to get there.  Is adding a fast ram expansion out of the question?

Fast Ram would modestly improve system performance, turn the Ramdisk into a far more useful tool, allow better disk buffering to improve access, etc.

You asked for software suggestions.  You might consider an improved hard disk file system, like PFS3 (Hopefully, available in PD soon, it's much faster and more secure than FFS).  There are faster serial port drivers, math libraries, and datatypes on Aminet.

Are you trying to see how far you can push the system, are you primarily a gamer?  What do want this system to do?

[Crom00]

I feel the Amiga OCS/ECS 68000 combo is most hampered by RAM. It would be interesting to see how an ECS game that utilized all the 2mb chip ram and  an 8 mb fast ram expansion would perform. Have any games like this ever been developed?

The 16 bit style consoles of that era had the benefit of cartridge format that allowed more ram and even hardware upgrades in the cartridges like the SNES super FX chip (I think that's what it was called)

[Cammy]

It's kinda cool that the SuperFX chip was designed by an Amiga guy (he made Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga, kinda similar to Starfox don't you think?).

There are surely games out there that use OCS/ECS and require more than 1MB ChipRAM, some needing several megs of FastRAM too, although I can't list them off the top of my head. I like it when a game can take advantage of my expanded system though.

[brownb2]

I must have missed something, what's magical about 1.7 MB free?  You seem to be sacrificing much to get there.  Is adding a fast ram expansion out of the question?

I picked the A600 up a couple of weeks ago for £25 (~$35-40 USD) and only did it as spur of the moment thing since I had an old A600 1MB memory upgrade and 2'5->3'5 cables to add a new internal hard disk/CF.

I want just to get it up and running and use for retro gaming/usage instead of wearing/leaving out my original A1200, hence I didn't really intend to invest.

You asked for software suggestions.  You might consider an improved hard disk file system, like PFS3 (Hopefully, available in PD soon, it's much faster and more secure than FFS).  There are faster serial port drivers, math libraries, and datatypes on Aminet.

I was aware of the likes of baud bandit etc. back in the day but really I won't be needing networking or port drivers.  I'm aware of some shareware math libraries but never really saw the need to get them. I won't be using this machine as viewer so the datatypes aren't really applicable - viewing a JPEG might be a bit painful too I used FFS as it was bootable and didn't want to set up multiple partitions on a 512 card that is regularly imaged...
[EDIT]Just found out that PFS3 might be bootable too by storing the driver in the RDB[/EDIT]

Are you trying to see how far you can push the system, are you primarily a gamer?  What do want this system to do?

Have a single boot mode (no cut down startup) that will run as many games as possible but still have a decent/impressive (for A600) Workbench for day to day tasks (backup, extraction, file manipulation, mod playing, algomusic, etc etc).

Hope this helps explain

[DyLucke]

It's kinda cool that the SuperFX chip was designed by an Amiga guy (he made Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga, kinda similar to Starfox don't you think?).

Argonaut Software dear Cammy, Argonaut... Their use of early 3D environments was really revolutionary back in the days, fast paced, lots of polys... Remember Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga or ST, later StarWing (StarFox) and Vortex on the SNES with that FX chip they developed specifically that was even able to run Doom on a plain 16bit slow console, of course it's quite choppy, but it's a merit.

Later they programmed the infamous FX fighter for the PC, at the time of the first Virtua Fighter, showing a PeeCee could do it too, sadly the game was quite bad despite it had remarkable technical quality.

Last game i've known about them was StarFox Adventures on the GameCube, a game i own and i like a lot. Again they were ahead porting a "Zelda" game to the GC before a REAL Zelda game for the GC.

Cheers

[Crom00]

BrownB2 I actually picked up an A600 for the same reason and  I quickly realized although the initial cost of the A600 was low the expense of getting it functional was not worth it, especially when the A1200 has many more expansions readily available.

If you're looking for more ram do google searches for SRAM cards. Don't go onto ebay becuase you'll find folks that know they're good for Amigas and charge up the wazzo. I've seen 4 meg cards outside of ebay for $50-70.

[Terse]

Argonaut Software dear Cammy, Argonaut... Their use of early 3D environments was really revolutionary back in the days, fast paced, lots of polys... Remember Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga or ST, later StarWing (StarFox) and Vortex on the SNES with that FX chip they developed specifically that was even able to run Doom on a plain 16bit slow console, of course it's quite choppy, but it's a merit.

Later they programmed the infamous FX fighter for the PC, at the time of the first Virtua Fighter, showing a PeeCee could do it too, sadly the game was quite bad despite it had remarkable technical quality.

Last game i've known about them was StarFox Adventures on the GameCube, a game i own and i like a lot. Again they were ahead porting a "Zelda" game to the GC before a REAL Zelda game for the GC.

Cheers

They made Malice for the Xbox.

[Terse]

It's kinda cool that the SuperFX chip was designed by an Amiga guy (he made Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga, kinda similar to Starfox don't you think?).

There are surely games out there that use OCS/ECS and require more than 1MB ChipRAM, some needing several megs of FastRAM too, although I can't list them off the top of my head. I like it when a game can take advantage of my expanded system though.

Hired guns will use more than 1MB chip RAM, if available for extra sounds.

[TheGoose]

'Ordering' is better than DOpus, to me. Big fan, use it in every machine. Too bad the config program is not screenmode friendly (RTG).

It's fun to see that some one else has discovered and appreciates the efficiency of Ordering.

I must have missed something, what's magical about 1.7 MB free?  You seem to be sacrificing much to get there.  Is adding a fast ram expansion out of the question?

Fast Ram would modestly improve system performance, turn the Ramdisk into a far more useful tool, allow better disk buffering to improve access, etc.

You asked for software suggestions.  You might consider an improved hard disk file system, like PFS3 (Hopefully, available in PD soon, it's much faster and more secure than FFS).  There are faster serial port drivers, math libraries, and datatypes on Aminet.

Are you trying to see how far you can push the system, are you primarily a gamer?  What do want this system to do?

[runequester]

It's kinda cool that the SuperFX chip was designed by an Amiga guy (he made Starglider and Starglider 2 on the Amiga, kinda similar to Starfox don't you think?).

There are surely games out there that use OCS/ECS and require more than 1MB ChipRAM, some needing several megs of FastRAM too, although I can't list them off the top of my head. I like it when a game can take advantage of my expanded system though.

Dungeon Master 2 requires 2 megs of RAM I believe. It was labelled as an AGA game simply to avoid confusion, but it runs on ECS provided you have extra RAM.

As mentioned above, some games will have extra stuff like sound effects (Hired Guns and Walker spring to mind) too

[Cammy]

Yeah, the Speris Legacy demo runs on a 2MB Chip A600 or A2000 too, so that wasn't really an AGA game to start with either.

[runequester]

Yeah, the Speris Legacy demo runs on a 2MB Chip A600 or A2000 too, so that wasn't really an AGA game to start with either.

I think they just labelled stuff like that as AGA, as a 1200 owner would be guaranteed to have 2 megs of RAM.