A600 Upgrade Options

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(Expansion Ports)
(Expansion Ports)
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:Many of these devices were not originally released specifically for the A600, but were PC laptop devices which have since been made to work with the A600 using free third party drives available on Aminet.  This means that many of them are now easily available at low prices these days.
:Many of these devices were not originally released specifically for the A600, but were PC laptop devices which have since been made to work with the A600 using free third party drives available on Aminet.  This means that many of them are now easily available at low prices these days.
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*'''Clockport expansions'''
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*'''Clock port expansions'''
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:As standard the A600 doesn't have an internal clockport.  However there are a couple of third party hardware upgrades that can add one to the A600.
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:As standard the A600 doesn't have an internal clock port.  However there are a couple of third party hardware upgrades that can add one to the A600.
:* Individual Computers A602 (A600 2M ChipRAM) trapdoor ram expansion.  This is a standard 1MB chip ram card that fits into the A600's trapdoor expansion slot.  It also includes a built in A1200 compatible clock port.
:* Individual Computers A602 (A600 2M ChipRAM) trapdoor ram expansion.  This is a standard 1MB chip ram card that fits into the A600's trapdoor expansion slot.  It also includes a built in A1200 compatible clock port.
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:* Individual Computers A600 Interface Expander.  This card connects to the A600's Gayle custom chip on the motherboard and provides an A1200 compatible clockport connector for the A600.  This card was also designed to fit inside the A600 together with the same companies  
+
:* Individual Computers A600 Interface Expander.  This card connects to the A600's Gayle custom chip on the motherboard and provides an A1200 compatible clock port connector for the A600.  This card was also designed to fit inside the A600 together with the same companies accelerator card for the A600.
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Adding a clockport to the A600 allows it to then take advantage of the clock port expansion cards released for the A1200 to add things like the Subway USB card to add USB ports to the A600, The Delfina DSP oundcard, or the Silversurfer for networking.
+
:Adding a clock port to the A600 allows it to then take advantage of the clock port expansion cards released for the A1200 to add things like the Subway USB card to add USB ports to the A600, The Delfina DSP soundcard, or the Silversurfer for networking.
===Custom upgrades===
===Custom upgrades===

Revision as of 00:53, 27 November 2008

Commodore Amiga A600
Commodore Amiga A600

Contents

A600

The A600 is probably the least expandable Amiga model of them all. Its small and compact size has the advantage of taking up less room than any other model, while retaining the same features and capacities of the older A500+ model. There are however still quite a few upgraded that can be added to the A600 to expand it.

Kickstart

As standard the A600 came with Kickstart version 2.05. This allows Workbench versions up to 2.1 to be used. This can be upgraded to Kickstart 3.1, allowing later versions of Workbench to be installed up to AmigaOS 3.9. It is also possible to fit a Kickstart 1.3 rom into the A600 allowing more compatibility with older software and games. However using a 1.3 rom would disabled the PCMCIA port and IDE interface so it isn't recommended unless you use a rom switcher so you can switch between the 1.3 rom and another newer rom.

Memory

The A600 has 1MB of chip ram already present on its motherboard.

Maximum memory the A600 can have installed is:

  • 2MB Chip Ram (1MB on Motherboard + 1MB A601 trapdoor expansion)
  • 4MB Fast Ram (PCMCIA SRAM card)
  • 32MB Fast Ram if using a CPU accelerator card

Expansion Ports

  • Trapdoor Memory expansion slot
The trapdoor slot is designed specifically for the Commodore A601 1MB Chip ram expansion card. This upgrades the A600 to 2MB of chip ram which is very useful for productivity software. However most games will not require this much ram unless installed to HD.
Third party hardware developers also created similar 1MB trap door cards to the official A601 and they should all work in the same way when installed. These include the 3-State A602, MicroniK 1MB, Individual Computers A600 2M ChipRAM, and the Alfa Data AlfaRam RA6-1M.
  • Internal 2.5" IDE Port
This port is designed for a laptop style 2.5" Harddrive. To use this port the A600 must have a kickstart 2.05 rom version 37.350 or a 3.1 rom fitted. The earlier A600 kickstart 2.05 roms had bugs that restricted or prevented HDs from being used with the IDE port ( Version 37.299 has no support for the IDE port, and version 37.300 only allowed a maximum of a 40MB HD to be used).
It is also possible to utilise the A600's IDE port beyond just using it for a harddrive.
  • IDE Compact Flash Card Adapter - You could use one of these instead of a HD as a sold state HD. Also making it easy to take the CF card out of the A600 and access its contents from your PC using WinUAE.
  • Buffered IDE interface - Fit one of these to the A600's internal IDE port and use it with the IDEFix'97 software. You can then connect more than one device to the IDE port at the same time.
  • Atapi/IDE CD-Rom or Laptop CD drive - The A600's case can easily be customised to fit a laptop style slim CD-Rom drive inside the case. Use a laptop CD-Rom drive alongside a buffered IDE interface and HD to really give the capacities of the A600 a boost, by instantly giving it the additions of an HD and a CD-Rom drive.
  • PCMCIA slot
The 16-bit Type II PCMCIA card slot on the left-hand side of the A600 can be used for a selection of upgrades for the A600. Newer 32-bit CardBus or PC Cards are however incompatible. Available expansions for the A600's PCMCIA card slot include:
  • 1-4MB PCMCIA SRAM Card - This will give the A600 1-4MB of Fast ram. Combine this with the 1MB trapdoor expansion and you can expand the A600 up to a total of 6MB ram (2MB Chip + 4MB Fast ram).
  • CD-Rom Controller (Archos CD-Rom drive)
  • External Harddrive (Archos External HD)
  • SCSI Controller (Squirrel SCSI card)
  • Sound Sampler
  • Video Digitiser
  • Network Card (both wired and wireless)
  • Dial up Modems
  • Compact Flash memory card adapters
Many of these devices were not originally released specifically for the A600, but were PC laptop devices which have since been made to work with the A600 using free third party drives available on Aminet. This means that many of them are now easily available at low prices these days.
  • Clock port expansions
As standard the A600 doesn't have an internal clock port. However there are a couple of third party hardware upgrades that can add one to the A600.
  • Individual Computers A602 (A600 2M ChipRAM) trapdoor ram expansion. This is a standard 1MB chip ram card that fits into the A600's trapdoor expansion slot. It also includes a built in A1200 compatible clock port.
  • Individual Computers A600 Interface Expander. This card connects to the A600's Gayle custom chip on the motherboard and provides an A1200 compatible clock port connector for the A600. This card was also designed to fit inside the A600 together with the same companies accelerator card for the A600.
Adding a clock port to the A600 allows it to then take advantage of the clock port expansion cards released for the A1200 to add things like the Subway USB card to add USB ports to the A600, The Delfina DSP soundcard, or the Silversurfer for networking.

Custom upgrades

In addition to the upgrades possible with the A600 using the built in expansion ports, some third party developers also created upgraded that connected directly to the A600's motherboard, allowing upgrades beyond the original design of the A600.

  • Accelerators
As standard CPU accelerators are not possible to add to an A600 because it is one of the only models of Amiga that doesn't provide an expansion port capable of accessing the main Amiga hardware to connect additional processors. However by fitting a piggy back connector over the A600's original motherboard mounted 68000 processor hardware developers managed to provide accelerators for the A600. These include the following:
  • Apollo 620 - A 68020 accelerator running at 20MHz or 25MHz with a FPU at the same speed as the CPU. And support for up to 8MB Fast ram. This accelerator is not PCMCIA friendly so needs to have a jumper set to 4MB to limit the fast ram of PCMCIA cards are going to be used.
  • Apollo 630 - A 68030 accelerator running at 40MHz or 50MHz with an optional FPU at the same speed. And support for up to 32MB of fast ram. This accelerator is PCMCIA friendly so should work with PCMCIA cards. This accelerator might however have problems working with revision 1.3 A600 motherboards.
  • DCE Viper 630 - A 68030 accelerator running at 33MHz, 40MHz or 42MHz with an FPU running at the same speed. And support for 4 or 8MB of fast ram. This accelerator is PCMCIA friendly.

Other upgrades

Also usable on the A600 is any Amiga hardware that can be connected via the RBG Video, Joystick, Floppy drive, Parallel or serial ports of the Amiga as the A600 shares exactly the same ports as all other models of Amiga. These ports were often used to connect external floppy disk drives, sound samplers, video digitisers, scanners, midi devices, printers... etc.

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