Amiga Hardware Upgrade Options

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(A600)
(A600)
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* PCMCIA slot
* 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 PCMICA card slot include:
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 PCMICA 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).  
+
*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)
**CD-Rom Controller (Archos CD-Rom drive)
**External Harddrive (Archos External HD)
**External Harddrive (Archos External HD)

Revision as of 01:30, 26 November 2008

Over the years many different models of Amiga were released. Commodore and third party hardware developers utilised every possible idea to add hardware upgrades and expansions for all models of Amiga to expand them with more ram, faster processors, harddrives, sound cards, network cards.. etc.

This section of the classicamiga Wiki will explore the variety of expansions available to show some of the possibilities available to get the most from each model of Amiga.

Contents

Amiga 1000

A2000/A1500/A2500

A500/A500+

A600

Commodore Amiga A600
Commodore Amiga 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.

Expansion Ports

  • Trapdoor Memory slot

The trapdoor slot is designed specifically for the 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.

  • 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 with a version number of 37.500.

  • 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 PCMICA 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)
    • Network Card (both wired and wireless)
    • Dialup Modems
    • Compact Flash memory card adaptors
    • Sound Sampler
    • Video Digitiser

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.

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.

A1200

A4000

CDTV

CD32

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