Commodore Amiga Retro
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Commodore Amiga 600HD
So you`ve bought an A600
What is there to check on the machine ?And how much punishment can an A600 take
Amiga A600
Manufaturer: CommodoreYear: 1992
OS Amiga DOS Release 2 + WorKBench 2.x
CPU: Motorola 68000 7.14mhz
RAM: 1024 kilobytes
Expandable to 2 megabytes
Maximum RAM expansion 6MB with PCMCIA
ROM: 512 kilobytes
Video: CSG "Daphne/Denise" chip
Co-processors: Agnes (MMU), Daphne (video), Portia (Sound & I/O)
Text: 60 X 32 and 80 X 32
GRAPHIC MODES 320 x 256 / 320 x 512 / 640 x 256 / 640 x 512
Hires: 320 X 200 through 640 X 512
4096 colour palette
Colours 32 (for 320 x X modes), 16 (for 640 x X modes)
among 4096 + two special modes EHB (64 colors) and HAM
(4096 colors)
Sound: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip
Four voice stereo Sound
Ports: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip
25 pin Centronics Parallel port
25 pin RS232 Serial port
Stereo RF Sound plugs
9-pin Mouse/Joystick ports (X2)
25-pin Amiga Floppy port
23-pin Amiga Video port (DB23 15 kHz)
Composite RF Video port
PCMCIA Slot (Type II)
IDE Port
Hard Drive Controllers: 1 x 2.5" IDE Controller (unbuffered)
1 x 2.5" Hard Drive Cradle
Keyboard: Full-sized 78 key QWERTY
Full-stroke keyboard, 78 key (no numeric keypad)
Expansion Slots: 1 x 40 pin Trapdoor Slot
4 direction cursor-pad
Extra hardware:
Internal 880K 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive (DB23)
Weight 6 lbs
The A600 was released during the summer of 1992 and was
intended to replace the Amiga A500 Plus. The big shock to
Amiga users at the time was the size of the A600, just 14"
deep by 9.5" wide and 3" high. This was the smallest classic
Amiga yet and specifically aimed at the games console market
The machine boasted 1Mb of chip memory, ECS and Workbench 2.05.
Commodore managed to get the size down by shrinking the keyboard
by removing the numeric keypad. The machine also introduced
the PCMCIA slot which together with its 78 keys made it almost
laptop worthy. The slot was intended to allow expansion with
CD drives and the like. The fatter Agnus chip was fitted as
standard which allowed up to 2 Mb Chip RAM as standard and a
maximum RAM expansion of 6 Mb.
Although the computer had the internal design works for the
hard-drive only the latter machines were able to support the
hard-drive. Eventually an A600HD was released which had fitted
either 20, 40 or 80 Mb hard-drives
Evidently the original Amiga A600 was going to be sold as an
Amiga A300 and was supposed to be a low spec machine at a level
below the A500 series. In the end however the A500+ was cancelled
in favour of the A600. The machine was rebadged and sold at the
same price of the A500. Some of the first A600s shipped still
had the A300 stamped on the motherboards. These models had no
IDE interface and are very rare
Workbench
Workbench Release 2.05, v37.71, 37.72(Kickstart v37.299, 37.300, 37.350)
Released: 1992 With new ROM (512KB) and software
Was shipped with: Amiga 600, 600HD, available as update
Enhancements:
Hard drive support for larger than 40MB (from Kickstart v37.350)
High-density floppy drives supported
Support for PCMCIA slots via "CC0:" device (from Kickstart v37.300)
Internal IDE support (from Kickstart v37.300)
Recoverable RAM drive renamed to RAM_0:
Included "PrepCard" on the Extras disk for the PCMCIA slot
Important hard-drive info
Different variations of drives supported pre v37.350v37.350 the first version to have no size limit
4GB maximum drive supported generally
v37.299 Will not auto-boot any hard-drive v37.300 will boot drives only of 40Mb or smaller ( questionable)
There have been reports of 37.300 supporting bigger drives
v37.72 removed speech support
Although speech support was removed from 2.1 there is
evidence that some 2.05 disks were shipped without it
The Install disk was only shipped with Amigas with hard-drives
Some early A600s were shipped not with 2.05 but with 2.04
and thus had no internal IDE or PCMCIA support and therefore
unlucky early A600 owners had to upgrade the ROM chip to
so they could benefit from 2.05
Motherboard Revisions: Rev 1.0 (Extra chip below gayle
(CBM 391287-01) and is labelled A300)
Rev 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, 2B
Rev 2D (1/4" shorter than Rev 1.0)
No battery backed clock
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Last updated 07/10/06