Amiga 600
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| Commodore Amiga 600 | |
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| Type | Home computer |
| Released | 1992 |
| Discontinued | 1993 |
| Processor | Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz 7.09 MHz (PAL) |
| Memory | 1 MiB (6 MiB Maximum) |
| OS | Amiga OS 2.0 |
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600 (codenamed "June Bug" after a B-52's song), was a home computer introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 was the final model of the original A500-esque line based around the Motorola 68000 processor, it was essentially a redesign of the A500 Plus. It was intended by manufacturer Commodore International to revitalise sales of the A500 line before the introduction of the 32-bit Amiga 1200.
A notable aspect of the A600 was its small size. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 was 14" long by 9.5" deep by 3" high and weighed approximately 6 pounds.
It came with AmigaOS 2.0 and was generally considered more user-friendly than its older brethren. It was aimed at the lower "consumer" end of the market, with the higher end being dominated by the A3000.
According to Dave Haynie, the A600 "was supposed to be $50–$60 cheaper than the A500, but it came in at about that much more expensive than the A500."[1] This is supported by the fact that the A600 was originally to have been numbered the A300, positioned as a budget version of the A500+. In the event, the cost led the machine to be marketed as a replacement for the A500+, requiring a change of number. Early models feature motherboards with the A300 designation.
The Managing Director of Commodore UK, David Pleasance, described the A600 as a "complete and utter screw-up". It was unexpandable, did not improve on the A500's CPU, was more expensive than the A500, and lacked a numeric keypad, meaning that games such as F19 Stealth Fighter, Railroad Tycoon and productivity software could not be used without a numpad emulator.
The A600 was the first Amiga ever manufactured in the UK. The factory was in Irvine, Scotland. The first ever production A600 — serial number "1" — sat in the Commodore UK Managing Director's office.
It had a failure rate under warranty of 0.78%, much better than the A500's rate of 8.25%.[citation needed]
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[edit] Processor and RAM
The A600 used the Motorola 68000 processor, running at 7.09 MHz (PAL) or 7.14 MHz (NTSC).
Standard RAM was 1 MiB, though many people upgraded to the maximum of 2 MiB "chip" RAM. An additional 4 MiB of "fast" RAM could be added if the PCMCIA slot was employed. Even more "fast" RAM could be added with a processor upgrade.
The original design did not intend processor upgrades expansion as the 68000 was soldered to its motherboard. Despite this, unofficial processor upgrades included the Motorola 68010, 68020 (at up to 25 MHz), and 68030 (at up to 50 MHz) processors. (The processor was upgraded not by unseating the 68000 and dropping in another chip, but rather by adding a new motherboard and chip to an expansion slot, which then commandeered the system bus.) Additionally, up to 32 MiB of "fast" RAM could be added with some processor upgrades.
[edit] Graphics and sound
The Fat Agnus display chip drove screen modes varying from 320×200 pixels to 1280×512 pixels. Generally only 32 colours were available, but there was an extra-half-bright mode that allowed each of the 32 colours in the palette to be dimmed to half its normal brightness. A memory-intensive 4096 colour "HAM" mode could be used at lower resolutions. At its highest resolutions, only 4 colours could be displayed at once.
Sound was 4 channel, with two channels for the left speaker and two for the right. Resolution was 8 bit. Sound was unchanged from the original Amiga designs.
[edit] Peripherals and expansion
One 3.5" internal floppy drive was standard and a second could be added externally. Two DE9 ports for joysticks, mice, and lightpens were included, plus a standard 25-pin RS-232 serial port and 25-pin Centronics parallel port.
Other expansion connectors included the PCMCIA Type II slot and the internal 44-pin ATA interface (for the 20 or 40 MB 2.5" disks — both expensive for the time). The model with the integral ATA drives was sold — for almost double the price of a standard A600 — as the "A600HD", with a white rather than cream outer casing, and was marketed as a more "scholarly" version of a home computer hitherto best known for its extensive range of games. Some games, however, were used to using every last system resource available to the standard Amiga so, for example, to run some games such as Civilization from the Hard disk a memory expansion to take the available RAM higher than the standard 1 MiB was required.
Other add-ons included MIDI interfaces and sound samplers.
[edit] Operating System
The Amiga 600 was shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, consisting of Workbench 2.0 and a Kickstart ROM which was either version 37.299, 37.300 or 37.350 (Commodore's internal version numbers). Confusingly, all three ROMs were officially designated as version "2.05".
Early revisions of the Amiga 600 were shipped with Kickstart version 37.299, which, to the surprise of some, neither had support for the internal ATA controller, nor for the PCMCIA interface. Although it was possible to load the necessary drivers from a floppy disk, it wasn't possible to boot directly from ATA or PCMCIA devices. Only later models of the Amiga 600 and especially the Amiga 600HD were equipped with Kickstart 37.300 or 37.350, which both were able to utilize those devices at boot time. Due to bugs in Kickstart 37.300, the maximum supported size of a hard drive was limited to 40 MB. Everything above this size was a game of chance. In contrast, version 37.350 was capable of supporting hard drives up to 4 GB.
Later it was possible to buy an updated Workbench 2.1. It featured a localization of the operating system in several languages and had a "CrossDOS" driver which provided read/write support for FAT (MS-DOS) formatted media like floppy disks or hard drives. It was a pure software update. Kickstart ROMs designated as 2.1 never existed. Workbench 2.1 ran on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family.
[edit] Bundled software
Originally the computer came bundled with one of Lemmings, Captain Planet & the Planeteers Shadow of the Beast III, and Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants, all of which had been bundled with the A500+, and the sophisticated-for-the-time Electronic Arts graphics package Deluxe Paint 3. Shortly afterwards the Wild Weird and Wicked bundle was launched, featuring Formula One Grand Prix, Pushover and Putty. Many retailers added a bundle of more up-to-date games, including Zool and Pinball Dreams.
[edit] Technical specifications
- CPU: Motorola 68000 (7.16 MHz NTSC, 7.09 MHz PAL).
- Chipset: ECS (Enhanced Chip Set)
- Memory:
- Removable Storage:
- 3.5" DD Floppy drive, capacity 880 KiB.
- Internal Storage:
- ATA-Controller supporting PIO-2 transfer mode.
- Input/Output connections:
- Composite TV out (PAL versions sold in Europe and Australia, NTSC elsewhere).
- Analogue RGB video plug (DB23) at 15.75KHz HSync (for most resolutions)
- RCA audio plugs
- 2 × Game/Joy ports (DE9)
- RS232 Serial port
- Centronics Parallel port (DB25)
- Port for external floppy drive (DB23)
- 16-bit Type II PCMCIA slot
- Software (Bundled):
- AmigaOS 2.0 operation system. (Kickstart 2.0/Workbench 2.0)
[edit] References
- ^ Haynie, Dave, "Re: Amiga CPU is similar to Mac CPU", Usenet (comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc). Posted 2002-11-04, article retrieved from Google Groups archive on 2006-11-09.
- Tim Smith and Chris Lloyd, "Chewing the Facts", Amiga Format, Annual 1994, p 107.
- Karl Foster (ed), "10 Totally Amazing Euro-Amiga Facts", "Amiga Format", Annual 1993, p 55.
[edit] External links
- History page
- The Extreme A600 Upgrade Page
- Amiga-Classics
- A600 specifications and motherboard photos
- More A600 specifications including processor and RAM upgrades
- Dedicated to the classic Amiga
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| MOS Technology 6502-based (8-bit) | MOS/CBM KIM-1 • PET/CBM • CBM-II (aka B/P series) • VIC-20/VC-20 • C64 • SX-64 • C16 & 116 • Plus/4 • C128 |
| Motorola 68000-based (16-bit/32-bit) | Amiga 1000 • Amiga 500 • Amiga 2000 • Amiga 2500 • Amiga 1500 • Amiga CDTV • Amiga 3000 • Amiga 3000UX • Amiga 3000T • Amiga 500+ • Amiga 600 • Amiga 1200 • Amiga 4000 • Amiga 4000T |
