Amiga 600

Infobox computer
Photo =
Name = Commodore Amiga 600
Type = Home computer
Released = 1992
Discontinued = 1993
CPU = Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz 7.09 MHz (PAL)
Memory = 1 MB
(6 MB 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 CPU and the ECS chipset. 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. AmigaOS 2.0 was included which was generally considered more user-friendly than AmigaOS 1.3.

Like the A500 before it, the A600 was aimed at the lower "consumer" end of the market, with the higher end being dominated by the Amiga 3000. It was essentially a redesign of the A500 Plus, with the option of an internal hard disk drive. It was intended by manufacturer Commodore International to revitalize sales of the A500 line before the introduction of the 32-bit Amiga 1200.

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."Haynie, Dave, [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc/browse_frm/thread/5764fad95e014a91/7d5c82eca35f0eb7?lnk=st "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.] 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".Fact|date=August 2007 In comparison to the popular A500 it was considered unexpandable, did not improve on the A500's CPU, was more expensive, and lacked a numeric keypad meaning that some existing software such as flight simulators and application software could not be used without a numerical pad emulator.

An "A600HD" model (with white rather than cream outer casing Fact|date=April 2007) was sold with an internal 2.5" ATA hard disk drive of either 20 or 40 MB. This model was marketed as a more "scholarly" version of a home computer hitherto best known for its extensive range of games and retailed at almost double the price of a standard A600. However, this hard disk support introduced some incompatibility with existing Amiga software because the memory used for hard disk control prevented some memory intensive titles from launching without adding additional RAM.

The A600 was the first Amiga model manufactured in the UK. The factory was in Irvine, Scotland. The first ever production A600 — serial number "1" — resided in the Commodore UK Managing Director's office.

Surface-mount technology used on the A600 lead to a failure rate under warranty of 0.78%, compared to the A500's failure rate of 8.25%.Fact|date=February 2007

Technical information

Processor and RAM

The A600 used the Motorola 68000 CPU, running at 7.09 MHz (PAL) or 7.16 MHz (NTSC).

Standard RAM was 1 MB, though it was possible to upgrade to 2 MB "chip" RAM using the trapdoor RAM expansion. An additional 4 MB of "fast" RAM could be added in the PC card slot using suitable SRAM cards to give a maximum RAM capacity of 6 MB. More "fast" RAM could be added with unofficial CPU upgrades.

The original design did not intend for CPU upgrades as the 68000 was soldered to its motherboard. Despite this, unofficial CPU upgrades included the Motorola 68010, 68020 (at up to 25 MHz), and 68030 (at up to 50 MHz). The processor was upgraded not by replacing the 68000, but rather by fitting a connector over the CPU, which allowed the upgraded CPU to commandeer the system bus. Additionally, up to 32 MB of "fast" RAM could be added with some processor upgrades [cite web|title=The Big Book of Amiga Hardware - Apollo 630|url=http://bboah.amiga-resistance.info/cgi-bin/showhardware_en.cgi?HARDID=91] .

Graphics and sound

The Fat Agnus display chip drove screen modes varying from 320×200 pixels to 1280×512 pixels. Generally only 32 colors were available, but there was an extra-half-bright mode that allowed each of the 32 colors in the palette to be dimmed to half its normal brightness. A memory-intensive 4096 color "HAM" mode could be used at lower resolutions. At its highest resolutions, only 4 colors 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.

Peripherals and expansion

The A600 featured Amiga compatible connectors including two DB9M ports for joysticks, mice, and light pens, a standard 25-pin RS-232 serial port and a 25-pin Centronics parallel port. Expansion capabilities new to the Amiga line were the PCMCIA Type II slot and the internal 44-pin ATA interface both controlled by the 'Gayle' custom chip. [cite web|title=Commodore A600|url=http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/cgi-bin/showhardware_en.cgi?HARDID=10 070726 amigahardware.mariomisic.de] [cite web|title=Commodore A600 Rev 1.5 Motherboard, Closeup (AT Attachment, Modulator) - 1124kB|url=http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/download_photos/a600mb_rev15_6.jpg 070726 amigahardware.mariomisic.de] [cite web|title=Linux/drivers/ide/legacy/gayle.c|url=http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/ide/legacy/gayle.c 070726 lxr.free-electrons.com, Source code of the Amiga 600 Gayle chip]

The A600 was the first of only two Amiga models to feature a built-in 16-bit PCMCIA Type II interface most commonly seen on laptop computers. This connector allows use of a number of compatible peripherals available for the laptop market, though only 16-bit (Type II) PCMCIA cards are hardware compatible, newer 32-bit CardBus or PC Card peripherals are incompatible. The port is not fully compliant with the PCMCIA Type II standard as the A600 was developed before the standard was finalized. The PCMCIA implementation on the A600 is almost identical to the one featured on the later Amiga 1200. A number of Amiga peripherals were released by third-party developers for this connector including SRAM cards, CD-ROM controllers, SCSI controllers, network cards, sound samplers and video digitizers. However, Commodore’s intended capability for expansion through this connector was largely unrealized at the time of release because of the prohibitive expense of PCMCIA peripherals for a budget home computer. [cite web|title=The Extreme Amiga 600 Upgrading Page - What the hell is an Amiga 600?|url= http://www.amiga600.de/whatisamiga600.htm] Later, a number of compatible laptop peripherals have been made to operate with the A600 including wired and wireless network cards, serial modems and CompactFlash adaptors.

The A600 was also compatible with many peripherals available for earlier Amiga models, such as external floppy disk drives, MIDI interfaces, Sound samplers and video digitizers.

Operating System

The A600 was shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, consisting of Workbench 2.0 and a Kickstart ROM chip which was either revision 37.299, 37.300 or 37.350 (Commodore's internal revision numbers). Confusingly, all three ROMs were officially designated as version "2.05".

Early revisions of the A600 were shipped with Kickstart revision 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 A600 and especially the A600HD 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.

Following release of AmigaOS 3.1 it was possible to upgrade the A600 by installing a compatible revision 40.xx Kickstart ROM.

Specifications

* CPU: Motorola 68000 at 7.16 MHz (NTSC) or 7.09 MHz (PAL)
* Memory:
** 1 MB Amiga Chip RAM by default, with the option of an additional 1 MB in the "trapdoor expansion slot"
** 512 kB Kickstart ROM
** Optionally up to 4 MB RAM in the PCMCIA-Slot
* Chipset: Enhanced Chip Set (ECS)
**Video (Common resolutions):
***320×200 with 32 colors, 64 colors in Halfbrite or 4096 in HAM-6
***640×400i with 16 colors
***640×480 with 4 colors
***800×600i with 4 colors (Super72)
***HSync rates of 15.60 to 31.44 kHz
**Audio (Paula):
*** 4 voices / 2 channels (Stereo)
*** 8-bit resolution / 6-bit volume
*** Up to 56 kHz sampling rate (depending on video mode in use)
*** 70 dB S/N ratio
* Removable Storage:
** 3.5" DD Floppy drive, capacity 880 KiB.
* Internal Storage:
** 44-pin ATA-Controller supporting PIO-2 transfer mode
* Input/Output connections:
** Analogue RGB video out (DB23)
** Composite video out (RCA)
** RF audio/video out (RCA)
** Audio out (2 × RCA)
** 2 × Mouse/Gamepad ports (DE9)
**RS-232 serial port (DB25)
**Centronics style parallel port (DB25)
** Floppy disk drive port (DB23)
** 16-bit Type II PCMCIA slot
*Operating System:
** AmigaOS 2.0 operating system (Kickstart 2.05/Workbench 2.05)

Bundled software

Commodore sold the A600 together with a number of software bundles. All packs included at least a stock A600, mouse, power supply, and Workbench disks.

A600 packs:
*'Lemmings' bundle (1992): "Lemmings" and the sophisticated-for-the-time Electronic Arts graphics package " Deluxe Paint III".
*'Robocop 3D' bundle (1992): "Robocop 3D", "", "Shadow of the Beast III", "Graphic Workshop" and "Microtext"
*'Wild, Weird and Wicked' bundle (late 1992, £349 launch price): "Formula One Grand Prix", "Pushover", "Putty" and " Deluxe Paint III"
* A600HD 'Epic/Language' bundle (1992, £499 launch price): including internal 20 MB hard disk drive, a word processor, "Trivial Pursuit", "", "Rome" and "Epic".

References

* 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.

External links

* [http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a600.html History page]
* [http://www.amiga600.de The Extreme A600 Upgrade Page]
* [http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=10 A600 specifications and motherboard photos]
* [http://amiga.resource.cx/mod/a600.html More A600 specifications including processor and RAM upgrades]