Amiga 600

The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal hard disk drive and a PCMCIA port. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 is only slightly larger than an IBM PC keyboard and weighing approximately 6 pounds. It shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, which was considered more user-friendly than earlier versions of the operating system.
Like the A500, the A600 was aimed at the lower end of the market. Commodore intended it to revitalize sales of the A500-related line before the introduction of the 32-bit Amiga 1200. According to Dave Haynie, the A600 "was supposed to be cheaper than the A500, but it came in at about that much more expensive." The A600 was originally to have been numbered the A300, positioning it as a lower-budget version of the Amiga 500 Plus.
An A600HD model was sold with an internal 2.5" ATA hard disk drive of either 20 or 40 MB.
Release.
The managing director of Commodore UK, David Pleasance, described the A600 as a "complete and utter screw-up". 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 which some existing software such as "F/A-18 Interceptor" required.
The A600 was the first Amiga model to be manufactured in the UK. The factory was in Irvine, Scotland, although some later examples were manufactured in Hong Kong. It was also manufactured in the Philippines.
Technical information.
The A600 shipped with a Motorola 68000 CPU, running at 7.09 MHz (PAL) or 7.16 MHz (NTSC) and 1 MB "chip" RAM with 80-ns access time.
Graphics and sound.
The A600 is the last Amiga model to use Commodore's Enhanced Chip Set (ECS), which can address 2 MB of RAM and adds higher resolution display modes. The so-called Super Agnus display chip can drive screen modes varying from 320×200 pixels to 1280×512 pixels, with different frequency sync. As with the original Amiga chipset, up to 32 colors can be displayed from a 12-bit (4096 color) palette at lower display resolutions. An extra-half-bright mode offers 64 simultaneous colors by allowing each of the 32 colors in the palette to be dimmed to half brightness. Additionally, a 4096-color "HAM" mode can be used at lower resolutions. At higher resolutions, such as 800×600i, only 4 simultaneous colors can be displayed.
Sound was unchanged from the original Amiga design, namely, 4 DMA-driven 8-bit channels, with two channels for the left speaker and two for the right.
The A600 was the first Amiga model with a built-in RF modulator (RCA), which allowed the A600 to be used with a standard CRT television without the need for a Commodore A520 RF Modulator adaptor.
Peripherals and expansion.
The A600 features Amiga-specific 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. As a result, the A600 is compatible with many peripherals available for earlier Amiga models, such as MIDI, sound samplers and video-capture devices.
Expansion capabilities new to the Amiga line were the PCMCIA Type II slot and the internal 44-pin ATA interface both most commonly seen on laptop computers. Both interfaces are controlled by the 'Gayle' custom chip. The A600 has internal housing for one 2.5" internal hard disk drive connecting to the ATA controller.
The A600 is the first of only two Amiga models to feature a PCMCIA Type II interface. This connector allows use of a number of compatible peripherals available for the laptop-computer market, although only 16-bit PCMCIA cards are hardware-compatible; newer 32-bit PC Card (CardBus) peripherals are incompatible. Mechanically, only Type I and Type II cards fit in the slot; thicker Type III cards will not fit (although they may connect if the A600 is removed from its original case). The port is also 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 a later Amiga, the 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-capture devices. Although PCMCIA was similar in spirit to Commodore's expansion architecture for its earlier systems, the intended capability for convenient external expansion through this connector was largely unrealized at the time of release because of the prohibitive expense of PCMCIA peripherals for a lower-budget personal computer. Later, a number of compatible laptop-computer peripherals have been made to operate with the A600, including network cards (both wired and wireless), serial modems and CompactFlash adapters.
Operating system.
The A600 shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, consisting of Workbench 2.0 and a Kickstart ROM revision 37.299, 37.300 or 37.350 (Commodore's internal revision numbers). Confusingly, all three ROM revisions were officially designated as version "2.05". Some early A600s shipped with Kickstart 37.299, which had neither support for the internal ATA controller, nor for the PCMCIA interface. Although it is possible to load the necessary drivers from floppy disk, it is not possible to boot directly from ATA or PCMCIA devices. Models fitted with Kickstart 37.300 or 37.350 can utilize those devices at boot time. Version 37.350 improved compatibility with ATA hard disks by increasing the wait time for disks to spin up during boot.
Bundled software.
In addition to the stock A600, mouse, power supply, and Workbench disk package, the A600 was available with the following software and hardware bundles:
Upgrades.
CPU.
Despite that the 68000 is soldered to the motherboard, unofficial CPU upgrades include the Motorola 68010, 68020 (at up to 25 MHz), and 68030 (at up to 50 MHz). The processor is upgraded not by replacing the 68000, but rather by fitting a connector over the CPU and commandeering the system bus. However, this approach caused instability problems with some board designs, prompting custom modifications for stable operation. As a result, such CPU expansions were largely unpopular.
Memory.
RAM can be upgraded to a maximum of 2 MB "chip RAM" using the trap-door expansion slot. An additional 4 MB of "fast RAM" can be added in the PC Card slot using a suitable SRAM card to reach a capacity of 6 MB. However, more "fast RAM" can be added with unofficial memory or CPU upgrades. For example, the A608 board adds up to a maximum of 8 MB additional RAM by connecting over the original 68000. Likewise, CPU upgrades can accommodate up to 64 MB.
Operating system.
It is possible to upgrade the A600 to Workbench 2.1. This features a localization of the operating system in several languages and has a "CrossDOS" driver providing read/write support for FAT (MS-DOS)-formatted media such as floppy disks or hard drives. Workbench 2.1 was a software only update which runs on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family.
Following the release of AmigaOS 3.1 in 1994 it was possible to upgrade the A600 by installing a compatible revision 40.63 Kickstart ROM.
Other.
The FPGA-driven Vampire adds 128MB Fastmem RAM, HDMI output, SD card for HDD storage and a 64-bit core with full 32-bit compatibility.