A600 Project

[Harrison]

While upgrading my A1200 I decided I might as well also upgrade my A600.

It will end up having:


A600 with 1MB chip ram expansion (2MB chip ram total)
2MB PCMCIA SRAM Card (2MB fast ram)
6GB 2.5" IDE HD
3.1 Kickstart rom

And to add later:


Buffered IDE Inteface
IDEFix'97
Laptop CD-Rom Drive
CF to IDE adapter and CF card

I will post some pictures once it is complete.

One question. I've heard from some that IDEFix'97 conflicts with CF card adapters. Is that true?

[Zetr0]

IDEFix97... conflicts with CF cards?!

NOOOooOOoooooo Wayyyyy

some CF cards dont play ball with HDToolsBox but you can use HDInstTools instead :) job done

[Harrison]

I fitted the 3.1 rom to the A600 today, but when I tried to boot the Amiga it doesn't do anything. The screen remains black and the caps lock key stays on all the time. There is no clicking from the floppy disk drive, so I assume it didn't even get to that point and didn't even load the rom.

So I swapped the rom back to the original KS2 rom but it now won't boot with that either. Same black screen and caps lock light on constantly.

I've never had a single problem getting this A600 to work in the past. It was always started and booted disks perfectly. Only since putting the KS3.1 rom chip into the system has it stopped working.

Could the 3.1 rom chip have somehow killed the A600? :unsure:

I've checked the motherboard and all caps and other parts are present and look OK. There are no blown or bulging caps etc...

What else could be wrong?

[Harrison]

Finally a proper update. I've got the A600 up and running again.A replacement motherboard was needed in the end.

It now has:

KS3.1 rom
1MB trap door chip ram expansion
2MB PCMCIA SRam card
6GB 2.5" IDE drive

So the system specs are A600 with KS3.1, 2MB chip ram and 2MB Fast Ram, 6GB HD.

I might still add a CF Card adapter or CD-Rom drive later to make the transfer of files to the system easier, but for the moment this is fine for my needs.

Last thing I need to do is setup the HD and find the spare 2.5" IDE cable I know I've got somewhere but can't currently find. I'm probably going to install the GAAE A600 version of ClassicWB on the drive.

Actually. As this A600 now has KS3.1 would the ClassicWB lite work? Or is it recommended to just stick with ClassicWB GAAE?

[Buleste]

Just had a quick look and lite require an 020 as minimum. Everything else you have is all right though.

[Harrison]

OK. Thanks. I will stick with using GAAE then. I've now setup the HD with the SFS filesystem and will copy over the OS later. Just need to find that damn IDE cable now. :hmmm:

[Harrison]

Damn. I still can't find one of the two 44pin IDE cables I know I have somewhere (they came out of my A1200's originally). Must be in my parents loft somewhere among the junk I'm still storing up there.

Does anyone have a spare 2.5" IDE cable for an A600/A1200 they could send me?

[Buleste]

I've got at least one. They're only 2-3cm in length though.

[Harrison]

That would be fine. I only need it to connect from the A600's IDE port to a 2.5" IDE drive, which will be sitting in the original A600's HD drive cradle.

[Buleste]

I think i still have your address from earlier this year so i'll get it sent to you.

[Harrison]

That's great. Cheers mate. :)

[Buleste]

That'll be one winning euromillions lottery ticket please!!!;)

[Buleste]

I lied. I've lost your address. Can you either PM me or email it to me and i'll send you the cable.

[Bloodwych]

OK. Thanks. I will stick with using GAAE then. I've now setup the HD with the SFS filesystem and will copy over the OS later. Just need to find that damn IDE cable now. :hmmm:

I have a beta ClassicWB 68000 (how many versions!!!) that is a modified version of the LITE. Doesn't have the character of the GAAE version as it's missing Paul's touch and the hand drawn dockbar - plus the games he chose aren't there either.

Allows Workbench 3.0/3.1 and I've replaced most of the 020 stuff although some libs and C programs might have remained until the final version. All the programs work however. Give me a shout if you want it.

I think SFS requires an 020??? Worth checking before committing your data to it!

[Harrison]

Got the cable at the weekend. Regarding SFS. I already set the HD up though WinUAE, so hopefully SFS will work when I connect it all up. Otherwise that is going to be a bit annoying having to change it all and reformat again. Will let you know how it goes.

[Harrison]

Damn! It looks like you were right and SFS does need at least an 020 CPU for the cache. On my A600 the HD won't boot. The system throws up a DH0: cannot be read error box and a reset then gives me a red guru memory error. :(

What other third filesystem options do I have to format the whole of the 6GB HD for the A600? I don't really want to lose 2GB from the disk.

[Bloodwych]

I'm not sure what your options are, but can suggest things to look into.

PFS has direct SCSI mode which should allow up to 8GB without any kind of extra SCSI patch, but I think it's commercial. I also don't know if it's 020 as well.

Some info in my 4GB thread might be useful:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32256

NSDpatch and a newer fastfile system could be a way forward. Again, you'll need to check the requirements first.

[Buleste]

PFS does work with a 68000. However it's a pain in the arse to set up and I could only get any partitions under the first 4GB to work.

[Harrison]

Rather than going to the hassle of trying to setup another alternative filesystem and getting it working on the A600 I instead decided to just wipe the HD and repartitioned it with good old FFS, keeping within the first 4GB of the HD space. This means I've lost a couple of GB from the 6.4GB HD, but the total size of all the files (ClassicWB + KGWHD game and demo packs) only totally 2.9GB so I still have over 1GB free.

And it works! :D

Booted up fine and I tried a couple of WHDLoad demos and games and they all loaded fine. So finally this little A600 upgrade project is complete.

Not the most adventurous upgrade project ever, but it was all I wanted.

It consists of:

A600
Kickstart 3.1 rom
1MB chip ram trapdoor upgrade
2MB SRAM PCMCIA card
6.4GB 2.5" IDE HD (formatted to 4GB)

So total spec is A600 with KS3.1, 2MB chip and 2MB fast, 6GB HD (4GB formatted).

Only thing I did notice is that the anticlick utility doesn't seem to be working. The program is in the C directory, and the entry is in the user-startup file. However the drive still clicks. Any ideas? This is how it was configured as standard with the ClassicWB GAAE setup. I haven't changed anything.

Future upgrades I might add to the A600 in the future might be:

Buffered IDE interface
CF or SD card reader
laptop CD-Rom drive

Question: If I add a buffered IDE interface and IDEFix would I then be able to use all of the 6.4GB HD more easily? And if so what filesystem would be best?

[Buleste]

In theory yes as IDEFix has TD64 etc supported however it's the file system that's the key. If you D/l the ffstd64 patch from here (http://aminet.net/disk/misc/ffstd64.lha) you should be able to use all your hard drive even if you are only using WB2.04. Are you using the standard IDE or the cheap IDE interface from AmigaKit at the moment. If you D/l that ffstd64 patch you should be able to use all the hard drive without an interface.

[Harrison]

I'm not using a buffered interface at all in the A600, so I think I will try this ffstd64 patch and see what happens. Cheers for the link.

I take it I still need to limit each partition to 2GB or less?

[Buleste]

From what I've just read in the documentation then yes <2GB partitions.

[Harrison]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Finished copying everything over to the HD. Booted fine in WinUAE and when tested in the A600. Then today I went to fix the drive inside the A600 properly and the system wouldn't boot when I tested it. I checked the cables and they were fine. So popped the drive back into the USB caddy. Windows detected the drive, but the drive won't boot in WinUAE now and doesn't show up as a drive in HDToolkit.

After all that has it suddenly died? It spins up fine and makes the usual initial seeking sounds and Windows reports the drive as the correct make and model.

[Buleste]

Have you tried booting WB on the 600 via floppy and checking the hard drive from that?

[Harrison]

Good idea. I hadn't tried that yet. So far I tried booting the drive directly in WinUAE, and then booting a WB ADF to see if the partitions would show up, but they didn't. I will try it on the real system, but I have the feeling it might not work because the drive didn't even show up in HDToolkit.

[Buleste]

Hopefully it may show up on a real Miggy. There is an alternative to HDToolbox. If i can find it I'll put a link to it as it should be on Aminet.

[Graham Humphrey]

HDInstTools I believe is what you're thinking of?

[woody.cool]

I usually use HDInstTools, as it's far more versatile than HDToolBox

[Harrison]

Cheers. I will give that a try.

On putting the HD back in the USB caddy and looking at the drive in Windows Disk Management it is showing the disk correctly, but with a status of Unallocated. Either this is due to the Amiga disk partitioning that it doesn't understand, or the drive has somehow lost it's RDB.

Are there any free RDB restoring/salvaging utilities I can try?

[Harrison]

I've currently scanning the HD with the shareware recovery utility RDB-Salv. So far it is about 50% of the way through the disk and seems to be finding the partitions, so it does look like the RDB somehow got erased or corrupted. Hopefully this utility will sort it out and create a new one.

I've taken the opportunity to add this utility to the software database as it seems very useful and quite easy to use. Although you do need to read though the readme text file included to get a full run through of what you need to do and the order to do it in.

[Buleste]

Here's (http://aminet.net/disk/misc/hdinst.lha) the link I hinted at and Woody.cool named. It's supposed to be much better than HDtoolbox in WB3.0 and 3.1 and can do the larger hard drives.

[Harrison]

I had some trouble restoring the RDB. RDB-Salv is a great tool but it seems that when scanning the HD for partitions it thinks that each of the WHDLoad games are a different partition, and with the complete set of KGWHD games and demos on the HD that is a lot of partitions it thought it was finding, so it eventualy crashed!

I did have a complete mirror of the A600's HD on my PC so I instead thought I would give HDInstTools a try. I fired it up, wiped the existing HD structure and setup some new partitions. I liked HDInstTools. Worked well and detected the HD sizes and partition sizes correctly. Only issue is you don't have very precise control over partition sizes using the slider to adjust them. But it was good enough, and much easier to use that HDToolkit.

I'm now copying everything onto the drive again. Just a load of WHDLoad games to go then it's ready to stick back in the A600. Fingers crossed it works this time. :)

[Harrison]

Here's (http://aminet.net/disk/misc/hdinst.lha) the link I hinted at and Woody.cool named. It's supposed to be much better than HDtoolbox in WB3.0 and 3.1 and can do the larger hard drives.

You are still restricted by the 4GB and 2GB partitions using FFS though. But it is definitely a better tool. I would be good if it had some kind or warnings though for going over the 4GB limits.

I've decided to stick with the first 4GB of space and leave the other 2GB unpartitioned for now.

[Harrison]

Finally it is finished! :D

The A600 case is screwed back together and the HD is booting nicely into ClassicWB GAAE with all of the WHDLoad game and demo packs from KG installed.

I had to eventually just wipe the HD again and repartition, then copy the backup onto the drive again. And this time I've made a backup of the RDB just in case it happens again.

On final testing part of the keyboard wasn't working, but taking the ribbon cable out and then refitting it at the motherboard end fixed that.

The only issue left now is that I can't get the internal floppy drive to stop clicking! Anticlick is loading in the user-startup, but it continues to click! Any ideas?

[Buleste]

You could try any of these. (http://aminet.net/search?query=noclick)