A600 Project

[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.

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!

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 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.