New Amiga A600 Chip Ram expansion A603

[Harrison]

Whilst looking at the Amigakit site I spotted that they have the A600 1MB Chip ram expansion A603 in stock for £35.99.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=879

Quite expensive, but it is the only way to expand the chip ram of an A600 to 2MB these days. It also has some advanced features, including a clockport to be able to connect and use some of the same clockport expansions available for the A1200 such as subway USB, silversurfer or Delfina.

It also interestingly has an expansion port for an upcoming ECS version of the famous Indivision flicker fixer. And reading some info this flicker fixer will be able to work with all OCS/ECS systems including A500/+, A600, A2000 and A3000.

The A600 will only be able to use it however in combination with this chip ram A603 expansion that has an adapter for it (I assume this is because of the A600's surfaced mounted chip design?). Vesalia are advertising a budle with both at http://www.vesalia.de/e_indivisionecs.htm but with no prices yet.

This could give you a very nice A600 system. And add the A608 8MB fast ram expansion for the A600 that is currently being manufactered by Zetro and a couple of other members of the Amiga community and it would be an amazing little Amiga.

Imagine the spec you could build:

• A600
• 2MB Chip Ram
• 8MB Fast Ram
• Scandoubler/flickerfixer
• Kickstart rom switcher with 2.05 and 3.1 roms (or maybe 3.1 and 1.3)
• buffered IDE interface
• Internal 2.5" IDE HDD or CF card adapter
• Internal laptop CD-Rom drive.

That would make one amazing little Amiga. I'm so tempted.

The only thing missing is an accelerator, but the 030 A600 ones are so rare and have a load of overheating issues, so it's not worth it. Better to opt for an A1200 if speed is what you need.

[Tiago]

I received my A603 today from Amigakit.com !!!!

Looks very nice,

It says on the board:
"don't use the elevator It's afraid of heights" must be a reference to those adapters that rise the board a bit from the m.board....

also says on the other side, "don't panic" .... i got no idea of this one.... :-)

[Harrison]

Don't Panic is a famous quote from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe it is related to that, and just trying to be funny.

[Tiago]

I read "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" some time ago, but i didn't associate it... Maybe...

---------- Post added at 05:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:46 PM ----------

And what about top part of the card, it looks like it has a Kickstart ROM Socket.
Is it for the future expansion to ECS ficker fixer ?

The clock port could be a good thing... maybe i put a usb later?

[Harrison]

In Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the actual guide has "Don't Panic!" written in large friendly letters on the cover.

The chip socket on the A603 is indeed ready for the ECS flicker fixer. On the A500/A2000 the ECS flicker fixer works by replacing the display custom chip with the ECS Flicker Fixer, and the original Amiga custom chip is placed in the Flicker Fixer's chip socket.

With the A600, because all of the custom chips are surface mounted this wasn't possible, so instead the flicker fixer will be connected via the A603.

The clockport will indeed be useful. My only worry is the speed of the A600's 68000. Will it be able to cope with running USB ports or a sound card?

[Tiago]

I setup today the A603, works fine
I remove the shield as they said, it could make a short-circuit .... the card would fit ok with the shield, but i remove it.

My A600 is Rev 2.05 37.300 so i can only go to 40Mb HD.
I will now change the ROM

Any reason i should not go to 3.1 instead of 2.05 37.350 ?

[Harrison]

I'm using a 3.1 rom in my A600 and it works perfectly fine.

The only reason for sticking with a kickstart 2.05 37.350 (if you could find one) would be for some games and software that won't be compatible with 3.1 roms. You could still use the ReLoKick 1.3 disk to boot the A600 into Kickstart 1.3 for anything that won't run.

A rom switcher could be a good solution, but then I would be tempted to have 3.1 and 1.3 roms for compatibility with old software. Although I expect 2MB of chip ram will cause more compatibility issues than the rom version.

[Tiago]

Cool i will look for a 3.1 chip for A600

[Harrison]

When looking for a 3.1 rom for your A600 remember that it was the same rom for the A500, A1500, A2000 and A600. So if you see a 3.1 rom listed as being for any of these Amigas it will work in the A600.

Failing that you could get someone to burn you an EPROM of Kickstart 3.1. Zetr0 did this for me for my A600 and it works fine.

[Tiago]

When looking for a 3.1 rom for your A600 remember that it was the same rom for the A500, A1500, A2000 and A600. So if you see a 3.1 rom listed as being for any of these Amigas it will work in the A600.

Failing that you could get someone to burn you an EPROM of Kickstart 3.1. Zetr0 did this for me for my A600 and it works fine.

Yes,
the AMIGA 600 kickstart Rom 3.1 ver.40.63
Looks like it's a single rev for the 600.... 40.63