Amiga 500 vs. Amiga 600
Christopher Ogut
I'm considering purchasing either an Amiga 500 or 600, for playing older
disk-based games and eventual upgrade. My question is, which of these
would me most compatible with older Amiga games? I remember reading
somewhere that the Amiga 600 was unable to play some older games and use
some early software for some reason or another. I understand that the
overall architecture is generally the same, except for the 600 having
2.x ROMs and a Fatter Agnus. Would this pose any problems as far as compatibility?
I guess if they're basically the same as far as compatibility goes, I'd
buy an Amiga 600. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Chris
Stot
Stot
--
600/020,25/8F/2C/800HD/16xCD/Squirrel
500/030,50/32F/1C/840HD/(trying to get picasso working)
Darrin01311
ROM and make it act like a A500 - plus you can run all those AGA games.
If it has to be an A500 or A600 then consider this:
A500 - pros: excellent "old game" compatibility
cons: limited memory and older graphics chipset restricts newer
games.
limited expansion options.
A600 - pros: Built in IDE to add a hard drive.
PCMCIA slot can take a SCSI CD ROM with squirrel.
cons: Lack of a full size keyboard causes problems with games
that need the numeric keypad.
Limited expansion options.
No AGA.
Darrin01311
Darrin01311
F. Heitkamp
darri...@cs.com (Darrin01311) writes:
>
>Forget both and get an A1200. You can always use Relockick to run a soft 1.3
>ROM and make it act like a A500 - plus you can run all those AGA games.
>
on my A2000 that won't play on the A4000T. Some of these games need
to boot in the floppy drive. They have some sort of copy protection
so that you can't (at least I can't) copy the disks.
Fred
Daniel Miller
footprint of an A500. I think the A600 has good compatibility with old
games, but of course the A500 is better in that respect because the
old games were largely written for the A500.
A guy elsewhere in this thread said you can softkick a 1.3 ROM in an
A600 and that is true but you need the memory, and it's not totally
legal last time I checked (unless you own the ROM or the Amiga Forever
license). And its a pain in the butt to configure that stuff. War in
Middle Earth is an old game which I could not run on my A600. I tried
softkicking a 1.3 ROM and booted Workbench 1.3 okay, but the WiME
program would still not run for some reason. I would be interested to
know if anyone is ever able to run WiME on a more recent Amiga.
That is an exception though. I do believe you get good compatibility
with the A600 so that is what you should get. Oops you say you want
future upgradeability too, and you can probably find A500 upgrades
more easily, oh well.
Darrin01311
use is called Relokick, but there is another called Kick13 (and probably
more). They should be on Aminet somewhere - mine came on an old UK magazine
coverdisk. When you run it it loads the 1.3 kickstart into RAM and then resets
the Amiga with no access to added drives. You end up with the old 1.3 static
"insert floppy disk" screen and as a result a hell of a lot of programs that
wouldn't work before suddenly do.
Mark T
"F. Heitkamp" wrote:
> >
> >Forget both and get an A1200. You can always use Relockick to run a soft 1.3
> >ROM and make it act like a A500 - plus you can run all those AGA games.
> >
> Does this work on a A4000T?
Yes
> I have some old games that I played
> on my A2000 that won't play on the A4000T. Some of these games need
> to boot in the floppy drive. They have some sort of copy protection
> so that you can't (at least I can't) copy the disks.
There are loads of installers for these games on Aminet. Just search for the name
of the game you want to run and it will probably be there. The installers make an
image of the disk (bit like an ADF I suppose) and bypass the copy protection. They
also "fix" the game so it will work with more modern hardware, such as OS3.x and
AGA chipset.
--
Mark
Powered by: Amiga 1200T, Apollo 040/40, 2C 32F, 8.4G HD, 24x CD, Z100,
AteoBus+Pixel64+AteoIO, running OS3.9 and loving it!
Eelke Blok
"Darrin01311" <darri...@cs.com> wrote in message
news:20010302210027...@ng-mi1.news.cs.com...
> Doesn't the A600 have Kickstart 2.1 ROMS?
There's no such thing as 2.1 ROMs, A600s have 2.0x ROMs, when they have been
kept unaltered.
> Or did you degrade your machine?
Yes, because see above.
It's an interesting insight that an A600 with a 1.3 ROM will run more old
games than an A500 will (why?), but, assuming we take the poster's word for
it, it shouldn't be forgotten it's not an everyday thing, an A600 with 1.3
ROMs, so it's questionabel of how much use this is to the original poster. I
think it's possible to still buy 1.3 ROMs, but I'm not sure.
Cheers,
Eelke
Stot
The 600 ran GODS when my 500 wouldnt recently also Lotus II wouldnt get to
the protection bit just said protection failed on the 500, ran fine on the
600. There were others.
Only problem I see with a 1.3 rom in an A600 is ive heard some games/demos
NEED fast ram and even with the expansion slot filled you still only have
chip ram, I never found any of these games though.
Comparing the two I would say the 600 is a better stand alone games machine
( with an option of 1.3 rom ) and the 500 is better for expansion.
Darrin01311
many games have given you trouble due to the lack of a numeric keypad? I have
a few simulation programs that wouldn't work without a keypad and I can't
imagine playing Civilization without one either. Does the A600 provide keypad
remapping onto other keys in a similar fashion to a PC laptop?
Darrin
Patrick Ford
> Doesn't the A600 have Kickstart 2.1 ROMS?
No, 2.05.
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Craig H. Ganoe
>Darrin01311 wrote:
>> Doesn't the A600 have Kickstart 2.1 ROMS?
>
>No, 2.05.
or if you're unlucky 2.04. Some shipped with 2.04 and then
you needed to upgrade to 2.05 to use the IDE interface.
Craig
Stot
Stot
Ville Jouppi
>A600 - pros: Built in IDE to add a hard drive.
I was thinking to myself - would it be possible to take the A3000 1.3 image,
swap the scsi.device for the IDE scsi.device found in A600, 1200, 4000 roms..
Then you'd have bootable harddisk support in 1.3 on the above machines..
Gl...@canit.se
+Darrin01311 <darri...@cs.com> wrote
>Forget both and get an A1200. You can always use Relockick to run a soft 1.3
>ROM and make it act like a A500 - plus you can run all those AGA games.
>If it has to be an A500 or A600 then consider this:
>A500 - pros: excellent "old game" compatibility
> cons: limited memory and older graphics chipset restricts newer
>games.
The gfx is the same as A600 (ok, A600 has ECS, but no games using that)
> limited expansion options.
There are LOADS of expansions for A500, but ok.. not new maybe..
>A600 - pros: Built in IDE to add a hard drive.
..Wich doesn't work in 9 cases out of 10 if you doesn't bought it with
harddrive and/or bought a new kickstartROM.
> PCMCIA slot can take a SCSI CD ROM with squirrel.
..And the A500 can take a SCSI-CDROm with a SCSI-controller.. no pro.
> cons: Lack of a full size keyboard causes problems with games
>that need the numeric keypad.
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Ville Jouppi
>Does the A600 provide keypad
>remapping onto other keys in a similar fashion to a PC laptop?
Heh, nope. The only way to do this is to either connect the keyboard from an
A500 or a big-box Amiga, or install a PC keyboard adapter in the machine..
Eelke Blok
"Ville Jouppi" <vjo...@sci.fi> wrote in message
news:unq4atoqmhfo6p7o8...@4ax.com...
I'm sure it should be possible to do it in the OS, but then again, most
OS-programs do not distinguish between the numpad and the equivalent keys
elsewhere anyway. And it wouldn't help non-OS software.
Maybe a neat hardware hack: provide numpad emulation in hardware for the
A600?
Cheers,
Eelke
Mick Foster
How we do folks,
"Ville Jouppi" <vjo...@sci.fi> wrote in message
news:unq4atoqmhfo6p7o8...@4ax.com...
It's program dependent. DPaint IV had a patch to remap the numpad keys as
did a few others IIRC. Check on Aminet.
The A600 is the one model of Amiga I never got. An A500 Plus with a GVP
Impact and ROM switcher was a much better route to go for compatibility and
expansion. A great pity they never made more of them than they did :-(((
Cheers,
Mick.
It would seem to me that the powers that be mic...@libertysurf.co.uk
Keep themselves in splendour and security mic...@freeuk.com
And then deny all responsibility... M.Fo...@TheSoftwareTailor.co.uk
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Ronald Teune
F. Heitkamp wrote in message <3aa05...@news1.prserv.net>...
Ross Vumbaca
Daniel Miller wrote:
> The Amiga 600 is the most aesthetic Amiga. It has barely half the
> footprint of an A500. I think the A600 has good compatibility with old
> games, but of course the A500 is better in that respect because the
> old games were largely written for the A500.
> A guy elsewhere in this thread said you can softkick a 1.3 ROM in an
> A600 and that is true but you need the memory, and it's not totally
> legal last time I checked (unless you own the ROM or the Amiga Forever
> license). And its a pain in the butt to configure that stuff. War in
This is pointless, when you could install a real 1.3 ROM in an A600
(with a ROM sharer even). They don't cost much.
Regards,
Ross..
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http://www.fl.net.au/~rossv
Running an Amiga 3000 (030/25), GVP Spectrum, C= A2065,
12Mb Fast/2Mb Chip, HD FDD, SCSI HDD's (never mind their size),
Kickstart 3.1 (40.68), OS 3.9, Linux m68k 2.2 (Debian 2.2r0).
--
Ronald Teune
Ville Jouppi wrote in message ...
>On 03 Mar 2001 01:25:48 GMT, darri...@cs.com (Darrin01311) wrote:
>
>>A600 - pros: Built in IDE to add a hard drive.
>
>I was thinking to myself - would it be possible to take the A3000 1.3
image,
>swap the scsi.device for the IDE scsi.device found in A600, 1200, 4000
, 500(+), 2000, 3000, etc. At least someone told me that.
>roms..
>Then you'd have bootable harddisk support in 1.3 on the above machines..
You can buy a silicon disk for that, as discussed in another thread.