A600 Amiga DefinitionComputer Pages: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
A computer known as the Amiga or A1000 that was first released by Commodore in 1985. Commodore later released other models which include the A500, A500+, A600, A1200, A2000, A3000, and A4000. However, in 1994 Commodore declared bankruptcy and sold all its assets. A notable aspect of the A600 was its small size. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 was 14" long by 9.5" deep by 3" high and weighed approximately 6 pounds. It came with AmigaOS 2.0 and was generally considered more user-friendly than its older brethren. It was aimed at the lower "consumer" end of the market, with the higher end being dominated by the A3000. According to Dave Haynie, the A600 "was supposed to be $50–$60 cheaper than the A500, but it came in at about that much more expensive than the A500." This is supported by the fact that the A600 was originally to have been numbered the A300, positioned as a budget version of the A500+. In the event, the cost led the machine to be marketed as a replacement for the A500+, requiring a change of number. Early models feature motherboards with the A300 designation. The Managing Director of Commodore UK, David Pleasance, described the A600 as a "complete and utter screw-up". It was unexpandable, did not improve on the A500's CPU, was more expensive than the A500, and lacked a numeric keypad, meaning that games such as F19 Stealth Fighter, Railroad Tycoon and productivity software could not be used without a numpad emulator. The A600 was the first Amiga ever manufactured in the UK. The factory was in Irvine, Scotland. The first ever production A600 — serial number "1" — sat in the Commodore UK Managing Director's office. It had a failure rate under warranty of 0.78%, much better than the A500's rate of 8.25%. A600 Processor and RAMThe A600 used the Motorola 68000 processor, running at 7.09 MHz (PAL) or 7.14 MHz (NTSC). Standard RAM was 1 MiB, though many people upgraded to the maximum of 2 MiB "chip" RAM. An additional 4 MiB of "fast" RAM could be added if the PCMCIA slot was employed. Even more "fast" RAM could be added with a processor upgrade. The original design did not intend processor upgrades expansion as the 68000 was soldered to its motherboard. Despite this, unofficial processor upgrades included the Motorola 68010, 68020 (at up to 25 MHz), and 68030 (at up to 50 MHz) processors. Additionally, up to 32 MiB of "fast" RAM could be added with some processor upgrades. A600 Graphics and SoundThe Fat Agnus display chip drove screen modes varying from 320×200 pixels to 1280×512 pixels. Generally only 32 colours (or 64 "half tone") were available, although a memory-intensive 4096 colour "HAM" mode could be used at lower resolutions. At its highest resolutions, only 4 colours could be displayed at once. Sound was 4 channel, 8-bit. A600 Peripherals and ExpansionOne 3.5" internal floppy drive was standard and a second could be added externally. Two DE9 ports for joysticks, mice, and lightpens were included, plus a standard 25-pin RS-232 serial port and 25-pin Centronics parallel port.Other expansion connectors included the PCMCIA Type II slot and the internal 44-pin ATA interface (for the 20 or 40 MB 2.5" disks — both expensive for the time). The model with the integral ATA drives was sold — for almost double the price of a standard A600 — as the "A600HD", with a white rather than cream outer casing, and was marketed as a more "scholarly" version of a home computer hitherto best known for its extensive range of games. Some games, however, were used to using every last system resource available to the standard Amiga so, for example, to run some games such as Civilization from the Hard disk a memory expansion to take the available RAM higher than the standard 1 MiB was required. Other add-ons included MIDI interfaces and sound samplers. A600 Operating SystemThe Amiga 600 was shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, consisting of Workbench 2.0 and a Kickstart ROM which was either version 37.299, 37.300 or 37.350 (Commodore's internal version numbers). Confusingly, all three ROMs were officially designated as version "2.05". Early revisions of the Amiga 600 were shipped with Kickstart version 37.299, which, to the surprise of some, neither had support for the internal ATA controller, nor for the PCMCIA interface. Although it was possible to load the necessary drivers from a floppy disk, it wasn't possible to boot directly from ATA or PCMCIA devices. Only later models of the Amiga 600 and especially the Amiga 600HD were equipped with Kickstart 37.300 or 37.350, which both were able to utilize those devices at boot time. Due to bugs in Kickstart 37.300, the maximum supported size of a hard drive was limited to 40 MB. Everything above this size was a game of chance. In contrast, version 37.350 was capable of supporting hard drives up to 4 GB. Later it was possible to buy an updated Workbench 2.1. It featured a localization of the operating system in several languages and had a "CrossDOS" driver which provided read/write support for FAT (MS-DOS) formatted media like floppy disks or hard drives. It was a pure software update. Kickstart ROMs designated as 2.1 never existed. Workbench 2.1 ran on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family. A600 Bundled SoftwareOriginally the computer came bundled with one of Lemmings, Captain Planet & the Planeteers and Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants, all of which had been bundled with the A500+, and the sophisticated-for-the-time Electronic Arts graphics package Deluxe Paint 3. Shortly afterwards the Wild Weird and Wicked bundle was launched, featuring Formula One Grand Prix, Pushover and Putty. Many retailers added a bundle of more up-to-date games, including Zool and Pinball Dreams. Technical Specifications
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