PCMCIA memory 600 or 1200

[Miggy2TheMax]

Does anyone have any experience with using PCMCIA memory cards with either a 600 or 1200? I'm interested if any old PCMCIA memory card would work with the amiga? Or should I be looking for a particular type? Or does it have to be amiga specific?

Cheers!

[TikTok]

One thing I can tell you is that you think this memory will speed up your Amiga, you are mistaken. The PCMCIA bus is very slow and adding memory this way tends to make things slower, not faster. :eek

But apart from that, you don't need Amiga an specific card AFAIK, as long as it is the right form factor of course (PCMCIA Type II?).

[DrBong]

IIRC PCMCIA memory cards will only slow down the A1200 since the fast ram will be 16 bit. They should speed up the A600, but probably not as much as fast ram attached to an accelerator or located in the trapdoor.

[Amiga1992]

Best way to use a PCMCIA memory card, methinks, is as a RAM disk

[rgen]

The size of the card is limited to 4 MB and if you want to use it as a disk which contents is not flushed after switching off the power you need a SRAM card with a built in battery.

[Miggy2TheMax]

Originally posted by Akira
Best way to use a PCMCIA memory card, methinks, is as a RAM disk

I was hoping to use a 4mb pcmcia card for whdloading.. ..


Many thanks for the replies guys! You've answered all my questions!

This thread is a bit old now, but hopefully someone will give it another look. As you might know if you have seen some of my other posts I cant seem to get hold of an A600 accelerator anywhere, except an extortionately priced one from America. I have found places selling a 1Mb upgrade for the A600 but I need a bit more than that for games like Settlers and UFO. I've seen SRAM PCMCIA cards on eBay (2Mb) but was looking for a card to expand the RAM. You can't get a Fast RAM that goes in the trapdoor as far as I know, but does anybody know of a Fast RAM card for the trapdoor, preferrably with the 1Mb Chip RAM on it as well.

[Korodny]

Go to http://www.amiga-hardware.com and check the "RAM Expansions" section. There are several Trapdoor RAM expansions for the A600 listed (one even takes SIMMs!).

The site is great ! I doubt anyone could get hold of most of the stuff on it though. Still, it has made me curious. I am mistaken or is the biggest 30-pin SIMM 1Mb? This would mean you could put 4Mb on the board with the SIMM slots. Combine this with the Chip RAM of 1Mb and a 4Mb PCMCIA and you'd have a 9Mb A600 without an accelerator. Or would there be conflicts addressing that much RAM?

[Amiga1992]

I dunno but I rather have 2MB of CHIP mem rather than having 1 of Chip and 8 of Fast.

I rather have 2MB of CHIP mem rather than having 1 of Chip and 8 of Fast.

Would 2Mb of chip RAM be faster or in some way better than having 1Mb chip and 8Mb Fast? Basically I need to know the difference between the RAM types, I naturally Fast RAM must be faster.

[Amiga1992]

Fast IS faster but the custom chipset cannot use it.
In the case of PCMCIA "Fast" RAM, it actually is slower than chip :P

[Korodny]

@NytroX86:

Would 2Mb of chip RAM be faster or in some way better than having 1Mb chip and 8Mb Fast? Basically I need to know the difference between the RAM types, I naturally Fast RAM must be faster.

(simplified explanation)

Chip RAM can be accessed by all chips on the motherboard (CPU + custom chips), but only one chip at a time. That means, the CPU often has to wait before it can access chip RAM. In other words: chip RAM is *slow*, but video and audio data have to be put there, so that the video and sound chips can access them (everything you see on the screen is data located in chip RAM).

FastRAM can only be accessed by the CPU, that means it's faster ;-) FastRAM should usually be used for everything except the data that needs to be fed to the custom chips.

In theory, a PCMCIA memory card is Fast RAM (as it can only be accessed by the CPU), but PCMCIA is simply to slow for that purpose. Forget about the PCMCIA memory card, it's crap.

Running out of chip RAM is a common problem when working with old Amigas. You can never have enough chip RAM ;-)

But you're probably more interested in games than anything else, right? There are no A600 games that require more than 1MB chip RAM, so if you're just into gaming, get (real) FastRAM.

so if you're just into gaming, get (real) FastRAM.

Thats easier said than done with an A600 though, isn't it? To fit Fast RAM I need an accelerator with extra RAM soldered on or with a SIMM socket. This is what I said before:
I've only found one site that sells Apollo 620/630s, www.wordbench.com/amih.html
They are charging a shocking £115/145 :eek ! So unless you know somewhere else I can get an accelerator, not necessarily an Apollo but I think the 630 is one of the best, I'm gonna have to do without Fast RAM or sacrifice the 1Mb Chip RAM upgrade slot for 4 30-pin SIMMS.
And about the explanations (Akira, Korodny) the stuff about the chipset using chip RAM and only the CPU using the Fast RAM sounds familiar, I probably read it on the net somewhere. That however is the best explanation I have had .

[Amiga1992]

Just for gaming, buy a 2MB Chip expansion. it's just 30 quid at the most! And you can already use WHDLoad with it

[DrBong]

Originally posted by NytroX86
I've only found one site that sells Apollo 620/630s, www.wordbench.com/amih.html
They are charging a shocking £115/145 :eek ! So unless you know somewhere else I can get an accelerator, not necessarily an Apollo but I think the 630 is one of the best, I'm gonna have to do without Fast RAM or sacrifice the 1Mb Chip RAM upgrade slot for 4 30-pin SIMMS.

Amiga Superbit in Spain are selling a Winner A630 accelerator (aka Apollo A630) for 119 EUR (75 UKP). Check it out here:

http://www.amigasuperbit.com/indexcataloge/34.htm

Spain is not too far away from you country-wise and they offer shipping worldwide at quite a reasonable price (10 EUR IIRC). They have an English version of their web site also, so I imagine someone there speaks English if you want to telephone them direct.

I honestly think that 1Mb plus an accelerator which takes 72 pin fast ram is probably your best solution given that you mostly want to play WHDLoad fixes (and the silly prices of A600 chipram and fast ram cards).

Amiga Superbit in Spain are selling a Winner A630 accelerator (aka Apollo A630) for 119 EUR (75 UKP).

Thanks for your help, but although this is cheaper, it still seems shocking to me! I got the A600 for £13, so to pay £75 for a card seems ridiculous, even though it is a very reasonable price. At the moment the only disk game I've got is Hillsea Lido which works fine, so maybe when I get some memory intensive games I'll have some incentive to splash out.
I know I keep going on about eBay, but on there right now someone is winning an A1200 with an accelerator and hardrive for £51, with only 4 hours left.
I also think I might have given the wrong impression, I haven't touched or downloaded WHDLoad or Win UAE yet, and although I intend to I'm still buying original software where possible. The only adf on my PC harddrive at the moment is Breed '96, cos the chances of getting an original copy of that are very slim!

[Amiga1992]

Bah
If you want to pay 1 quid for an accelerator/ram expansion, you better stop looking.

This is the price for Amiga accelerators, and the A600 one is quite the rare thing.

If you want to pay 1 quid for an accelerator/ram expansion, you better stop looking.

I meant the £75 card was shocking, not the £30 or less RAM.
I'll probably get a Chip RAM expansion for £16 from www.analogic.co.uk. I realise I ain't gonna get nothing for a quid, or probably not for under £50 either. That doesn't mean I have to like it though, does it?

[Daz]

Go to one of those Pound shops - see what you can find - everything in there is *shock* £1!!

ain't no boards though - i looked....