Whats to consider when buying a mem upgrade? (A600)

[foob]

As in my other threads, i mentioned i obtained a very early A600 with kickstart .299.

After a lot of very helpful advice from a lot of you, its basically been decided that i'm going use my PCMCIA adapter with CF card as the hard drive (as I've found it can still be used for file transfers by creating new folders in the EXPANSION folder within windows). However, after a few choice posts regarding WHDLoad and a few bits of other info I've googled, it appears im not really able to get by with the standard 1MB of RAM unless i wish to use floppies for my games.

Now, as mentioned previously, i WOULD prefer to use floppies for the games, but given how bit-rotten a lot of games today are, i highly doubt i'l be able to find enough working disks to be able to do this, so it doesnt seem like i have a choice.

Would i be able to stick with 1MB of RAM, can i "get away" with 2MB (an expansion using the trap door on the underside of the board which i am faaaaaar more comfortable installing) or should i get a 4MB expansion, which is cheaper than the 2MB from what i gather but i am not too thrilled about its installation procedure as a don't know enough about my Amiga's internals to confidently start prodding about in there.

I can't seem to find a definitive answer out there, just arguments between whether or not 2MB is sufficient.

[Amiga1992]

The Amiga has two types of RAM, Chip and Fast.

The trapdoor port can host a 1MB Chip RAM expansion to lift your Amiga's Chip RAM to its max of 2 Megabytes. After that, Fast RAM can be added for example with kipper2k's 4MB adapter. a 4MB adapter should suffice for most classic games except those that have too many disks (like graphic adventures). I think 2MB of Chip RAM is quite a must. It's the memory the custom chips access therefore it's used to store game graphics and sound data. Many games are enhanced if you have more chip RAM.

My A600 has 2MB of Chip RAM and that's all, and although a bunch of WHDLoad games run, a lot of them do so without preloading the disk image contents to RAM and suffer of "system flashes", basically, WHDLoad going "back into the system in a flash" to load and making music stutter and graphics blink while loading this data.

With kipper2k's 4MB of Fast RAM upgrade, you can forget about that problem. I think it's a neat and affordable add-on and if I don't end up buying an ACA620 accelerator I will definitely get that, although I don't use my A600 much for gaming. I wonder if WHDLoad would be fine with it if you just had 1MB of Chip RAM. The problem is that opening a folder with icons eats up Chip RAM, so if you launch stuff from Workbench, even if you had enough Fast RAm to load the entire game to RAM, the game might not have enough Chip RAM to store its graphics and audio data. So this is why I say 2MB Chip is essential.

[demolition]

I'd say rather get the 4MB fastmem expansion than the 1MB chipmem one. And if you decide to get Kipper2k's 4MB expansion, he also makes a nice internal CF adapter for the IDE port, which will not interfere (physically) with the mem expansion.
Alternatively you might also get along using a 1MB chipmem expansion and a 2MB SRAM card for PCMCIA which will also work as fast mem, giving you 4MB total. This should work with most 1 or 2 disk games in WHDload, but I would not count on much more than that.
SRAM cards aren't particularly cheap though and are a bit slower than the internal ones.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by demolition

Alternatively you might also get along using a 1MB chipmem expansion and a 2MB SRAM card for PCMCIA which will also work as fast mem, giving you 4MB total.

Nope, because he will use the PCMCIA slot as storage.
Kipper's 4MB adapter is a much better purchase, those SRAM cards are expensive.
(also 1+2 = 3 )

[scu98rkr]

My thinking would be similar to Akira in that you should get the 2MB chip expansion. The A604 is expensive because it adds alot of extra function but if you dont need them I would try to pick up and old expansion cheap on ebay or amibay.

How much is Kipper's 4MB adapter after taxes and postage. I know it is alot off money £80, but the ACA EC62O can be picked up straight away with a years warranty its very easy to fit and adds more mem and a faster processor.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by scu98rkr

I would try to pick up and old expansion cheap on ebay or amibay.

Yeah, don't buy an A604, not necessary. Also not an accelerator, you dont need it for WHDLoad. you just need some Fast RAM.

[foob]

any examples on what exactly i should be looking for? i had a scan on ebay and couldnt find anything, but i suspect thats because im not sure what to be looking for in the first place

[roy bates]

these are kipper2k's

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...8l2Q7daXMcCf6A



this is a internal 1mb chipram upgrade for the 600 that takes the chipram to 2mb




this is a sram card for the pcmcia port,this one is 4mb

[sneeker]

First thing you need to do is upgrade the kickstart. .299 is seriously broken, pcmcia doesnt work at all, and neither does the ide interface.
V37.350 will allow you to use the hdd and pcmcia port, then get one of kippers memory upgrades to enable using whdload.

2Mb is usable, but kippers adapters are so cheap, you might as well just get 4mb.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by sneeker

First thing you need to do is upgrade the kickstart. .299 is seriously broken, pcmcia doesnt work at all, and neither does the ide interface.

That isn't true. It has issues with hard drives but not PCMCIA. He is already using PCMCIA.

[foob]

Well, like i say i'm gonna take it one step at a time for now. I'm waiting on the WB backups to arrive (as well as my dry drive-cleaner) and from there i should at least be able to write some floppies.

If it goes well enough with the 1.44MB converts i think i just use those for now, but if it goes awry (which, frankly, i'm expecting), i think the +1MB of chipram should do the trick. i assume the +1mb chipram expansion is trapdoor fit only, yes? there are no other forms of it around i can make the mistake of buying?

[roy bates]

the 1mb chipram upgrade is indeed interior.

if your writing floppys you should be able to do that with 1mb shouldnt you?

[foob]

Originally Posted by roy bates

the 1mb chipram upgrade is indeed interior.

if your writing floppys you should be able to do that with 1mb shouldnt you?

that's the plan, but it needs testing first. As mentioned in my other thread i'm trying to steer clear of modifying the interiors of the A600 as much as possible as i would prefer to keep it as close to what it was back in the day.

Plus, if it starts getting to the point where i'm going to have to start changing kickstarts, adding CF HDDs, fast/chipmem expansions and a whole host of other mods, im fairly certain it would just be far cheaper to buy another machine with this stuff already in place, no?

[Amiga1992]

That stuff isn't in place except on desktop (a.k.a. "big") Amigas like the 2000,3000 or 4000.
The 4MB fast RAM upgrade is pretty cool and not intrusive. You don't have to modify anything to use it and it will leave your Amiga pretty much standard and outside looking just like it should.

Remember, the expansion posibilities are meant to exist, so there's no "sin" in adding them.

[roy bates]

no, i dont think it would be cheaper to buy a machine with these upgrades already in place.


remember the machine can take harddrives and memory as standard,some where shipped with harddrives.

[Arnie]

IMHO the least you should do is add a 1mb trapdoor upgrade and a CF hardrdrive.

To fit the Harddrive you will have to remove 4 screws, lift off the top part of the case and insert the CF Harddrive onto the 44 pin ide connector.
Replace the cover and 4 screws and you're done.

It then only requires your WB disks to partition and Install Workbench.

Once the Harddrive is up and running the A600 is so much easier to use.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Akira

Nope, because he will use the PCMCIA slot as storage.
Kipper's 4MB adapter is a much better purchase, those SRAM cards are expensive.
(also 1+2 = 3 )

Correct, but all my A600's came with 1MB from the factory, so that's a +1 MB.

Before I started expanding my A600, I wrote floppies as well, using just the standard 1MB Chipmem. I would LHA the ADF file on the PC and move it onto a 720K PC floppy (was usually possible to fit it). I would then use a Multidos bootdisk with LHA on it to extract the LHA'd ADF file from the PC floppy onto the RAM disk in the Amiga where the 880K image could just fit. I then used a command-line tool to transfer this image onto an amiga formatted floppy disk. I did this with many games, although it was slow and tedious, so it can be done using no hardware upgrades.

Everything just got so much easier when I put in a 320MB 2½" HDD. This was still before CF cards were cheap so back then I transferred the ADF images over a serial cable. It was still slow, but not tedious anymore.