Considering getting SRAM for my A600, opinions please.

[jt5566]

Hi ive been advised by several people on this site to consider getting 2mb of SRAM for my amiga 600. im not going nuts spending loads on massively upgrading the machine, as im only a casual amiga user (i was going to sell my old A600 as though it works, the original 20mb HD had failed but i have since added 4gb CF hard drive and got the bug back so keeping it)
There is a SRAM card on ebay at present and as i am a novice im curious if its the right type of card i need? "Amiga A600/A1200 2meg SRAM memory card ADD 2 meg fast ram for whdload" £39.95 plus £1.52 del' Ebay, uk seller i think. brand name ALESIS? mentions issues removing card whilst computer is on.
any opinions as to if its the right choice welcome. Also im unsure what whdload means. The machine is setup as it was when i used it way back when with workbench 2.05. Im running kickstart 7.300 and already have a 1mb ram upgrade installed (2mb total). cheers jt

[roy bates]

yes they work and the 4mb version as well ,i got a 4mb melcard for the wife.

as for whdload,just google it if you want to know what it is.basicly its a hardrive install package for games.there is even a site where you can get the packages pre-installed.
i highly recommend whdload,and to register it its well worth the money.

[Allen1]

Hi there jt,

you should never remove one of these cards while the computer is switched on or it will be damaged and probably the computer too. The price of SRAM cards goes up and down depending on how much people are willing to pay, there were loads of these cards (2MB) going for around £23 a month or so ago on ebay buy it now auctions, so I think the price for this one is a bit steep to be honest.

If you are not already a member on Amibay then I would suggest that you join there too and start a wanted thread for a cheap SRAM card 2 or 4 meg for an Amiga 600 and see what offers you get at more realistic prices.

[Toni Wilen]

Nothing gets damaged, Amiga simply resets because PCMCIA hardware is programmed to reset the system if PCMCIA SRAM configured as RAM gets removed. (Not much choice in this situation.. Reset or crash.)

PCMCIA is designed to be fully hot-pluggable and Amiga PCMCIA hardware design supports it.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by roy bates

i got a 4mb melcard for the wife.

Now that's what I'd call a great swap

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Now that's what I'd call a great swap

[Allen1]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Nothing gets damaged, Amiga simply resets because PCMCIA hardware is programmed to reset the system if PCMCIA SRAM configured as RAM gets removed. (Not much choice in this situation.. Reset or crash.)

PCMCIA is designed to be fully hot-pluggable and Amiga PCMCIA hardware design supports it.

Toni,

I am really surprised at wisdom of your comments above. To a degree, you will get away with removing certain cards from a PCMCIA slot while the machine is on, modems and network cards and CF cards when they have finished being wrote to as an example. On the other hand software engineers didn't write programs for most operating systems to stop the PCMCIA reading a device to allow safe removal of cards for nothing.

You are also no doubt aware that if a card was being wrote to as in the case for a CF card in an adapter or an ATA flash card for instance was ejected during that process, the card or file being written would probably be corrupt or worse. I would expect a card like an SRAM card being used as extra memory, to be in use by a computer all the time it is connected, I certainly wouldn't remove a memory module from a PC while the computer is powered up and I wouldn't even think of removing an external memory device such as an SRAM card unless it was halted by a program and safe to remove, or the machine was powered off.


Taking unnecessary risks with electronic devices is bad practise and once you pick up that habit, its a hard one to break. It is better to be slightly overcautious in situations like the SRAM usage than to risk seeing things going tits up, especially when all you would have saved is 30 to 60 seconds switching off the Amiga to remove the card and then rebooting.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Now that's what I'd call a great swap

Sick! You guys are sick!

(---Insert wife swap meeting joke here---)

Allen1, I don't like that kind of 'heed the user manual' type of warnings. Of course he may corrupt an SD card if it's being written to, but as Toni says they're made to be ejected. Compare to mechanical eject buttons for PCMCIA on laptops.

jt5566, WHDLoad is a utility that allows you to run games from harddisk instead of floppy, and fastram is very useful for it, and required for some of the games. You seem to have found a perfectly usably card for Amiga!

SRAM cards also makes your Amiga 25-33% faster, so go for it I say

[Toni Wilen]

I'd call that being overly paranoid because most users remove/insert mouse/joystick regularly when Amiga is powered on which is much more dangerous to hardware than removel/insertion of PCMCIA cards.

Bigger danger with PCMCIA is slot pin damage.

Data corruption <> hardware damage.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Allen1

Toni,

I am really surprised at wisdom of your comments above. To a degree, you will get away with removing certain cards from a PCMCIA slot while the machine is on, modems and network cards and CF cards when they have finished being wrote to as an example. On the other hand software engineers didn't write programs for most operating systems to stop the PCMCIA reading a device to allow safe removal of cards for nothing.

You are also no doubt aware that if a card was being wrote to as in the case for a CF card in an adapter or an ATA flash card for instance was ejected during that process, the card or file being written would probably be corrupt or worse. I would expect a card like an SRAM card being used as extra memory, to be in use by a computer all the time it is connected, I certainly wouldn't remove a memory module from a PC while the computer is powered up and I wouldn't even think of removing an external memory device such as an SRAM card unless it was halted by a program and safe to remove, or the machine was powered off.


Taking unnecessary risks with electronic devices is bad practise and once you pick up that habit, its a hard one to break. It is better to be slightly overcautious in situations like the SRAM usage than to risk seeing things going tits up, especially when all you would have saved is 30 to 60 seconds switching off the Amiga to remove the card and then rebooting.

Sorry the pedant in me has to call you up on the continual use of the "Wrote" instead of "written"

[Allen1]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

Sorry the pedant in me has to call you up on the continual use of the "Wrote" instead of "written"

Hehehee, I am surprised that you didn't mention the missing "the" in the line :-

"I am really surprised at wisdom of your comments above."

I chopped a lot off the original text and did some alterations to simplify the argument such as omitting that USB devices are also hot swappable but the program that is used to stop and safely remove such a device is also used for PCMCIA card removal on most operating systems to prevent the risk of damage etc.

There are probably a load of other grammatical errors to be found but what the heck, I'm no budding author and at my time of life, if I was a car I would be wrote off (or maybe written off or even a write off)