4 replies to this topic

[thegamezmaster]

I'm a noobie when it comes to Amigas. Of the two I've listed which is better. Got a chance to sell one but want to keep one. Anyone know the values of these? Thanks.

[stephena]

thegamezmaster, on Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:38 AM, said:

I'm a noobie when it comes to Amigas. Of the two I've listed which is better. Got a chance to sell one but want to keep one. Anyone know the values of these? Thanks.

The A600 is basically an expanded A500. It would cost quite a few dollars to expand an A500 to an A600. The A600 has the latest graphics chips from the old series (not AGA), and has a built-in IDE hard drive interface (so you could install an internal 2.5" IDE drive). While the A500 could be expanded to do so, it would obviously cost more to add on the required hardware.

On the other hand, the A500 was the much more popular machine, and as such will have many more hardware addons available. And it is the more 'iconic' machine. If forced to choose between the two, I'd keep the A600. If looking for a new system, I'd consider an A1200 instead.

As for value, I don't think either is worth a lot. Perhaps $50 or so, certainly no more than $100 (depending on included addons, of course). Have a look on amibay.com for current prices of such hardware. That site tends to give more accurate prices compared to the often over-valued stuff on Ebay.

EDIT: I forgot to add that the A600 has a PCMCIA slot that can accommodate an Ethernet card, so you can connect to a network relatively easily. Not that any PCMCIA card will work, mind you, but at least there are cards that will work. Adding such functionality to the A500 is much harder (if not impossible, since I've never heard of an ethernet adaptor for the A500).

I also forgot to mention, if you keep the A600, consider adding a 4GB compact flash card and IDE adaptor instead of an actual IDE drive. Will be much faster, completely silent and use very little power

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Doh! Gave wrong response at first, thought it was between A600 and A1200.

Anywho, The A500 is nice but given the choice personally I would keep the A600. If we are talking US NTSC machines then the A600 is definitely harder to find I would not get rid of it. Plus the A600 is the newer machine with a newer OS, Kickstart and Chipset so all in all better IMHO.

Agree though, selling both and getting an A1200 would be even better!

Edited by OldSchoolRetroGamer, Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:30 PM.

[Feralstorm]

One small thing worth noting is the smaller A600 doesn't have the numeric keypad part of the keyboard, which a few games and other pieces of software like to use (as controls, not just for numbers)

[Geoff Oltmans]

Feralstorm, on Thu Jul 14, 2011 9:30 PM, said:

One small thing worth noting is the smaller A600 doesn't have the numeric keypad part of the keyboard, which a few games and other pieces of software like to use (as controls, not just for numbers)

When the A600 came out it was seen by the Amiga community at large as a big step backward in terms of expandability. Nowadays they are somewhat desirable in part because they are much smaller and they have a hard disk interface built in. The A500 is a bit more expandable and serviceable, if you can find the upgrade stuff for it. Stateside A600s are harder to find it seems. At the time it didn't make much sense to buy an A600 if you had an A500, because if you wanted an internal IDE hard drive, an AdIDE interface could be added to the A500. AFAIK, the A600 still uses programmed IO for the internal IDE interface, so it was no faster. There are also no drivers for the IDE interface in <KS2.05, so if backward compatibility with older games was important, you'd have to use a ROM switcher if you wanted to be able to use it with them. The chipset could be upgraded on the A500 to the same spec as the A600's...both Super Denise and 2mb Agnus, although depending on the model A500 you have to use a Meg-a-chip (A500+ didn't but they weren't common in North America). Plus you could use a bunch more Zorro sidecar peripherals with it that you can't use at all with the A600. In fact, most of the chips in the A500 are socketed so it's easy to replace blown components (ram excluded). If you inevitably blow a CIA chip on the A600, you're going to have to whip out your soldering iron and replace some surface mounted chips. CPU accelerators are also more plentiful for the A500, and depending on the model you don't even have to open up the case to install them. There was really very little reason for A500 people to "upgrade" to the A600, and as a cost-reduced A500 with no expansion port it severely limited its upgrade path. These days there's probably more availability of drivers for PCMCIA, but at the time about the only use PCMCIA was for most people was expansion RAM.

Since A500 was the more plentiful machine, most ECS games are targeted toward that so 2MB vs 1MB chip RAM was not as crucial except for probably some obscure demos. There were only two models of Amigas that shipped with 2MB Agnuses pre-AGA, the A600 and A3000... the A3000 was EXPENSIVE and the A600 came out just before the A1200 came out. I probably wouldn't even bother with putting a Super Denise in a 500 because the "enhanced" modes are mostly weird resolutions that matter more for Workbench instead of games and slow the system down dramatically when you use them due to the increased bandwidth requirement for the video display.

PCMCIA is nice to have for networking, but if you use any expansion memory in the PCMCIA slot then you're stuck if you want to use it simultaneously with the network card unless you can find a rare A600 accelerator card and put memory on that instead. To be sure, the A600 is a nice spec out of the box, but you can make the A500 do everything it can do minus PCMCIA, and you will never be able to put a Zorro slot on the A600.