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Launched: 1992
Released in the summer of 1992 as a replacement to the A500+, the A600 weighed just 6lbs (the smallest Classic Amiga ever!). This 14 deep x 9.5" wide x 3" high system was aimed at the console market, adding very little to the operating system or the Amiga as a whole. It only had 1mb of chip memory, ECS and Workbench 2.05. It shrunk the basic system by doing away with the numeric keypad leaving just 78 keys, and became the nearest the Amiga has to a laptop. It did, however introduce the PCMCIA slot at the side of machine allowing the use of ram cards; CD drives and disks that fitted into this port. The fatter Agnus chip as standard also allowed the addressing of up to 2Mb Chip ram as standard, with the maximum ram expansion (with PCMCIA) being 6Mb.
This was yet another attempt by Commodore to aim the Amiga towards the console market by selling it as a games machine with a keyboard, which didn't work. The numeric keypad was sorely missed by most Amigans who would not touch it with a barge pole. Whatever the reasons Commodore chose to produce it, it was the last of the 16 bit Amigas and was the closest we have had to a laptop yet. In fact, it forms the basis of the DIY laptop known as Suzanne.
68000 @ 7 MHz
68020 @ 25 MHz
68030 @ 33-40 MHz
All A600s has a 68000 @ 7.14 MHz
soldered to its motherboard.
The A600's expansion slots are designed to not support processor card upgrades
at all. Even its 68000 is not socketed which would allow the easy connection of
a processor board. The only solution is to place the board on top of the 68000
with a mirrored CPU socket.
up to 2 MB Chip RAM
up to 32 MB Fast RAM on processor boards
up to 4 MB Fast RAM on PCMCIA cards
The A600 has 1 MB Chip RAM on
its motherboard which can be expanded to 2 MB via the trapdoor slot.
Fast RAM can be added either via the PCMCIA slot or via using a processor board.
Fat Agnus - ECS display
controller
Super Denise - ECS graphics coprocessor
Paula - audio and I/O controller
Gayle - system address decoder and IDE controller
Kickstart ROMs
The A600's ECS chip set supports the following screen modes:
Low | High | Super | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PAL, non-interlaced PAL, interlaced NTSC, non-interlaced NTSC, interlaced |
320×256 320×512 320×200 320×400 |
640×256 640×512 640×200 640×400 |
1280×256 1280×512 1280×200 1280×400 |
50 Hz, 15.75 kHz 50 Hz, 15.75 kHz 60 Hz, 15.75 kHz 60 Hz, 15.75 kHz |
|
Productivity Super72 |
640×480
- 640×960 400×300 - 800×600 |
50 Hz, 31.5 kHz 72 Hz, 24 kHz |
1× trapdoor expansion slot
1× PCMCIA Type II slot
The 40 pin trapdoor expansion
slot is not compatible with the one in the A500. It can be used for Chip RAM
expansion only.
The 68 pin PCMCIA slot accepts industry standard peripherals if the suitable
driver software is present.
1× serial DB25 male, RS232
1× parallel DB25 female, Centronics
1× video DB23 male, analog RGB
1× composite video, RCA jack
1× RF modulated video, RCA jack
2× mouse/game DB9 male
2× stereo audio, RCA jack
1× external floppy DB23 female
1× internal floppy 34 pin header
1× internal IDE 44 pin header
Unlike the A500, the composite
video output is coloured and the RF modulator is internal.
The floppy drive controller supports up to four devices - one attached to the
internal floppy header and three connected to the external floppy port. Both
double and high density disk drives are supported. A 880 kB double density
floppy disk drive is built into the A600's compact case.
The built in IDE controller supports two IDE devices connected simultaneously,
although there is only one internal drive bay for a 2.5" hard disk drive.
Only mode PIO 0 is supported.
Amiga 600 with Motorola 68000 Processor, internal 3.5 880K Floppy Drive, 1 MB RAM Integral Keyboard Release 2.X Operating System and Utilities 2-button Mouse.
Amiga 600 with Motorola 68000 Processor, internal 3.5 880K Floppy Drive, 1 MB RAM Internal 40MB IDE Hard Drive Integral Keyboard Release 2.X Operating System and Utilities 2-button Mouse.