Amiga600 refurb, gaming workhorse

GeX · 28 Jun 2019 at 17:18

Picked up an Amiga600, and the plan is to have this as my goto for Amiga gaming. I do have an A500 and A1200 - but given their size, they're not going to be on my desk as often.

As you can see, it's quite grubby.

So I pulled it to bits

Gave it a good clean in the sink with some car shampoo

It came up quite well, but thought I'd leave it out the sun for a bit (lightrbiting, sue me

)

The motherboard looks ok

but on close inspection, I can see tell tale signs of a capacitor having bumped it's guts

Look at the lower pad for the top right cap, it's dulled.

I don't trust my skills with SMD soldering where pads are already corroded - and to replace all the caps on this board would mean removing the keyboard connector to get decent access.. meh. So I sent it off to Steve at AmigaPassion to have it sorted.

This is how looked after some sun bathing;

They keys have not come up quite as well, so I think it's time for some peroxide on those. That's all I've done for now.

I do need some advice though. What accelerator would you fit? As I say, it'll be used for games. So I guess that means WHDLoad, which means more fastRAM, and a speed bump would be nice..
I was thinking Furia card would tick those boxes, and I've heard they work better with SD cards than CF - so some kind of IDE to SD.
Is it worth adding a A604n to increase the chipRAM too?

vanpeebles · 28 Jun 2019 at 17:41

Good work, smd caps are a pain, I’m trying to recap a pc engine duo

Flibster · 29 Jun 2019 at 03:11

Other than the cap leakage, looks in damn nice condition. I've got one that is very much beyond repair. Case is battered and scraped, but the worse news was the motherboard was cracked in half.

From the photo I was sent, looks like some moron tried to remove an expansion and broke it. It got binned.

I never really liked the 600 at the time of release. Seemed ok for a games machine but I was doing more than that on my Amigas. It really has grown on me over the years though. I was tempted to try and buy the bits to build it out, but I'm probably going to Pi it. I've seen that there's mounting brackets and adaptors so I can use the original keyboard. Will just use a basic 2 button USB mouse on it and one of the USB Competition Pro's that were released a few years ago.

GeX · 29 Jun 2019 at 09:32

vanpeebles said:
Good work, smd caps are a pain, I’m trying to recap a pc engine duo

eek, they're notorious for it iirc.

Flibster said:
Other than the cap leakage, looks in damn nice condition. I've got one that is very much beyond repair. Case is battered and scraped, but the worse news was the motherboard was cracked in half. From the photo I was sent, looks like some moron tried to remove an expansion and broke it. It got binned.

I never really liked the 600 at the time of release. Seemed ok for a games machine but I was doing more than that on my Amigas. It really has grown on me over the years though. I was tempted to try and buy the bits to build it out, but I'm probably going to Pi it. I've seen that there's mounting brackets and adaptors so I can use the original keyboard. Will just use a basic 2 button USB mouse on it and one of the USB Competition Pro's that were released a few years ago.

I never had an Amiga when they were 'current' - but have fond memories of playing on one at youth club, that's pretty much what's triggered my desire to buy some now. Reading into the history I can see that the 600 was quite unloved when it was released, but it's becoming quite a popular model for retro gaming due to it's size and the accelerators for it

Some more photos of my collection (none of the 500 in there yet, as I've only opened it up to check there's no trapdoor expansion with a battery in it) https://photos.app.goo.gl/MDYkmJcZ16TaCMj46

spudbynight · 29 Jun 2019 at 20:32

Are you going to get a Vampire for it?

GeX · 29 Jun 2019 at 21:10

spudbynight said:
Are you going to get a Vampire for it?

No, too far. Kinda feels like the FPGA just does it all and the A600 is just a holder for it. Also, LOL WHAT at the cost.

It was lovely and sunny today, so perfect more retrobrighting - this time with added peroxide;

The keys needed doing;

and I did the rest of the plastics too as they still had a bit of yellowing

quick wash in the sink

Keys before

Keys after

and the top case (compare this to the first picture at the start of the thread)

Pretty happy with how it's turned out.

spudbynight · 29 Jun 2019 at 21:18

That came out really well

Deleted member 77746 · 30 Jun 2019 at 10:28

Damn that looks nearly as new! can't wait to see how it looks back in one piece.

SilverTongue · 30 Jun 2019 at 10:38

Looking good,definitely gonna be following this. Love watching The 8-bit Guy on YouTube. Especially his restorations

Duke · 30 Jun 2019 at 11:33

Nice little project

Can easily get an SD/HD working in the A600 too which is a good option compared to the A500.

GeX · 1 Jul 2019 at 11:54

and here it is with the keyboard back in place

Deleted member 77746 · 1 Jul 2019 at 13:22

That looks brand new!!!! absolutely amazing condition for a restore.

LewisRaz · 1 Jul 2019 at 14:58

Excellent restoration. I know literally 0 about amigas but appreciate they have a dedicated fanbase

GeX · 1 Jul 2019 at 15:57

LewisRaz said:
Excellent restoration. I know literally 0 about amigas but appreciate they have a dedicated fanbase

Thanks

I knew very little about them till recently (I had a ZX Spectrum when I was younger, never an Amiga). I read https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/ which I thought was great (quite indepth).

lakitu · 1 Jul 2019 at 21:00

Superb job! I had a 500+, 600 and now a 1200. Always loved the 600 for it's form factor.

Flibster · 2 Jul 2019 at 20:43

GeX said:
I never had an Amiga when they were 'current' - but have fond memories of playing on one at youth club, that's pretty much what's triggered my desire to buy some now. Reading into the history I can see that the 600 was quite unloved when it was released, but it's becoming quite a popular model for retro gaming due to it's size and the accelerators for it

Part of the issue with it was that it came with 1mb ram, Kickstart 2.00, 2.04 or 2.05 (or later 2.1) and the Enhanced Chip Set. Was never as compatible as the old A500 with KS1.3 and the Original Chip Set. But holding down the mouse buttons on boot allowed you to fiddle with various things to get them working... Mostly.

Even the Commodore boss didn't like the A600. iirc he called it a screw up. With the current level of accelerators and storage available for it, makes it much more interesting. Especially with a Kickstart 3.1 update.

mmj_uk · 3 Jul 2019 at 08:07

I believe the A600 was called the A300 in development, even the early motherboards were labelled as such. It was just a cost reduced A500. I think most games will work though if you use something like a degrader disk for Kickstart 1.3, the only other games you'll have problems with is those that require the number pad keys or very old ones hard-coded for 512Kb or slow ram.

GeX · 28 Aug 2019 at 21:36

I haven't forgotten about this thread, just been short on time. Couple of shiny things have arrived though;

Furia accelerator (revision 3 with 40Mhz overclock (well, we are on ocuk here

) and active cooling)

SD2IDE and 90 degree PCB instead of silly flappy little IDE cable;