I had an A600 back in the 90's, and I really miss it!! I loved that computer!! The disk drive failed, I couldn't get a replacement, any other option was way too expensive, and I had moved on to PC, so it got thrown out. Who could have guessed the Gotek solution was to come? And I haven't stopped kicking myself since!!
For all the hate the Amiga 600 gets, it's still a perfectly lovely machine and you've done an amazing job getting this one looking and functioning as good or better than it was ever intended to. Well done!
Form factor is brilliant, looks best of the wedge shaped Amigas IMO. I don't know how hard or costly it is to get accelerator cards for it nowadays... but feels like it had the last laugh in the aftermarket. I thought it was pretty pointless back when it was released though.
There would have likely been a shift had they made a C64 card for the Amiga or a PC clone with C64 instead of the 128, since CP/M was on the way out and graphic artists and TV shows were gravitating towards the Amiga. The home market could have been secured by them. They already had the styling. The 1571 and 1581 drives could see the DOS disks since MS-DOS was a CP/M clone. Plus the Z80 being an 8080 extension, wouldn't have taken much to go 8086 derivatives instead, or like I said given the Amiga C64 capabilities. Shift the C64 customers over. Imagine having an Amiga but still being able to use your C64 software.
Nice video. I have one and need to config the pcmcia to transfer files. It is really necessary to have the additional 1Mb chip expansion? I have the 4mb fast.
Good video but it would help if you put the links to the parts used so we can get them ourselves. Also don't know if you have already, but how about a video on that script you used to install the os on the cf.....thanks
Ooops - Forgot to put the parts list in! I'll do that this evening. As for the script - it's on the Workbench Install Disk - just boot from that and then use the PrepHD, FormatHD and InstallHD icons - easy peasy :)
If only they'd done what they should have.. And made it a mini 1200 (thus the 600 being half) instead of making it a small 500+ it wouldn't have been so disliked. Cracks at Commodore were huge at that point
I have 2 A600s, one permanently on my desk. I love to type on it (just plain text, nothing special) and you can run Protracker on it. I would never go for a Gotek, always prefer the real thing. But my primary Amiga has a Furia of course.
If it hadn't originally been designed as a cost reduced A500 and then re-badged in a stupid marketing ploy just before it's release, then it's reception back in the day would have been better...
@@RanFire The A500+ was a better product IMHO. It was released a few months before the A600. Then the A500+ was promptly pulled off the market because it competed with the A600 which had a better profit margin.
That poor protective plastic thinking that it had survived your ire after all but then...lol! Kidding aside, great job and I'm eager to see what comes next, and of course, get more second tier tea towel cameos to boot... ~_^
I don't know if it actually helps but when I saw my Amiga keys floating upside down in the solution, I put a sheet of Alu foil underneath the container to reflect the light back up at the keys.
Makes me feel ill to think I binned one of these 5 or 6 years ago because it wouldn't boot, along with 2 x ti 99/4 whose metal finish had corroded and an mz80 that stopped working with a puff of smoke, this experience stopped my collecting retro computers and quickly sold off my surviving computers. Watching channels like this satisfies my appetite for retro computers and consoles. Great channel.
The problem with the A600 wasn’t what it was, but what it was not. It was neither cheap nor significantly better. Today that doesn’t matter, so it’s moot and the what it is remains.
@@TheRetroShack Since all retro computing is “bad” by today’s standards, the reason to have any of it is different. Some of the flops back in the day ends up being quite interesting today :)
I certainly will, although that's an A500 mouse so it probably won't feature again in this series - I have an optical mouse for this machine arriving for part 3 :)
I don't think I will ever fully understand the 'hate' for the A600. I got one for Christmas that year and absolutely loved it because it was powerful and small, something I could pack up and take to my aunts etc. Had no problems running most games (aside from the numpad issue) because I sourced a copy of Relokick via a school friend. Loved it, still love it. I really want to fix up my old one soon.
Good luck with your own refurb and I'm starting to see the benefits of this machine myself :) (Don't think it will ever overtake my love for the A500 though - that machine is just so darn sexy! :) )
@@TheRetroShack thanks man :) enjoyed the video and it's interesting to hear other peoples opinion on the little-mig. It definitely had its faults, when I got the A1200 I realised that even more. Briefly had the A500+ as well but the breakout box needed for RF made it slightly annoying (naturally in the modern day this is no longer the case).
I did notice that Amiga club members offloaded their A600s to unsuspecting new members and at inflated price...a good reason to hate..reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Peter is playing the keyboard and the unmasking of him as a phony.
I'll try to 'help' with the whole 'hating on the A600' thing. 😏 I worked for a dealership in PA, USA, only a few counties away from the old Commodore factory. Around this time, PC's were really becoming competitive, both in terms of speed and graphics. In short, the Amiga was losing its edge. When the A1200 came out, almost every Amiga fan that saw it in our showroom wanted one, only... We couldn't get them. Oh, we had PLENTY of the A600's in stock, though!... Yeah, NO ONE who wanted an A1200 would settle for that! What we didn't/couldn't know at the time was the financial state that Commodore was in. When we were demanding more A1200's, an engineer from Commodore reached out to us and told us anonymously that the truth was, they couldn't pay the company that assembled them... 😮 I think you Brits have a saying for the way we felt: Gobsmacked. We knew Commodore had its issues, but that phone call got us thinking very seriously about our business model as a company, AND, it got me personally thinking about my future career as well (I ended up getting into networking, Linux, server administration). Look, the A600 was 'OK', but to us, the issue was that: 1. It wasn't the A1200. It was simply a smaller version of the A1000 w/1 MB of Chip RAM, honestly. Had it come out a year or two before, that might have been understandable, but... 2. No one wanted this. If they did want one it was only because they didn't have an A500 yet, or because this small machine was TERRIFIC for kiosks and/or multimedia (Scala) presentations, mainly because of its color composite out. BTW, curse Commodore and its STUPID decision to ship a 4096 color computer (A500) with B/W composite out! If Jack Tramiel was still the CEO at the time, he would've fired the person responsible for that decision: TWICE! 3. It was noticeably slower than its predecessor (A500) because of its lack of Fast RAM. How much slower? I recall around an 11% hit. Significant enough to FEEL it. Around that time, I had written a 'Tron' game which used the Copper to draw a horizon point to simulate the tank battle from the movie. I rendered the Recognizers on our Video Toaster and animated them as a large 3D scalable sprite, blitted across the screen. It was just about playable on the A500, too slow on the A600, and way TOO FAST on the A1200 - that version got more color, more frames for animation, etc. 4. This was a hard sell because with everything above, you would think all the cost reduction would equate to costing less than the A500. Nope. 🤬Incredibly, it was *more* expensive - I don't remember how much, but it was significant. The fact that it was SLOWER than the old A500 was a hard pill to swallow when it seemed that PCs were arriving at double their speeds every six months or so at the time. I recall getting a 'Number 9' VGA board in and was just blown away by how fast and clean its 2D graphics and text were. And people like me were PISSED. I WANTED the A1200. I worked at the dealership and *I* couldn't get one. So yeah, the A600 took the brunt of our collective frustration. It wasn't a terrible machine, in fact, I LOVED the form factor and actually used it in our Scala business for kiosks and even a local planetarium! But like so many Commodore decisions made at the time, this one was unforgivable. The A600 should never have been built - the focus should've been on the A1200, the AAA chipset, corporate support of the Video Toaster and working with Newtek to help them further that market... Oh, so many things! The morning of the bankruptcy, I found my PC tech outside smoking a cigarette. He told me the news, and I asked him for a butt - this after I had quit a full year before. It was a difficult time for the developers, the hardware engineers, the Commodore employees, the dealers like us, and finally, the customers who were left flapping in the breeze. For me personally, it was an especially difficult time in my life personally, and this was just the icing on the cake. Although we managed to get an A4000 tower, we couldn't get any A1200s after that, for sure - but you know... I'll bet you could've gotten yourself a brand-new in-the-box A600 for MONTHS afterwards... 🙄
One more thing. Sure, it had IDE 2.5" support, a SLOW as molasses (and mostly useless - at least on the Amiga), PCMCIA slot, AND it had the ability for easy expansion. But the little hard drives back then were REALLY expensive, and the cost of even the 512K/Clock card was ridiculous! When I upgraded our floor model with that card though, it made a big difference in performance - BUT - not enough (at least to me!), to justify the cost of it. After all, at that point, it was essentially a stock A500+, innit? 😀
Thanks! I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
Great channels like this just would not have existed pre internet, Imagine selling this to ITV execs, so whats the show, lasers, celebs, sexy times? errr no we are giving a 30 year old computer a scrub up!
Hard to say as I have a tank I keep ready but it's probably about 20 litres of water to 1 litre of Peroxide - Probably fluctuates up and down as I add more peroxide if things aren't going well :)
When I was a teen. I always thought the A600 was the rebranding of the A500 line to match the leaked A1200 at the time. The A1200 looked neater and modern, compared to the A500 model. I did own a Acorn Electron > Spectrum +3 > Atari 520STFM > Amiga A500 > A1200. Sadly, my A1200 complete with '030 accelerator card, 120mb HDD, Power Dual external floppy, Hand scanner and the new CBM multisync Monitor got stolen in the early 2000s. So they couldn't be replaced :(
@@TheRetroShack Unfortunately no. I soon got into the PC building and early internet late 90s. I did use BBS on my A1200 when I borrowed a friends modem and numbers. I do use WinUAE and I have a FPGA for more hardware emulating. I first learned C++ on my Amiga, and continued from the Acorn and Spectrum ASM to M68k with DevPac. I sure miss those days of the all in one micro's, and glad that the Pi400 managed to bring back some of that magic :)
It seems your retro-briting method is pretty safe to avoid streaking, as long as you make sure the plastic is completely clean. No drying of creams since it's in a watery liquid the whole time. Curious that the keys didn't need to be facing up, I guess they get the appropriate light everywhere through refraction. Does your method help prevent the plastic getting too brittle? Does it matter how much hydrogen peroxide you put in the tub, i.e. I have a very, very slightly yellowed A600 and it's almost not worth doing it...I"m also thinking of trying lite-brighting first (Retro Recipes talked about that technique). All new to me as a QL'er since, well, black plastic doesn't have that problem :-)
I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
Used to own a Lemmings Amiga 600 pack back in the 1990s. Cost £399 from Silica Shop in 1993. Think I had a memory expansion in the trap door, think it was 4MB for a total of 6MB. And I also had an external PCMIA 200MB hard disk drive which cost a small fortune back then, never did fill it up to the top. Barely had 10MB installed at any one time. I forget what I ended up doing with it in the end. Probably sold it either on eBay in the late 90s or sold it through a local buy and sell advertiser newspaper.
@@TheRetroShack Yep. Actually wanted a 1200 but they were either not available at the time or didn't have enough money. The external hard drive device cost me about £300 at the time. Thought it would be a great idea but most Amiga games were not hard drive installable.
Yes you were, sorry. I swapped my A500 for an A500+ and that was one of the biggest mistake I ever made. Now that's a machine that should be shat upon. Same memory, an OS that took more ram and half of my old games didn't work anymore. So I conned some idiot into buying that and got an A600. Compact, sweet, cuddly, can load all my old games, had a hard disk, a PCMCIA slot, and it was the coolest thing ever for those who couldn't afford an A1200.
@@TheRetroShack Glad you did, as many others have. Mad props! It's a fantastic machine and it's not her fault the Amiga legacy was killed off, as much as it was the CD32's fault. It was bad timing and marketing, extremely stupid corporate decisions and active sabotage that did away with the mighty Amiga. It would have DESTROYED the "IBM-compatible" market back then, with their pitiful 16 colours, pc speaker bleeps, clunky OS and "affordable prices". The Amiga team weren't corporate acquisitions, they were brilliant and ingenious acolytes dedicated fully to their wonderful brainchild. The Amiga would probably be able to teleport and be controlling warp drives by now if things went differently. Bless her soul!
few years back i worked on a600 to upgrade i belive chip ram from 1 to 2 mb by just piggubacking few ram chips on the two oryginal ones with only select lines connected to random places on the motherboard, well i was only the soldering person, not the owner, not an amiga guru , but i remember i did few things different than instructed , like piggybacking 2 ram chips on a single chip instead of one on each for a sole reason that floppy drive and rf shield would close with additional chips in place. somehow i love how hackable old computers were
Hey i had an A600 back in the day (so to speak) and used it to learn code. Loved my A600, it fitted on my small desk in my small bedroom (i was a kid) Workbench 2.0 and a 20mb hard disk!
@@TheRetroShack That isn't correct. Only Sony had Memory Stick. What you have linked is an explanation to help people who don't know. It"s like plug and play, people don't understand what it really is fully. They confuse it with hot plug or hot swapping which is different.
That's the illusion of the 1200 looking case. I was poking around my A600 and realize its got ECS. Its basically a A500 lacking a side expansion so i cant use my GVP Hard Drive.
@@TheRetroShack And wanting cash for all the bad stuff in the A600! Would be interesting to know more about marketing campaigns Commodore engaged in to sell these things...must have been a lot of straight faces. I remember an Atari dealer who bought a lot of stock from Atari and Atari folded the next day..the dealer was left with a warehouse of instantly obsolete stock he couldn't move except to the tip...
To be honest I'm not really sure at the moment - I keep an tub on the go at all times and add water if it's running low (evaporating) and hydrogen peroxide if things aren't progressing quickly enough (based on experience) but I'd guess it's around 20/25:1 Water/Hydrogen Peroxide at any given time.
@@TheRetroShack Thanks, and what is percentage of hydrogen it self 12% or 30%. I know when I was using Hydrogen (12%) + HCl to make PCB, I realized that if I want to use same solution after few days it worked poorly. So is Hydrogen getting weaker after a period of time in this case? My friend told me that Hydrogen also have expiring date so after few years unopened it degrades, I don't know if it true that is why I am asking you. Nice videos and thanks for getting me back in time.
Showing me age here, but I miss the ZX81 vs Vic20, C64 vs CPC6128 vs BBC B, ST vs Amiga, those were the good old days :) If I missed a machine, that's because I listed ones I owned. Oh yes, because I love all things Retro, a new Sub :)
Just found your channel and love it! My only disappointment is that you have no TI 99 4/A content that I'm aware of. Would you consider doing a TI video?
Хотел посмотреть, что такое эта ваша амига. Посмотрел два видео. Ничего не понял. Думаю, если что и было ошибкой, то это вот так снять и не показать вообще ничего, что она умеет
that Amiga looks like it must have been a barn computer in its previous life (well, what else would one do with a 600?) Smoothest restoration job that have seen in a long time - very nice outcome
Did something like this a few months ago after building a new power supply out of an old atx one. Turned out much the same.. the on board ide really is handy with the gotek
Great video. Im interested in retrobrite as were having nice weather in the uk now can I ask what make of peroxide solution you use. Also how long did you leave the case and keys out for? Many thanks.
I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
@@TheRetroShack Thanks for replying can I ask the name of the brand of liquid peroxide you used theres so many im hoping to get some for the nice weather this weekend.
I would be tempted to bright the entire kb as it is. How would you guarantee consistent results with keys randomly being tossed into the solution? Not saying I'm right but it seems problematic.
I was looking at the layout of the keyboard, noting how similar the UK and US layouts are, but I couldn't find the single quote / apostrophe. I'm probably just blind, so I thought I would ask where it is. Thanks!
It really wasnt what the Amiga needed when it was released, but that was 30 years ago. These days, its a nice little machine, especially with the hardware you can pick up for it now.
![[Limbus Company - Teaser] Season5 - Oblivion](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8anKuEeZLeI/mqdefault.jpg)
I had an A600 back in the 90's, and I really miss it!! I loved that computer!! The disk drive failed, I couldn't get a replacement, any other option was way too expensive, and I had moved on to PC, so it got thrown out. Who could have guessed the Gotek solution was to come? And I haven't stopped kicking myself since!!
For the 4mb ram expansion i highly recommend a plastic nylon spacer M3x7x8 (height)mm + self-tapping scew M2.3 x 12 mm
Thanks for the tip! :)
3:34 Stirring the keys with the space bar - BRILLIANT!
I heard a British person say "... doin' it's thang!". It is the greatest thing I heard today.
You’re very welcome :) :)
i loved the amiga 600 and reload kick 3.1 lol
Check out part two where I fit a rom switch :) :)
my first ever computer was a amiga 500 very fond memory of it
One of my absolute favourite machines :) Was playing Zany Golf last night :)
Good stuff, I was waiting for a "but" that never came as you proceeded to get everything up and running :)
Yay! :)
A600 FTW. Mine still sits here with me 🥰
:) :) Nice!
There's a lot to like about the A600.
So I'm discovering :)
Thats now a nice A600. I guess they're good if you're lacking desk space.
Thanks very much - glad you enjoyed it :)
For all the hate the Amiga 600 gets, it's still a perfectly lovely machine and you've done an amazing job getting this one looking and functioning as good or better than it was ever intended to. Well done!
Thanks - I must admit I've gotten to really quite like it over the past few weeks :)
Form factor is brilliant, looks best of the wedge shaped Amigas IMO. I don't know how hard or costly it is to get accelerator cards for it nowadays... but feels like it had the last laugh in the aftermarket. I thought it was pretty pointless back when it was released though.
You can see the style similarities to the Commodore 128, and Commodore 64C.
Definitely! I thought the same thing :)
There would have likely been a shift had they made a C64 card for the Amiga or a PC clone with C64 instead of the 128, since CP/M was on the way out and graphic artists and TV shows were gravitating towards the Amiga. The home market could have been secured by them. They already had the styling. The 1571 and 1581 drives could see the DOS disks since MS-DOS was a CP/M clone. Plus the Z80 being an 8080 extension, wouldn't have taken much to go 8086 derivatives instead, or like I said given the Amiga C64 capabilities. Shift the C64 customers over. Imagine having an Amiga but still being able to use your C64 software.
First thing I did with mine was to retire the 20mb HDD, fit a SD card and upgrade the ROM, transformed the machine.
Nice to see people making the most of these machines :)
Love your channel and I would guess you are slightly older than me (based on which machines you personally used back in the day).
Well not knowing your age it’s difficult to say, but I will say that I’m as old as my hair but slightly older than my teeth :)
Where you get these upgrades for the Amiga 600? I'd love to upgrade mine as you did. Thanks for the video!
Nice video. I have one and need to config the pcmcia to transfer files. It is really necessary to have the additional 1Mb chip expansion? I have the 4mb fast.
Not sure it's strictly necessary, but can't hurt, right? :) :)
Good video but it would help if you put the links to the parts used so we can get them ourselves. Also don't know if you have already, but how about a video on that script you used to install the os on the cf.....thanks
Ooops - Forgot to put the parts list in! I'll do that this evening. As for the script - it's on the Workbench Install Disk - just boot from that and then use the PrepHD, FormatHD and InstallHD icons - easy peasy :)
That’s my old computer 👍⭐️🥸
Really? The family member who donated it said they had it from new :) I'll be having words :) :)
Just out of curiosity... Do you have any plans for a Kickstart upgrade to 3.x?
Yep - we'll cover that in part 3 :)
If only they'd done what they should have.. And made it a mini 1200 (thus the 600 being half) instead of making it a small 500+ it wouldn't have been so disliked.
Cracks at Commodore were huge at that point
Indeed they were!
If you haven't read David Pleasance book yet... He goes into it in great detail. Fabulous book!
@@tristramcox4615 I’ll grab a copy and give it a read - thanks!
were is part 3 please??????/
I have 2 A600s, one permanently on my desk. I love to type on it (just plain text, nothing special) and you can run Protracker on it. I would never go for a Gotek, always prefer the real thing. But my primary Amiga has a Furia of course.
Nice!
If it hadn't originally been designed as a cost reduced A500 and then re-badged in a stupid marketing ploy just before it's release, then it's reception back in the day would have been better...
As the A300 it's a good-ish idea. As the A600 really bad idea.
@@RanFire The A500+ was a better product IMHO. It was released a few months before the A600. Then the A500+ was promptly pulled off the market because it competed with the A600 which had a better profit margin.
Agreed!
I have a Amiga a500 plus and a1200 available if you’re looking for one
Drop me an email Paul :)
Doesn't the A600 already have a "PCMIA slot" for data exchange via PCMCIA and Compact Flash?
Alright Mr Picky :) I meant a PCMCIA Card, not slot :) :) :) Me and my stupid brain :)
@@TheRetroShack You're welcome ;-)
I never wrote this console off, but picked up an Amiga 1200 instead back in 1992, which I think was amazing.
Unfortunately I'd moved from Amiga 500 to PC by the time the 600 and 1200 came out, and couldn't really justify having them at the time :(
@@TheRetroShack I actually went from Amiga 500 to PC, then back to Amiga then to juicer PC again.
That poor protective plastic thinking that it had survived your ire after all but then...lol! Kidding aside, great job and I'm eager to see what comes next, and of course, get more second tier tea towel cameos to boot... ~_^
Thanks Trevin - I wondered how many people would think I'd forgotten about that little piece of plastic :) :)
I don't know if it actually helps but when I saw my Amiga keys floating upside down in the solution, I put a sheet of Alu foil underneath the container to reflect the light back up at the keys.
Thanks for the tip :)
Good thinking!
Makes me feel ill to think I binned one of these 5 or 6 years ago because it wouldn't boot, along with 2 x ti 99/4 whose metal finish had corroded and an mz80 that stopped working with a puff of smoke, this experience stopped my collecting retro computers and quickly sold off my surviving computers. Watching channels like this satisfies my appetite for retro computers and consoles. Great channel.
The problem with the A600 wasn’t what it was, but what it was not. It was neither cheap nor significantly better. Today that doesn’t matter, so it’s moot and the what it is remains.
Nicely put :)
@@TheRetroShack Since all retro computing is “bad” by today’s standards, the reason to have any of it is different. Some of the flops back in the day ends up being quite interesting today :)
Like the video. Will you retrobrite the mouse?
I certainly will, although that's an A500 mouse so it probably won't feature again in this series - I have an optical mouse for this machine arriving for part 3 :)
I don't think I will ever fully understand the 'hate' for the A600. I got one for Christmas that year and absolutely loved it because it was powerful and small, something I could pack up and take to my aunts etc. Had no problems running most games (aside from the numpad issue) because I sourced a copy of Relokick via a school friend. Loved it, still love it. I really want to fix up my old one soon.
Good luck with your own refurb and I'm starting to see the benefits of this machine myself :) (Don't think it will ever overtake my love for the A500 though - that machine is just so darn sexy! :) )
@@TheRetroShack thanks man :) enjoyed the video and it's interesting to hear other peoples opinion on the little-mig. It definitely had its faults, when I got the A1200 I realised that even more. Briefly had the A500+ as well but the breakout box needed for RF made it slightly annoying (naturally in the modern day this is no longer the case).
I did notice that Amiga club members offloaded their A600s to unsuspecting new members and at inflated price...a good reason to hate..reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Peter is playing the keyboard and the unmasking of him as a phony.
I'll try to 'help' with the whole 'hating on the A600' thing. 😏
I worked for a dealership in PA, USA, only a few counties away from the old Commodore factory.
Around this time, PC's were really becoming competitive, both in terms of speed and graphics. In short, the Amiga was losing its edge. When the A1200 came out, almost every Amiga fan that saw it in our showroom wanted one, only... We couldn't get them. Oh, we had PLENTY of the A600's in stock, though!... Yeah, NO ONE who wanted an A1200 would settle for that! What we didn't/couldn't know at the time was the financial state that Commodore was in. When we were demanding more A1200's, an engineer from Commodore reached out to us and told us anonymously that the truth was, they couldn't pay the company that assembled them... 😮
I think you Brits have a saying for the way we felt: Gobsmacked. We knew Commodore had its issues, but that phone call got us thinking very seriously about our business model as a company, AND, it got me personally thinking about my future career as well (I ended up getting into networking, Linux, server administration).
Look, the A600 was 'OK', but to us, the issue was that:
1. It wasn't the A1200. It was simply a smaller version of the A1000 w/1 MB of Chip RAM, honestly. Had it come out a year or two before, that might have been understandable, but...
2. No one wanted this. If they did want one it was only because they didn't have an A500 yet, or because this small machine was TERRIFIC for kiosks and/or multimedia (Scala) presentations, mainly because of its color composite out. BTW, curse Commodore and its STUPID decision to ship a 4096 color computer (A500) with B/W composite out! If Jack Tramiel was still the CEO at the time, he would've fired the person responsible for that decision: TWICE!
3. It was noticeably slower than its predecessor (A500) because of its lack of Fast RAM. How much slower? I recall around an 11% hit. Significant enough to FEEL it. Around that time, I had written a 'Tron' game which used the Copper to draw a horizon point to simulate the tank battle from the movie. I rendered the Recognizers on our Video Toaster and animated them as a large 3D scalable sprite, blitted across the screen. It was just about playable on the A500, too slow on the A600, and way TOO FAST on the A1200 - that version got more color, more frames for animation, etc.
4. This was a hard sell because with everything above, you would think all the cost reduction would equate to costing less than the A500. Nope. 🤬Incredibly, it was *more* expensive - I don't remember how much, but it was significant. The fact that it was SLOWER than the old A500 was a hard pill to swallow when it seemed that PCs were arriving at double their speeds every six months or so at the time. I recall getting a 'Number 9' VGA board in and was just blown away by how fast and clean its 2D graphics and text were.
And people like me were PISSED. I WANTED the A1200. I worked at the dealership and *I* couldn't get one. So yeah, the A600 took the brunt of our collective frustration. It wasn't a terrible machine, in fact, I LOVED the form factor and actually used it in our Scala business for kiosks and even a local planetarium! But like so many Commodore decisions made at the time, this one was unforgivable. The A600 should never have been built - the focus should've been on the A1200, the AAA chipset, corporate support of the Video Toaster and working with Newtek to help them further that market... Oh, so many things!
The morning of the bankruptcy, I found my PC tech outside smoking a cigarette. He told me the news, and I asked him for a butt - this after I had quit a full year before. It was a difficult time for the developers, the hardware engineers, the Commodore employees, the dealers like us, and finally, the customers who were left flapping in the breeze. For me personally, it was an especially difficult time in my life personally, and this was just the icing on the cake.
Although we managed to get an A4000 tower, we couldn't get any A1200s after that, for sure - but you know... I'll bet you could've gotten yourself a brand-new in-the-box A600 for MONTHS afterwards... 🙄
One more thing. Sure, it had IDE 2.5" support, a SLOW as molasses (and mostly useless - at least on the Amiga), PCMCIA slot, AND it had the ability for easy expansion. But the little hard drives back then were REALLY expensive, and the cost of even the 512K/Clock card was ridiculous! When I upgraded our floor model with that card though, it made a big difference in performance - BUT - not enough (at least to me!), to justify the cost of it. After all, at that point, it was essentially a stock A500+, innit? 😀
hi, I was wondering if you could tell me what your retrobright-mixture consist of - how much water/peroxide and anything else? - btw great video :-)
Thanks! I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
My A600 is my only working Amiga at the moment. No Number Pad. I'll find out how much its needed. Or not. 😂
I'm loving this Amiga 600 to be honest! :)
Great channels like this just would not have existed pre internet, Imagine selling this to ITV execs, so whats the show, lasers, celebs, sexy times? errr no we are giving a 30 year old computer a scrub up!
Thanks so much :) Might get a slot on Dave :)
Hi. What ratio water to peroxide? And which peroxide do you use. Do you use the same concoction for keys and white plastic? Ty
Hard to say as I have a tank I keep ready but it's probably about 20 litres of water to 1 litre of Peroxide - Probably fluctuates up and down as I add more peroxide if things aren't going well :)
🎶"Mr Blue Sky, please tell us why, you have to Retr0brite for so long (so long)".
So musical! :)
Cannot wait for the same video for my favourite Amiga: 1200!!!
Need to get hold of one first :( But when I do :)
Ohh my first new computer. before a zx81
*Before* a ZX81? :)
When I was a teen. I always thought the A600 was the rebranding of the A500 line to match the leaked A1200 at the time. The A1200 looked neater and modern, compared to the A500 model.
I did own a Acorn Electron > Spectrum +3 > Atari 520STFM > Amiga A500 > A1200.
Sadly, my A1200 complete with '030 accelerator card, 120mb HDD, Power Dual external floppy, Hand scanner and the new CBM multisync Monitor got stolen in the early 2000s. So they couldn't be replaced :(
Oh that’s such a sad story! So sorry to hear you lost such a cherished setup. Have you thought about recreating it?
@@TheRetroShack Unfortunately no. I soon got into the PC building and early internet late 90s. I did use BBS on my A1200 when I borrowed a friends modem and numbers.
I do use WinUAE and I have a FPGA for more hardware emulating.
I first learned C++ on my Amiga, and continued from the Acorn and Spectrum ASM to M68k with DevPac.
I sure miss those days of the all in one micro's, and glad that the Pi400 managed to bring back some of that magic :)
It seems your retro-briting method is pretty safe to avoid streaking, as long as you make sure the plastic is completely clean. No drying of creams since it's in a watery liquid the whole time. Curious that the keys didn't need to be facing up, I guess they get the appropriate light everywhere through refraction. Does your method help prevent the plastic getting too brittle? Does it matter how much hydrogen peroxide you put in the tub, i.e. I have a very, very slightly yellowed A600 and it's almost not worth doing it...I"m also thinking of trying lite-brighting first (Retro Recipes talked about that technique). All new to me as a QL'er since, well, black plastic doesn't have that problem :-)
I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
Hello where i can find that 4mb fast ram expansion?
Here's the one I got: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164267655374
Used to own a Lemmings Amiga 600 pack back in the 1990s. Cost £399 from Silica Shop in 1993. Think I had a memory expansion in the trap door, think it was 4MB for a total of 6MB. And I also had an external PCMIA 200MB hard disk drive which cost a small fortune back then, never did fill it up to the top. Barely had 10MB installed at any one time. I forget what I ended up doing with it in the end. Probably sold it either on eBay in the late 90s or sold it through a local buy and sell advertiser newspaper.
Thanks for sharing :). Bet you wish you'd kept it :)
@@TheRetroShack Yep. Actually wanted a 1200 but they were either not available at the time or didn't have enough money. The external hard drive device cost me about £300 at the time. Thought it would be a great idea but most Amiga games were not hard drive installable.
Yes you were, sorry. I swapped my A500 for an A500+ and that was one of the biggest mistake I ever made. Now that's a machine that should be shat upon. Same memory, an OS that took more ram and half of my old games didn't work anymore. So I conned some idiot into buying that and got an A600. Compact, sweet, cuddly, can load all my old games, had a hard disk, a PCMCIA slot, and it was the coolest thing ever for those who couldn't afford an A1200.
Don't worry - I've come to really admire this little thing over the past few weeks, and I have to admit, yes I was wrong! ;)
@@TheRetroShack Glad you did, as many others have. Mad props! It's a fantastic machine and it's not her fault the Amiga legacy was killed off, as much as it was the CD32's fault. It was bad timing and marketing, extremely stupid corporate decisions and active sabotage that did away with the mighty Amiga. It would have DESTROYED the "IBM-compatible" market back then, with their pitiful 16 colours, pc speaker bleeps, clunky OS and "affordable prices". The Amiga team weren't corporate acquisitions, they were brilliant and ingenious acolytes dedicated fully to their wonderful brainchild. The Amiga would probably be able to teleport and be controlling warp drives by now if things went differently. Bless her soul!
few years back i worked on a600 to upgrade i belive chip ram from 1 to 2 mb by just piggubacking few ram chips on the two oryginal ones with only select lines connected to random places on the motherboard, well i was only the soldering person, not the owner, not an amiga guru , but i remember i did few things different than instructed , like piggybacking 2 ram chips on a single chip instead of one on each for a sole reason that floppy drive and rf shield would close with additional chips in place.
somehow i love how hackable old computers were
Hey, if it worked then I guess it doesn't matter how you did it :) :)
@@TheRetroShack since both memory chips were connected in paralell only one select pin difference it had no chance to not work :P
Hey i had an A600 back in the day (so to speak) and used it to learn code. Loved my A600, it fitted on my small desk in my small bedroom (i was a kid) Workbench 2.0 and a 20mb hard disk!
And I bet you loved it! :) :) Bedroom coding is where I started out too (albeit on a ZX Spectrum)
Great work
Thank you so much 😀
excellent vid! how did you connect it to a flatscreen?
Thanks! The connection is through a simple SCART > HDMI connector off Amazon :)
Computers have no devices with "stick" in the name, not memory, keyboards, monitors, memory, CPUs, or other peripherals
Colin disagrees :) www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/memory-stick
@@TheRetroShack That isn't correct. Only Sony had Memory Stick.
What you have linked is an explanation to help people who don't know. It"s like plug and play, people don't understand what it really is fully.
They confuse it with hot plug or hot swapping which is different.
I’d suggest dropping the various dictionary sites an email and point out their mistake :)
the 600 should have had aga and at least an 020
That would have made it an Amiga 1200, bro...
That's the illusion of the 1200 looking case. I was poking around my A600 and realize its got ECS. Its basically a A500 lacking a side expansion so i cant use my GVP Hard Drive.
@@10MARC no because the A1200 had an extended keypad, bro...
They were holding all the good stuff back for the 1200 :)
@@TheRetroShack And wanting cash for all the bad stuff in the A600! Would be interesting to know more about marketing campaigns Commodore engaged in to sell these things...must have been a lot of straight faces. I remember an Atari dealer who bought a lot of stock from Atari and Atari folded the next day..the dealer was left with a warehouse of instantly obsolete stock he couldn't move except to the tip...
Oh, yeah! That's a satisfying video ending, if I ever saw one... :D
Hehe - I couldn't help but chuckle when I was editing this together :)
Hi, what is percentage of Hydrogen against the water?
To be honest I'm not really sure at the moment - I keep an tub on the go at all times and add water if it's running low (evaporating) and hydrogen peroxide if things aren't progressing quickly enough (based on experience) but I'd guess it's around 20/25:1 Water/Hydrogen Peroxide at any given time.
@@TheRetroShack Thanks,
and what is percentage of hydrogen it self 12% or 30%.
I know when I was using Hydrogen (12%) + HCl to make PCB, I realized that if I want to use same solution after few days it worked poorly. So is Hydrogen getting weaker after a period of time in this case?
My friend told me that Hydrogen also have expiring date so after few years unopened it degrades, I don't know if it true that is why I am asking you. Nice videos and thanks for getting me back in time.
Very entertaining! Well done. Also, lovely to se another Amiga getting back to tip top shape. Cheers
:) Glad you enjoyed it!
I've never come across your channel before. Subscribed right away.
I'm fairly new to your channel but loving it so far. You really deserve way more subscribers! Love the content and the delivery.
Cheers, and thanks for the vote of confidence - really appreciate it :) :)
7:13 OMG that card is filthy. Please clean it out, at your convenience, but just consider doing it, no way out.
Lol - yes, I only threw it in to see if it worked :) I'll make sure to give it a quick scrub up before it moves in permanently :)
@@TheRetroShack I would have bet that! Going straigth on the 10k road! Cheers, M
@@mark12358 Thanks - looking forward to the 10k party :) :) Might even open a bottle of champers :)
Showing me age here, but I miss the ZX81 vs Vic20, C64 vs CPC6128 vs BBC B, ST vs Amiga, those were the good old days :)
If I missed a machine, that's because I listed ones I owned.
Oh yes, because I love all things Retro, a new Sub :)
Welcome aboard! :)
too many machines that are allmost same and PC market just getting interesting windows 95 boom
work bench 2.x looks very nice. but I still like original and not sure if I like 3.1 yet. Just talking about the look and feel.
Just found your channel and love it! My only disappointment is that you have no TI 99 4/A content that I'm aware of. Would you consider doing a TI video?
Working on it! :)
Smashing video, I had the 600 back in the day after 6 months the built in rf modulator stopped working, gutted I was
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video, as always. Now to find part 3.
You can consider this episode 2.5: ruclips.net/video/yr7cGiFCAOU/видео.html :) :)
@@TheRetroShack I found and watched it.
Another great video, looks as good as new!
Thanks Wayne - yep, very happy with how it turned out :)
Oh I should recap all my Amigas, but I don't have any surface mount tools =(
Be brave, young Padawan!
Хотел посмотреть, что такое эта ваша амига. Посмотрел два видео. Ничего не понял. Думаю, если что и было ошибкой, то это вот так снять и не показать вообще ничего, что она умеет
that Amiga looks like it must have been a barn computer in its previous life (well, what else would one do with a 600?) Smoothest restoration job that have seen in a long time - very nice outcome
Ta! I like to put the hard work in as it really does pay off :)
Did something like this a few months ago after building a new power supply out of an old atx one. Turned out much the same.. the on board ide really is handy with the gotek
Hope you have as much fun with yours as I'm having with this one :)
A 500 mini about 20 years ahead of its time.
Are you looking for a once loved 1200?
Absolutely! Please get in touch through email and we can have a chat :)
@@TheRetroShack Will do
@@TheRetroShack Email sent
Great video. Im interested in retrobrite as were having nice weather in the uk now can I ask what make of peroxide solution you use. Also how long did you leave the case and keys out for? Many thanks.
I keep that tub sitting outside so tend to top it up with water and a dribble of Hydrogen Peroxide every now and again, so I'm not sure what the current mix is. I tend to go by speed of results. When it's sunny my expectation is that most things are done in a couple of days. If it's taking longer I'll add 500ml of chemical and go again. Sorry I can't be more precise :(
@@TheRetroShack Thanks for replying can I ask the name of the brand of liquid peroxide you used theres so many im hoping to get some for the nice weather this weekend.
you've done a lovely job restoriong that 600.. i'm still not sure about them thou.. lolol..
Maybe part 3 will convince you? :) :)
My Amigas were all recapped last year. Luckily I also found my Apollo 630. It got a new socket for the 68000, hope it will work.
I hope so too :). Good luck and let me know how it goes :)
This just makes me miss my 2000
Sorry :( Perhaps you should get another one :) :)
@@TheRetroShack MAYBE I WILL
who am i kidding the wife would murder me. I've got UAE and my old hard drive as an HDF, close enough
I would be tempted to bright the entire kb as it is. How would you guarantee consistent results with keys randomly being tossed into the solution? Not saying I'm right but it seems problematic.
As long as you swish them round every couple of hours it's all good - I've never had a problem doing it this way :)
@@TheRetroShack Good to know.
The A600 was my first Amiga, I then ended up with x2 500+'s, x3 A1200's and an A4000 ..
Wish I'd have kept all of them.
I bet! That was an awesome collection! :)
I bought an A600 back in the day, fantastic machine, wish I still had it.
Yep, certainly I’ve got a new-found respect for it :)
Gotek is heresy. :)
I was looking at the layout of the keyboard, noting how similar the UK and US layouts are, but I couldn't find the single quote / apostrophe. I'm probably just blind, so I thought I would ask where it is. Thanks!
Blimey, you're right - doesn't have one! Just checked my A500 and that doesn't either... However did we cope?? :)
It should be top left above tab
And it is
That's not an apostrophe! It's facing the wrong way :) :) Either that, or I'm hanging my head in shame! :)
@@TheRetroShack Yeah, that's grave accent, not apostrophe. Totally different character.
It really wasnt what the Amiga needed when it was released, but that was 30 years ago. These days, its a nice little machine, especially with the hardware you can pick up for it now.
Couldn't agree more!
Ah, yes. The "there are various methods on how to replace SMD caps"-excuse for ripping them off the board.
Just do it right, and noone is poked.
:) :) You're never safe from a poke! :)