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.

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? 😀

Nice!

You’re very welcome :) :)

Need to get hold of one first :( But when I do :)

And I bet you loved it! :) :) Bedroom coding is where I started out too (albeit on a ZX Spectrum)

Cheers, and thanks for the vote of confidence - really appreciate it :) :)

Thanks for the tip! :)

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.

:) Glad you enjoyed it!

You can consider this episode 2.5: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9hnlqqaq6mlf4k.html :) :)

@@TheRetroShack I found and watched it.

I bet! That was an awesome collection! :)

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.

Yay! :)

Thanks Trevin - I wondered how many people would think I'd forgotten about that little piece of plastic :) :)

So musical! :)

Hehe - I couldn't help but chuckle when I was editing this together :)

Check out part two where I fit a rom switch :) :)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

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

Thanks Wayne - yep, very happy with how it turned out :)

One of my absolute favourite machines :) Was playing Zany Golf last night :)

Ta! I like to put the hard work in as it really does pay off :)

Welcome aboard! :)

Thanks very much - glad you enjoyed it :)

So I'm discovering :)

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 :)

I hope so too :). Good luck and let me know how it goes :)

:) :) Nice!

Thanks for the tip :)

Good thinking!

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 :(

Hope you have as much fun with yours as I'm having with this one :)

Not sure it's strictly necessary, but can't hurt, right? :) :)

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.

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 :)

Yep, certainly I’ve got a new-found respect for it :)

Nice to see people making the most of these machines :)

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'm loving this Amiga 600 to be honest! :)

Thanks so much :) Might get a slot on Dave :)

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!

Thanks! The connection is through a simple SCART > HDMI connector off Amazon :)

Thank you so much 😀

Couldn't agree more!

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 :(

Working on it! :)

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 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 :)

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 :)

Yep - we'll cover that in part 3 :)

Alright Mr Picky :) I meant a PCMCIA Card, not slot :) :) :) Me and my stupid brain :)

@@TheRetroShack You're welcome ;-)

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 :)

Maybe part 3 will convince you? :) :)

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.

Be brave, young Padawan!

*Before* a ZX81? :)

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 :)

Here's the one I got: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164267655374

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!

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.

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.

Absolutely! Please get in touch through email and we can have a chat :)

@@TheRetroShack Will do

@@TheRetroShack Email sent

Really? The family member who donated it said they had it from new :) I'll be having words :) :)

Drop me an email Paul :)

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...

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!

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 :)

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 :)

:) :) You're never safe from a poke! :)