Sometimes, doing retro can genuinely get me down.

Sometimes, doing retro can genuinely get me down. My attempts to get an updated ROM working in the A600 have taken up so much time today, and in the end simply failed as too unreliable to use - and I only wanted it so I can use the PCMCIA port which seems to recognise absolutely nothing of value under Workbench 2.x.

And then there's the ongoing silence from the makers and sellers of OS3.2 which makes me feel like I've somehow been shadow banned.

I'm going to just walk away from it for today.

@retrotechtive What's your issue with the PCMCIA port? Note that the Amiga does not recognize any PCMCIA cards by itself, except DRAM/SRAM cards prepared by PrepCard. For all other cards, you need device drivers.

Also, the PCMCIA slot is deactivated if you have 8 megs of 24-bit Fast RAM.

@derSammler thanks, yeah I'm aware of that, the cards are detected in 2.x but won't prep, and some are probably too large to show though they do on my A1200s (and for that matter, USB on the 4000, however relevant that is). Drivers did not help, again this all works fine on the A1200s.

I was hoping the 3.2 ROMs and OS would fix it, but The EEPROM I've used seems too unstable, and I don't have any others spare so I didn't get that far.

No fast ram btw just 2MB chip.

@retrotechtive What do you mean with "won't prep"? PrepCard is for DRAM/SRAM only (4 megs or less), you can not use it with any other cards.

If you try to use a CF card in an adapter, you need compactflash.device, fat95, and a mount list (just get the cfd package from aminet).

I'm using SRAM, WLAN, and CF adapters in my A600 and A1200 with ROMs from 2.05 to 3.1.4 with no issues at all.

@derSammler So prep was just to see if that would detect the cards, which it did, I wasn't surprised they didn't prep, not something I have tried before.

I have those drivers, like I say I've done this before on the A1200. It's possible the mountlist was wrong though, I didn't check it too deeply before wondering about the ROM.

If you say it works on 2.05 then that's interesting, and perhaps I don't need the other ROM at all, which would be preferable - though 2.x is noticeably slower to me.

@derSammler Ah just noticed you mentioned the cfd package from aminet, yes I tried that last and it still didn't work.

@derSammler So prep was just to see if that would detect the cards, which it did, I wasn't surprised they didn't prep, not something I have tried before.

I have those drivers, like I say I've done this before on the A1200. It's possible the mountlist was wrong though, I didn't check it too deeply before wondering about the ROM.

If you say it works on 2.05 then that's interesting, and perhaps I don't need the other ROM at all, which would be preferable - though 2.x is noticeably slower to me.

@retrotechtive I would recommend trying with an SRAM card if you have one, as those work with no additional software. Because it sounds to me like an hardware issue (bent or pushed-in pin or trace damage around the three buffer chips due to cap leakage). I can assure you it has nothing to do with the ROM.

Sometimes, doing retro can genuinely get me down. My attempts to get an updated ROM working in the A600 have taken up so much time today, and in the end simply failed as too unreliable to use - and I only wanted it so I can use the PCMCIA port which seems to recognise absolutely nothing of value under Workbench 2.x.

And then there's the ongoing silence from the makers and sellers of OS3.2 which makes me feel like I've somehow been shadow banned.

I'm going to just walk away from it for today.

Sigh, well it looks like the 5V line is 4.82 at best and dips to around 4.7ish during activity. This is a high power replacement PSU i bought a few years back and until now it's been good, but this could well be the issue here. Amigas can behave weirdly if 5V drops too low, this is right on the edge of reliable levels. Ordered another PSU as the only other quality one I have is 110V only.

PSU that came with the A600 has a broken -12V line so I won't even try that.

Fingers crossed it's this.

Sigh, well it looks like the 5V line is 4.82 at best and dips to around 4.7ish during activity. This is a high power replacement PSU i bought a few years back and until now it's been good, but this could well be the issue here. Amigas can behave weirdly if 5V drops too low, this is right on the edge of reliable levels. Ordered another PSU as the only other quality one I have is 110V only.

PSU that came with the A600 has a broken -12V line so I won't even try that.

Fingers crossed it's this.

@retrotechtive does your modern psu have a trim pot for the 5v? Might be worth checking it's not too low

Still no reply from Hyperion or RR though.

A question for all Amiga 600 owners. Do you find that your onboard 68000 CPU runs hot?

My experience of 68000s (specifically that, not the later models) is that they rarely run all that hot, even when the machine's been on a while. Those have been mostly the original large package though.

This one runs really hot even only after a few minutes of being on.

The Mac Classic also uses this form factor 68k but I don't recall that being toasty either.

Suspicious?

(Boosts welcome!)

THe 680EC20 on the A1200 also runs merely warm on the machines I've built and used (A1200, CD32, etc). Of course that chip might have had massive internal revisions since the original 68k but still this also makes me wonder about that A600 processor.