Description
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600 (codenamed "June Bug" after a
B-52s song), is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in
March 1992. The A600 was Commodore International's final model based on
the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. It is essentially a redesign
of the Amiga 500 Plus, with the option of an internal hard disk drive. A
notable aspect of the A600 is its small size. Lacking a numeric keypad,
the A600 is only slightly larger than a standard PC keyboard (14" long
by 9.5" deep by 3" high and weighing approximately 6 pounds). It shipped
with AmigaOS 2.0, which was generally considered more user-friendly than
earlier versions of the operating system.
Like the A500 before it, the A600 was aimed at the lower "consumer" end
of the market, with the higher end being dominated by the Amiga 3000. It
was intended by manufacturer, Commodore, to revitalize sales of the A500
line before the introduction of the 32-bit Amiga 1200. According to Dave
Haynie, the A600 "was supposed to be 50–60 US$ cheaper than the A500,
but it came in at about that much more expensive than the A500."[1] This
is supported by the fact that the A600 was originally to have been
numbered the A300, positioning it as a budget version of the A500+. In
the event, the cost led the machine to be marketed as a replacement for
the A500+, requiring a change of number. Early models feature
motherboards and power supplies with the A300 designation.
The Managing Director of Commodore UK, David Pleasance, described the
A600 as a "complete and utter screw-up".[2] In comparison to the popular
A500 it was considered unexpandable, did not improve on the A500's CPU,
was more expensive, and lacked a numeric keypad meaning that some
existing software such as flight simulators and application software
could not be used without a numerical pad emulator.
An "A600HD" model was sold with an internal 2.5" ATA hard disk drive of
either 20 or 40 MB. This model was marketed as a more "scholarly"
version of a home computer, previously best known for its extensive
range of games and retailed at almost double the price of a standard
A600. However, this hard disk support introduced some issues with
existing Amiga software because the memory used for hard disk control
prevented some memory intensive titles from launching without disabling
the hard drive (via the machine's inbuilt boot menu). Later models sold
without a hard disk drive in the 'Wild, Weird and Wicked' bundle
contained the A600HD label, but with the HD cradle and HD missing. These
all had ROM version 37.350.
The A600 was the first Amiga model manufactured in the UK. The factory
was in Irvine, Scotland, although some later examples were manufactured
in Hong Kong. It was also manufactured in the Philippines. The first
ever production A600—serial number "1"—resided in the Commodore UK
Managing Director's office.
Surface-mount technology used on the A600 led to a failure rate under
warranty of 0.78%, compared to the A500's failure rate of 8.25%.
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