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What is this all about?

What is an Amiga 600?

The A600's capabilities

How to upgrade an Amiga 600...

Software suggestions

Hardware suggestions

Thanks to...

Links and downloads

Software suggestions

As already mentioned, this site is not supposed to instruct you on installing the A600's operating system and software. However this will give you some hints on what to do and what to use.

Operating system:
Get a 3.1 ROM (still available for sale in Amiga shops -- see Links page) and the current Amiga OS 3.9 operating system if you are serious about this project. Only then will you be able to use the latest Amiga software

Drivers:
Use the cnet.device (which can be found on Aminet) if you want to use a PCMCIA network card (and I recommend to do so!). The cnet.device will run with most NE2000 (Novell) compatible cards. Another driver for 3COM PCMCIA NICs has been posted recently on the Aminet. I have however never tried this. If you did so with an Amiga 600, please let me know the results!

Networking:
If you do not use OS 3.9, you will need to use a third party TCP/IP stack (OS 3.9 has one built in). "Miami" is good and easy to configure. However it is not free. If you want to use folders shared by a Windows computer, install "SMB Handler". This will allow you to mount shared folders as Amiga devices.

Emulators:
Shapeshifter/Basilisk II: These are 68K Macintosh emulators which will allow you to run 68K Macintosh operating systems (Up to Mac OS 8.1) and software on your Amiga, provided you've got a Mac ROM file which again is only legal if you own a Mac. The emulation is very fast. You will not perceive a considerable speed difference compared to real Macs using the same 68K processor. However graphics output speed is slow in color modes due to the different graphics system of the Amiga and Mac. Mac OS will run in Amiga's multitasking environment, with Mac OS being just another Amiga task! "Basilisk II" is the newer release, but also check out "Shapeshifter" which has its advantages. A Mac emulator is a must! This will bring Netscape, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office (although none of them in a current version) to your Amiga! (See screen snapshots on "A600's capabilities" page)

PC emulators: There are some PC emulators out there for the Amiga, some of them event boast that they are capable of running Windows. Don't waste any time with them. Although they are master pieces from a technical point of view (especially PCTask 4.4 with JIT compiling), you will hardly get the speed of a slow 80386 on a Apollo equipped Amiga 600. Just for fun I ran Norton SI on PCTask 4.4 with large JIT cache setting on my upgraded Amiga 600. It resulted a Norton Speed Index of 16.1 (compared to a IBM XT). My Duron 700 results an index of 95 (SI run under Windows 2000 though).

Linux:
Debian still assembles distributions of Linux m68k ready to be installed on Amigas. At the time of writing this, the current release was 3.0r1a. See the links page for URLs. Debian is not easy to install. You should have some Linux experience if you want to use Debian Linux.

Games:
If you want to play those old games the Amiga was famous for, use "WHDLoad". This allows to run virtually any game from your Amiga 600's hard disk and takes care of removing incompatibilities. You can find WHDLoad here.