Here are some quick answers 😀

- open up the floppy and clean the heads gently with IPA , 95% it will be fine after that
- replace all smd electrolytic caps on the mobo - 95% chance they already leak on the bottom (sadly you can't see it unless u remove the caps)
- WB3x needs 3x kickstart so it won't boot on your setup
- the easiest/fastest ways to copy files to amiga hdd is to do it via winuae - connect your amiga drive to the pc , add it to the winuae settings and copy over from your emulated environment

for wb3x and upwards I recommend something like ClassicWB that comes with many things pre-configured: http://classicwb.abime.net

ROM 2.05 will not boot WB 3.1, as already written. It will give you Recoverable Alerts and System Held messages all the time. ROM 2.05 can boot WB 2.1 at a max.

Looking at the picture of the Kickstart ROM, you have to replace it anyway. 37.300 isn't able to support hard disks larger than 40 MB. You need 37.350 for larger ones. But better get Kickstart 3.1 instead of 37.350 (which is 2.05, too - there were three builds of 2.05 for the A600).

Once you have sorted that out, prepare the CF card using WinUAE. If you get WinUAE to boot from the CF card, the A600 will as well.

ps: you may also PM me, as I have four A600 running from CF/SD cards.

OK, first of all: thanks for your useful answers - it's always a pleasure to find other passionates of the big A. @derSammler, if you want, we can exchange our emails, if you have 4 machines like mine with CF, it would be great for me if you'll share your experience and knowledge.

@keropi - I'll try to do this cleaning for sure, but I chose at the end to order a Gotek too, just to be safe... on one hand, I'm 'sorry' to do this - but these floppy emus are great and can make things a lot easier. Do you use them too? Regarding caps and leaks, from the pics I've posted it doesn't seem to be many of them - and they are on the left side in the upper corner, if I am right. Electrolytic are the 'bigger ones', no?

Can I upgrade using these 'new' licensed ROM chips?

https://www.ebay.it/itm/New-Licensed-Kickstar … LgAAOSwAuZX1Y0O

Yes, but these require a special version of the Workbench, since Cloanto removed the workbench.library from the ROM. They say it was needed to add fixes and newer libraries, but since they also sell that special version of the Workbench on 3.5" disk and CF card, you can put one and one together...

Try getting an original ROM from back then. You can get those for a similar price.

derSammler wrote:

Looking at the picture of the Kickstart ROM, you have to replace it anyway. 37.300 isn't able to support hard disks larger than 40 MB. You need 37.350 for larger ones. But better get Kickstart 3.1 instead of 37.350 (which is 2.05, too - there were three builds of 2.05 for the A600).

It's an urban legend that all 37.300 can not run drives larger than 40mb. I ran kick 37.300 and had a 512mb installed.
It might be due to the board revisions instead, though not running drives larger than 40mb is simply not true.

No, it's pure luck. The scsi.device in 37.300 has a bug preventing drives larger than 44 mb to be recognized correctly, or at all. If it works for you, fine. But normally it doesn't.

Kadath wrote:

Can I upgrade using these 'new' licensed ROM chips?

https://www.ebay.it/itm/New-Licensed-Kickstar … LgAAOSwAuZX1Y0O

Be aware that these chips might be one of those, that have extra legs. I bought one of those for my 600.
The original commodore chips, was a bit shorter than the socket.
If the chip fill out the socket, then you need to be shure that your board will have power on the pins normally not used.
My board was build without this, and the seller was happy to take the rom chip back again. Got refunded.
Then I bough an original 37.350 rom, as I have no intention of running kick 3.x on my 600.

Just check your board before buying the chips.

derSammler wrote:

No, it's pure luck. The scsi.device in 37.300 has a bug preventing drives larger than 44 mb to be recognized correctly, or at all. If it works for you, fine. But normally it doesn't.

Working with a Seagate 50gb platter drive as well, though I can only partition it to 2x2gb drives.
Well.... This is stock setup with WB 2.04 and 2.10 on kick 37.300.
Dan Wood on youtube is reporting this as well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5svNq2grTEU
It is a myth that all 37.300 can not use drives larger than 40mb.
The only way to know if your machine can do it or not, is to test it out in each individual machines.

Kadath wrote:

[...]

@keropi - I'll try to do this cleaning for sure, but I chose at the end to order a Gotek too, just to be safe... on one hand, I'm 'sorry' to do this - but these floppy emus are great and can make things a lot easier. Do you use them too? Regarding caps and leaks, from the pics I've posted it doesn't seem to be many of them - and they are on the left side in the upper corner, if I am right. Electrolytic are the 'bigger ones', no?

A gotek is indeed a good solution , I have one but I don't use it at all. I have installed a furia020 accelerator in my A600 that also comes with 10MB of ram so I run all my games via hdd by using WHDLOAD. I also use a 8GB CF as a hdd - it's a no brainer nowdays 😎

The caps you are mentioning are the classic style hole-thru electrolytic ones - these tend to be OK - I am talking about the smaller SMD metallic ones that are all over the board: these are electrolytics as well and like in almost all amigas I've seen they are really prone to leaking. It's not uncommon to notice audio loss, video parasites or other weirdness. The recommendation here if you care about the machine is to change all of them ASAP - and that's not scare tactics these caps are really cheap+crap 🤣 🤣 🤣

I'll chime my experience with the scsi.device - it's really troublesome! I am with derSammler on this one, it's a hit and miss! Just like the HDD access led that does not work with all devices 😵 . I would chose Cloanto's kickstart + cf/floppies any day over the stock scsi.device on the kickstart.
Personally I use a custom 3.9 kickstart rom with a scsi.device that plays well with 99% of HDDs and CFs out there.

brostenen wrote:

derSammler wrote:

Looking at the picture of the Kickstart ROM, you have to replace it anyway. 37.300 isn't able to support hard disks larger than 40 MB. You need 37.350 for larger ones. But better get Kickstart 3.1 instead of 37.350 (which is 2.05, too - there were three builds of 2.05 for the A600).

It's an urban legend that all 37.300 can not run drives larger than 40mb. I ran kick 37.300 and had a 512mb installed.
It might be due to the board revisions instead, though not running drives larger than 40mb is simply not true.

I must say, I've seen on YouTube videos that confirm this - it is a little unclear - many people seem to have had the same lucky experience.

brostenen wrote:

Working with a Seagate 50gb platter drive as well, though I can only partition it to 2x2gb drives. Well.... This is stock setup […]
Show full quote

derSammler wrote:

No, it's pure luck. The scsi.device in 37.300 has a bug preventing drives larger than 44 mb to be recognized correctly, or at all. If it works for you, fine. But normally it doesn't.

Working with a Seagate 50gb platter drive as well, though I can only partition it to 2x2gb drives.
Well.... This is stock setup with WB 2.04 and 2.10 on kick 37.300.
Dan Wood on youtube is reporting this as well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5svNq2grTEU
It is a myth that all 37.300 can not use drives larger than 40mb.
The only way to know if your machine can do it or not, is to test it out in each individual machines.

I was just referring to that video - however, reading about your comments and experiences, I give up with the licensed ROM released by Cloanto - I prefer an original chip by far.

keropi wrote:

A gotek is indeed a good solution , I have one but I don't use it at all. I have installed a furia020 accelerator in my A600 that also comes with 10MB of ram so I run all my games via hdd by using WHDLOAD. I also use a 8GB CF as a hdd - it's a no brainer nowdays 😎

Awesome that accelerator! Bought on Vesalia?

keropi wrote:

The caps you are mentioning are the classic style hole-thru electrolytic ones - these tend to be OK - I am talking about the smaller SMD metallic ones that are all over the board: these are electrolytics as well and like in almost all amigas I've seen they are really prone to leaking. It's not uncommon to notice audio loss, video parasites or other weirdness. The recommendation here if you care about the machine is to change all of them ASAP - and that's not scare tactics these caps are really cheap+crap 🤣 🤣 🤣

I noted that some boot time is longer than others, and floppy doesn't read well, almost every time. The theme of Sensible Soccer doesn't seems to have symptoms of bad audio, for now... I'm organizing an almost full recap of the board, for next month, if everything goes well.

Kadath wrote:

I was just referring to that video - however, reading about your comments and experiences, I give up with the licensed ROM released by Cloanto - I prefer an original chip by far.

If you want to run 3.0/3.1 there are no original chips ever made.
Though if you want to run as authentic as possible like me, then this is a fair price for an 37.350 Kickstart.

https://amigakit.amiga.store/catalog/product_ … products_id=380

Kadath wrote:

keropi wrote:

The caps you are mentioning are the classic style hole-thru electrolytic ones - these tend to be OK - I am talking about the smaller SMD metallic ones that are all over the board: these are electrolytics as well and like in almost all amigas I've seen they are really prone to leaking. It's not uncommon to notice audio loss, video parasites or other weirdness. The recommendation here if you care about the machine is to change all of them ASAP - and that's not scare tactics these caps are really cheap+crap 🤣 🤣 🤣

I noted that some boot time is longer than others, and floppy doesn't read well, almost every time. The theme of Sensible Soccer doesn't seems to have symptoms of bad audio, for now... I'm organizing an almost full recap of the board, for next month, if everything goes well.

After reading that, I must say that all your symptoms, are the exact same as I had. I managed to find a fully recapped replacement board, tested and stuff, on were the recapping was done with tantalum caps. And I was lucky to find a buyer for my old board.

Kadath wrote:

Awesome that accelerator! Bought on Vesalia?

Nope, a good friend gave it to me after he upgraded to something better. 😎
Here is some info on the card: http://www.kuchinka.cz/furia , you can get it from several places nowdays. I haven't followed amiga news for a year or so, no idea if something better at that range exists.

About the caps, you can't avoid a recap - really... they WILL fail and maybe cause other issues as well due to the leaking acid. Since you are on the setup of the machine have it recapped and get it out of the way, it really is mandatory 🤣

brostenen wrote:

If you want to run 3.0/3.1 there are no original chips ever made.

What do you mean by that? Of course there were original chips of 3.1 made for the A500/600/2000.

The Furia card is great, I have it in one of my 4 A600 (other one has an ACA-620, another one an M-tec 630). It has problems with a couple of WHDLoad games, however.

derSammler wrote:

brostenen wrote:

If you want to run 3.0/3.1 there are no original chips ever made.

What do you mean by that? Of course there were original chips of 3.1 made for the A500/600/2000.

Can you point me to a page, that shows off a kickrom 3.0 or 3.1, made by Commodore for the Amiga600 specifically? I would really like to see original ones that have the correct length and can hold the right amount of data. If they exist, then it will be the first time that I hear about it.

keropi wrote:

Nope, a good friend gave it to me after he upgraded to something better. :cool: Here is some info on the card: http://www.kuch […]
Show full quote

Kadath wrote:

Awesome that accelerator! Bought on Vesalia?

Nope, a good friend gave it to me after he upgraded to something better. 😎
Here is some info on the card: http://www.kuchinka.cz/furia , you can get it from several places nowdays. I haven't followed amiga news for a year or so, no idea if something better at that range exists.

About the caps, you can't avoid a recap - really... they WILL fail and maybe cause other issues as well due to the leaking acid. Since you are on the setup of the machine have it recapped and get it out of the way, it really is mandatory 🤣

I've just made a check with my trusty electronic expert friend, that will help me recapping the entire board. It seems japanese caps are too expensive for motherboard total recap, so I think I'll take one of those A600 caps-kit on eBay or other shops online... yes, caps swapping for sure, of course.

Timo, I've mounted the CF with the 1GB image you've kindly linked me by mail, but I get this error - I suppose I can't use this CF system without upgrading a little memory or other?

When I google "error #8000003", I get the following:

https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/16-122