Amiga 600

What can I do with an Amiga 600?
The Amiga 600, sorry to say,  was not a very popular machine. It is cute though. They are basically an Amiga 500, with no numeric keypad, and a PCMCIA slot rather than the ZORRO I of the 500 and 1000 Unfortunately, the A600 is somewhat limited in its expansion capabilities. Also, almost all of the chips are surface mounted, thus making expansion a hard task. You will be limited in your expansion options and the PCMCIA slot is your primary expansion option. Most modern laptops and PC's use these cards, and that makes them more expensive. There are only a limited amount of "second hand" expansions also. Again, I recommend new Amiga users start with an A1200 and expand from there. However, if you want to take the time and some expense, the A600 can run a good portion of modern software.

Can the A600 run modern software?
Yes, with upgrading. Generally, I recommend the following upgrades:
A) AmigaOS 3.1 (you may need to have a qualified technician remove the old ROMS)
B) Accelerator card equipped with a 68030/40mhz or better (again a tech may have to do this)
C) 8MB RAM
D) Hard drive controller (SCSI) hard disk (100Mb or more) & CD-ROM (if possible).
* Please note, that any software requiring the upgraded AGA custom chipset will not work with the A600.

Can I connect to the Internet?
Yes, but again the key word is, upgrade. First off, it's imperative to have a hard drive and a good amount of RAM. With the 68000 CPU as stock, you'll be limited in what types of applications you can run. FTP, IRC, E-Mail, Telnet and a Webbrowser will work, albeit very slowly. You'll need at the very least AmigaOS 2.04. If you have 3.1 or above you'll be able to run a webbrowser in 16 colors. Even if you upgrade to a fairly quick CPU, you'll still be limited in colors.

How do I expand it?
The Amiga 600 is in a single keyboard case, like the old Commodore 64/128, and has very few upgrade options. The left side PCMCIA expansion slot is probably your best bet, and there are a few expansion products that use this.