The 600 is one of the few Amiga models I’ve never owned (though that day may come). I love these things about it:
its compactness (no number pad)
it has PCMCIA like A1200 (though it’s slightly buggy sometimes) (a PCMCIA to CF adapter with the appropriate software running on the Amiga side can actually mount a CF card [under 4GB] that can be shared with/used in the Octatrack btw … I wouldn’t do this with your production card though)
can fit (solid state) hard drive inside
2 megs chipram, I think
expandable
ECS mode can use low-end VGA with an adapter (not as nicely as AGA can)
Things to check though:
the capacitors may need replacing
the OS may be 2.x and may be best to upgrade (unless you can get by with it, which is totally possible/reasonable)
The A600 would be a mean machine using OctaMED SoundStudio — that program is a beast (there are tracker commands that send ARexx commands to other programs running on the Amiga – interprocess communications in a tracker ) . I also like using Sample Wrench (which can also be scripted over ARexx) and … well, tons of other s__t on the Amiga. (Bars & Pipes Professional is an amazing MIDI environment, reminiscent of M4L, but it could take years to master and it’s not without its bugs. Gotta collect all the tools.)
re: C64 – I use my MSSIAH cart quite a bit; especially for the Drummer module. Used Drummer and the Sample player quite a bit on the middle/latter tracks of my jamuary2023 experiments, fed into the AK.
I know @darenager has written a lot about C64 here and elsewhere. I too have had MUSICALC for many many years, with the keyboard attachment. I don’t use it very often; the disk is copy-protected and if it goes bad, it’s impossible to load the program.
I also have (& use & love) a HardSID ISA in a ThinkPad Docking Station but that’s a whole other story.
the noise can sometimes be worked around. a lot of implementations/users ignore the ‘audio in’ pin on the video cable. if the ‘audio in’ is simply wired to something (so it is properly grounded/closed) then that can eliminate a lot of the noise. at least, that’s my experience on the 6581
Kerberos is really great, you can dump roms to it by midi sysex which means you can have a bunch of music programs installed and load them pretty quick from the cart, the midi side works flawlessly in all the stuff I tested it with.
Also recommend SidFx, it allows 2 Sid chips to be installed and gives a much cleaner (though still characterful) output and can use differential Sid types in each slot or the modern replacements, it has a very good config utility so it can be easily set up for a variety of Sid addresses.
Yeah, what an awesome program, I don’t feel it ever got the recognition it deserves really. BTW I found a way to “hack” it by using it installed on a SD card (using SD2IEC drive) and setting the SD card switch to lock to prevent it from cocking the disk up.
I am all of these synths. I am shape-shifter. The C64 thread is a gold mine. Thank you for linkage. I’m gonna get off the internet for some hours now. K. Bye.
Never had a C64 myself and my closest experience must be with LSDJ and Nanoloop, but I am very fond of chiptune and keygen music.
Give some tracker a shot?