Re: Flogging a dead horse
I remember grafting a C64 (that someone had crushed) into a C16 case creating what a lot of people at the time looked unusual (maybe even cool), A black C64
As for the A600, I'm not sure what the drawbacks were compared to the A500 (other than the loss of the expansion port & numeric keypad)
the built in modulator was far cleaner (signal wise) than the add-on for the A500 and properly combined composite without having use the modulator was useful (and a surprisingly clean signal).
The addition of the built in IDE interface was very useful (mine ended up with an ide - compactflash adaptor and a 256mb card in it), the PCMCIA slot was useful too, mine ended up with a 4mb memory card in (in addition to the extra 1mb with clock in the trapdoor).
I did add in a second kickstart rom (1.3 soldered on top of the 2.5 rom with the chip enable lines switchable on each) so that I could switch back to a real 1.3 rom rather than the soft version that was available but that was more of a "I have the spare chip and I can do this" rather than needing it for anything.