28 Mar
1998
28 Mar
'98
8:22 p.m.
On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, John Foust wrote:
I'll bet a doughnut there are at least two Sidecar
sites on the net,
given the known rabidity of Amiga enthusiasts.
Very possible, though I've so far not found them. There seems to be some
product for the named "SideCar" though, because Alta Vista keeps coughing
up links to articles on it.
The only reference to the A1060 SideCar I was able to find, was in the
alt.emulators FAQ. I'll go back to searching when I've got time.
I'll also bet that by posting on the relevant
Amiga news groups, you'll
be in e-mail contact with an engineer who worked on it.
Also possible, though I wouldn't be able to guess who worked on it as I
believe the SideCar was designed at Commodore Germany.
Some of the usual posting-crazy ex-Commodore engineers seem to have
disapeared from the newsgroups recently. I'm hoping it's because they're
busy cooking up new cool stuff. :)
I've got most of the
Amiga dev con notes in the basement, along with some rare Janus
programming docs and disks, but I'm not sure they'd be relevant
to your ROM version.
Make sure to keep this stuff in good condition, and back up those disks.
Someday I hope someone has an Amiga preservation project like Ward
Shrake's VIC-20 project. (Even if the Amiga survives and flourishes in
future, I still want the old stuff preserved.)
A year or so ago, I saw a very interesting Amiga
collection go up
for auction: a pristine, still-in-the-unopened-boxes Amiga 1000,
I've still got the boxes and packing material (minus bubble wrap) for my
1000, as well as the original disks and registration forms. As a matter
of fact, my 1000 is packed in its original box right now.
complete with RAM sidecar, parallel-port hard disk,
etc. It was
something left over from Commodore that someone rescued in the
last days.
<s> I wish I could have been there to pick up some cool junk.
I saw someone posting on alt.folklore.computers a while back that they had
an Amiga prototype. It actually had had the breadboard versions of the
custom chips fitted in it at one time, but they've disappeared. I think
he said he worked for Synapse Software before Amiga's release.
I've also seen mention of people having Amiga Transputer boards in their
posession.
I'm still hoarding my collection of never-shipped
aluminium "boing"
logos that fit in the little square on the corner of the A1000. :-)
I wish I had ordered something from IAM when they had their "boing logo"
promotion, but I had recently purchased DiskSalv at a computer show, and
already had the "Deathbed Vigil" video and T-shirt, and I wasn't
interested in any of their other products at the time. It would've been
nice to get the logos, though. (They were scoured from the garages of
various ex-Commodore engineers.)
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca