25 Nov
2007
25 Nov
'07
8:34 p.m.
does anyone operate one of these? That is does anyone
favor this machine over any of the later models?
Commercially ISTR it being a flop, so that might seem
like a strange question, but there is no lack of
strange birds on this list. If you know what I mean
LOL LOL! Hey maybe I'm stranger then the rest of you
birds LOL LOL LOL!
anyhow interested in the thoughts that find this unit
particularly enjoyable.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you
with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ
26 Nov
26 Nov
12:41 a.m.
Chris M wrote:
does anyone operate one of these? That is does anyone
favor this machine over any of the later models?
Commercially ISTR it being a flop, so that might seem
like a strange question, but there is no lack of
strange birds on this list. If you know what I mean
LOL LOL! Hey maybe I'm stranger then the rest of you
birds LOL LOL LOL!
anyhow interested in the thoughts that find this unit
particularly enjoyable.
It's the first, so historically it has significance. It's also worth a
bit more money than an A500 or A2000 because of the production run
numbers. It's a bit annoying to operate since you need both a kickstart
disk and then an operating system disk to get to the operating system.
(Some bootable games will only require the kickstart.)
As for any *practical* reasons to operate one, there is some software
(circa 1985-1986) that will *only* run on early versions of kickstart.
Most of the games with this requirement have been patched or otherwise
worked around, but not the commercial applications.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
5:57 a.m.
On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 11:41:43PM -0600, Jim Leonard wrote:
It's the first, so historically it has
significance. It's also worth a
bit more money than an A500 or A2000 because of the production run
numbers.
Personally, I think it's a bit more stylish than the A500 as well.
It's a bit annoying to operate since you need both
a kickstart
disk and then an operating system disk to get to the operating system.
For a stock machine, yes. Mine has an add-in board, a "Rejuvinator".
It's a kickstart board replacement with ROMs, a Fat Agnus, 1MB of Chip
Ram (max of 2MB if you can find the right DRAMs), and 95% of an A2000
video slot. It was a somewhat cheaper way to get A2000 functionality
and not obsolete A1000 peripherals - a serious consideration to those
of us who had a couple of grand tied up in our machines 20+ years ago
(I bought my A1000 new in 1986).
(Some bootable games will only require the kickstart.)
I still have a few of those - "The Halley Project" was one of the best
games to come out in the A1000-only days. Once AmigaDOS 1.3 came out
and people started booting from hard drives, developers started to move
away from games that required a reboot to start.
As for any *practical* reasons to operate one, there
is some software
(circa 1985-1986) that will *only* run on early versions of kickstart.
Most of the games with this requirement have been patched or otherwise
worked around, but not the commercial applications.
I saw plenty of games like that (including ones that were later patched
for hard drive installs), but I don't think I owned any commercial stuff
that was locked to older versions of Kickstart.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 26-Nov-2007 at 10:50 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -31.4 F (-35.2 C) Windchill -50.0 F (-45.5 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 5.6 kts Grid 299 Barometer 681.8 mb (10560 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
11:28 a.m.
On Nov 26, 2007 5:57 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> wrote:
I bought my A1000 in (IIRC) 1989, upgrading from my C64. I still have
it, and I just booted it up a few weeks ago. The original mouse is
unfortunately broken (some of the little plastic bits inside are worn
out) but other than that it's in good working condition.
Here is what used to be my booting preocedure - no longer possible,
unfortunately - but it involved 1) turn machine on with Kickstart disk
(patched with antivirus) 2) fiddle with the (20M) harddrive to make it
spin up. The (MFM) HD was sitting outside on top of the sidecar,
(since I wanted to keep using the 5 1/4 drive in the sidecar) with the
ribbon cables and power just squeezing out the side. 3) Boot with my
custom Workbench disk, that would load the Janus software, then alias
almost everything over to directories on the hard drive.
Unfortunately, the Sidecar has not survived the long years. It still
sort of works but does not boot up properly anymore, the floppy drive
shows a solid LED. I still have the full length MFM controller card
and the HD.
The A1000 is also the first computer I modded in a major way:
upgrading to 1meg ("slow", bit not chip) ram. The A1000 had 256k on
the motherboard, and everyone had the 256k expansion in the front slot
- the extra 512k ram were added by piggybacking 2 chips onto each of
the motherboards ram chips (can't remember if there were 8 or 16) and
a mess of wires to hook up the correct chip selects. (This really is
the part that amazes me it still works!)
It's "slow" ram since it was still slowed down to the chip ram speeds,
but could not be accessed by Gary and Denise (?).
I should open the thing up and take some pictures. But I remember even
opening the thing was a tricky affair, due to the RF shielding...
Why was the A1000 better than the A500? Well, there was the sidecar,
of course, but I also like the feel of the (detachable) keyboard of
the A1000 to the A500 one.
Joe.
Anyone with a spare sidecar and original A1000 mouse in the Montreal
area, feel free to contact me :-)
On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 11:41:43PM -0600, Jim Leonard
wrote:
Agreed.
It's the first, so historically it has
significance. It's also worth a
bit more money than an A500 or A2000 because of the production run
numbers.
Personally, I think it's a bit more stylish than the A500 as well. It's a bit
annoying to operate since you need both a kickstart
disk and then an operating system disk to get to the operating system.
For a stock machine, yes. Mine has an add-in board, a "Rejuvinator".
It's a kickstart board replacement with ROMs, a Fat Agnus, 1MB of Chip
Ram (max of 2MB if you can find the right DRAMs), and 95% of an A2000
video slot. It was a somewhat cheaper way to get A2000 functionality
and not obsolete A1000 peripherals - a serious consideration to those
of us who had a couple of grand tied up in our machines 20+ years ago
(I bought my A1000 new in 1986). (Some bootable
games will only require the kickstart.)
I still have a few of those - "The Halley Project" was one of the best
games to come out in the A1000-only days. Once AmigaDOS 1.3 came out
and people started booting from hard drives, developers started to move
away from games that required a reboot to start.
6:21 p.m.
On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 11:28:46AM -0500, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
On Nov 26, 2007 5:57 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks
at usap.gov> wrote:
I bought my A1000 in (IIRC) 1989, upgrading from my C64. I still have
it, and I just booted it up a few weeks ago. The original mouse is
unfortunately broken (some of the little plastic bits inside are worn
out) but other than that it's in good working condition.
You might be able to get away with scavenging plastic bits from the
right model of A500/A2000 mouse - the difference being that you will
probably want to keep your A1000 cable for the right-angle DE-9.
Here is what used to be my booting preocedure - no
longer possible,
unfortunately - but it involved 1) turn machine on with Kickstart disk
(patched with antivirus) 2) fiddle with the (20M) harddrive to make it
spin up. The (MFM) HD was sitting outside on top of the sidecar,
(since I wanted to keep using the 5 1/4 drive in the sidecar) with the
ribbon cables and power just squeezing out the side. 3) Boot with my
custom Workbench disk, that would load the Janus software, then alias
almost everything over to directories on the hard drive.
Wow... that's elaborate. My first hard drive was on a "Wedge" - a
Canadian product that mapped an 8-bit path to an ISA port, and an
MFM or RLL controller (like a DTC-5150 or DTC-5160). You booted
a workbench floppy which had the Wedge hard disk driver and enough
of a startup script to transfer to directories on the hard drive.
Mine was a little like yours, except for no MS-DOS machine in the
middle.
Later, I replaced that Wedge with a Starboard (memory) and a Stardrive
(SCSI daughter card on the Starboard). I ran that configuration for
a number of years.
Unfortunately, the Sidecar has not survived the long
years. It still
sort of works but does not boot up properly anymore, the floppy drive
shows a solid LED. I still have the full length MFM controller card
and the HD.
That should be diagnosable. You might be able to stick a video card
in the Sidecar rather than depend on the Janus libs for mapped video,
and see what it's trying to do.
The A1000 is also the first computer I modded in a
major way:
upgrading to 1meg ("slow", bit not chip) ram. The A1000 had 256k on
the motherboard, and everyone had the 256k expansion in the front slot
I didn't for months... I got my A1000 then found a cheap 3rd-party
"front nose" 256K expansion - by Skyles, IIRC - six months later.
- the extra 512k ram were added by piggybacking 2
chips onto each of
the motherboards ram chips (can't remember if there were 8 or 16) and
a mess of wires to hook up the correct chip selects. (This really is
the part that amazes me it still works!)
There should have been 8 64Kx4 DRAMs on the motherboard and another 8
on the expansion card. It's by far from the only example of memory
doubling by piggyback.
I didn't try that particular hack, partially because 64Kx4 chips were
harder to find than 256Kx1 at the time. My first memory expansion
was a Sprit Inboard. It held 1.5M of 256Kx1 chips, which at the time
soared from $3.50 to $17.50 *per chip* due to anti-dumping tariffs and
the resultant market roiling. There was lots of demand for 256Kx1
chips for DOS machines and Amiga owners got taken on the same ride.
Fortunately for me, we discarded an engineering prototype at work
(with piggybacked 256Kx1 memory, BTW) and I scavenged a handful of
50256 chips that the company had previously paid $80 *per chip* for
sometime around 1984-1985, IIRC. I think those chips are still in
my Inboard.
It's "slow" ram since it was still
slowed down to the chip ram speeds,
but could not be accessed by Gary and Denise (?).
No Gary in an A1000... Gary appeared first in the A500 and A2000.
The A1000 had Agnus, Paula and Denise (though I recall one name being
different in the way-back-earliest days of the Amiga).
I should open the thing up and take some pictures. But
I remember even
opening the thing was a tricky affair, due to the RF shielding...
Indeed. I remember that, too. I also remember needing the shielding
because when I had the cover off, you could see what was happening
with the Amiga on our TV downstairs when it was tuned to channel 3.
Why was the A1000 better than the A500? Well, there
was the sidecar,
of course, but I also like the feel of the (detachable) keyboard of
the A1000 to the A500 one.
I loved the keyboard dock. It's a shame that feature never caught on.
Anyone with a spare sidecar and original A1000 mouse
in the Montreal
area, feel free to contact me :-)
Sorry... not anywhere close to Montreal, even when I'm home, and I've never
owned a Sidecar. As for a mouse, try opening up an A500/A2000 mouse or two
to see if you could transplant the cable. The actual mouse innards are
simple - it transmits raw quadrature plus the 2 buttons over the DE9 - all
the work is done in the Amiga, unlike a "modern" PC mouse (but very much
like an old Microsoft "bus mouse").
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 26-Nov-2007 at 23:00 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -24.3 F (-31.3 C) Windchill -41.6 F (-40.9 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 5.6 kts Grid 0 Barometer 681.8 mb (10560 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
6:41 p.m.
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> wrote:*>> snip <<*
No Gary in an A1000... Gary appeared first in
the A500 and A2000.
The A1000 had Agnus, Paula and Denise
(though I recall one name being
different in the way-back-earliest days of the
Amiga).
Yes, Denise was originally called Daphne. I think Agnus and Paula had different names
(starting with the same initial - A and P respectively) too, but I can't recall them
right now. It's mentioned somewhere in Dave Haynies Deathbed Vigil video. Probably
when he's going through the old West Chester HQ, I seem to recall it being written on
a white board or something.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
27 Nov
27 Nov
12:30 p.m.
On Nov 26, 2007 6:21 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> wrote:
Yes, I'm thinking of trying that. I think I still have an old 8-bit
ISA mono card and appropriate monitor kicking around somewhere (though
my 1084(?) with the C128-80col cable could work). Janus puts up a PC
screen with distorted characters that look like a BIOS boot screen
(all characters squeezed down to 2 lines or so)
Unfortunately,
the Sidecar has not survived the long years. It still
sort of works but does not boot up properly anymore, the floppy drive
shows a solid LED. I still have the full length MFM controller card
and the HD.
That should be diagnosable. You might be able to stick a video card
in the Sidecar rather than depend on the Janus libs for mapped video,
and see what it's trying to do. No Gary in an A1000... Gary appeared first in the A500
and A2000.
My mistake, I blame early-onset Alzheimer's. Or too much alcohol
during engineering undergrad.
Sorry... not anywhere close to Montreal, even when
I'm home, and I've never
owned a Sidecar. As for a mouse, try opening up an A500/A2000 mouse or two
to see if you could transplant the cable. The actual mouse innards are
simple - it transmits raw quadrature plus the 2 buttons over the DE9 - all
the work is done in the Amiga, unlike a "modern" PC mouse (but very much
like an old Microsoft "bus mouse").
I don't have a 500/2000 mouse unfortunately, tough I could probably
look on ePay for one. I have a third-party mouse - I think I bought
it as a replacement for the pregnant mouse that came with my 3000.
(Still have that one too, working - both the mouse and the 3000) The
third-party mouse looks like a generic mouse for that time (mid 90's)
but has 3 buttons - handy for when I was using NetBSD (0.9 or so) on
my 3000. Hmmmmm - X11 on 640x480 (or was that 400?) with 5megs of
ram (4 fast, 1 chip)...
Joe.
28 Nov
28 Nov
12:51 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
I saw plenty of games like that (including ones that
were later patched
for hard drive installs), but I don't think I owned any commercial stuff
that was locked to older versions of Kickstart.
There was a music program from Electronic Arts that I remember not
working properly on an A500 (Instant Music IIRC)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
5:34 p.m.
On Wednesday 28 November 2007 00:51, Jim Leonard wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Lots of stuff from EA didn't seem to want to work right for our customers.
We went round and round with them on the phone once. I wanted to know what
the heck the software was trying to do that it wasn't loading properly. They
insisted that the drive had to be perfectly aligned, and I'd just done
that...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
I saw plenty of games like that (including ones
that were later patched
for hard drive installs), but I don't think I owned any commercial stuff
that was locked to older versions of Kickstart.
There was a music program from Electronic Arts that I remember not
working properly on an A500 (Instant Music IIRC)
30 Nov
30 Nov
1:58 a.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
We went round and round with them on the phone once.
I wanted to know what
the heck the software was trying to do that it wasn't loading properly. They
insisted that the drive had to be perfectly aligned, and I'd just done
that...
Is that a subtle/sarcastic dig at their copy protection methods, or just
"they would connect me to clueless people on the other end of the line"?
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
2 Dec
2 Dec
4:17 p.m.
On Friday 30 November 2007 01:58, Jim Leonard wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Beats me. The phone call just didn't resolve anything, and the level of
frustration on both my part and that of the customer just increased...
BTW, the company still appears to have some issues. A family member came to
me asking for help with a web-based game that wouldn't work. The site
insisted that java had to be installed and enabled. As far as I could tell
it was. Detailed instructions on their site referred to specific stuff that
wasn't there in "Java" on that computer, though I managed to find the
specifics anyhow, and enabled things. The computer had 1.6.something, they
were saying you needed at least 1.5...
Looked at the bottom of the web page and there was that familiar logo I hadn't
seen since those days: "EA"
Told the family member that the site was screwed up, and not seeing that they
already had Java installed and enabled. <shrug>
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
We went round and round with them on the phone
once. I wanted to know
what the heck the software was trying to do that it wasn't loading
properly. They insisted that the drive had to be perfectly aligned, and
I'd just done that...
Is that a subtle/sarcastic dig at their copy protection methods, or just
"they would connect me to clueless people on the other end of the line"?
26 Nov
26 Nov
6:32 p.m.
No, sorry.
I prefer the Amiga 600, even though many consider it to be the runt of the litter.
However, it's the only Amiga (other than the A1200) to have a PCMCIA slot which has
proven to be useful to me.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: does anyone operate one of these? That is
does anyone
favor this machine over any of the later models?
Commercially ISTR it being a flop, so that might seem
like a strange question, but there is no lack of
strange birds on this list. If you know what I mean
LOL LOL! Hey maybe I'm stranger then the rest of you
birds LOL LOL LOL!
anyhow interested in the thoughts that find this unit
particularly enjoyable.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you
with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ
27 Nov
27 Nov
6:53 p.m.
New subject: Amgia 600 and IBM PC Radio was Re: Amiga 1000
I actually have a 600 myself, but never used it. I'll
be bugging you with questions before too long LOL LOL.
So what's the largest cflash card it can utilize? I
assume that's a type 1 slot, although I don't know the
difference between a type 1 or type 2. My *new* IBM PC
Radios have a pcmcia slot also (that's what it looks
like anyway.
--- Andrew Burton <aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better pen pal.
Text or chat with friends inside Yahoo! Mail. See how. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/
No, sorry.
I prefer the Amiga 600, even though many consider it
to be the runt of the litter. However, it's the only
Amiga (other than the A1200) to have a PCMCIA slot
which has proven to be useful to me.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: does anyone
operate one of these? That is does anyone
favor this machine over any of the later models?
Commercially ISTR it being a flop, so that might
seem
like a strange question, but there is no lack of
strange birds on this list. If you know what I mean
LOL LOL! Hey maybe I'm stranger then the rest of you
birds LOL LOL LOL!
anyhow interested in the thoughts that find this
unit
particularly enjoyable.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you
with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ
29 Nov
29 Nov
6:28 p.m.
New subject: Amgia 600 and IBM PC Radio was Re: Amiga 1000
Wish I kept my mouth shut now!
Not actually tried using a CFlash card yet myself, though I have purchased the necessary
kit. Also, my A600's are still both down :(
Perhaps I can find the time to look at them over Christmas (once my brother has gone back
to his place).
My laptop (Dell Latitude C610) appears to have 2 PCMCIA style slots too (one is currently
occupied with a wireless LAN card which I don't use), but I'm more into retro gear
than modern PC (or Mac) stuff so I know nothing about type 1 or 2 etc.
Getting back on topic, you may wish to know that the Amiga 600 can have a maximum of 6MB
RAM using original expansions units (1MB built-in, 1MB in trapdoor and 4MB (fast RAM) via
PCMCIA RAM card) or there is a modern piece of kit that can be fitted internally to add
something like 128MB of RAM (I don't have this).
I own a 2MB PCMCIA RAM card and another PCMCIA card that can have 4Mb (Megabits, not MB)
RAM when fully populated - I haven't used this yet, so I don't know whether
it's populated or not!
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: I actually have a 600 myself, but never
used it. I'll
be bugging you with questions before too long LOL LOL.
So what's the largest cflash card it can utilize? I
assume that's a type 1 slot, although I don't know the
difference between a type 1 or type 2. My *new* IBM PC
Radios have a pcmcia slot also (that's what it looks
like anyway.
--- Andrew Burton wrote:
No, sorry.
I prefer the Amiga 600, even though many consider it
to be the runt of the litter. However, it's the only
Amiga (other than the A1200) to have a PCMCIA slot
which has proven to be useful to me.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
6077
days inactive
6083
days old
13 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk -
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
ethan.dicks＠usap.gov -
joachim.thiemann＠gmail.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
trixter＠oldskool.org