On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Bruce James wrote: Yeah, both are definitely Good Things if you want to run serious applications on that machine. But there's plenty of software that'll run on a 512K A1000 with floppies only. The second floppy drive is important. Using the shell with an unexpanded A1000 and only one disk drive can be maddening. Too many "Please insert volume ARGH! in any drive" requestors. :) I've actually got a 5.25" disk drive for it now, too. It can read C= 1541 disks into a .dsk file for emulators in about 12 seconds, which is pretty cool. And Apple ][ disks in about 17 seconds (must be lamer programming). Too bad I don't have anything to WRITE to those formats, though I suspect writing to a 1541 format wouldn't work. There were a lot of old terminal programs that worked well on the A1000. The one I still use occasionally on that machine is NComm (I don't remember the version). It's probably still available via FTP, but I can send you the archive if you like. If you don't have a terminal program already, though, it can lead to a chicken-and-egg problem (though of course we know the egg came first). Unless you're lucky enough to already have CrossDOS or MessyDOS working on your A1000, for using 720K MS-DOS disks. As for word processors... Probably none available via FTP, or on Fish Disks (Fred Fish's Amiga software library from the dark ages). I might be able to scare something up, though. :) Yes. :) The A500 and A2000 are virtually operationally identical to the A1000. The problem is that most new software requires a newer version of the OS than what the A1000 can normally run. With additional RAM, you can actually load Kickstart 2.x (and possibly 3.x) into memory so if you can find RAM expansion for it, you may not need to install ROMs. I happen to like running my A1000 with Kickstart/Workbench 1.x, for that 'period' feel. I still load up 1.1 sometimes and pull the 'lets see how many cheesy graphics demos I can get running on the screen at the same time' trick. I managed slightly over 100 on my 1MB machine, but Workbench 1.1 GURU'd after I had _closed_ all the windows. Still, not bad for the date. :) Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca