Amiga 1000 (was:My Recent find)

From: Doug Spence <ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca>
Date: Thu Nov 6 04:53:30 1997

On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Bruce James wrote:

> At 04:48 AM 11/1/97 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> >On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Bruce James wrote:
> >
> >> and my latest find a Amiga 1000 with 1080 moniter and 512k memory
> >> anyone have more information on expansion of this computer??
> >
> >I used an Amiga 1000 as my primary computer for six years. Beautiful
> >machine. The darling of my collection. :)
>
> Hi thanks Doug for the reply
> I am mostly looking for ways of adding more memory and a hard drive..

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.

> picked up a second 3 1/2 external drive and rs1200 modem.
> I need a good terminal program and Word Processer..

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. :)

> Also can you give me a hint on what software will work like most stuff for
> the a-500 or a-2000??

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 The problem is that most new software requires a newer version of
the OS than what the A1000 can normally run.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_at_alcor.concordia.ca
Received on Thu Nov 06 1997 - 04:53:30 GMT