Amiga 1000

From: Gary Hildebrand <ghldbrd_at_ccp.com>
Date: Sun Jul 7 09:07:25 2002

Doc Shipley wrote:
>
> Well, I held off for a year and a half, but when the A1000 hit $5 I
> couldn't help it. I bought it.
> Now all I need is a keyboard, joystick, and a clue, none of which
> were available at Goodwill. I do have a display, thanks to Bill
> Bradford.

Keyboards are the tricky part Quite a few of them were destroyed
during a trade-up scheme by Commodore for the A2000. You can use a
keyboard for any of the big box Amigas if you make an adapter cable, but
then again it won't fit underneath the 1000 like the original did.

> Will a 1541 or 1571 external floppy be a good addition? Which?

Neither. Amigas use 3.5" DSDD drives, so what you need is a 1010 or
1011 or reasonable facsimile thereof. There was a 1020 5.25" drive that
looks almost identical to a 1571, but it is primarily for reading old
IBM DSDD floppies for file transfer.

> ISTR that there's no reasonable hope of genning up a boot floppy on a
> PC or Mac, right? So I need to find someone to dupe disks to get
> started? Or <shudder> pay for them?

You will need three disks. Kickstart, Workbench and Extras. Get 1.3
(the latest) as it has bugfixes and supports autobooting of harddrives,
if you ever find a HD controller for it.


> Anybody have a pile of spare keyboards & mice?

The mouse is still commercially available through various Amiga vendors
for about $15-20 each. Keyboards are about $50 each and very rare, as
they are not the same as PC keyboards. Look for 10 function keys
instead of 12, and fewer keys in the area between the QWERTY and the
numeric keypad. A2000/3000 keyboards have a 5 pin DIN plug; the A4000
uses a mini-DIN. If you buy a keyboard and mouse, you will have more in
the 1000 than it is worth, sad to say.

One little known slick trick is that you can use the keyboard to emulate
mouse movements (Amiga patent). Awkward, but it works.


Gary Hildebrand
St. Joseph, MO
Received on Sun Jul 07 2002 - 09:07:25 BST