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The A1000, or Commodore Amiga 1000, was Commodore's initial Amiga multimedia home/personal computer, released in the summer of 1985 at an original retail price of US$1,295 without a monitor. A 13-inch analog RGB monitor was available for around US$300. Before the follow-up A500 and A2000 models were released in 1987, the A1000 was usually just called the Amiga.
The A1000 had a number of characteristics that distinguished it from later Amigas: It was the only model to feature the short-lived Amiga "checkmark" logo on its case; the case was elevated slightly to give a storage area for the keyboard when not in use (a "keyboard garage"); and the inside of the case was engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers, including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy.
Many A1000 owners remained attached to their machines long after newer models rendered the units technically obsolete, and it attracted numerous aftermarket upgrades. Many CPU upgrades that plugged into the Motorola 68000 socket functioned in the A1000. Additionally, a line of products called the Rejuvinator series allowed the use of newer chipsets in the A1000, and an Australian-designed replacement A1000 motherboard called The Phoenix utilized the same chipset as the A3000 and added an A2000-compatible video slot and onboard SCSI.
Though most users attach an analog RGB monitor and most units even were sold together with an A1080/1/2 RGB-Monitor, the A1000 also has a built-in composite video output which allowed the computer to be connected directly to a TV or VCR. However, the output signal is considered too "hot" (strong) by many to be useful for anything other than home use. This can be remedied by running the A1000's composite output through a video processing amplifier, or "proc amp", to bring the video levels down to a suitable level.
Writable Control Store
Because AmigaOS was rather buggy at the time of the A1000's release, the OS was not placed in ROM. Instead, the A1000 included a daughterboard with 256 KB of RAM, dubbed the "Writable Control Store" (WCS), into which the operating system was booted from floppy disk (the disk containing the 256 KB image was called "Kickstart"). The WCS was write-protected after loading, and system resets did not require a reload of the WCS. In Europe the WCS was often referred to as WOM (Write Once Memory) as opposite to ROM (Read Only Memory).
Technical specifications
- CPU: Motorola 68000 (7.16 MHz NTSC, 7.09 MHz PAL)
- Chipset: OCS (Original Chipset)
- Audio (Paula):
- 4 voices / 2 channels (Stereo)
- 8-bit resolution / 6-bit volume
- 28 KHz sampling rate
- 70 dB S/N Ratio
- Video (Common resolutions):
- 320×200 with 32 colors or HAM-6
- 320×400i with 32 colors or HAM-6
- 640×200 with 16 colors
- 640×400i with 16 colors
- Audio (Paula):
- Memory:
- Removable Storage:
- 3.5" DD Floppy drive, capacity 880 KiB
- Input/Output connections:
- Composite TV out (PAL versions sold in Europe and Australia, NTSC elsewhere)
- Analogue RGB video plug
- RCA audio plugs
- 2 × Game/Joy ports (used by the mouse)
- Keyboard port
- RS232 Serial port (DB25)
- Centronics Parallel port (DB25)
- Port for external floppy drive
- One expansion port for add-ons (memory, SCSI adaptor, etc), electrically identical to the Amiga 500 expansion port.
- Resources handled by AutoConfig.
- Software (Bundled):
- AmigaOS 1.0/1.1/1.2 operation system, loaded from the Kickstart floppy disk at power-on.
- Microsoft Amiga BASIC
- Voice synthesis library
The two versions of the A1000
There were two versions of the Amiga 1000. The first one was sold only in Canada and the United States, had a NTSC display and lacked the EHB video mode which all other models of the Amiga had. Later versions of this version would have this video mode built in. The second one had a PAL display, the enhanced video modes (EHB) and was built in Germany.
External links
Commodore Amiga | Expandable PCs
Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000 | Amiga 1000
"Amiga 1000"