Commodore Amiga 1000 Trash to Treasure Part 1 | Meet The Amiga

[@laurencevanhelsuwe3052]

According to Commodore Belgium at the time, I was the first person to buy an A1000 in Belgium. I had waited almost a whole year for the thing to turn up at their HQ. I drooled over the specs for well over a year and couldn't wait to start programming it. As part of the purchase I got copies of all the official Addison-Wesley manuals (Intuition, hardware, etc.). The architecture was a joy to program.. and roughly a year later I got hired by Icon Design (Manchester) to work on porting Kikstart II (C64 original) to the Amiga. The Amiga launched my programming career. Unique times.. Four years later I managed to get a software engineering position within Commodore itself, but that''s a whole different story (Google is your friend).

[@RavenWolfRetroTech]

I can't wait to see the rest of this series. Using BYTE as a reference and timeline is brilliant. I brought home my first ever Amiga 1000 this week only to find an active ants nest in it so that is going to be an extreme restoration.

[@mockier]

Nice, I had an ants nest in a Asus Laptop 10 years ago. That went well and there was no damage aside from some chipped areas of plastic where the ants had made a hole. Keep an eye out for any eggs.

[@RavenWolfRetroTech]

​ @mockier That's how I found out its an active nest! I took off the RAM cover on the front and ants and eggs fell out. It is all now well sealed in multiple plastic bags and sealed in a bin with a tight lid.

[@rvenden]

Great video. Thank you for highlighting BYTE magazine. It was a truly wonderful publication where I met the Macintosh, Amiga, and IBM PC. It was also where I encountered the legendary Jerry Pournelle. Thanks for the great memories.

[@MrDuncl]

They used to have Byte in my school library in 1977 when the school of 1500 pupils had one computer; a Busicom 2017 programmed using punch cards.

[@bertjilk3456]

Wow. A new Amiga series! Amiga can never be 'done to death'. I'd happily watch more A500 trash to treasures. Nothing more satisfying than seeing an old Amiga come back to life.

[@winstonsmith478]

Ars Technica has an outstanding "A history of the Amiga" series on their site.

[@erwin-1660]

Great video, looking forward to the next episodes! I cherish my early A1000 and A1080 monitor, imported from the US in 1985. All 110V, NTSC, rev 6 motherboard with WCS daughterboard. Two years ago I got my hands on a second A1000, the motherboard of which I replaced by a GBA1000. The features are stunning: 68060 CPU at 100MHz, fat Agnus ECS chipset, 2MB chipram, 136MB fastram, onboard bootable 2.5" IDE controller, A2320 flicker fixer, realtime clock, Zorro II expansion port with Picasso II RTG graphics, autoswitching VGA output... All fitting perfectly in the A1000 case, not a single hole drilled!

[@10MARC]

Excellent start to the series, Neil! I watched the Amiga 1000 for years as a young man, but could never afford it. Even after I bought my Amiga 500 in 1988, I saw the Amiga 1000 as a "better" machine. In many ways it was - the build quality is incredible, the composite output is probably the best I have seen... What a lovely machine and mine always has a place on my desk.

[@Channel-Zx]

Mines on my desk as well enjoying using to play MP3's with Emu68 and PiMiga2.0

[@neilo3476]

@@Channel-Zx Sorry, do you mean you are using an A1000 to run an emulator?

[@Channel-Zx]

@@neilo3476 PiStorm board with RasPi installed & Emu68 is the sw to emulate the CPU

[@bryndal36]

I had a mate who had an Amiga 1000 and I was blown away by what it could do. I had a Laser 128 Apple 2e clone myself so to see an Amiga in action was awesome.

[@8BitNaptime]

Those were fun days were there was real progress you could feel and see and hear.

[@brianh2771]

That shot of the "piggyback" RAM upgrade brings back memories of soldering my own in 1986 or 87, to increase my A1000 to 1 MiB. It was a low-cost way to avoid being one-upped by the new Atari 1040ST.

[@martindebes414]

You know it's serious when Neil breaks out the murder gloves.

[@steviebboy69]

The murder gloves remind me of Joan Ferguson AKA the freak on Prisoner, an Aussie tv show from around this same time. She used to put them on in a similar or more sinister way.

[@amigachris]

When Kickstart was booted write enable was disabled so fully reset proof. You only needed to load once per session. It was effectively a WOM or write once memory. Immune to even the worse crash. (WB 1.0 did that quite alot....lol) Wish I never sold mine. damn..

[@Anoldergamer1971]

So glad you are making this series. I've read about the Amiga 1000 in a French magazine when I was in high school (in Quebec) . It was an very early article, just a column with a tiny picture but still I was blown away by the promises of a computer with 4,096 colors! The possibility for gaming was out of this world. The computers I knew then were C64, the originals Macintosh and the monochrome IBMs. I finally got to see a year our two later in a large retail store and it was love at first sight. Thus begun a very long campaign to get my parents to purchases one. It was a tough fight including the usual lies about all the productive things I would with such a computer. Success was in the form of an Amiga 500, store used, who would crash if my tv (no real monitor for me, no sir) was too close to it. I still have a picture of my setup. I stuck whit the Amiga computers till the my last purchase was a Amiga 4000, 68020. I was the guy who would jump into BBS to defend proudly the Amiga against those PC users and their VGA cards with passion until Civilization II can only for Windows. I shamefully surrender and got my first pc computer.

[@dvdvnr]

Great start, Neil. I'm looking forward to the rest of this series. In 1984/5 I was working in a small company that had a connection to Commodore - we were building 64K RAM boards for the C16 and, at one point, Commodore UK had a conversation with us about supplying the boards so they could fit them into C16s from new. That plan never developed into anything concrete but, because of the connection, we did get invited to a special UK trade/ticket-only launch of the Amiga (long before it was called the 1000) in 1985. We had to get to Kensington Olympia where some other computer show was taking place (possibly a PCW show - I can no longer remember) and get on coaches were laid on to take us to a town hall somewhere (possibly Hammersmith - I can no longer recall). The whole thing was rather low-key but, once there, we were given a full run-through of what the Amiga could do at the time. I remember finding the long load time of first Kickstart and then Workbench from disk rather tedious - that was definitely a letdown after the almost instant boot times of most 8-bit computers of the time. At least Kickstart was then effectively write-protected and would survive warm boots, so the demo speeded up after that and became far more impressive. They showed off the early version of Deluxe Paint running and we were treated to the Boing Ball, RoboCity, speech synthesis and the various line and circle drawing demos that seemed so amazing back then. I think they may have also demoed the early A-Basic, which was later superseded by the embarrassingly slow AmigaBasic from Microsoft. At the time I came away wanting one but, at £1295, it was totally out of reach. Two years later I finally got my hands on an A500 after the prices started falling.

[@darylh8657]

This opens up the way-back machine again. I first saw the Amiga in Vancouver during the big reveal. I was blown away, and so were all the computer geeks around. Soon I was sporting an Amiga 1000 with 020 processor, 2MB ram, 80 MB SCSI hard-drive, a 286 bridge-board, and various other thingies with blinky lights. The local computer club had fissioned off (Panorama) and we rode the tech wave until the untimely and inglorious demise of the Amiga.

[@JenniferinIllinois]

I never had an A1000 but did have a friend who did. I eventually got an A500 in 1988 to replace my C64. I still miss that thing. It took years before I finally had an Intel-based PC that surpassed my A500.

[@christopherbaar4498]

Ah, the machine I grew up with. I still have it, and it still works, though it’s sitting in storage right now. It was also a pain to open up, as I recall. Only the X68000 was more complicated, at least from what I personally own. That daughter board also made installing upgrades a pain! I put an Indivision ECS in mine for VGA output. Installation instructions for the A1000 say to put it in the Paula socket, but with the daughter board, that’s impossible. I ended up cutting away part of the power supply shell so I could fit it in the Denise socket. Another thing to keep in mind, US A1000s (at least the early ones) shipped with the R5 Denise, which lacked Extra Half-Brite mode. Fortunately it’s just a drop in replacement for a newer revision, and I have an R8 in mine. Also, the expansion slot is more or less compatible with A500 slot expansions; they just need to be rotated, and propped up to account for the height difference. I’m glad mine doesn’t have such extensive yellowing. Personally I think it’s screaming for a retrobrite job. Love how you can tell that there was definitely some sort of sidecar connected to it!

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

Never had a micro computer and I am still finding this series a joy to watch. Can't wait for the next part.

[@devMashcom]

I haven’t had my A1000 open since 1988. Now I’m excited to pop the top and see how things look after all these years...

[@MrButtonpresser]

I really enjoyed that look back pretending to wait for the Amiga to appear. I used to do that, sometimes it took absolutely ages to get what you thought you needed.

[@VHSTvRetro]

Great Computer. I have Amiga 500 in 1992. I have A1200 with 040. I'm from Cracov Poland.

[@stevenhawkins179]

It was good to see it open on the table during my cave visit. The photos came out well too!

[@techkev140]

Denise was the looker, Paula sounded great and Angus held the show together.

[@jameslewis2635]

When I first started learning about Amiga's (and computers in general) as a child I really struggled to see the reason why someone would want the A1000 over the A500. From everything I could understand the A500 was capable of everything that the A1000 could do, just in a different box. It is only years later I became aware that the A1000 pre-dated the A500 but even then I was confused that Commodore was still selling A1000's when A500's were already on the market. This is something that could use some explaining, especially with the A1000 costing more than twice the cost of an A500. Then Commodore released the A2000 which further confused me as that still ran a 68000 at 7MHz. Of course today I can see that the internal expansion options are the things that make that model special but it seemed like a huge price hike (£1500 as opposed to £500 for an A500) for a minimal addition of capabilites (which you would then need to pay extra to use). That machine would have made a lot more sense if it came with a 68020 CPU but that's not what Commodore chose to do.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

The Amiga 500 was _officially_ introduced a few months after the Amiga 2000 but maybe not everywhere at once. Did the £500 price include VAT? I remember it cost around £750 here in Sweden in the first few years.

[@mikerichards6065]

@@FindecanorNotGmail I got one of the very first A500s in the UK and it was £500 including VAT - so it looks like Swedes really got stung.

[@giuseppe74921]

Me too think the Amiga2000 should have come standard with 68020 at 14 or 16 mhz

[@turricanedtc3764]

@@giuseppe74921 - Processor speed wasn't the major issue it became towards the end of the 1980s, and with the chipset, even the basic Amiga could do things no other machine could - especially at that price point. What the 2000s did usually come with was a hard drive, and that was what made it more expensive over and above the greater expandability. You could get accelerator boards for the 2000 that went in the Zorro slots. Keeping the 68000 at the standard 7.09/7.16MHz also meant that the 2000 would be fully compatible with all software, including games, as a lot of programmers bypassed the ROM and OS libraries, preferring to hit the hardware directly. This caused compatibility issues, as could be seen in the later machines.

[@Henrik_Holst]

@@turricanedtc3764 the A2000 also had 1MB of RAM and RAM was all the rage in the 80:ies, the cpu speed not so much as you wrote.

[@DavePoo2]

18:50 I believe the internal expansion was omitted to keep cost down. The card edge PCB connection was the compromise, and that lived on in the low cost A500 as well.

[@xeroniris]

Argh! It didn't occur to me to get a photo with the lid when I visited but now I wish I had!

[@MrKelaher]

The Amiga was basically an Arcade machine architecturally, and it had a better OS than Apples. I so wanted one, but had to wait until the A500 to afford one.

[@thezerne]

I found some pics of the the Amiga 3100 joystick, search for "Amiga Power Stick"

[@nickwallette6201]

Great timing! I just got my very first Amiga (1000). I’ll be following along. :-)

[@rager1969]

I didn't know that Amiga made joysticks before they sold to Commodore. A quick Google search yielded articles talking about their Power-Stick with pictures. Apparently, they made versions for TI 99/A, Colecovision and Atari (that one is model number 3100). Neat.

[@razorsz195]

I really like the different turn on this TTT, showing the audience the thought processes in each time period, what was out, where people got their information from, it wasn't as easy as today where a 10 minute youtube video would get you up to speed, you had to wait MONTHS and scour around different magazines and articles to learn as much as you could before dropping big money on early advanced computing..i need an Amiga 1000..

[@adampoll4977]

Like other truly great things of the 80s, the Amiga 1000 crops up in Stranger Things 4 :)

[@rjaques60]

In the early 90's I was scheduled to work in a high school library, going through the boxes of old magazines to see if any were salvageable from a water leak. I discovered all the Byte magazine back to mid 80's. I had just been given an A1000 and would just get lost looking through the old mags and the Amiga section. What a great time. Nostalgia hitting me big time right now. This is going to be awesome watching the videos about this. Nicely done!

[@dragonheatgaming5005]

That controller was basis behind the famous guru error

[@delboy3k1]

I bought a month 2 amiga 1000 in the uk after seeing a preview of it in london at the novatel hotel at a commodore show. Happy days. That 1st year was frustrating for me software wise. Thank god for fred fish public domain. I so loved this machine. Excelsior :-)

[@phantom2012]

Seeing the actual piece of hardware that created the phrase "guru meditation error" was worth it. Yes perfect standing on that widget was "guru meditation", a fall to a side would be a, you guessed it a "guru meditation error". Amiga kept that as their standard error message.

[@stevethepocket]

To elaborate on this, they made a custom cartridge for themselves to use as a form of stress relief during those hectic years designing the Amiga; they'd sit on it like a meditating yogi and try to avoid triggering any of its directional registers as long as they could.

[@asteele7931]

I definitely vote for retro bright. It always looks better and I believe it can fix some of the brittleness of the plastic.

[@Ran-tan-tan]

MikroBitti binder on the low left! How cool is that! Very neat to see that as a Finn!

[@Colin_Ames]

Excellent start to a new trash to treasure series. I love the idea of using Byte magazine for the history lesson.

[@samuelschwager]

That dirt really got the VIP treatment ;)

[@conman2k1]

Very creative new take on this. Excellent work.

[@BollingHolt]

Can't wait to watch this one! I just scored a free Amiga 1000 (and 64C and plus/4 in the box and 1541 in the box and Mac Color Classic) yesterday! ;)

[@luke_mz]

You're better than many professional journos. What a great watch!

[@kins749]

I really like the way the story is told, tbh otherwise I might have switched off as I'm not a huge Amiga fan, but this really brought the moment in time back to life

[@BigR91100]

thank you so much for all these videos, i really appreciate and love watching them

[@StephenBlower]

That's an excellent approach to talk about a greatly talked about machines history. Loved it.

[@harryandy44]

Finally! The missing piece of the puzzle. Enjoyed this episode so much. Can't wait for the rest.

[@tobus71]

My dad threw out my A1000 with original Phoenix board and monitors and floppies and BJ330 printer, it still hurts. :(

[@djpirtu2]

I'm going to buy A1000 tomorrow and I just need to watch this series again before that 😃

[@KarlHamilton]

First. Also, the A1000 was NEVER trash!

[@marksterling8286]

Loved the box Amigas at uni lots of early adopters had A2000 often with a pc bridge board. About a year later lots and lots of a500s descended on the population

[@nicholas_scott]

I got the A500 as soon as they came out, and was frustrated at the time- So many cool hardware add-ons were only for the A1000 and A2000. But I was able to suffice with external harddrives, floppies and modems. Internally, I shoehorned in a PC emulator, and memory.... and chugged along with that A500 for happy 10 years

[@8BitNaptime]

Man I had a 3000 with 386SX BridgeBoard. I regret selling the thing.

[@marksterling8286]

@@8BitNaptime one of my best friends at uni had an a3000, to this day I still think it’s one of the best looking and best performing workstations of the 1990s

[@8BitNaptime]

@@marksterling8286 When Commodore put their minds to it, they could make things like the 1581, the 1571, the 1351, the 1764, the C65, the LCD, the 3000...

[@SledgeFox]

This is one of the best videos about the Amiga, I ever saw! Brilliant, thank you very much!

[@phantom2012]

And yes I did have one. So much goofy upgrades to play games. But I got mine in the later years and they were common. Other than a few "glitches" that involved jumpers it ran every A500 game.

[@jyunderwood]

I love the narrative as a user reading BYTE and deciding on an Amiga. I think you should retrobright it, and make it as pristine as you can. Then at the end of the series it is as though your new Amiga finally shipped, and you've set it up for the first time. Maybe a follow up series detailing what upgrades that user might do over time based on the ads section of computer magazines of the era if you can find those.

[@DPfen]

If I could add just one more system to my collection, it would easily be the 1000. Just so rare to find in the States, and when you do, they're so expensive. Someday.

[@Nobe_Oddy]

oh wow, this a SUCH a COOL way to tell the story!!! and to have you restoring an orignal first model... EXCELLENT!!!! - I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!!!! :D

[@SobieRobie]

Bring it back to the former glory!

[@netcreature]

I own all versions of the Amiga joystick in my collection. There are several.

[@lootpack27]

The murder gloves 😂 very interesting concept acting as a buyer and reading “updates” to make your decision! Looking forward to future videos in this series

[@AdamSommer70]

The Amiga 1000 is a great looking machine. Great video!

[@paulmiller591]

Can you capture the signatures to paper by doing a sketching like a brass rubbing using a pencil of charcoal and framing that?

[@commodorecave5581]

Very interesting. I would put the case on a electric jewelry roundabout and leave it in the sun for a few days.

[@cbluebeard]

You may consider a small "pancake" air compressor to blow out components. I do it outside. Tip: Don't spin the fans with the air. I learned that one the hard way.

[@steviebboy69]

I learned the hard way as well with an old PSU fan and I spun it up to like gee I dont know how many RPM and the plastic fan come off the metal motor and it hovered for a small fraction of a second then hit me in the chin.

[@stevethepocket]

@@steviebboy69 Well that's one reason not to do it. The other is that it literally sends a charge of power into the circuitry that could cause all kinds of electrical damage. If you're lucky it'll just destroy the fan motor.

[@steviebboy69]

@@stevethepocket The particular fan I was speaking of was pulled from an old PSU, and I thought it would be fun to spin it up, and with the result mentioned above. I get what you mean about the power going back, sort of like back EMF.

[@McStrien]

I still own and occasionally run my amiga 1000 which I bought new when it was introduced. It came with kickstart and workbench 1.1

[@docsnavely1010]

You, sir, are an expert storyteller. Thank you for this peaceful review of wonderful pioneering technology.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Some AIO computers let you stow the keyboard under the screen. I fully agree, getting that desk space back when you’re not using the computer (or even having the option to put it there while the system churns away on something) is indeed very useful.

[@jimsteele9261]

I was an Atari 8-bit guy back then. I remember hearing the rumors about the Amiga and talking about them online in the pre-internet Compuserve Atari forums. The rumor had it that the machine could do Saturday morning cartoon level animation.... and I wanted one. 🙂 BTW, the keyboard cable looks like a modular phone cable, but it's actually a handset cable.

[@electricadventures]

Brilliant approach to the series, going through the history via the BYTE magazine articles was excellent. Look forward to the next chapter.

[@robertclark8351]

Neil, those shoes are entirely appropriate for someone who values old-school cool, and naff.

[@Kee-Lo]

I wouldn't usually say retrobrite but it definitely needs it!

[@nopenopeandnope7050]

Your boots are awesome!

[@hats-k2z]

Love to watch this after work while I'm eating dinner. :)

[@PeTTs0n88]

Man that episode really flew by, I can't wait to see more! Never seen an A1000 in person (only A500, A1200 and A4000) it's a beaut! Hope to be able to fly over to the UK and see it in the cave one day!

[@SenileOtaku]

One of our tenants at the time had an Amiga 1000, and I think that was the only Amiga I saw back then. I wonder if he still has it (doubtful, plus I haven't seen him for 11 years, and that was at a reunion of local New Wave bands).

[@TotoGuy-Original]

you could use some white board marker on the signatures inside the case to highlight them in black then take a photo of them. then you can make a poster or something to put on the wall i think that would be a nice display piece

[@homelate1306]

Epic machine, I restored one a few months ago

[@GerardKean]

Glad to see another trash to treasure. In school my friend's older brother had an Amiga 1000 while we played on hid C64c

[@RetroGamesBoy78]

OMG another RMC TTT!!!👍😍👍 can't wait till I get home!

[@craigallan4322]

Nice approach to the story telling Neil.

[@laserwave6012]

Loving it. Can't wait for the next episode.

[@amigacoverdisk]

Nice series idea! Looking forward to more! Thanks.

[@thisnthat3530]

Kickstart on Disk was a handy feature. My original A500 was KS1.2 and would have cost quite a bit to upgrade to 1.3 via a ROM swap. With the A1000 it was just another floppy disk.

[@krashd]

My first Amiga was an A600 with KS2.0 and in order to play many of the games my friends had for their A500's I would have to load KS1.3 from disk.

[@merman1974]

To quote Coldplay, it was all yellow. Given how brittle that cover was, I would go for just cleaning rather than Retrobrite.

[@mustangj0hn]

I first became aware of the Amiga from the review in PCW magazine, it said its sound was "Fairlight Data Compatible." I'd no idea what that meant, but it sounded so cool!

[@steviebboy69]

I remember reading something like that in I am sure it was Compute's Gazette or something like that and it said sound that would rival a Fairlight.

[@MrDuncl]

But you have heard the Fairlight 1001 times on tracks like Kate Bush and Art of Noise. Interesting that Amiga financed the design of their computer by selling joysticks while Fairlight financed designing their Musical Keyboard by selling computer boards to businesses.

[@MarcusTDM]

I’m looking forward to seeing the finished machine. Definitely think you should retrobrite it. Will look amazing. Great video as always. 👍🏻

[@Yolo_Swaggins]

The "Amiga 3100" controller that is advertised is referring to the product code for the "Amiga Power-Stick" controller. It was printed on the back of the box as "#3100".

[@mogwaay]

Nice video and good way to explore the topic through the pages of Byte magazine. One of my regrets from my visit to the cave was to spend more time at the library, next time 😋

[@phillupson8561]

First ten minutes was like Jackanory for nerds, loved it :)

[@stupotsvideo]

I love the end user perspective, brings a really new fresh idea to this videos

[@Retr0Rewind]

Excellent Idea for a series..love it.

[@Rockythefishman]

What a beast :) really looking forward the next parts

[@ukmk3supra]

Aaah the A1000 - I was convinced i'd never see one for real, outside magazines. Would be interesting to get a Georg Braun A1K motherboard inside that :D

[@MrJakeTucker]

22:40 You're not planning on snorting that are you Neil?

[@PXAbstraction]

"I can taste the retro!"

[@coolnoob5508]

The joyboard looks a lot like being an inspiration to the LJN Roll n' Rock controller for the NES, nice to see a wierd controller

[@dotcomDan]

Another great viddy thanks I have the 2000 with the maths co processor & when it came out would watch Red Sector demo daily before schooling

[@kcharles8857]

Brilliant! Cannot wait for the rest.

[@mattjames6349]

Murder gloves amused me! Great video as always!

[@retrojem8531]

Definitely would like to see this retrobrighted. Bring it back to original

[@siteczek]

Yes! I cannot wait for the next episode!

[@Mike-mu7tk]

The headline about LCD's getting cheaper than CRTs.. Amazing

[@xenium1024]

I'm guessing the joysticks mentioned in that issue of Byte were "The Power-Stick", which were definitely released, I have several of them. They were little hand-held sticks. Quite awful to use, actually. :-)

[@DaveVelociraptor]

Get in contact with Neil, discord is a good place!

[@AshMcCool]

Jep, you can even see the numbering on the original packaging (3100, 3101).

[@ChrisHorswill]

Can you trace over the signatures with pencil, scan them in and then print. Or maybe some sort of plaster cast to save them. Such a cool feature having those under the lid!

[@andrewfrost8866]

Absolutely awesome!