User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Aug 14, 2017 10:47 pm

After cleaning my Amiga 1000s keyboard, which was almost worthy of a quarantine, I put the whole project aside for awhile. Partly to regain my stomach's stamina, and partly because I was really jonesing to play some Starflight, which is just freaking awesome.

This past weekend I took a deep breath (a really deep breath) and decided it was time to attack the 1000 itself. I knew I had two main issues: the machine's internals being filled with who knew what and the external disk drive port not working. When I'd tried using it originally it was never recognized. I'd pop a disk in and nothing ever happened.

From what I could tell my 1000 had never been opened before. It was completely virgin save for two memory expansions popped onto its exterior.
IMG_0395.JPG
Opening the 1000 starts, well, at the bottom.

I soon discovered that the side RAM expansion needed to come off in order to remove the case.
IMG_0396.JPG
So, this is what 512K of RAM used to look like, folks. Something the size of a very tall cheap romance paper back. Or maybe two Belgian waffles.
IMG_0398.JPG
Incidentally, to simply remove the side RAM expansion required a screwdriver. It doesn't just pop in and out - it's screwed on.

You also need to remove some of the front plastic "caps", of which there are three. One covers an additional RAM expansion port, one covers the left side of the front case, and one covers the floppy disk drive. I removed all three. After taking the floppy disk cover off, I encountered a similar situation to what I found under the keyboard - total nasty. It truly is remarkable that this drive can read disks at all when a fluffy sweater surrounds the disk insertion bay.
IMG_0400.JPG
The little LED lights for power and disk drive activity are really classy and clean. I wish more machines designed them like this.
IMG_0407.JPG
Floppy drive LED

IMG_0408.JPG
Power LED

To be quite frank, after removing all of the screws and RAM expansions and extra front plastic covers I was a bit flummoxed about how to open the case. I pulled and pried and the plastic bowed to an extreme curvature. And then, in a bit of frustration, I went for it and "pop!" it simply opened up on the right side of the case. But the left side worked like a hinge! Until I opened it even further and "pop!" that side disengaged as well.

I let out a huge sigh of relief that no tiny bits of plastic went flying.

And then, finally, I was rewarded with one of the absolutely coolest things about the 1000 machine (besides its obvious sex appeal): the engravings of the creators. Something 95% of the original owners of the 1000 never even saw. So so so SO cool! Even Miner's sweet old office dog's print was there for all the nerds to see.
IMG_0401.JPG
IMG_0402.JPG
IMG_0403.JPG
IMG_0404.JPG
IMG_0405.JPG
I cleaned the gold contacts for the 2 different expansion ports and any other surface or nook and cranny I could see.

At this stage, all I needed to remove was the heat shield.
IMG_0410.JPG
The Amiga 1000 really is an exceptionally tidy machine.

After I removed the shield, the truth is the interior was nearly spotless! The main crud was around the front, which I'd already removed and the fan in the back. Well, and the power switch - it was keyboard nasty.

I pressed all of the chips into their slots firmly and sprayed some electronics cleaner into the external drive port. Then I buttoned it all back up.

I'm happy to report that the external drive port works now. More on that soon. :)
IMG_0447.JPG
More on this amazing external drive soon.

Oh, and the fluffy sweater found throughout the inside of the case has been carefully removed and sent to a better place - a place far, far away from this Amiga 1000.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:38 am

Comment by Malor on Reddit regarding this post, re-printed here with permission:
My family owned one of these, and can confirm: we never saw the autographs inside the case, although I did know they were there. But I never took it apart.

The A1000 had 256K on the motherboard, which was really quite a bit, for the time. (the machine was actually functional in 256K, and could genuinely multitask with that much, but it really wasn't enough for routine use.) The front panel popped off and allowed you to add another 256K, which IIRC was about $500 when the machine first shipped. I think the second floppy drive was another $200. (My father bought an A1000 on Christmas Eve of 1985, and he spent about $3500 on it; I think the rough breakdown was $2500 for the Amiga, $500 for the RAM, $200 for the drive, and $300 in tax, a game, a mousepad, and a box of floppies. Just a box of 3.5" DS/DD floppies cost $50! They were $5 each.)

That expansion you have on the side is aftermarket. You could add up to another 8 megs on the external bus, which was a phenomenal amount of memory for the time; it would have cost something like $20,000 to buy that much RAM when the machine came out. Many of the early expansions would do 2 megs. I'm suspicious that your expansion would, as well; I think the reason it's only 256K is because it's using lower-density RAM chips. I don't actually know this, but I believe it would probably go to 2 megs with a jumper and higher-density RAM. (which would probably be fairly hard to source, these days, that stuff hasn't been made in thirty years.)

68000-class Amigas are at their best with about 2.5 megs of RAM and a hard drive, but those expansions usually had to be bolted onto the side of an A1000 (or the later A500.) I vaguely remember internal expansions existing, but as you accurately point out, very few A1000 owners ever did more than open the front panel to add the first 256K RAM expansion. Plugging in a chain of stuff on the side, though, was pretty easy, and lots of people did that.





Return to “Hardware”