Back in October of 2016 I was able to attend the fantastic Portland Retro Gaming Expo which was held at the Oregon Convention Center. That show features a large arcade (aww yeah), speaker panels, museum, gaming tournaments, auction and a large vendor floor where some folks set up tables with wares to sell.
To be honest, the first place I went was the vendor section. Overall, there was a huge turnout for Nintendo carts and gear, which is to be expected. There were plenty of other retro consoles represented, too, and to my surprise a rather large turnout of Intellivision gear.
After walking around the entire room - about the size of a high school gymnasium - I found one vendor with some Commodore software which surprised me. I took a look and slowly started to circle his setup which was 4 rectangular tables arranged roughly in a square where the vendor stood in the center. Below one table not really in a place to be easily seen, two huge boxes caught my eye which made me nearly gasp. They had Amiga logos on them. I bent down to the ground and took a closer look and soon discovered I was looking at 2 boxed Amiga 2000s. I flipped open one, and saw a rather yellowed machine sitting inside the box. I flipped open the other and couldn't believe what I was looking at - a NOS Amiga 2000 HD, never used and never removed from its box. I wondered if it might have battery issues, but ultimately decided I didn't care. I quickly bought that machine and felt like I'd just found excalibur and pulled it from the rock. I was so stoked. But before leaving the table, I realized there was another box sitting behind the 2000s.
It was a small box sporting a 1010 external floppy drive. I snagged that, too. It only cost me $20.
It's been nearly a year and I'd yet to open it. With the dual-floppy 2000s I've been using, I really had no use for an external drive. But I knew I might some day. After acquiring an awesome Amiga 1000 recently that day finally came. When I first powered up the 1000, I plugged an extra external floppy drive which I knew worked into its external port but it never powered up the drive. I decided to try and clean the 1000 first and reseated some of its chips. I was nervous but wasn't ready to panic about the external drive not firing up.
After buttoning the 1000 back up, I decided to go "all in" and use the NOS 1010. I mean, aesthetically the 1010 looks like a perfect extension of the 1000's case. This really is what the 1010 has been waiting for since 1986 apparently.
Assuming the 1000 could see it, that is, and power it up this time after its cleanse.
Below is the unboxing of my 1010 for the very first time. I opened the box and released some 1986 air into our 2017 air. We could probably use it; it couldn't hurt.
In utter elation, the drive was recognized by the cleaned 1000 and powered on!
And will it read disks? You bet it will.
Now, the interesting thing about this Amiga 1000 that I've found a bit curious is that it really only likes disks that were created on a machine running 1.3. My other machines (500, 2000) that are running 1.3 can read literally any disk that was made on 1.3 , or simply duplicated on any Amiga machine regardless of classic OS. For example, had I created a Amiga 1.3 disk on a 1200 running 3.1, the 500 and 2000 could read those disks. The 1000 is quite fickle and will balk at those disks. If the ADF was created on the 500 or 2000, however, it's totally fine. Very odd.
But whatever - I'm stoked to have this working! I can hear a very slight rumble coming from the 1000s primary DF0: drive. I hope I don't have to perform some sort of surgery on it in the coming days, too. Ah, age.