intric8 wrote:This starts to enter the realm of personal opinion.
I use 1.3 exclusively, and I know I'm the oddball here in that department. But 1.3 - for me - almost guarantees compatibility with probably around 95% of the software I'll ever want to use. The only other variable really is NTSC vs PAL when it comes to compatibility (which is a real issue). For AGA (e.g. the a1200, etc.) there are less than a dozen titles I'd ever care about - just me, personally.
So I stick to what works. And, in a non-logical move, I love the way it looks, too.
Most of my machines run SCSI hard drives, which are sometimes faster than IDE drives, too.
But the A1000 is obviously a very unique creature and harder to upgrade as the rest.
There were several side expansions made for it but most of them are 1) long dead and/or hard to find 2) expensive if you do find one (and may still be dead) 3) usually small capacity (e.g. 20-40 mb) etc. And it's even more complicated. You have to get the SCSI side-car interface, then the expansion will usually only work with a small set of hard drives that were made back then. And each expansion typically came with its own unique "driver" software, which often was written for 1.0 or 1.1 or 1.2.
I think my Zip Drive expansion is probably my favorite A1000 hard drive solution just because it's so weird. But it was also a major PITA to set up (and finding the parts is haaaaaard). Although sometimes the journey is just as much fun as the final solution if you like to geek out on hardware.
So, from a practical standpoint..... hm.
OK. If I only had 1 A1000 I would try and find a way (there is a way) to get a Kickstart ROM that could boot a SCSI2SD card. 2gb sd card, nice and quiet with almost zero power drain on our ancient PSUs, with Workbench 1.3 loaded on it.
I should make one of my stock 1000's like that just to go through the process and get it all set up nice and tidy.
At the end of the day just ask yourself: What is it you want to do? If it's play games, you will want to get some sort of hard drive solution at some point - at least the kind of games I play it's just a better experience to have them installed. But if you want to, say, play Ultima IV, all you need is RAM. That's it! Save yourself the headache and just go have fun (for the next several months). Hah!
If you're gonna go 2.0, you might as well jump up to 3.1. Sorry for the rambling post.
I honestly bought the A1000 for 1.3 but that was because I had a close friend who's dad gave him his A500 with 1.3 on it and we would use it for hours. It wasn't until a month ago that I found this pristine A1000 with 1.3 on it that I couldn't resist getting it. I just didn't realize that it would be so difficult to modify to play games or just use most software with only 256kb.
I eventually want to look into getting an A500 but they're rare in good condition for a fair price. I would love to get the A1000 to work with this IDE without upgrading the Kickstart, but I'm honestly looking at what would be my easiest and most cost efficient option. Overall, I want to just be able to play games, experiment with music trackers, try Digital Paint III and possibly get an accelerator!
I'm very open to any suggestion at this point. It's nice just to see that there are helpful answers like this since it's been almost two weeks struggling to find anything.
(Also here is photos of the IDE with measurement:
https://imgur.com/a/gnjd0bs)