Jay Miner's signature from the top cover of a Commodore Amiga 1000 computer.

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. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1076x788, 391 KB) Summary Jay Miners signature and Mitchs paw print from the top cover of a revision A Commodore Amiga. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1076x788, 391 KB) Summary Jay Miners signature and Mitchs paw print from the top cover of a revision A Commodore Amiga. ... Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore International, a West Chester, Pennsylvania based electronics company who was a vital player in the personal computer field. ... In computing, Amiga is a range of home/personal computers primarily using the Motorola 68000 processor family, whose development started in 1982, initially as a game machine. ... Jump to: navigation, search Multimedia is the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactivity). ... The home computer is a consumer-friendly word for the second generation of microcomputers (the technical term that was previously used), entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The RGB color model utilizes the additive model in which red, green, and blue light are combined in various ways to create other colors. ... The A500, also known as the Amiga 500, was the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16-bit multimedia home/personal computer model. ... The A2000, also known as the Commodore Amiga 2000, was the high-end Amiga personal computer that was released in 1987 at the same time as the low-end high-volume model A500. ...

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. Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 - June 20, 1994) was a famous microprocessor designer, known primarily for his work in multimedia chips. ...

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. The Motorola 68000 is a CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ... Jump to: navigation, search SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, and is a standard interface and command set for transferring data between devices on both internal and external computer buses. ...

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. AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. ... A computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working as intended, or produces an incorrect result. ... A daughterboard or daughtercard is a circuit board meant to be an extension or daughter of a motherboard (or mainboard), or occasionally another card. ... A BOOTING is any exercise of the verb to boot. ...

Technical specifications

• Motorola 68000 (32-bit CISC microprocessor with 16 registers lacking MMU for memory protection and virtual memory).
• Default operating system AmigaOS 1.0/1.1/1.2 loaded from the Kickstart floppy disk at power-on (having 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking microkernel)
• 256 KB of Chip RAM by default, with an additional 256 KB provided by a dedicated cartridge (sound buffers, graphics buffers and software existed in same memory space)
  • Practical upper limit of about 9 MB of memory due to MC68000 limitations (24-bit external address bus)
• OCS chipset
• 50 Hz PAL and 60 Hz NTSC TV output by default versions available (PAL versions sold in Europe and Australia)
• One expansion port for add-ons (memory, SCSI adaptor, etc), electrically identical to the Amiga 500 expansion port.
  • Resources handled by AutoConfig

The Motorola 68000 is a CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ... A Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) is an instruction set architecture (ISA) in which each instruction can indicate several low-level operations, such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store, all in a single instruction. ... MMU, short for Memory Management Unit, is a class of computer hardware components responsible for handling memory accesses requested by the CPU. Among the functions of such devices are the translation of virtual addresses to physical addresses (i. ... AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. ... The term Kickstart can refer to: The bootstrap for computers running AmigaOS or some Linux distibutions. ... Jump to: navigation, search A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a circular piece of thin, flexible (i. ... Jump to: navigation, search Pre-emptive multitasking is a form of multitasking. ... Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Kernel (computer science). ... A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1024 or 1000 bytes. ... Chip RAM is the name given to RAM with dual port access in the Amiga computer that could be accessed by the custom chipset as well as the CPU. The custom chipset was able to perform DMA transfers to and from this RAM, and would even lock-out the CPU... This article is about a unit of data measurement. ... Jump to: navigation, search An address bus is (part of) a computer bus, used by CPUs or DMA-capable units for communicating the physical addresses of computer memory elements/locations that the requesting unit wants to access (read/write). ... Jump to: navigation, search The Commodore Amiga Original Chip Set (OCS) is a chipset used in the earliest Amiga computers, from the 1985 Amiga 1000 onwards. ... The hertz (symbol Hz) is the SI unit of frequency. ... For other meanings of PAL see PAL (disambiguation). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Jump to: navigation, search Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. ... Jump to: navigation, search SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, and is a standard interface and command set for transferring data between devices on both internal and external computer buses. ... Missing image A500 The A500, also known as the Amiga 500, was the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16_bit multimedia home/personal computer model. ... AutoConfig is a feature of Amiga computers which gives features similar to todays Plug and Play, although it was introduced in 1985 with the A1000, years before Windows 95. ...

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. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... For other meanings of PAL see PAL (disambiguation). ...

External links

• The Commodore Amiga A1000 at OLD-COMPUTERS.COM