Amiga development system (prototype?) on eBay

[Rob]

I know Mitchy wasn't a Labrador but did she have ambitions of being the Andrex puppy, or is there another reason for there being a toilet roll on the board.

[bloodline]

It seems likely the sell accidentally threw away the "good stuff" and kept the wrong bit... Anybody want to let him know?

[bloodline]

It would seem it's just "partial" then, as all the custom chip breadboards are stading in the back of the older picture.

If it is, it's too bad that they are lost, because as the seller is stating, this was salvaged from a pile of old vcrs.

To furthur my previous post, I think the "VCRs", might actually have been the custom chip units!

[Ilwrath]

One of the custom chips their is mass produced production run variety so...........

Where do you see that in the picture?  The only two MOS chips I can identify from the crappy pictures posted would seem to be the CIAs.  And I think that would hold true, as I believe the CIAs were actually a stock MOS part, developed separate from Amiga.

It looks fairly probable as legit to me.  Paw print would be Mitchy.  (Jay Minor's dog -- He is also the paw print inside the early A1000 cases.)

The ROMs handwritten as 24.60.  Amiga beta ROMs seem to start at 27.xx, and kickstart 1.0 was 30.xx.  This fits, as well.

If it's fake, someone put some time and research into placing things properly.

EDIT:  I also believe, as others do, that it's incomplete.  Most of the custom chipset appears to be missing.

[coldfish]

If it is the Lorraine (even part of) proto...

But, it wouldn't be impossible for some cunning sod to cludge together a fake and make a tidy sum from some cleverly assembled junk parts.  

The paw and bog-roll icons on the PCB are interesting...

If it is what it appears to be then, WOW!  It belongs in a computer museum.

[Calgor]

See also what Arcticfox designer/developer Damon Slye has to say about what they used to make their game:

http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/user/Damon%20Slye

"Dynamix' first huge contract with EA for a whopping total budget of $35K ! We had finally hit the big-time! (or so we thought) We released this, EA's first original title for the Amiga, in 1986. We developed on a pre-release Amiga packaged in a black steel box with a wooden keyboard."

The seller needs to post more details or better photos.

If someone asks one of the original amiga team members they surely would be able to tell if it is the Lorraine prototype or not.  I would have thought one of them would keep it themselves.

[desiv]

... We developed on a pre-release Amiga packaged in a black steel box with a wooden keyboard."

Interesting.  So it could be a Lorraine proto, or they could have used the same black steel boxes for their development boxes...

So, it still "might" not be missing too much.  

Would be interesting to find out...  Not $1500 interesting, but still. ;-)

desiv

[tone007]

Maybe there were a bunch of pre-release Frankenstein1000s sent around to software developers?  Would make sense.

[AmigaHeretic]

Maybe there were a bunch of pre-release Frankenstein1000s sent around to software developers?  Would make sense.

Yeah, that would make sense.  Also, assuming it's not fake, the serial number D-115 would lend more to that idea too.  If it was a prototype it might not make sense to have the serial # there.

[odin]

It's doubtful it is Lorraine (or a part of her) if the sticker on the side saying 'C= Amiga dev system' is ligit, since Lorraine was developed and made even before C= got hold of Amiga Corp. IIRC.

Better pictures are needed.

[xeron]

I'd love to get a dump of those ROMs...

[Drummerboy]

Yeah, thats a bad pics.. can´t see the components..

The only intersting fact is the Mitchy footprint and the toilet paper drawing..

[ElPolloDiabl]

Was there a triple A chipset in there?

[Plaz]

This does look like only a peice of a dev system. I don't see any thing in there that could fuction as a custom co-processor. It looks more like it functioned as the keyboard and I/O interface.

I also recall years ago that some one talked of displaying the Lorraine proto boards at some clubs or meetings. Reportedly non-functioning. Could it be that these peices were some how separted long ago taking different paths?

Any one esle recall mention of those co-processor cards?

Plaz

[Daff]

Amiga prototypes had several names like Lorraine, Zorro and Amiga PC. Lorraine refers to the project name (1983) and the early prototype (first part of 1984).

This machine sold at eBay had been made in late 1984/early 1985 for development purpose. But it's possible that no third developer really used it.

So we could consider it as a real Amiga prototype, a late prototype, but not a Lorraine.

And it's of course labelled "Commodore" because it had been made after Commodore bought Amiga Inc.

[bloodline]

For developer unit, the custom chip breadboards probably would have been housed in black metal cases that might have looked like some old broken "VCRs"