PAL Jr documentation or software?

[craig65535]

Hello,

I am fortunate enough to have picked up a PAL jr in a haul of random computer hardware and software. I actually had no idea how rare it was until I searched for it just now. It has a 5.25" MFM hard drive (a ST-251) in it, and one slot contains a hard drive controller board.

I'll tackle getting the hard drive to work later, but for now I'd like to see if the built in RAM expansion (1MB AFAIK) works. My Amiga 1000 I would be testing it with works and is stock except for the front panel RAM expansion.

Does anyone know where to find documentation for this thing? Does the RAM expansion need software?

Thank you

[craig65535]

Thanks for the reply. I tried booting it (using KS 1.2 and WB 1.2 on floppies).

With the hard drive disconnected (I didn't want to affect the data on it), the Amiga starts, starts loading KS, and then hangs on a blank screen. I suspected it was trying and failing to communicate with the HD, so I took out the hard drive controller card. With that removed, it got as far as asking for the WB disk, but then freezing again during loading.

I'm not really a knowledgeable Amiga user, having moved from a C64 to a PC in the 90s. I guess I assumed the RAM expansion would be autodetected like the front RAM card is.

[craig65535]

I tried KS and WB 1.3, and WB threw a "task held" error during startup.

I looked for info on the Usenet archives on Google Groups, and also found some old magazine ads.

http://vintagecomputer.net/pictures/2016/1986_MagCovers/AmazingComputing_1986_4-issues.pdf
The ad on page 6 says it autoconfigures under 1.2.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.amiga/c/DPUBnznhbKg/m/rYofS_JRTR4J
This Usenet post says it included a custom WB 1.2.

I might be stuck without that disk?