Rare Development System What is this ?

[Jeff]

I haven't ever seen this, and I've done a lot of reading over the years.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4598&item=5187005028&rd=1

[seer]

Looks like a self made case... Never seen an "Amiga Devevelopment system" so who knows. Not worth the starting bid tho.

[TheMagicM]

sounds like a scam to me.

[Framiga]

or even not!

because someone have never seen a thing, it doesn't mean that doesnt exists.

[TheMagicM]

true.. but just a claim without any proof would make me skeptical.  I can do the same thing and slap on a few things taped with scotch tape and claim its the BoXeR devel system.  :lol:

[Striker]

I was digging through some old articles and found a reference to the predecesser of the Amiga called Lorraine.  It was produced by Jay Miner's company Hi-Toro.  This does have more than a passing resemblence to the Lorraine. I'd need more than some fuzzy pictures and a scotch-note to justify the $1,500 price tag though.

[coldfish]

I like how the scotch tape and label are nice and new and the case is scratched & battered.

0 bids, wonder why, that price is beyond a joke, try $5.

 

[Floid]

Striker wrote:
I was digging through some old articles and found a reference to the predecesser of the Amiga called Lorraine.  It was produced by Jay Miner's company Hi-Toro.  This does have more than a passing resemblence to the Lorraine. I'd need more than some fuzzy pictures and a scotch-note to justify the $1,500 price tag though.

Whuh-oh.  I was about to say I'd never seen a unit like this either... but I have.  Emugaming heads the photos with "Images of the Lorraine breadboards and the developer machine (.jpg)" -- what's not obvious (and as I think was remarked the last time that collection got toured around) is that those are, apparently, two separate assemblies; the breadboards are the breadboards, while the developer machine would apparently house the first working silicon.

Where, semantically, does "Lorraine" end and "something else" begin?  I'd ask if Commodore had continued to seed later designs in the same black boxes after acquiring Amiga, but that looks more like something 1000-esque than anything else.

Stands to reason they would've wanted to produce more than, y'know, 1 preproduction development box, but the mythology around the original Amiga Corp. has things so wing-and-a-prayer that it's easy to forget... after all, it's an attractive idea to imagine this one black obelisk everyone was huddled around, even though the whole "personal computing" movement was an attempt to get beyond that.  8-)

[Striker]

This gives a little more info and a much better picture.

http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson16.html

[Ilwrath]

Yeah... egads!  That's expensive, for not having any proof it's real.  To me, it looks like it's POSSIBLE that it's an A1000 prototype...  But I don't think many people will lay down that type of cash without a little more evidence.

The shoddy pictures and fake tape/paper labels don't inspire confidence.  The hand scribbled "Rev C" "silkscreen" on the mainboard doesn't look quite right, either.  There are lots of things to pick on to argue that it's fake.

On the other hand, there are also some things that make you pause and think.  The single shot of the 8 1-bit EPROMS showing V24.60 scribbled on old looking labels sure looks possible.  A lot of the design looks like it could have evolved into the A1000.  The cartridge slot on the front of the device is shown in some early A1000 concept sketches.  Ditto with the joystick port placements.  

Without access to the actual device, we just can't say one way or the other.

[Zac67]

The Lorraine was the very first prototype of the A1000 with all 'custom chips' put up discretely on large boards (see picture), the main board was in a black box app. the size of an A2000.
When silicon was ready, C= put out some pre-A1000 developer boxes to start software development before market intro - that box seems to be one of those. They should be pretty much A1000s with EPROM kickstarts, and lots of those little workarounds to make them go.  :-D

[Effy]

In other words, if you buy this then it might even not work out of the box and you may need to do several workarounds that you need to find out somehow  :-o

[Ilwrath]

In other words, if you buy this then it might even not work out of the box and you may need to do several workarounds that you need to find out somehow

Yeah, I can't see that device firing up cleanly.  At least not without a lot of diagnostic and debugging work, first.  If you look at it, there are loose clip-on jumper wires sitting around inside the case, horrible ugly solder patches everywhere, etc.  

But at that price, it's not being sold as a functional computer.  They're banking on someone wanting it for historical purposes.

It's intriguing.  Would love to know what's on those V24.60 ROMs.  But not at that starting bid.  :lol:

[NorthWay]

>Would love to know what's on those V24.60 ROMs. But not at that starting bid.

We should pester the winner to dump them!