Mystery A1000 Hard drive box

[lavo]

Hi All!

Haven't posted here in a long time, but now is a good time to start!  I managed to pick up 7 A1000s for free on the weekend, in various states of yellowness :-)  What was unusual about 2 of them, was a box that sat on the top.  Its about the same size as the A1000, and has power connectors on the back.  It also hooks into the expansion port.  All homemade by the look of it, but peeking through I can almost see a hard drive.

Does anyone have an idea what it could be?  I'll post some pics in the next few days.

Seeya

Rod!

[LoadWB]

I'm interested in pics.  In digging through my new Amiga World collection, there are quite a few expansions for the 1000, one of which provides Zorro slots.  The ones I have in mind match your description, though these are professional rather than home made.

Interesting all the same.  It's amazing how much really existed for the 1000 and was (apparently) forgotten all at the same time.

[lavo]

I have a feeling there is a power supply in there with a MFM/RLL hard drive.  There are extra power points on the back to plug in your monitor and Amiga, which is pretty cool :-)

Seeing as they came from a university, it will be interesting to see what is on the drive.  I'm guessing it doesn't autoboot, so I'm hoping there is a disk somewhere that will mount the drive!

[shaf]

Either Spirit or Supra did and expansion box that sat on top of the A1000 and had a MFM/RLL HDD Controller.

I was thinking of getting one at the time but decided to go with Comspec Ram and SCSI devices instead.

Shaf

[JimS]

Byte-by-Byte made a box like that also, the PAL and Pal Jr. The Pal was about twice as tall as the 1000 itself.
The Pal Jr. was about the height of the 1000. It had 2 zorro slots, one used for the HD controller. One meg of RAM and a RTC were on the box's motherboard. Take a look at this ad from the July 1986 issue of [color=ff0000]Amazing Computing. [/color]

Warning! 450K jpeg
amazing PAL ad

Here's one for PAL Jr from AmigaWorld May 87

AmigaWorld PAL Jr. ad

[nadoom]

Why does that A1000 have a boing ball for a logo? That is one seriously ugly piece of kit ontop of that amiga !

[lavo]

I found a manual for it in the shed last night.  It is a Max - The Hard Disk System Hackers Package.  You essentially had to solder your own interface to the expansion bus, plus the controller.  The company provided the software and instructions for building one, then you had to supply the rest.  Will post some photos on the weekend!