Amiga 1000 help needed

[adric22]

I'm kind of just getting back into the Amiga stuff, my A500 and A1000 have been packed away for 10 or more years until a couple of months ago.  I just got through soldering a proper null modem to work with Amiga Explorer (the one I had bought from the store years ago wasn't compatible with the handshaking) and I purchased a copy of Amiga Explorer and I've been dumping .ADF files over to real Amiga disks and trying to run them.  

However, it has come to my attention that a lot of the games refuse to work due to lack of RAM.  My A1000 has 512K chip ram and no fast-ram.  My A500 actually has 1 MB but due to the nature of having a family and limited space to setup an old hobby computer, the A500 won't really fit anywhere.  At least I can sit the monitor atop of the A1000.  

My A1000 has kickstart built-in to ROM.  Somebody had mentioned to me that I could enable that kickstart RAM and make it available to the system so I'd have 768K.  Can somebody point me to some instructions on how to do that?  keep in mind that I'm not that knowledgable about the operating sytem.  All i ever used this thing for years ago was playing some games from floppy and calling BBSs.  Outside of that, I never learned how to do much.  So I'm not a wizard or anything like that.

Also.. is it possible to expand the internal RAM on the A1000 beyond what it has now?  I have seen the ones that plug into the side, but I think that is hideous and takes up space.  I'm good with a soldering iron and hardware mods and stuff, so if there is any modifications available that would allow me to add some internal RAM, I'd be happy to takle that.

Thank you for your help!

[rkauer]

What kind of acelerator your A1000 have? Or it's just a ROM holder?

Look at these sites:

The Big Book of Amiga Hardware

Amiga Hardware Database

And specially look this particular item in Amiga - Hardware:
CMI - A1000 modifications

And be good for other human behings, my son :angel:

[adric22]

I looked at those links.  I can see that I need some program called "addmem" but I haven't been able to locate this program yet.  Can anyone provide a link to this program?

[motrucker]

The admem program isn't going to help. the 512K you see, is all there is, IF your A1000 has the ram card added to the front panel.
You will have to add more RAM chips to add anything. There were several boards that would add RAM internally, but they are almost impossible to find these days. It would be a bit more than just soldering chips in - you have to make a Printed circuit board. This really isn't out of the question, IF you have the artwork for one. Radio Shack used to sell PCB kits!
The Starboard RAM expansion (those horrible external boxes) actually work quite well. I use one on my old A1000 for RAM and SCSI.
Good luck....

[DonP1]

When you say your A1000 has built in Kickstart ROM, are you saying when you start the A1000 you just need to put in a WB disk or a game, and that you don't need to put in the initial kickstart disk? If so, I understand what you are saying but I'm of no help.

For A1000 upgrades, I've done just about all of them. But for you, I think the Spirit InBoard IN1000 that adds 1.5MB internally is what you should be looking for.

[c64_d0c]

thank god for a1200+1230+whdload....
________
Cheap Ca870 Commandos Shotgun W Laser

[jiffydos]

Can anyone confirm or deny if the elbox CDTV ram expansions (designed to plug direction into the 68000 CPU SOCKET) work with the A1000.  I cannot see any reason why they wouldn't.

Dave

[KThunder]

motrucker wrote:
The admem program isn't going to help. the 512K you see, is all there is, IF your A1000 has the ram card added to the front panel.

the 1000 has 256k of ram called the wom (write once memory) this is what the kickstart disk is loaded into. there are programs that allow you to use the wom for other stuff but im not sure how flexible they are

[motrucker]

KThunder wrote:


the 1000 has 256k of ram called the wom (write once memory) this is what the kickstart disk is loaded into. there are programs that allow you to use the wom for other stuff but im not sure how flexible they are

I am aware of this, I own and use an A1000. I have never been able to access this memory for system use though (other than the kickstart).
I would LOVE to find one of the internal RAM boards for the A1000 too!

[Ratte]

adric22 wrote:

My A1000 has kickstart built-in to ROM.  Somebody had mentioned to me that I could enable that kickstart RAM and make it available to the system so I'd have 768K.  Can somebody point me to some instructions on how to do that?  keep in mind that I'm not that knowledgable about the operating sytem.  All i ever used this thing for years ago was playing some games from floppy and calling BBSs.  Outside of that, I never learned how to do much.  So I'm not a wizard or anything like that.

Also.. is it possible to expand the internal RAM on the A1000 beyond what it has now?  I have seen the ones that plug into the side, but I think that is hideous and takes up space.  I'm good with a soldering iron and hardware mods and stuff, so if there is any modifications available that would allow me to add some internal RAM, I'd be happy to takle that.

Thank you for your help!

www.a1k.org - international section

[Zac67]

I remember dimly that with a special boot block, it's possible to prevent write protection of the WOM area and AddRAM it.
Very dimly...