Amiga 1000 upgrades?

[haywirepc]

I have an amiga 1000 I just saved from a dumpster. Its original with original monitor too...except it also came with a 2 meg ram sidecar addition.
 
I have heard there is a board you can add that will let you use 3.1 roms and not have to use a kickstart disk. Does anyone know where I can find this?

Also, I've also heard of a board for amiga 2000/500 that basically adds amiga 600/1200 ide controller. Does anyone know if this works with amiga 1000 and where can I find one?
 
Finally, there is some kinda accellerator I saw for amiga 500/2000 before which plugs into the original 68000 socket. Does anyone know if this works for amiga 1000 and whats that called so I can watch ebay/amibay for one?
 
Any help or thoughts from those who have upgraded an original 1000 alot would be greatly appreciated. I'd really like to see other people's projects or hear how they upgraded this old girl...
 
Steven

[save2600]

I'd leave your A1000 alone as upgrading it the way you want is going to be a painful and expensive exercise you wish you hadn't taken on.

But, if you insist:

MrMKL here (and Amibay) sells an IDE and RAM board for the 68000 socket. But you're going to need Kickstart 2.x+ (has scsi.device) if you want the IDE part of it to work.

DJBase here sells a Kickstart board that plugs into the A1000. But instructions are vague/misleading and there are wires that need to be soldered to the daughterboard. Jumper pads on the mobo get molested also... lol   This board does NOT plug into the 68000 socket. Wish it did as it'd be a much simpler deal. BUT... you can "simply" make your own adapter OR wire up your Kickstart chip by hand directly to the 68000 chip itself. There are instructions how to do this on the net and maybe even Aminet.

This board you're talking about that adds IDE capabilities. Well, there's one for the A2000 called Buddha, that's a Zorro II card and the A500 one plugs into Gary and is called AdIDE. Good luck finding one of those. The Buddha Zorro II card is not going to work on your A1000 without a sidecar adapter or your own makeshift adapter, for which I currently have the parts for - but involves a lot of soldering/wiring.

Accelerators for the A1000 include the 14mhz 68000 AdSpeed and these Derringer 020 and 030 boards. Latter two are quite rare are overpriced and suck because most of the time, they do not come with RAM. 32-bit accelerator with no 32-bit RAM is LAME! And to add insult to injury, they're not really made for the A1000 without removing the friggin' internal 3.5" drive. Yeah, how's that for an "authentic" Amiga 1000 experience? lol   Almost forgot... those 020/030 acclerators require your A1000 to have Kickstart in ROM also. DOH!

DKB's Multi-Start II is a Kickstart board that plugs into the 68000 socket and allows you to switch between both ROMS, but good luck finding one that uses the standard 16-bit ROMS. Most of the time I've seen these old Kickstart ROM adapters, they're designed to take Kickstart divided by 4 chips. Better know a buddy with an EEPROM programmer if you find one of those things.

[motrucker]

I got a small PC board that allows using a newer Kickstart ROM from a member here. It wasn't ratte, but I cannot remember his name (and I guess I erased my PM that far back) The instruction were not great, but I got it working without too much trouble.
The accelerator is another story. Some of the A500/A2000 jobs that install on the mobo can be made to work, but not easily (that may be an understatement!)

My current A1000 uses an Insider (1Mb addition) and a Microbotics Starboard II, 2Mb sidecar type expander. I still use the 1.3 OS, disk based kickstart system. It will play many games that the newer systems choke on - which is why I keep this configuration. It's a very dependable system.

[desiv]

As for an accelerator/HD board for it, it's my understanding that the new design ACA520 should work on an A1000.  I think they hinted there wouldn't be room for a floppy.
Now, as it's not out yet, it's hard to say what all of that means.
The IDE controller on the ACA520 is, I believe, going to be A600 IDE compatible, which means you'd need Kickstart 2.0(4 or 5??) or above to boot from it.

And if you're loosing the floppy (It might be like the ACA630 and you can use an external floppy), you'll need a hard disk bootable solution.

That said, by the time it's released, it might be a perfect solution for you depending on the options...

I don't think I'll do that to my A1000.  I already have an accelerated / lots O RAM Amiga 1200.  And my A1000 has an "Insider II" so it has almost 2M of RAM.
Beyond that, I think I want to keep my A1000 fairly original...

desiv

[haywirepc]

I'd really love it to have 3.1 kickstart built in and run os3.1 with an internal hard drive... Sounds like the work involved may be ridiculous though. I'm fairly technical, and I can solder, but I'm not feeling very optimistic about making this happen after hearing from some folks here...
 
Perhaps I should just leave it as it is, a floppy based system with an extra 2 megs of ram.  I've been meaning to buy a catweasel for my windows pc. Maybe thats the only upgrade I need... Then I can make self booting floppys and just play games with it or whatever.
 
Steven

[save2600]

I no longer have a HD hooked to my A1000, but like you, I have the 2mb sidecar expansion. This means we can boot Kickstart 1.3 AND 3.1 from floppy    

http://aminet.net/package/util/sys/twinkick

Works great!

[amigadave]

Unless you don't have another Amiga that runs 3.1, I would stick with 1.3 on the A1000 and use it mostly just for games.  Look for an AdIDE w/ShuffleBoard for an internal hard drive solution, or find one of the many external side expansion hard drive enclosures.

For the ultimate A1000, find one of the 50 GBA1000 builders that have decided for one reason or another NOT to complete their project and get their motherboard and any parts they have already found for it.  The GBA1000 is a great board which is almost equal to the A3000 in performance and has a couple of companion projects for flicker fixer, or even a PicassoII equivalent graphics card.

I have one of those motherboards, but plan to keep and complete it myself one day.

[haywirepc]

I'm not a big fan of os 1.3
 
Thanks for everyones thoughts on this. I may try a few of these upgrades. I prefer os3.1 to 1.3...
 
I have an amiga 1200 which I upgraded with hard drive, new rom chips and a hd with os3.9. I also have an a2000 and a500 that need some work
 
Steven

[RobertB]

I bought the A1000 RAM/IDE adapter from Tom Thul (who frequents Amibay.com).

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org

[desiv]

I bought the A1000 RAM/IDE adapter from Tom Thul

The sidecar one or the internal?
I was watching the sidecar one, but didn't notice if he'd finished it...

desiv

[JimS]

DKB made a ROM board for the 1000 called the Kwikstart. I've got one in my 1000 with a 2.1 ROM in it. Seems to me it went under the 68000, had a couple of wires to the motherboard, and some new PAL chips. When I had a HD on my 1000, I used an external Zorro II espansion box with a 2000 SCSI card & RAM board.

[RobertB]

The sidecar one or the internal?

The sidecar one.

FCUG celebrating 30 years,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org

[desiv]

The sidecar one.

D'oh!  I never saw the "it's ready" message!  :confused:  

Time for a PM..
(After I check my checking account..)

desiv