[Coco] [Color Computer] Older site.

[James Diffendaffer]

>Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:17:46 -0800 (PST)
>From: Dan Olson <dano at agora.rdrop.com>

>I'm not too familar with the inner workings of the 1000, I do have an
>external SCSI controller for it (the same as used with the 500) and I
>guess I assumed that the ROM had enough smarts to look for a hard drive
>before booting off of floppy.... I mean, it's an old computer, but not
>that old.

Oh, I wouldn't say that.

You should have seen AmigaDOS 1.0... it made WindowsMe look reliable
<shudder>.  It would crash just sitting there with the first 1.0
version I saw.  Early adopters also got to use Musicraft, Graphicraft
 and Textcraft. (aka Musicrap, Graphicrap and Textcrap)  If you were
lucky enough you got to see Textcraft animate the pointer as a little
blue bird... it was dropped from later versions.  It was pretty scary
software.  There was also PC DOS emulator but it was never marketed
for some reason.  I guess they wanted to sell the SideCar instead.

Anyway back to the 1000 and AmigaDOS...
V1.1 actually made the OS stable enough to use an hour at time.
V1.2 is the first version I'd consider using.  There were a lot of bug
fixes, optimizations to the floppy drivers/file system and some
additions.  I'm not sure if it supported HD autobooting or not.  It
was this version or the next that did.
V1.3... what most people remember other than 2.x.

The A1000 could actually be fitted with Kickstart ROMs, I believe it
has the sockets for them.  You had to replace a couple PALs on the
daughterboard to do it but it worked fine.  I don't think it supported
the larger Kickstart ROMs that came with 2.x.  If you made the
modification then you could use ADRAM to add the Kickstart RAM to
regular system memory.  This and internal RAM expansions from Sprit
Technology were pretty popular at my partner's store.  I think quite a
few people had CLtd hard drive controllers.  

I started developing for the Amiga on a 2 drive A1000 system. 
Swapping disks for the compiler was a nightmare!  I didn't get to use
a hard drive until I got a 2000.  I bought a GVP controller and added
2MB of RAM to it.  RAM was so expensive then that the rep drove an
hour (1 way) to deliver it.  I think it was over $400 just for the RAM.

If you really want Amiga info try posting on Amiga.org.