Commodore Amiga 1000: 1985 жылғы жеке компьютер

1985 personal computer

The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32 bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced graphics and sound systems in its class. It runs a preemptive multitasking operating system that fits into 256 KB of read only memory and was shipped with 256 KB of RAM. The primary memory can be expanded internally with a manufacturer supplied 256 KB module for a total of 512 KB of RAM. Using the external slot the primary memory can be expanded up to 8.5 MB. As Senior Industrial Designer at Commodore, Stolz was the mechanical lead and primary interface with Sanyo in Japan, the contract manufacturer for the A1000 casing. The Amiga 1000 was manufactured in two variations: One uses the NTSC television standard and the other uses the PAL television standard. The NTSC variant was the initial model manufactured and sold in North America. The later PAL model was manufactured in Germany and sold in countries using the PAL television standard. The first NTSC systems lack the EHB video mode which is present in all later Amiga models. Because AmigaOS was rather buggy at the time of the A1000's release, the OS was not placed in ROM then. Instead, the A1000 includes a daughterboard with 256 KB of RAM, dubbed the "writable control store" (WCS), into which the core of the operating system is loaded from floppy disk (this portion of the operating system is known as the "Kickstart"). The WCS is write protected after loading, and system resets do not require a reload of the WCS. In Europe, the WCS was often referred to as WOM (Write Once Memory), a play on the more conventional term "ROM" (read only memory).

The preproduction Amiga (which was codenamed "Velvet") released to developers in early 1985 contained 128 KB of RAM with an option to expand it to 256 KB. Commodore later increased the system memory to 256 KB due to objections by the Amiga development team. The names of the custom chips were different; Denise and Paula were called Daphne and Portia respectively. The casing of the preproduction Amiga was almost identical to the production version: the main difference being an embossed Commodore logo in the top left corner. It did not have the developer signatures. The Amiga 1000 has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 7.15909 MHz on NTSC systems RAM may also be upgraded via official and third party upgrades, with a practical upper limit of about 9 MB of "fast RAM" due to the 68000's 24 bit address bus. This memory is accessible only by the CPU permitting faster code execution as DMA cycles are not shared with the chipset. The Amiga 1000 features an 86 pin expansion port (electrically identical to the later Amiga 500 expansion port, though the A500's connector is inverted). This port is used by third party expansions such as memory upgrades and SCSI adapters. These resources are handled by the Amiga Autoconfig standard. Other expansion options are available including a bus expander which provides two Zorro II slots.

Many A1000 owners remained attached to their machines long after newer models rendered the units technically obsolete, and it attracted numerous aftermarket upgrades. Many CPU upgrades that plugged into the Motorola 68000 socket functioned in the A1000. Additionally, a line of products called the Rejuvenator series allowed the use of newer chipsets in the A1000, and an Australian designed replacement A1000 motherboard called The Phoenix utilized the same chipset as the A3000 and added an A2000 compatible video slot and on board SCSI controller.

In its product preview, Byte magazine was impressed by the computer's multitasking capabilities and the quality of its graphics and sound systems. It also praised its text to speech library for voice output, and predicted that the Amiga would be successful enough to influence the personal computer industry. Computer Gaming World praised the machine's versatility without any obvious hardware shortcomings and stressed that it was ideal for game designers demanding fewer system constraints. Creative Computing magazine had only minor criticisms for what they otherwise called a "dream machine." These criticisms were directed toward its case quality, the disk drives slowing during certain operations, and not finding an AUTOEXEC command in AmigaDOS, though the marketing vice president of Commodore, Clive Smith, assured the magazine that later production units would address most of its complaints. Months after the Amiga 1000 was released, InfoWorld offered a mixed review. It praised Intuition and the customizability of Workbench, but took issue with the operating system's bugs such as memory overflow and screen flickering of single lines as a result of their being interleaved when displayed in high resolution mode. It also criticized the sparseness of the software library preventing the publication from fully realizing the computer's potential. In 1994, as Commodore filed for bankruptcy, Byte magazine called the Amiga 1000 "the first multimedia computer so far ahead of its time that almost nobody—including Commodore's marketing department—could fully articulate what it was all about". In 2006, PC World rated the Amiga 1000 as the 7th greatest PC of all time. In 2007, it was rated by the same magazine as the 37th best tech product of all time. Also that year, IDG Sweden ranked it the 10th best computer of all time.

"Joe Pillow" was the name given on the ticket for the extra airline seat purchased to hold the first Amiga prototype while on the way to the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. The airlines required a name for the airline ticket and Joe Pillow was born. The engineers (RJ Mical and Dale Luck) who flew with the Amiga prototype (codenamed Lorraine) drew a happy face on the front of the pillowcase and even added a tie. Joe Pillow extended his fifteen minutes of fame when the Amiga went to production. All fifty three Amiga team members who worked on the project signed the Amiga case. This included Joe Pillow and Jay Miner's dog Michy who each got to "sign" the case in their own unique way.