In the mid 1980s, there was a rash of 16-bit computers entering the market. One of them stood head and shoulders above the rest: Commodore’s Amiga 1000. It had everything that could reasonably be stuffed into a machine of the period, and multimedia capabilities the rest wouldn’t catch up on for years. [Celso Martinho] has managed to secure one of those first machines, and has shared his tale of bringing it back to life.
The post is as much a love letter to the Amiga and review of A1000 peripherals as it is a restoration, which makes it a good read for retrocomputing enthusiasts. He recapped it and it wouldn’t boot, the solution of which turned out to be a reminder for the rest of us.
The machine had a RAM upgrade in the form of a daughterboard under the processor, its pins had weakened the leaves of the processor socket so it wouldn’t make contact. So don’t forget to replace sockets as well as capacitors.
The resulting machine is much faster thanks to a modern upgrade with a much quicker processor, memory, and an SD card for storage. He goes into some of the other upgrades available today, all of which would have had early-1990s-us salivating. It’s fair to say that in 2025 an A1000 is more 40-year-old curio than useful modern computer, but we can’t fail to admit to a bit of envy. The Amiga holds a special affection, here.
“One of them stood head and shoulders above the rest”
Amiga ? seriously ?
How about the Heathkit H-11 ?
It was a 16 bit machine that ran off the DEC LSI-11 cpu.
You could run all the PDP-11 libraries on it.
I think Jenny’s text is misleading, because the words “consumer” and “games” are omitted 😅
The Amiga is interesting in the sense that what makes it “Amiga” is the specific chipset configuration that provides particular functions. When you upgrade the system with better graphics, more memory, etc. you’re bypassing the original chipset functions, which means that you’re actually building a system of a different architecture on top of the original and then just ignoring the underlying system.
So if you have a “fully tricked out” Amiga, it may be two or three different computers grafted together, where one is usable at any given time depending on how you choose to boot it up and what software you load up.
Except for Amiga 2000, maybe, which was made with expansion in mind.
Installing an 68010 processor or an 68020/68030 CPU card in the CPU/MMU slot and installing a flickerfixer/scandoubler or an optional graphics card doesn’t change the original character very much.
The underlying hardware in still in use, after all.
But yeah, I agree, the Amiga was pretty much an arcade board in a desktop chassis..
It has certain character traits that get lost when installing those Power PC Processor boards, for example.
Never understood that habbit of installing PPC/PCI upgrade boards.
They’re like parasites to the original electronics on the mainboard.
I maybe should mention that upgrading/modding had been a common thing among Commodore, Sinclair/Amstrad or Atari computer fans of the 80s.
Adding things like reset buttons, installing a NEV30/80286 PC emulator board, using eprom programmers or case modding started back then.
So it’s not as if it’s an entirely modern phenomenon, whatsoever.
Back then, however, considerations of “period-correctness” didn’t exist set.
Hardware rather had been modyfied or replaced at the time.
Also, in case of Amiga, an A1000 with 256KB of stock RAM is nearly unusable.
It does need at least that RAM upgrade that goes behind the hidden slot on the frontpanel.
Otherwise it can’t run games or applications from late 80s, even.
Also, an 68010 is needed to properly use WHDLoad utility nowadays.