Commodore Amiga 1000 (1985)

Commodore Amiga 1000

Today, July 23rd 2014, the Amiga turns 29: it was presented in 1985. That year my parents bought a Commodore 128, while my first Amiga, model 500, arrived in 1988. As always I won’t discuss the technical details of this revolutionary computer, but I will pay my tribute with a set of photographs.

I bought this Amiga in 2005; it was an NTSC version, maybe one of the first units imported to Italy before Commodore officialy began selling it in this country. Oddly enough, I never opened it, I never saw how it was made “inside”… until today!

The Commodore logo doesn’t appear anywhere; later revisions of the computer and the monitor had the brand printed on the cases with the institutional blue and red colours.

Some views of the computer:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Views

These are the ports on the back, with pictures of the matching icons:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Ports

The keyboard can be hidden under the Amiga:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Hidden keyboard

The mouse has a peculiar connector compared to the subsequent models:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Mouse

I don’t have the manuals; I only have the Kickstart, Workbench and Extras floppy disks, version 1.1.

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Kickstart and Workbench 1.1

Here’s the keyboard, US layout:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Keyboard

The next picture is in black and white to enhance the signatures on the interior of the top case.

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Signatures

To create the transparency effect in the next image, I took two pictures with the camera on a tripod:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Transparent

The exploded view is a kind of habit, and a computer like this one deserved all the time devoted to the shooting of the pictures and the post-processing in PhotoShop…

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Exploded View

Here are the motherboard and daughterboard; most of the PAL units had all the ICs on a single board.

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Motherboard

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Daughterboard

All the integrated circuits have a datecode of mid 1985. Only a couple of them have later dates: the Denise chip, probably upgraded because early units didn’t support a special graphic mode (Extra Half Brite), and the Paula chip, maybe replaced after a failure.

The motherboard is the very first official revision, marked as REV 6:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - Rev 6

A couple of pictures of the internal of the 1080 monitor:

Commodore Amiga 1080 - Back

Commodore Amiga 1080 - Side

Not even the label on the back has the Commodore logo…

Commodore Amiga 1080 - Label

The TV modulator and switch box:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - TV modulator

One last picture of the complete system, with the R•Type game on screen:

Commodore Amiga 1000 - R•Type

13 thoughts on “Commodore Amiga 1000 (1985)

  1. Frank

    Very nice pictures!
    Looks really like new and made for a product flyer.
    Also the transparent case and the isometric view of the right top side looks very interesting.
    Almost like a CAD view :)
    Does exist a hi-res version of the picture with the transparent case ?

    Reply
  2. Giacomo Post author

    Sorry but I can’t give away high resolution pictures. If you need them for some particular use (e.g. for an article in a magazine) please write to me through the “Contact me” page.

    Reply
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  5. Kevin

    The exploded view of the A1000 is amazing, still one of my favourite Amiga Models, while I never owned this one (hopefully oneday) came be to search for good image references to build a 3D model.

    Reply
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