Picked up a 1000 today...

[DonutKing]

I met a bloke on another forum who had some old miggies sequestered away in his garage.
Took this 1000 home with me. Cosmetically its seen much better days.


But the inside seems to be in good order



I was a bit surprised when I plugged in and was greeted with the 'workbench 1.3 disk' screen.
I thought the 1000's needed a kickstart disk first.
A closer look at the motherboard revealed this:



'Phoenix Enhanced Motherboard for the Amiga 1000'





So apparently this is an upgrade board, but I can't find much more info than that. Can someone tell me exactly what the deal is with this board? Seems to have a 68000 CPU but I don't know what chipset? What other advantages does this have over the original 1000?


Also got this thing:


some sort of memory expansion? Where does this plug into? Can I use it with this phoenix board, or my Amiga 500?

[T_hairy_bootson]

Very nice score there.

A little info on the much sought after Phoenix board.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha....cgi?HARDID=46

The XEL expansion in handy for a regular a1000 as it is a ram expansion with a weird SCSI port that requires additional hardware to be functional. I am not sure if it would suit the phoenix though as I have never seen a phoenix myself but I have had several XEL expansions.

http://www.bboah.com/index.php?actio...356&artlang=en

[Fingerlickin_B]

Awesome..for free?!?!

PZ.

[DonutKing]

Thanks for the info
Is it true that there are supposedly less than 1000 of these ever made?


Wasn't free, cost $50 AUD

[roy bates]

the outside isent that bad,nothing a good clean and a bottle of h202 cant fix.(albiet a lot of time and tlc)and she be back as good as new.(ive seen worse)

roy.

[Fingerlickin_B]

Originally Posted by DonutKing

Wasn't free, cost $50 AUD

Still awesome!

PZ.

[DonutKing]

I've pulled the machine apart in an attempt to clean it, and taken a few more photos.

Here's the two keyboard I got with it. They are foul - I think one's had milk spilled in it at one point because it was absolutely rank when I pulled it apart. I've tried to clean it as best I could. Both of them seem to have a few faulty keys. I'm hoping that when I get the system running, it will just be a matter of desoldering some working switches off one board and soldering them onto the other.




Can anyone tell me if a 2000/3000/4000 keyboard will work with a 1000 if I fit an RJ11-DIN adapter or something?


Anyway here's some shots of the board.












There are a lot of empty sockets but it works as far as I can tell. At least, its got 1.3 kickstart on it and it happily boots off a floppy.
Can anyone shed some light onto what some of the missing chips might be, or what options this board is equipped with?

I believe it has 256KB of RAM installed, with 8 256 kilobit DIP chips and another 8 empty sockets.

On the underside of the board there are a few wires that have been soldered in place.



There are heaps of messages and greetings all over the underside:









Sorry for the poor quality. This last one says 'Sorry sheldon we did it anyway' and 'the various user groups who supported us'



This one says 'To the 540 depositors who made it all possible, my thanks and in particular, Margaret Wilson, Jonathon Potter, Mike Chow and the others scattered around the board'.

The phone number is an old 7 digit number, in the mid 90's Australian phone numbers were changed to 8 digits.

[egillskallagrim]

Originally Posted by DonutKing

They are foul - I think one's had milk spilled in it at one point because it was absolutely rank when I pulled it apart.

I'm laying odds that it wasn't milk spilled in the keyboard. You sir are a much braver man than I.

[lost_loven]

those are awesome pics! I hope to see it 100% running again! good luck!

lost

[DonutKing]

Originally Posted by egillskallagrim

I'm laying odds that it wasn't milk spilled in the keyboard. You sir are a much braver man than I.

.... that honestly never crossed my mind. I think I'd have been much happier if it didn't

those are awesome pics! I hope to see it 100% running again! good luck!

lost

That's the plan at this stage, I think there's a fair amount of work involved...

[egillskallagrim]

Originally Posted by DonutKing

.... that honestly never crossed my mind. I think I'd have been much happier if it didn't

Ignore me. I'm just bitter that no one within a 300 mile radius of me ever gives away rare-ish Amiga gear or really any Amiga gear, for that matter.

[ChrisUnionNJ]

Originally Posted by DonutKing

Thanks for the info
Is it true that there are supposedly less than 1000 of these ever made?


Wasn't free, cost $50 AUD

That's still A great price!!!

Chris

[chiark]

In answer to your question, yes you can use any external keyboard on an A1000 with the adapter. You'll need a 4p4c RJ11 (4 pin, 4 connection - most modem cables are 6p4c) that you can butcher off a telephone from the handset to base connection, and a DIN connector or similar.

I use one on my GB A1000 through a switchbox. If you need more info I can dig out the wiring.

And that phoenix board is wonderful! Lucky sod!

[MalleII]

@Donutking:
Wow, that is a rare Phoenix Board! Very Nice!
You should realy take time to restore this to a fully functioning unit.
Have a look at this site: www.a1k.org
These guys are specialised on the A1000 and Phoenix Board and will gladly help you.

Did i mention, that i also have a phoenix board?

[8bitbubsy]

Very nice indeed, these boards are a very cool thing to have!
I see *a lot* of rust on the connectors and the shielding on the expansion ports, you should unscrew those metal covers and maybe desolder the plugs and solder in new ones. At least for the RCA sound plugs.

[DonutKing]

Thanks for the info.
The XEL thing is just a standard sidecar expansion. There are no external connectors, and the only internal connector is a 26 pin header.
A bit of googling suggests this could be a proprietary JVC hard disk interface : http://www.pd.com/gb15xx/messages/1489.html

So the disk controller is probably useless although it does have 1MB of fast RAM installed on it, which I confirmed working on my A500.

As for the phoenix board - after reading through the manuals I've determined that most of the missing chips are just for additional kickstart ROMs. The only one installed is the 1.3.
There is also no FPU installed and the SCSI controller is missing too.

The only option that appears to be installed is the internal DB23 floppy drive connector, to mount an external floppy inside the case.

FPU can be found pretty easily if I was to bother with it, but the SCSI controller chips seem proprietary? Are these available anywhere?

[DonutKing]

This is coming along pretty well, the case and keyboard look like they'll clean up nicely (actually making a working keyboard is another matter), and I'm planning to solder on some new RCA jacks and maybe even a coin cell battery holder to replace the dead one that's soldered on, if I don't just remove it entirely.

Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be able to take advantage of all the bells and whistles of this board because the SCSI controller, FPU, kickstart switcher and the B2000 expansion slot all require PAL chips (programmable array logic, not the video standard) - which I don't have. They would have all been Phoenix proprietary. The SCSI controller also requires an EPROM installed in U31 which appears to have contained some sort of autoboot code (in addition to Kickstart ROMs that support autobooting natively it seems).

I imagine these things are as rare as rocking horse poop. They are generally programmed at the factory and have a security fuse blown so its not possible to simply read their logic. However, depending on the type of the chip used and its complexity it may be possible to reverse engineer these chips and program replacements.
More info here: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...AL-HAL-(Part-1)

Of course this is all just talk. I lack the knowledge and equipment to do this myself, and there was an effort to reverse engineer the PAL chip for the CMS upgrade on the Sound Blaster 2.0, which never went anywhere- and some of those guys actually had the chips.

About the only upgrade I can do is stick more RAM in it, otherwise it seems functionally identical to an A500, in a desktop case with an external keyboard.


I'd be interested to hear if anyone actually has these PAL chips? Having a board as rare as this is one thing but actually having one with all the options installed would be quite the prize.

For reference the chips in question are:
U59 - Kickstart switcher
U21 - FPU
U70 - B2000 expansion slot
Not sure about SCSI controller chips exactly, any of chips U27, U23, U25, U26, U24 might be the PAL. Also requires EPROM in U31 and actual SCSI controller chip in U30


I'm also chasing a front cover for the A1000 case (where the chipram expansion would go), don't suppose anyones got one lying around?

[rkauer]

How about creating an account on Amibay and then asking for the bits & bobs you are in need?

Pretty sure someone else will pop up with something.

[DonutKing]

I'm already a member of Amibay. Another guy has had a thread looking for the chipram cover going for a couple of months now with no offers.
As for the chips I need, I've got the binary files from a1k.org but actually getting them programmed is going to be an issue. PALs and GALs appear to be obsolete, so finding new chips let alone someone to program them is proving difficult.

[DonutKing]

A bit of an update on this project...

Thankfully one of the users at a1k.org was kind enough to identify and dump the missing chips for me So I now have the .JED files to program replacements and the scsi autoboot ROM. Here they are for anyone that's looking for them.
All the other SCSI controller chips etc can be found online.

So to that end I've bought a cheap and nasty G540 USB universal programmer off ebay and some rewritable GAL chips from futurlec. Waiting for them to arrive so I can try them out

Unfortunately the U60 chip, which allows a 1MB Agnus to interface to 2MB of RAM won't work in a rewritable GAL. It will only work in a write-once PAL for reasons unknown (Andrew Wilson himself said he never figured this out). It's impossible to find the required type of PAL that hasn't already been programmed, and even if I did you can't program them with a normal programmer.
Of course if I managed to track down a 2MB Agnus chip that fits, the docs say that would work too, but these are pretty rare. I might have to just make do with 1MB.

The board has 1MB of RAM installed which I've configured as all chip memory. You can reconfigure it for 512 chip and 512 slow (similar config to an A500 with the 512KB trapdoor expansion) while the sidecar expansion is 1MB fast. Funnily enough, if I configure for 512KB/512KB Chip/Slow, sysinfo reports about 3% faster speed than 1MB/1MB chip/fast? I thought the whole thing with slow memory was that it was like chip memory (controlled by agnus, which introduces a delay as the CPU can't access it every cycle) but processor had exclusive use of it, while fast mem was controlled by processor and could access it on every cycle so there was no delay. Strange.


Anyway, while I'm waiting for the chips and programmer to arrive I've been keeping busy. I've stripped the machine and cleaned it, and tried to retrobright it. I tried using cling wrap to prevent the retrobright from drying out unfortunately this just made it brighten the plastic unevenly (wherever there was a crease in the cling wrap). I work full time and I don't want to leave it out in the hot aussie sun from 8-5 without being able to check on it every hour or so... and I've been busy on weekends so its been slow progress on this front.


In the meantime I've managed to get a working keyboard.


The one that was missing the spacebar had only 4 or so dead keyswitches plus the missing switch for the spacebar. I managed to get the others working with a few squirts of WD40 to loosen them up. I managed to desolder 5 working ones off the other board (which had missing keys all over the place but funnily enough QWERTY at least worked fine) and solder them onto the new board.

I've also since replaced the dead clock battery with a coin cell holder so as to make replacements easier in the future





I've also replaced the corroded old RCA jacks with nice, clean new ones





Everything is humming along nicely It definitely sounds a lot clearer with the new RCA jacks.




I also got the steel wool and some Autosol and polished up those metal brackets on the edge connectors, they are still dull but at least they aren't brown and rusty any more. I don't think these serve any purpose anyway? the sidecar doesn't even touch them when its installed.
I tried to polish up the RF shields but they were too far gone. After an hour of furious scrubbing and polishing they still looked crap so I've put them aside for now.


So now its basically just waiting for the chip and programmer to arrive, at which point I hope to get the FPU, kickstart switcher and SCSI working. Planning to get a 50 pin SCSI card reader so I can install workbench to it.
Most B2000 CPU expansion card don't look like they'll fit inside the standard A1000 case so I'll just forget about that for now.