User avatar
cbmeeks

Posted Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:33 pm

About 10 years ago I bought an Amiga 1000. I tried many times to get it to work but it never gets past the light-grey screen.

Last week, I had a little extra "blow money" and found another Amiga 1000 on eBay that was listed as "working". Plus, this one had the front RAM cover my original did not. This one also had a keyboard and the right-angle mouse.

I bought it, it arrived today and guess what? It has the SAME $^#&*%(# ERROR! :x

I contacted the seller and asked how was it tested working when it clearly does not.

Anyway, I removed the front RAM expansion plugged in the keyboard, floppy, etc. When it boots, I see a dark grey screen and then a few seconds later, I get a light grey screen and that's it.

No floppy clicking sounds, no other colors, nothing.

The good news is that I literally have two identical A1000's so maybe between the two, I can get one working. I remember a couple years ago on my original A1000, I swapped out the CPU and all custom chips from a working A500 but to no avail. I don't know where to go next with this one.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Thanks.

User avatar
cbmeeks

Posted Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:57 pm

HAHAHAHA! OMG!

I am such an idiot. I did not notice the floppy was unplugged on the back!!!!!!

It's asking for a Kickstart.

This is going to be one good weekend I hope! :-D

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:42 pm

You'll want that front RAM expansion plugged in when you boot. Congrats on finding the issue with the floppy drive!

Do you have the Kickstart and WB disks you need to get to the promised land?

User avatar
cbmeeks

Posted Fri Mar 03, 2023 4:17 pm

I don't have WB1.3 any more. So I need to get a copy of that.

I do have a KickStart 1.3 and DPaint III.

It seems to accept the KickStart 1.3 just fine. I even have Easy AMOS that boots just fine.
When I boot DPaint III, the CLI shows 1.3 starting up.

I assume that means this machine has 1.3 ROMs? How can I find out for sure?

On a positive note, I managed to load Easy AMOS, DPaint III, DigiPaint III and Baal. Oblitorator crashed after the demo.

Oh, and the front RAM expansion works. Which means I am very excited.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Mar 03, 2023 5:17 pm

If the machine is asking for and accepting Kickstart 1.3, then you don't have any ROMs at all. That's a stock Amiga 1000. And that's how the vast majority of A1Ks are unless you either go the Rejuvenator route, add a Kickstart ROM adapter or do some other similar upgrade.

If after loading Kickstart your Deluxe Paint III fails to load then I have a feeling your disk may be corrupted.

Screenshot 2023-03-03 at 4.15.58 PM.png

User avatar
cbmeeks

Posted Sat Mar 04, 2023 8:55 am

OK, that makes perfect sense now. In fact, I knew it didn't have ROMS (I see the blank spaces where sockets could be installed). But I guess in the back of my mind I was thinking there was some kind of hardware checking for 1.2 or 1.3.

I've been an Amiga user since I was 16 but that was with A500. The whole KS is new to me. :-)

Thanks for the information. I'm sure I will have many more questions to come.

Side question: If I have KS1.3 disk (which I bought), is there ever a reason to load up KS1.2?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 04, 2023 8:58 am

is there ever a reason to load up KS1.2?
No, not really. 1.3 will have you covered completely.

I see the blank spaces where sockets could be installed
I'd be very curious to see a photo of what you're talking about.

User avatar
cbmeeks

Posted Sat Mar 04, 2023 9:25 am

A1000.png
I assume those are for extra ROMs?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 04, 2023 11:05 am

I've asked around and the 2 chips you see there with the stickers the bootstrap/boot ROMs. All NA 1000s have those. They contain something like 8KB of instructions but they aren't full-fledged Kickstart ROMs.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 04, 2023 11:30 am

From my friend Christian:
The motherboard can handle 256 KB Kickstarts in 4 EPROMs and that was the original design. The KickWOM was a (nice, and well done) hack.
This works by reconfiguring jumpers that are on the motherboard. (no, those jumpers do not have pin headers installed)

Confirmed for Rev B. It is possible that Rev 6 and Rev A require some patch wires - but it could also be that the user who did this did not fully understand the jumper fields.





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