#A2000A/A2000B
14 messages in this thread
I wouldn't doubt your word, Phillip, but I do know it says made in germany
right on my 2000B motherboard and I bought it in Frankfurt.de My machine looks
just like any other A2000 box. I was in germany during the entire period the
Amiga was introduced and developed, had my first A1000 shipped from the USA as
soon as it came available. I don't recall ever seeing a machine that looked
like a 1000 made for the german market but I might have missed that.
Cheers
Tom
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
I could be wrong about the a2000a looking like an a1000, that may have been a
prototype. I think most of the problems were ironed out before the machine was
manufactured in significant numbers. The 2000b was a lot better for a number of
reasons, I think this was designed in the usa, but could have been manufactured
in germany. Have you still got the a1000???? What is the serial number?
Phill
Phillip
I don't have the A1000 anymore, and don't even know the serial number. It was
probably low though, and I wish I hadn't sold it to that young airman at Rhein
Main AB to play games on. Hey, talk about antiques, how about this one: I have
a copy of the issue of Popular Electronics that announced the kit project for
the very first home computer. It was such an exciting thing at the time so I
kept it hoping to get enough $$ together to buy one and never did. Still have
the RCA ELF II kit computer based on the famous 1802 cmos cpu chip too. I think
I learned electonics on that one.
Tom
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
1802, never heard of that one, it's a good job IBM didn't pick that one to put
in the pc 😉
Phill
Hi
Wrong answer: it is too damned bad that IBM picked the most crippled mpu out
there to base their Personal Computer on instead of the 1802 or at least the
6800. Today's desktop computer would almost certainly be a generation further
ahead of where it is today. In other words, like an Amiga.
Seriously, the only reason IBM did that was probably due to business alliances
and such things, it could not possibly have been because their very capable and
intelligent engineering staff did not know which mpu chips were superior. To
prove the point, NASA and a large number of prime contractors for the military
put the 1802 into sattelites, F15 fighters, the Jupiter probe, AMSAT (I think
that was what the ARRL called their first sattelite relay) and plenty of other
cutting edge projects.
Just as it is today, superior technology took back seat to price and company
politics and the consumer has paid a heavy price by being saddled with 640K Dos
and Windows3.x and now Win95, not to mention Microsoft itself. Sad.
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
When IBM chose a processor, they had the option of the 68000, but intel offered
them a better deal ( a couple of dollars per chip probably ). The people who
worked on the original pc have stated that they regretted their choice.
Phill
I have a copy of the Popular Electronics issue that first explained how
transistors work.
—Betty
Umm .. did you get around to reading that article about how transistors work
yet, Betty?
🙂
Jim
Of course, I read it, Jim. I even understood part of it.<g>
—Betty
Ooooh! Gosh Betty, I didn't even know PE went back that far, I first became
aware of the transistor through a project in the ARRL bible. The RCA CK721 or
CK722 as I recall (amazing, I remembered). Couldn't build it, xistors cost
nearly $100 each back then and had a mtbf of months or weeks. I'm half a
century old more or less, and the computer has come so far it is incredible. My
first job was installing the then new all-transistor mainframes of Honeywell
Data Products division, and in only 25-30 years the profession of mainframe
guru has already come and gone. Most of us have gone into related jobs (I'm a
CNE) but too many are now eating dogfood and doing warranty work on PC's in the
homes. Oh well, Amerika love it or lieb it.
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
That definitive article explaining transistors for the non-engineer types was
written by none other than Amiga-Forum member, Jim Butterfield – and quite an
article it was, too.
Popular Electronics had been around for a while before that, though. I cleared
out an almost complete set from about 1952-1985 or so – don't recall just when
it stopped – a year or so ago. My husband subscribed to it for years and
years.
—Betty
The CK722 and the 2N104 were the first transistors that could be bought at a
price of less than $10, so their appearance was quite a breakthrough. The
CK722 was NPN and the 2N104 PNP, so you could try one of each. Economical
power transistors started arriving a year later.
> xistors .. had an mtbf of months or weeks ..
That's the myth that was being put around by the old tube hands .. tubes were
sturdy, transistors would blow if you even looked at them hard, if you weren't
equipped with special soldering tools and techniques, that trivial voltage
fluctuations would pop them, that they would wear out soon … … all
nonsense.
You COULD pop a transitor by putting too high a voltage on it, or trying to
make it drive an unprotected inductive load (same thing). But it was almost
impossible to destroy the little devils with heat; I often demonstrated heating
an in-circuit transistor with a cigarette lighter (changed the operating
characteristics but didn't bust it). Wearing out? Anyone who has a transistor
radio from the 60s knows that doesn't happen.
The world was shot through with myths about transistors back in the 1960s ..
much of my article was directing at debunking this stuff. And saying, "Switch
your thinking from voltage to current".
–Jim
Tom,
Do you still use your ELF II ever? Mine is right here beside me as I type
this. But my terminal board no longer works, and I haven't used it since 1986
when I bought my first Amiga. Actually, I bought the Amiga because I was
upgrading my ELF (from 20K to 64K, and adding disk drives) and needed a
computer badly for work I was doing. The 64K board tested out, but I never got
the disk drives (8 1/2 inchers) installed. By the time I got caught up enough
to work on it again the terminal wouldn't output the proper video anymore, and
I've never succeeded in fixing or replacing the terminal board.
Somebody replied to you that it was a good thing that IBM hadn't used the 1802,
but when I found out that the PC was based on an 8085, I lost all temptation to
buy one. If I could get my ELF working again, I'd use it at the office instead
of the 486-based thing my employers provided me with.
Bart
P.S. I thought the ELF project WAS Popular Electronics' first home computer.
It ran in four parts from August 76 July 77.
Bart, pisano! You have an ELFII? You know what this means? We can ask CIS to
start up an 1802 forum for us. Actually mine is packed in a box but I have kept
all the parts through moves to and from Germany over the years and have meant
to reassemble it someday. Maybe I will do it now.
I only got mine to 48K mem but I did install Fig Forth and worked hard
integrating Steve Nies's text editor with the OS favored by ACE, the Amateur
Computer Experimenter group based in Ontario. If you knew their newsletter Ipso
Facto, you probably saw my name on some of the articles. A few reviews to the
Pet User's Group newsletter also. Those were fun times, weren't they?
I still have my MC6847 video board in the box, 100% homemade of course. Like
you I never got a Harddrive or even a floppy interfaced to it. for years it
used a keyin loader to boot in the hand-pulled paper tape monitor which then
booted in the cassette O/S including the editor and Forth. When I packed it she
was using a 2716 Eprom to boot up the cassette. I used a GE Terminet 300 for my
ascii printer at that time.
I agree of course that IBM would have done the world a favor by opting for a
CMOS based MPU with 16 (count 'em) 16 bit (!!) registers, and the incredibly
fast register pointers to instantly switch programs with a single cycle after
an interrupt, and all the other advantages. With computers that ran from a
small battery right back there in 1978, what would the PC look like today? wear
iot in you eyeglass frames probably. Instead they opted for Nmos and
powersupplys that could do double duty as arc-welders and a fixed register
based/seperate I/O bus architecture rooted in ancient mainframe theory. The
4040 was actually a japanese customer inspired attempt by Intel to pack a
primative DEC mini into a couple of chips, I am told. Too bad they didn't also
look at the PDP architecture and instruction set, which was great. I was also
dismayed when IBM made that stupid choice and followed up on it by adopting Dos
instead of multitasking CP/M. Still makes me burn.
No, the ACE projects appeared in PE many months after they presented the first
project to build the Altair 8800 in Jan 1975. It was designed by MITS of
Albuquerque NM, Intel 80f80 2mhz based, had 256 bytes of main memory, and used
toggle switches to program it, leds for output. That's it. (later I read that
the designers showed the editor of PE a singular prototype which they knew
didn't work yet to get free advertising. For their failing company it was a
last ditch effort to survive. When the orders for the $397kit/$498 assembled
Altair flooded in tfhey had to rush to hire engineers and get it working. Sound
like any other intel based machines we know?)
I'm not positive but I believe SWTP in Texas had already introduced their 6800
based machine (to increase sales of their ascii television based terminal IMHO)
before Netronics introduced the ELF single board project in or near 1978.
I still have some software for the 1802 like PaloAlto Basic (Oak Ridge
Version), Pilot, Assembler, full screen Text Editor, Fig Forth, 1802
disassembler, DDT full
screen dynamic debugger, …all the foregoing for 40×16
video screen….plus for 1861 output I have Netronics original monitor ElfBug,
CSTP debug/trace, Super Graphics, Morsecode decoder, Life, Space war, a
lightpen pgm and more. Gotta go.
Tom
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers