Amiga 1000 - Design

Design

The A1000 has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from later Amiga models: It is the only model to feature the short-lived Amiga "check mark" logo on its case, the case is elevated slightly to give a storage area for the keyboard when not in use (a "keyboard garage"), and the inside of the case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers (similar to the Macintosh); including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy. The A1000's case was designed by Howard Stolz. As Senior Industrial Designer at Commodore, Stolz was the mechanical lead and primary interface with Sanyo in Japan, the contract manufacturer for the A1000 casing.

The Amiga 1000 was manufactured in two variations: One used the NTSC television standard and the other used the PAL television standard. The NTSC variant was the initial model manufactured and sold in North America. The later PAL model was manufactured in Germany and sold in countries using the PAL television standard. The first NTSC systems lack the EHB video mode which is present in all later Amiga models.

Because AmigaOS was rather buggy at the time of the A1000's release, the OS was not placed in ROM. Instead, the A1000 included a daughterboard with 256 KB of RAM, dubbed the "Writable Control Store" (WCS), into which the core of the operating system was loaded from floppy disk (this portion of the operating system was known as the "Kickstart"). The WCS was write-protected after loading, and system resets did not require a reload of the WCS. In Europe, the WCS was often referred to as WOM (Write Once Memory), a play on the more conventional term "ROM" (Read Only Memory).