This is the start (hopefully) of a new series where we'll look at the various Amigas that have been released through history. So we might as well start with the first...
Released way back in 1985, it had a 7MHz 68000 processor, 256k of RAM, single 880k floppy drive, and the original Amiga custom chipset.
The real strong point of the machine was the chipset. Displaying 4096 colours on screen at once was amazing at a time when the Mac was black and white, and PCs had 4 colours. Even without the HAM trick, you could have animated 32 colour displays. 4 channel 8 bit stereo sample playing was considered way ahead of its time back in 1985 - it's just a pity the Amiga chipset today is capable of no more...
The disk drive squeezed 880k out of a 3.5" floppy at a time when 360k was a common standard. As a finishing touch, there was a little bay where the keyboard could be put away underneath the main computer.
The Amiga was originally designed with games in mind - this was, after all, at a time when home computers were used for little more than games. This resulted in not only the custom chipset, but also the ability to output to a standard TV or video - something which has helped the Amiga into video and multimedia applications to this day.
The price was a whopping 1500UKP, or 1700UKP with external floppy drive. Other peripherals could be added by a 'Zorro 1' side slot. The A1000 was not that commercially successful, it was only when prices came down, and the A500 was released two years later that the Amiga began to take off (and with the A2000 to push the Amiga into the video industry).
The operating system was also amazing of course: A true 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking OS, with both GUI and Command Line Interface, and all on a 7MHz 68000, 256k RAM and no hard drive. But it was also somewhat overlooked. It's an interesting point - you can understand the greatness of the OS being overshadowed compared to the graphics capabilities of the machine. As time went on though, Commodore continued to underate the OS, keeping it tied to the custom hardware (not to mention turning down offers from Digital of an Alpha port...) Now we have a time when many consider the OS to be the Amiga's greatest asset, and we are crying out to be able to run AmigaOS on the latest hardware (be it PC or otherwise)...
A question in recent times has been 'What makes an Amiga?' In particular, when machines such as PIOS ONE, the A\BOX and now the 'Amiga II' were announced, many Amiga advocates said that these new machines weren't Amigas. Well, if the A1000 was the original Amiga, then what makes all the other machines still Amiga? New machines have to have changes in them, and the Amiga 2 will have to be signifcantly different from 'Classic Amigas' to catch up... but it can still be an Amiga.
Many people point out how the Amiga's strong point to begin with was its graphics and sound, and not its operating system, so why do people go on about the AmigaOS being good now? Well, true, the A1000 had such good graphics that the fact it also had a very decent OS compared to DOS based sloths may have been overlooked... I saw a debate recently in some Amiga newsgroup where people were arguing Amiga vs PC, and an Amiga with graphics card didn't count as an Amiga, since it used 'PC harware'. Since when has hardware been PC only? There's nothing wrong if Amigas make use of new hardware in place of its custom chipset - so what if the same chips are used in some PC graphics cards. It is true that the A1000 stunned the world because of its custom graphics chipset, but we must remember that the days of the custom chipset are over. There are many companies dedicated to producing chipsets - if you're producing a computer, you'll be much better off using one of these off the shelf chipsets (whether you have it on the motherboard, or use PCI slots or something).
Both the Pre-Box and the Amiga II seem to be taking this view - they'll both be making use of chipsets which will be on board, as opposed to on cards, but they will be standard off the shelf chipsets, rather than custom designed ones.