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The A1500 was a UK-specific machine derived from the A2000. Both machines use a socketed Motorola 68000 7.14 MHz CPU and were shipped with an empty processor slot. The operating system also remained the same, shipping with Kickstart 1.3. The only difference is that the Amiga 1500 shipped with two floppy drives, 1MB Chip RAM and a new nameplate.
The exact reason why Commodore chose to release such a limited machine has remained a mystery for years. Many suggest CBM UK released it to “kill” an A500 desktop conversion unit sold by Checkmate Digital that was also called the A1500. Commodore always had a questionable business sense. By releasing a competitor to another company they were almost certainly attempting to drive potential Amiga suppliers out-of-business, as well as spending large amounts of money on a system that added little to the Amiga market. Alternatively, Commodore may have had a lot of internal floppy drives they wanted to use.
After Commodore released the A1500, First Computers in Leeds released an unofficial upgraded version called the 1500+, an ECS version of the A1500 that included the 2.04 Kickstart ROM. There was also a later version dubbed the 1500Deluxe that added an 1.3/2.04 ROM switcher and RAM expansion. Silica released a similar system called the 2000Plus that dropped the RAM expansion, only including the ROM switcher.
CPU 68000@7.14 Mhz
Custom Chips Denise – 8362 Denise, REV6.3+ had 8373 SuperDenise
Paula
Fat Agnus
Gary
Buster ZorroII Buster DIP
Video OCS or ECS (4096 colors)
Kickstarts 1.2, 1.3 then 2.04
Memory 1MB Chip RAM
Drives Internal 880K floppy
SCSI HD in 2000HD models
Drive bays 2x 3.5″ front bays
1x 5.25″ front bay
(both of the 3.5″ bays are occupied with 880Kb DD floppy disk drives.)
Slots 1 – Video
1 – CPU
5 – Zorro II
2 – 8 bit ISA
2 – 16 bit ISA in line with Zorro II slots
Interfaces 1x Serial DB25 male, RS232
1x Internal serial 26 pin header
1x Parallel DB25 female, Centronics
1x Video DB23 male, analog RGB
1x Composite, black & white
2x Mouse/game DB9 male
2x Stereo audio RCA jack
1x Keyboard 5 pin DIN female
1x External floppy DB23 female
1x Internal floppy 34 pin header
