Restoring a Commodore Amiga Sidecar, an MS-DOS computer add-on #VintageComputing #Commodore #PC
Richard “Shred” Körber documents refurbishing a Commodore A1060 “Sidecar”.
But what is a Sidecar? When Commodore released the Amiga 1000, its graphics and sound capabilities were unmatched in that price range. However, because the machine was based on the Motorola 68000 processor, users were unable to run existing MS-DOS software on the machine.
The German Commodore factory in Braunschweig tried to solve this problem with the Amiga 1060. The machine was connected to the Amiga 1000 and provided a full IBM compatible PC. Although it was a standalone computer, it had no video and keyboard ports, but was fully controlled by the Amiga. Because it was connected to the right side of the Amiga, it looked like the sidecar of a motorcycle, which gave it its nickname.
The Sidecar came relatively late to the market, could only be used with the Amiga 1000, and was quite expensive. For this reason, only a small number were produced. I could not find any official figures, but according to Dr. Peter Kittel (an engineer at Commodore Braunschweig) only between 3,000 and 5,000 units were sold in Germany, and certainly even less worldwide.
In the three part article, Richard looks to:
Clean the case, remove the rust, replace all screws
Fix the power LED
PSU overhaul
Replacing all electrolytic caps, the buzzer, and the Zorro connector
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