Commodore Amiga 1500

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.

Related Pages
CheckMate 1500 | The Amiga Chronology

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