The Amiga 1500 Story | Commodore Vs Checkmate Digital

I wonder how an 2019 Commodore Amiga would look like. Like Apple, just another X86 variety? Or something really impressive??

Amiga 1000 was simply called Amiga until 500 & 2000 models arrived.. :/

Sadly, Commodore hammered their own nails into their own coffins...this story was an example. You take true Amiga fans that promote your hardware with love and simply shut them down without getting all the info... wonderful.

💖💖💖Dankeschön 💖💖💖
Now that I see it I remember seeing them in the magazines 😉

Interesting facts! One thing though which was incorrect when opening the A1500 and comparing it to the A2000: The A2000 never had a HD controller in it as a standard. That was the A2000HD or the A2500

Wow I own a commodore A1500 but had no idea about the story behind it!

Quite funny that Checkmate still exists while the real Amiga doesn't

PC ATX motherboard scales from bottom to high end which Commodore failed to deliver.

I bought one of the Amiga 1500s (The Commodore one) years ago.
I remember when I was in the shop and I was just gonna get an Amiga 500.
The sales guy said it was essentially an Amiga 2000 minus the HDD.
So I bought it and it was awesome.
Many 100s of great gaming hours on that machine. :)

"Checkmate Commodore - Checkmate"! Stephen's the winner here... he is still getting to design cases for the beloved Amiga. And where is Commodore?!
Its a shame that the market is flooded with IBM compatible computers, and nothing "exciting" out there like what the Amiga was. We need someone to come up with an awesome machine & O/S to shake up the market again.

Nostalgia and emotionalism: talking about all Amigas and cases designed for Amigas. Reality and 'cold logistics' then kick in: "inside the case i have installed an INTEL ATOM".

That what should have been done was that somebody put some effort in the development of the Amiga.

The Amiga is dead, and that is not without a reason, there were mistakes in the design, there were inefficient ways of doing stuff, and in stead of changing this the Amiga is frozen, the operating system is just like it was in last century. If you want to work with an Amiga it is better to order a Raspberry Pi with the Amiga simulation software, it is cheaper, it is smaller and it is functioning better.

Please make episode from Bodega Bay A500

Bit short sighted, I'd have moved into A1500 to A2000 upgrade kits.

Amazing. I always thought that I had learned about the Amiga 1500 in a dream...but was real!

I had 2-2000s, 3-1000,, 1-600, 1000 was my original , then got a 2000 somewhere between 3000 and 4000 availability, I had a fat agnus,,040,8 megs,,486 bridge card Mac rom card. somehow I aquired an extra 1000 and another 2000, Then I won at an Amiga club meeting a drawing for a 1000 that was used my Lockheed at the space center

Where I can by this plexi stand for monitor? What name it have as product?

Where can I get the original A1500 case for my A500 ? Never find one anywhere...

hmmm, a small pc-case for 150 GBP, 50 GPB for a riser-board... and it's just a plastic facia... I do like the initiative but it's quite expensive (which is probably not his fault).

Commodore were always idots company with great products

It still is a fantastic device. I use it everyday.

I could've done with one of these when I was at uni for my A1200 + Blizzard board. Would've been even better if you could also extend it with a Picasso II at the time.

RetroManCave, I'm sorry. Any person that wants an original Amiga wants an original Amiga. I would never transform my 500, 1200 or any other Amiga to this. Sorry. Id rather search for the ORIGNAL case. Or just purchase a 2000 or 3000 from someone.

They should have taken those Amiga 1500' thrown a HDD and some other upgrades and sold it as the Checkmate A2500.

Brilliant idea, so well done Checkmate : the A500 had loads of hardware (quite cheap) expansions !

That was an Amiga that Commodore should had done, the exact same way: a bit tweaked A500 motherboard into a bigger case allowing internal HDD, as such.


As a owner of various Amigas (in buy order : A500, A2000, A1000, A4030), I would have bought one of Checkmate's A1500 !
Quite decent (reminds me about some Archimedes) case (the A1500+ is simply superb), room for things I was looking for, it had most boxes checked !

Thanks for this excellent video, and the links, Q&A, etc.

Brings back memories...... I have one of these somewhere and Steve and I used to chat often. I would a journo with Popular Computing Weakly (sic) and others at the time and I was quite keen on the A1500 case. Interesting to see this progress into modern times.

No one needs this coffins on the table today.

Amiga!! <3

The fellow sounds like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but I’m sure he knew exactly why they were upset (using a1500 to resell Commodore products was more than “a little bit cheeky”).
Frankly, I’m not at all surprised with Commodore’s actions. It’s a wonder they didn’t end up in court with a massive fine. They certainly would today!

It's really sad the AMIGA went out a decade before computer graphics became mainstream in the 2000s-2010s. It would've been an awesome digital content creation machine. I'm not denying the importance of LightWave, but it may have had a competent market share among studios when Maya became a thing.

Commodore should be rather ashamed of what they did to Checkmate back in the day! but the jokes on Commodore now that Checkmate has free rel-estate.

I remember the Checkmate Digital 1500 being reviewed in Amiga Shopper. Interesting product.

I'm glad the Checkmate folks are having the last laugh. With Commodore belly up, it's very pleasing to see that Checkmate has revived and is serving the thriving Commodore Amiga community. With the advent of new hardware such as Vampire v4 standalone and the ability of the Raspberry Pi to effectively emulate a fast Amiga, Checkmate cases offer a great way to expand these systems further. Also, old-timers such as myself who have their original Commodore Amiga 500s, 600s or 1200s can now upgrade them to a Checkmate case and gain the Zorro slots as well as a host of potential expansions. Great job Checkmate!!!

I had an A1500, threy had simply stuck the black A1500 sticker over the top of the beige A2000 sticker so it was an A2000 with dual floppies and no hard drive card.

The new Checkmate case, inspired by the A3000, looks great. I love the original one too; such a nice sleek, smart case, especially compared to the rebadged A2000 behemoth that Commodore passed off as their own A1500 product.

Thank you

Good evening, I did not know this model of Amiga, was crazy as this machine was brilliant, even today the Amiga did not cost a wrinkle for me, the games were really good, there were these releases to die for, even today silk 32 years later, the games make me dance, especially the music and atmospheres of certain games that I often replay elsewhere, sometimes I say to myself, the pc is the Amiga of the future

But the Amiga OS, the workbench is really great, much better than Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 you couldn't do anything with, the games were under your back, it's only since win 95 that Microsoft started to do the same.

On Amiga the games were launched from the workbench, or the diskettes, the workbench a copy on the hdd two minutes to install, windows 12 diskettes, it was necessary to wait until 1995 for the pc to become what it is today, Commodore the was already 8 years earlier.

Our secondary school had one hiding in the art department in the early 90's. We only ever had time to use Deluxe Paint but managed a few times get a game of sense and Elite 2.

I did work experience at Birmingham university in the early 90s.
One of the people who worked there used a computer, which if I recall correctly was an Acorn Archimedes.
It must have originally been one of the all-in-one models, because he had re-cased it in a homemade desktop case to make it into a workstation.
He had done a very neat job of it, with indicator leds and toggle switches on the front of the unit, and legends made using Letraset transfers to show what each one did.
I think he said that he had re-cased it to allow some internal upgrades, but this was a long time ago, and I don't remember what they were.
One thing that did really stick in my mind though was the fact that it had a cooling fan.
Most computers have fans now, but at the time, I was very excited and impressed at the idea of a computer with a cooling fan.
I got all fired up with the idea of doing the same thing with my Atari ST, but a quick look through the Maplin catalog when I got home soon put paid to that idea. They had enclosures and fans that would have worked, but I couldn't afford them.
I guess this is all a roundabout way of saying that the idea of rehoming all-in-one computers to make them into more 'mature' workstations was seen as quite a desirable thing back then.
I can certainly understand why there would have been a demand for products like the Checkmate (and, as I later found out, similar aftermarket cases for the ST).

This box looks like an A3000 with much better fans for cooling- A3K box temps are a nightmare to control with enough cards placed inside.

i remember back in the day i was making a choice , did i want the amiga or the Amstrad or the Archimedes , i wanted business stuff and a bit of fun , so realistically it was either the amiga or the acorn i went acorn because i wanted to buy British , but amigas still intrigue me today
having said that looking at prices on the e bays i wish i had kept my acorn AND changed the battery

With the a3000 just round the corner, this just goes to show how petty Commodore was releasing the a1500.

A1000 was my first “real” computer and I loved it!

Hello here is a computer that I loved, I didn't know there was an Amiga 1500, I had the 500 600 and 1200, ha what I was able to play with,I had lots of good games, Alien Breed Special edition, Project 1992, although time has passed, PCs dominate the market, Vr Ia, Smartphone etc, time passes, but the Amiga has not aged, which proves that in the past it was as good as nowadays, although PC or VR games are good, the Amiga will always remain my best platform.
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•But what's great is this Commodore way of doing things, a keyboard and everything inside, without a boring tower, the look of the Amiga is really great, we don't see that anymore these days, with PCs you need everything separately, the keyboard mouse, joysticks, you rack your brains to connect everything with a new PC, the Amiga was simple, one port you plug in finished.

With the PC, the printer, getting them to work is hell, the drivers are crazy, getting a printer to work on a PC is an obstacle course, on an Amiga, serial port you plug in and that's it.