From: adap@rachel.cs.andrews.edu (Edsel Adap)
Subject: Re: After the Amiga...
Organization: Andrews University
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 04:08:46 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.041034.18162@grebyn.com> richk@grebyn.com (Richard Krehbiel) writes:
>
>OK, I was thinking about Commodore's next computer, after the Amiga.
>Surely we all know it can't last forever, at least because the
>Motorola 68K line is being outpaced by RISC chips in terms of
>performance increases.  So what would the next Amiga look like?
>
>RISC CPU, surely.  This would be a design intended for a long future,
>and RISC CPUs, which might be a bit steep right now, will become much
>cheaper as time goes by.  Which?  Well, I think a cheap one.
>Certainly one with an MMU (scratch the AMD 29000) and FPU (scratch the
>ARM).  Choose one with strong support and a bright future (scratch
>88K, which is too bad since they're cheap; and scratch i860).  IBM
>Power PC?  MIPS R4000?  Alpha?  Hmmm.... I'd have to guess the R4000
>myself.  64 bits will carry a long way into the future.
>
>Should the next Amiga run AmigaDOS?  I think not, at least not in the
>state it's in.  Since there won't be any concern about existing
>applications (wanna write the 68K emulator?) we can add the virtual
>memory, the protected address spaces, the resource accounting that
>many think should be there.  Our new speedy RISC CPU will have
>horsepower to spend on more hardware abstraction, inlcuding the device
>independent graphics.
>
>That 114MHz custom chip set Commodore's described would do pretty well
>for this machine.
>
>I think the Zorro III bus will do nicely as an I/O bus.  Auto-config
>is still unequalled in the rest of the world, as far as I can see.
>
>Put the CPU, custom chippery, and space for 64M or 128M of RAM on the
>motherboard.  Have a CPU slot that can take over for the CPU and
>custom chips.  SCSI on the motherboard.  Ethernet?  Um...  Nah.
>
>What about applications?  Who would buy a machine that didn't run
>stuff?  Well, if we're gonna run an R4000, then (here comes some
>serious flame bait) might I humbly suggest Windows NT as the operating
>system?  See, it's already running on the R4000.  It can run DOS and
>Windows x86 code with an included emulator.
>
>Now, I think that maybe Windows NT adds too much abstraction for the
>kind of good multimedia video and animation (and games!) that we're
>used to, so in addition to the standard Windows interface, we'd want a
>thinner interface to these neat custom chips.  I thought that maybe it
>could run an AmigaDOS subsystem under it's micro-kernel.  Maybe not to
>run AmigaDOS binaries directly, but the architecture would be the same
>as AmigaDOS, so that many programs could be recompiled after some
>amount of porting effort.  This is what would make this Amiga-NT
>unique, and not just another Windows PC or RISC workstation.
>

I personally don't think that this is a bad idea.  Hey, WIndows NT is
gonna be here whether we amiga users like it or not.  It has is Pluses
and its Minuses but it certainly is a good product.  Why not use it on
the amiga?
Same goes with RISC processors.  There is no reason for the amiga to
stay behind in technology.
Good ideas here.  Keep coming.......

Edsel Adap
--
________________________________________________________________________________
|    Behind Every Dark Cloud Is         | Edsel Adap
|       A Silver Lining!                | Computer Science / Mathematics Major
|        (hopefully!!!)                 | Andrews University
|  Now comes the question: Is it still  |
|      possible to get an 'A'?          | adap@cs.andrews.edu
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