From: watters@cranel.com (David Watters)
Subject: Re: Amiga 4000 is HERE : )
Organization: Cranel, Incorporated, Worthington Ohio
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 13:01:07 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.060236.5656@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>In article <35600@cbmvax.commodore.com> grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes:
>>Me?  When we spec'd out the changes from the Agnus chip to the Alice
>>chip, we deleted some of the 68000 related pins that weren't used in
>>the A3000 environment.  This left room for pins (3) to address up to
>>8 M-byte of chip memory, **iff** the Agnus core got updated to support
>>22-bit addressing.

>   Actually, 8M addressing would be 23-bit.  But anyway, why did you have to
>worry about preserving the pin count from the Agnus chip?  You obviously did
>not worry about the Lisa chip having the same number of pins as the Denise
>chip, for instance.  
>   It is interesting that you have confirmed that the Agnus core has not been
>updated very much.  This leaves two of the original Big Three Amiga chips that
>have not been updated very much from the versions found in the Amiga 1000.  

Obviously the A1000 Agnus is not the same as the Fat Agnus, let alone the 
ECS Agnus. I believe he implied that the A3000's ECS Agnus logic is unchanged 
within Alice.   If it had, you would probably be bitching about compatibility
problems and how C-A had screwed that up!

>>Turned out not to be the true path to the future, but it seemed like a
>>pretty good idea at the time.

It was a great idea, and one can only speculate on the great things the
overshadowed it for the future of Amiga graphics hardware.

>   Are you now confirming that no upgrades to the Alice chip are being planned
>as updates to existing systems?  If not, then why are you saying that the
>devotion of three pins as additional addressing pins is not the "true path to
>the future"?
>| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu


Has anyone proposed getting a collection going to buy this guy a Mac or a
PC???   Go AWAY!!  If you don't like the Amiga or what it is doing, Go
Away!!  Geezzz!
 
C-A Inc. is not developing machines to address your criticisms, they are 
developing machines to meet the needs of the masses, and most of the work I
have done on the Amiga has begged for two simple things.

1) More colors!  They certainly addressed this.  While I have not seen Ham8
   on the machine I have access to,  The technical explinations make it
   sound extremely promising!

2) Frame rate!   This was also addressed.  My early experiments show that
   a 640x480 16color anim (the same mode that DCTV-4 uses) plays about
   4.5 - 5 times faster with an average delta of 75,000.

This sounds like the specs of a great video add on, but no... it is integrated
with the new OS!  Not only that, but they threw in an '040 to boot!  What
a bunch of great guys.

This machine is important enough for me that I can _temporarily_ overlook
the "head-up-the-butt-decision" IDE controller. (What they HELL was he
thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

David
Watters


-- 
   \_____/~~~~~\_____/~~~~\_____/~~~~\_____/~~~~\_____/~~~~\_____/~~~~\_____/
David R. Watters (watters@cranel.com)    Cranel Inc. Development & Engineering
Voice:  (614) 433 0045| Eagles may fly, but a weasel | 510F E Wilson Bridge Rd 
Fax:    (614) 433 0073| never got sucked into a jet! | Worthington, Ohio 43085
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware