From: gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Subject: Re: C= speaks!!! let's spread the words!!!
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 04:18:27 GMT

barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
:   First of all, there are three major chips that are exactly the same between
: the A3000 and the A1000; I can interchange these chips between an A3000 and
: an A1000 and both systems will function fine.  These chips are the two CIAs
: and the Paula chups.  The Agnus and Denise chips were upgraded, but not by
: all that much.  This is reflected in how pathetically easy it is to get the
: A3000's Agnus and Denise chips to work in an A1000.  A friend of mine did it
: with a tiny amount of discrete logic.  The SCSI chip was not designed by
: Commodore at all, and the Ramsey and Buster are simple gate-array chips, old
: hat and nothing special in the computer industry (modern development tools
: make making gate array chips almost trivial).  Just about the only chip that
: is really anything special in the A3000 is the Amber display enhancer chip.

They're not almost trivial, not even with today's software.  I can't
think of ONE piece of software that would make a gate array of that
kind of size "trivial".  I don't know an EE that would say that.
You're CS, right?

:    Oh boy, I'm really impressed!  Commodore really has a knack at purchasing
: those power supplies!  :-)  Power supplies are nothing special either, and
: Commodore doesn't even make them.  It doesn't exactly take much talen to 
: purchase power supplies and screw them into a case.

Correct...  but that bit was meant as a joke.  Obviously, I don't
REALLY run my house on my Amiga's power supply.  After all, everyone
knows I run it off the power supply of the CM-5 in the other room.

:    Like the minimal amounts of funding that Commodore has put into AmigaOS
: since 1985; I mean, it took six years for Commodore just to redraw the 
: Workbench and make it look nice!  Like concentrating on making the Amiga's

But that wasn't the only update.  It went from
1.0->1.1->1.2->1.3->Moniterm version->2.0.  And that took six years.
It took till 1.2 to get a more-or-less bug-free version, yes, but it
was there.

: CPU faster and faster and faster through the development of CPU boards like
: the A2620 and A2630 and the development of the A3000, without doing anything
: to improve anything else about the Amiga.  Like the development of the ECS,

They did improve other things.  They gave us HD controllers,
Ethernet...  Surely you can think of other things.

: which improves the Amiga as much as possible without having to use an 
: expensive new technology.  Like the lack of changes to the Paula chip in the
: ECS.  Like the development of the CDTV, which is just about the only 
: really mass-marketable product that Commdore could development that would
: not require investing in major new technologies.

Those are all true.  However, each of those can be easily countered,
if you'd give it some thought.  They had NO extra bandwidth to use on
the Paula.  What could they have done?  Not much.  They could have
given me that FIFO I always wanted.  And that's about all that comes
to mind.

:    Really, if it isn't totally obvious to you that Commodore's tactics all
: along have been to push the Amiga into markets where it can compete without
: raising the R&D budgets.  This is why Commodore has been pushing the Amiga
: into the low-end; to market the Amiga in the higher-end markets, Commodore
: would have had to spend more on R&D.  

Or they'd need a new platform, with new hardware and new standards,
because the current ones are somewhat stagnated.  Aren't they?  And
since they ARE going to announce new Amigae, then one could probably
say that getting a new high-end platform is what they've opted to do,
couldn't one?

:    The upgrade path above provides no way to upgrade in color capabilities,
: resolution (other than being able to deinterlace some interlaced modes), soun
: capabilities, floppy disk storage capabilities, etc.  The upgrade path is
: then not much of an upgrade path.  

Standard upgrades for those types of things, including audio upgrades,
are available.  They're on ZorroII compliant cards, as a matter of
fact.  The fact that they don't seamlessly integrate is a problem with
the OS, not the hardware.  If device-independent graphics and hardware
were available, all but the floppy disk storage would be negated from
the above argument.  And since audio is fully usable in its current
state, both as a motherboard Paula and through high-end boards such as
the SunRize stuff, I see no real problem with audio.  The last is
resolution, which can be gotten now.  Leaving one argument to be
solved by future releases of the OS.

: | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu

Greg

--
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(:	gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu			Gregory R. Block         :)
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy