From: paulg@tplrd.tpl.oz.au (Paul Gittings)
Subject: Re: Amiga Future?!?
Originator: paulg@sydrd19
Organization: Telectronics Pacing Systems
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 23:21:40 GMT


In article <1100@se.alcbel.be>, magu@se.alcbel.be (Mike Aguilar) writes:
[stuff deleted]
> 
> Thats the software part of things.  Aren't there any hardware hackers who
> could hack up a similar Amiga hardware from off-the-shelf chips, and of course
> add in improvements/innovations etc... that Commodore lacks.  Maybe if we
> start a discussion on this topic, someone might pick things up and give
> Commodore some competition.  And competition in the PC (+compatibles) market
> is what's giving them the edge over the Amiga, right?
[stuff deleted]

I'm sure that there are people reading these newsgroups who could design
and build Amiga clones.  However, there are a number of problems; the
work ain't easy, the expense and the fact that C= won't license the chip
set to another computer manufacturer .... There are are a couple of boards 
available to upgrade A1000 they come without the special Amiga chips for 
a reason.  Now it may be possible to reverse engineer the chips but it would
not be a trivial task.  Currently most of the chips are readily available 
from C= but they would soon try to limit the availability of the chips should
competitors start building machines which made use of these chips.  I
remember hearing that C= was willing to license the chip set to CDTV
player manufactures, so maybe it would be possible to build a computer
in the disguise of a CDTV player ie, CDTV compatible, 68030, various expansion
capabilities  but no keyboard type of deal, not sure what limits C=
would place on what is considered to be a CDTV player.

There is of course a problem with a clone.  If it takes enough business
away from C= then C= might just drop the Amiga line, which of course
means that AmigaDOS disappears as well.  Maybe C= could split itself
up like Sun into separate (competing) divisions, where one division
will sell the OS to anybody who wants it and another competes on the
hardware.  There will have to be some "body" like SPARC international
which decides on what the Amiga "standard" will be and to certify 
various manufactures machines meet that standard. Sorry I'm running
off at the mouth ....

NOTE: anybody interested in KitWare or Public Domain hardware should take
      a look at the SCRAM-500 project which can be found on one of the
      more recent (690-700 range I think).  The guy who put this A500
      SCSI/RAM board together is looking for future projects and wants
      to encourage others to develop other hardware projects, sort of
      a Fred Fish for hardware.

Cheers,
Paul Gittings
Telectronics Pacing Systems- 7 Sirius Rd, Lane Cove, NSW 2066, Australia
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