From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R. Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Commodore Engineer speaks out.
Date: 7 Oct 1992 08:07:47 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33
Keywords: Reverse Enginneering AGA - can it be done?

In article <u894776.718428857@bruny> u894776@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (James McCoull) writes:
>Just some questions... if KS3.x has faster graphics primitives,
>faster directory handling etc... why don't commodore put it in as
>standard on the Amiga600?  The quicker we can get rid of this 2.04
>stuff the better :)

Because it's not done yet, of course.  Remember when the 3000 came out
with a pre-release 2.0?  Well, this is the same thing.  The 4000 comes
with a pre-release 3.0.  (It is quite solid, however...)

>surely CBM should not supply any machines with CPU's  below about
>the 68030@16 [32bit bus], if they want people to stop bashing the hardware
>on the "games" / "demos" side.  Particularly the days of chipram only
>machines should be discarded.  I can possibly see the need for the
>current ECS,68000,A600, KS3.0 class of machines to support the lower end -
>but please no CPU crippled AGA machines.

I'm not sure where to start bashing you.  :)  I guess we'll start at
the beginning.    There is NO problem with selling 68000 systems.
None.  If the market buys them, all the better.  And since once
machines using 3.0 are released games will start programming under the
os, things are going to speed up on faster machines, and you'll get
people buying better systems to play better games.  :)  And as long as
new operating systems offer good functionality to high-end users while
still working on low-end machines, I see no problem.

And now I'm not sure.  If you're advocating removing chip memory,
you've lost your mind.  See, there's two ways to go.  Either you have
it our way, and you have so much chip ram, and then have fast ram that
gives the CPU full access, or you have everything as chip memory, like
the falcon, and throw away neat things like burst access.

In my opinion, its the existence of Chip memory that makes the Amiga
so interesting, architecturally--it's the best of both worlds.  VRAM
would be another solution, but it doesn't work well with the Amiga's
system.  VRAM really likes a "chunky" setup.

>Now a nice machine would be an AGA+030 [no HD :)] for about $600 US
>running say KS3.0 (with some bloody decent fonts in rom!) - ie extend
>the rom with some features to make a diskless amiga almost possible :)

Do you really think that an AGA+030 system would cost 600 bucks?  I
sure don't.  And tossing everything under the sun into rom is a bad
idea.  For instance, CompuGraphic fonts do not belong in rom.  The
only font that belongs in rom is topaz.font in size 8 and 11 because
1) it's always been there, and 2)it's the default font that always
exists so that it's always usable, and never corruptable.

>[if text viewers etc... were in rom... we wouldnt need these silly "what
>path should i use" sorts of arguments now would we :)]

And that's a bad idea too.  As I said, throwing everything under the
sun into ROM is NOT the thing to do.  Rom is for the OS, pal, it's not
there so that you can take your commands off of df0:.

2.04 removes the need for giving the actual location in the path.  If
a program asks for "More", and more is in the path (if you can just
type "more" in your shell and have it work, which is default, of
course) then it will work.  Selecting just the name of the program
will search the entire default path list for the program.  I've got it
set up so that every major application is on the path.

>	PLEASE NO BLOODY 68020 BASED MACHINES! [AAAAAARG :)]

I agree.  Socketed 68LC030/EC030 machines are a much better idea.
Hell, even non-socketed 68LC/EC030 machines would be nice, then you
just switch processor cards for a real 68030.

"No you won't fool the children of the revolution..."  ;)

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy