From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett)
Subject: Re: C= speaks!!! let's spread the words!!!
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 23:14:20 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.212035.29966@uwm.edu> gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
>They're all a whole lot more than that.  The 3000 was a total rewrite
>of the Amiga itself.  A new bus, new arrays, motherboard SCSI, a whole
>new system, practically.

   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.

>  The 2000 had Zorro II and a processor slot,
>and made lots of little changes.  It's also as sturdy as a brick wall
>and you can run your house on its power supply.

   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.

>:   I mean, it's been in Commodore's history that upgrading meant something
>: totally different. Instead of processing speed and ram capability.. they
>: seem to concentrate on things that aren't expensive to them in the long
>: run. 
>
>Like?

   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
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,
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.

   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.  

>:   Their supposed upgrading schemes just don't make any damn sense to me.
>
>600->2000->3000.  Not really that hard.  No expansion->good
>expansion->great expansion.  Pretty easy.  And processors?  Well, that
>can be done on ANY of the above.

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

>(: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today?  Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :) :)
>(:"The person who said size doesn't matter was probably a very small man":)
>(:	gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu			Gregory R. Block         :)
>(: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

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