From: 8800529@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU ()
Subject: Re: Re: A4000/Alice
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 02:49:07 GMT

In article <1992Oct5.015138.18550@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>In article <1992Oct4.230829.11722@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> dmacphee@nyx.cs.du.edu (Don mac phee) writes:
>>>In article <jbono.04bq@tension.UUCP> jbono@tension.UUCP (John Bono) writes:
>>>>In article <1992Sep25.201919.15792@microsoft.com>, iank@microsoft.com (Ian
>>>>Kennedy) writes:
>>>>>Of course others have said all of the custom chips in the AGA machines
>>>>>are surface mounted. In that case there will be no upgrades at all.
>>>>>
>>>>All the chips in the A4000 are surface mount.  However, the entire board with
>>>>the graphics chips on it is designed to be replaceable.  This means that when
>>>>the fast chipset comes out, you will yank the board with AGA on it, and swap it
>>>>for a board with AGAGA on it, and keep your '040 and zorro III boards.
>>>
>>>   Bullshit.  The "board with the graphics chips on it" is the motherboard, 
>>>and Commodore in their entire history has never offered motherboard upgrades
>>>for older Amigas.  
>>
>> You want to know something? Marc is RIGHT! The custom chips ARE 
>>on the motherboard. However, not having to replace the backplane and
>>the CPU could save a bit of money....
>>
>> And as to motherboard upgrades, it might make a certain amount of sense
>>now to do it. (No CPU, no backplane, quite a savings.) And with the 
>
>   Then why doesn't Commodore do it?  For the A3000, I mean.  Sure, the CPU
>is on the motherboard in the A3000, but the A3000 still has the backplane on
>a card just like the A4000.  And for people looking to upgrade to an '040 and
>AGA at the same time, the costs of upgrading an A3000 to an A4000 with a
>motherboard replacement would still be pretty low.
>
>   It might have helped things a bit if the A4000 had purposely been designed
>so that the motherboard would just happen to fit into an A3000 case.  This
>would have made it easier for Commodore's marketing department to come up with
>a motherboard swap program for A3000 owners.  The way it is, marketing has 
>to pursuade management to direct engineering to develop a special A4000
>motherboard that will fit in an A3000 case; with Commodore's messed-up
>beauracracy, this doesn't seem likely.  Maybe engineering will think of this
>when they design the motherboard and casework for the A5000.

	It seems that you have escaped to haunt other newsgroups Mark :-)
Well just for the record it seems that C= gave out modified
A3000 machines with AGA chipset in them for beta testing.\
I could be wrong and your the wrong 
to say it to but rather than redesigning a new model getting FCC aproval
and all the other beurocracy I think we should wait for RTG (Which is
for WB 4.0 this coming strait from David H mouth and is in the works.
The grafix.library is a program upgrade rather than a whole new model.
ie cheaper, third party, better given a 1024x7xx (something) modes
and hopefuly priced reasnably low.



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