🚀 go-pugleaf

Would anyone care to hear what I think should be in the A3000?

No?

Who cares, I'll tell you anyway!!!


Although I am FAR from being any sort of expert in computer hardware, it
seems to me that the following suggestion is something that Commodore should
be able to do for a reasonable (system) price.

First of all, make the custom chips 32-bit chips, and make them run at twice
the current clock rates (internal and external; I heard that they were
different).  It seems to me that by doing this, Commodore should be able to
make it run four times as fast.  (I'm not saying that it's all that simple...)

From this, Commodore should be able to design it to have new graphics modes with

  - double the width and double the height
  - double the number of bitplanes
    and
  - a combination of the above two options

From one I can tell, a 1280 x 800 screen (approx. 1408 x 1080 overscan) with
16 colors would be very nice to have built into the system, especially if
screen redraw and refresh ran at current Amiga speeds, even if it were
interlaced.

640 x 400 with 2048 (or would it be 4096?) colors with the current Amiga
graphics speed would be great, too.

How about the same for the new ECS modes?

   1008 x 800 with 16 colors?
   2016 x 1600 with 4 colors?

   1280 x 400 (200 non-interlaced) with 16 colors?
   2560 x 800 (400 non-interlaced) with 4 colors?
   
    640 x  480 non-interlaced with 16 colors?
   1280 x 1760 non-interlaced with 4 colors?

Of course, monitors to handle some of these wild resolutions would be quite
expensive, and either very fast and expensive standards drams or video drams
would have to be used for chip ram, but it should be feasible, and it needs to
be done to keep the Amigas place as a graphics computer intact.  The Amiga 3000,
IMHO, needs higher resolution graphics and needs more colors (including a
24 bit pallete).


Sound:

Commodore, PLEASE don't ignore the sound capabilities.  These should also
be "doubled-up", with 16 bit sound at double the sample rate.

Chip RAM:

Sit down.  Are you ready?  I think that Chip RAM should be expanded to...
at least 8 Megabytes.

With higher graphics resolutions, you will need more chip ram.  Also, there is
no need to expand your chip ram to its maximum before you expand your fast ram.
So you should be able to have a system with, say, 4Mb of chip ram, and 4Mb of
fast ram, and be able to upgrade your chip ram anytime you want to (and can
afford to!)

In article <4686@shlump.nac.dec.com> balzer@frambo.enet.dec.com (Christian Balzer) writes:
>2. A stoopid(tm) thing to do would be an A3000 without a 32 bit version of
      ^^^^^^^
      Hey, you can't say that!!!  That's an IBM trademark!!! :-)

>the custom chips. Enhancements that go beyond that of the ECS would be
>needed to place the A3000 succesfully in the upper PC/lower workstation 
>range.
>
>3. Another VERY stoopid(tm) thing would be the placement of the CPU on the
>motherboard.

I don't know if I really agree with that ... putting it on a seperate board
seems like it might raise the cost considerably.

I do think that the A3000 REALLY should have a scalable-speed asynchronous
design.  By that, I mean that the user, by replacing the CPU and some other
(socketed) chips, should be able to upgrade their 25Mhz A3000 to a 33 Mhz
A3000 (unless you want to ship it as a 33Mhz machine ...).  They should also
be able to upgrade it to a 50Mhz machine, and so on, when the CPU is available.

I have a feeling that this isn't exactly an easy thing to engineer, but if
it is done, it would have very interesting implications.  Commodore could
sell several "versions" of the Amiga 3000, running at different clock rates,
which would actually be the same machine, except for a few chips!

>                                    A really nice thing would be a 68000
>as fallback CPU on the motherboard.

No, I disagree.  By this time, if it doesn't work on machines above the 68000,
I think the developers need a gentle push to make their programs work on the
newer chips.  It would also add to the cost (how much, I don't know...), and
I'm already making enough cost-raising suggestions, so you don't need to add
any more to the cost!!! :-)

>4. A friend of mine (Martin Kopp of TurboBackup fame) has much more to say on
>this specific subject, but in nutshell his proposal goes like this:
>-An Amiga without compatible custom chipset is no longer an Amiga.

I agree.

>-The chipset has certain limitations that are VERY expensive to overcome.

Unless they are redesigned....

>-The solution is simple, supply the A3000 with a powerful chipset (like large 
> screens [1024 by 1024 min.] more colors...) but don't try to do the 
> (financially) impossible and have the whole system try to refresh these
> displays at flicker free rates (25Hz are sufficient for animations). 

Would it be economically infeasible to have these higher resolutions, even
using my simple(-minded(???)) ideas?

><CB>

Ok, thanks for letting me shoot my mouth off.  Now, it's time for you to
tell me why my ideas are ridiculous, unfeasible, etc.

Thanks.

[ Next: A cute disclaimer ]
Since I do not have any connections with Commodore (other than owning an Amiga,
and two Commodore 64's before it, and convincing several people to buy
Amigas and ... well, you get the point ) the above information is subject to
several abberations, like, for example, being completely wrong.

NO WARRANTY EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED

Rodney Ricks,
   Morehouse Software Group
-- 
"We may have come over here in different ships,
 but we're all in the same boat now."   --   Jesse Jackson

Rodney Ricks,   Atlanta University Center Computation Center