jwhitman@st-louis-emh2.army.mil (Jerry Whitman) (06/24/89)
I have read the myriad of postings concerning various aspects of the
'Fatter' Agnus chip. As a result I now have a few questions of my own,
so here goes.
Either because of, or in spite of, the many postings about the revised
chip I am very unclear what features she provides that were not available
in the predecessor and what those features really mean in terms of how
Amy functions. Gathering from some of the comments I have seen I am not the
only one wandering & wondering. I need help understanding the following;
1. What features are new/revised. If possible a cryptic description would
be of help.
2. How do these features affect existing applications?
3. Are there existing applications that are looking for and ready to capitalize
on those changes?
4. Why would I (Joe Typical User) want to upgrade my 2000HD with the new chip?
5. Does the new chip lay ground for up-coming functionality in Amiga-DOS 1.4?
As you can tell by the above, almost anything you can tell me would be an
improvement over what I already have.
Thanks for the input; Jerryjms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) (06/24/89)
It's my understanding that the 1-meg Agnus is one half of the Enhanced Chip Set, the other half is referred to as the ECS Denise. I'm still waiting for Commodore to announce what's new in Denise. The only thing they have publically acknowledged is that we will be able to open a 640 by 400 by 4 color non-interlaced screen on a multisync (31 kHz) monitor. As for the new Agnus, it is available now. After moving one jumper and cutting another, you now have 1 megabyte of chip RAM. I believe that the new Agnus can handle blits bigger than 1024 by 1024 bits. Other information on the new Agnus has been sparse. In article <18380@louie.udel.EDU> jwhitman@st-louis-emh2.army.mil (Jerry Whitman) writes: >Either because of, or in spite of, the many postings about the revised >chip I am very unclear what features she provides that were not available >in the predecessor and what those features really mean in terms of how >Amy functions. Gathering from some of the comments I have seen I am not the >only one wandering & wondering. I need help understanding the following; > >1. What features are new/revised. If possible a cryptic description would > be of help. >2. How do these features affect existing applications? An Amiga with the new Agnus and only 1 meg of memory now has 1 meg of chip RAM and 0 k of fast RAM. Which means improperly written programs that demand fast RAM instead of any type of RAM will fail. >3. Are there existing applications that are looking for and ready to > capitalize on those changes? >4. Why would I (Joe Typical User) want to upgrade my 2000HD with the new > chip? Many programs today can use all the chip RAM they can get. Such as having more than one overscaned hires interlaced screen. Dpaint and PixMate, for instance, can immediately benifit from having the new 1-meg Agnus chip now. >5. Does the new chip lay ground for up-coming functionality in Amiga-DOS 1.4? You betcha! -- Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: JMS@F74.TYMNET.COM or jms@tymix.tymnet.com McDonnell Douglas FSCO | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!tardis!jms PO Box 49019, MS-D21 | PDP-10 support: My car's license plate is "POPJ P," San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | narrator.device: "I didn't say that, my Amiga did!"