mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (10/24/87)
Personally, I don't give a damn about the peripheral market for the
500 and 2000 if some third-party (Perry, are you listening?) comes
out with the following product for the A1000:
An A2000 form-factor card cage.
No, not a 2000-and-1 box. Really, I *don't* want IBM compatibity on
my Amiga, and really don't want to pay for it. If I wanted IBM
compatibilty, I would have bought one. As it is, I can use one of my
housemate's PC's if I have to (one of them is a Commodore PC-10,
BTW). All I want is a box with two to four A2000 form-factor slots,
along the lines of the ASDG MiniRack series. I talked to Perry on
the phone about a 2MB expansion including MiniRack-C, but I'm willing
to bet the slot is A1000 form-factor and would close off a great
number of expansion options once A1000 stuff is obsolete. True?
I understand that the bus timing is much more robust on the 2000 than
the 1000, simply because the 2000 contains no KickStart tower to
louse things up. Would this get in the way of a compatible card
cage?
--M
Michael Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University
ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu
BITNET: rainwalker@drycas (a uVax-1 run by CMU Computer Club)
"Boys living next door are never what they seem"
--Bananarama, "Robert DeNiro's Waiting"grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (10/25/87)
In article <wVU8edy00V41YY40Bq@andrew.cmu.edu> mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes: > Personally, I don't give a damn about the peripheral market for the > 500 and 2000 if some third-party (Perry, are you listening?) comes > out with the following product for the A1000: > > An A2000 form-factor card cage. > > No, not a 2000-and-1 box. Really, I *don't* want IBM compatibity on > my Amiga, and really don't want to pay for it. If I wanted IBM > compatibilty, I would have bought one. As it is, I can use one of my > housemate's PC's if I have to (one of them is a Commodore PC-10, > BTW). All I want is a box with two to four A2000 form-factor slots, > along the lines of the ASDG MiniRack series. I talked to Perry on > the phone about a 2MB expansion including MiniRack-C, but I'm willing > to bet the slot is A1000 form-factor and would close off a great > number of expansion options once A1000 stuff is obsolete. True? All the Perry's A2000+1 box pays for PC compatibilty is the extra connectors for the PC/AT slots. This is no big deal compared to the cost of the PC board, power supply and metal work. Perry has tried hard to provide a solid foundation for Amiga expansion, and this product looks like it should be the bridge between A1000 and A2000 expansion products. I hope he is able to make this a very successful product. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: out to lunch... Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonor e8.
mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (10/26/87)
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) writes: > All the Perry's A2000+1 box pays for PC compatibilty is the extra > connectors for the PC/AT slots. This is no big deal compared to > the cost of the PC board, power supply and metal work. Then why do the MiniRack-C and MiniRack-D cost several hundred dollars less than the 2000-and-1? Really, I don't want to pay for two A1000 form-factor slots plus all the PC slots and the coprocessor slot. Plain and simply put, if I had the money to buy the 2000-and-1 box (or the $1000 for the 1000 ==> 2000 upgrade) I would simply buy a hard disk for my 1000 and be done with it. By the time I can afford these options, they won't be available to me anymore. My expansion desires are very simple; a few meg of memory and a reasonable-sized hard disk. It was hard enough to afford A1000 expansion before the 500/2000 came out; the new machines will only make it worse by drying up the A1000 market. I'm not bellyaching about the fact the A1000 expansion market will be trashed; what I am complaining about is that nobody is offering a *****LOW COST***** way to use A2000 peripheral cards. I'm sure at least one other person on the net feels the same way I do. > Perry has tried hard to provide a solid foundation for Amiga > expansion, and this product looks like it should be the bridge > between A1000 and A2000 expansion products. I hope he is able to > make this a very successful product. I think the 2000-and-1 is a very nice product as well; unfortunately, it does not meet my expansion requirements. Am I being too selfish in asking for a modest, not excessive, upgrade path for the future? --M Michael Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: rainwalker@drycas (a uVax-1 run by CMU Computer Club) "Boys living next door are never what they seem" --Bananarama, "Robert DeNiro's Waiting"
sl131084@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (10/26/87)
Well, I don't really know if this has been covered lately... But... Will
there be a A1000 upgrade mother-board. This would be one that would allow
use of the FANG chip with it's one meg of Chip RAM. Is this even being
considered at CBM?
-El Gato
Communique BBS - 812-333-2831 - Count Zero
AKA DOCTOR
AKA James Colyerdaveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/27/87)
in article <wVU8edy00V41YY40Bq@andrew.cmu.edu>, mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) says: > > I understand that the bus timing is much more robust on the 2000 than > the 1000, simply because the 2000 contains no KickStart tower to > louse things up. Would this get in the way of a compatible card > cage? The local bus timing on a 2000 will be better in many respects due to the ROM and some higher integrations (Fat Agnus comes to mind here). But what's more important is that expansion devices, except for something sitting in the coprocessor slot, don't care about this. 'Cause they're all properly buffered, and of course there's no problem of distance between buffers and the 68000. So an A2000 backplane for the A1000 would be no problem at all. As some of us have mentioned before, we use an open-air (no case) backplane for the A1000 around here. All the A2000 cards (except for coprocessor slot cards) work in this just fine. I'd expect anything that Perry's gang or anyone else whips up could work just as well on an A1000. > Michael Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University > ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu > BITNET: rainwalker@drycas (a uVax-1 run by CMU Computer Club) -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The B2000 Guy" PLINK : D-DAVE H BIX : hazy "Computers are what happen when you give up sleeping" - Iggy the Cat
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (10/29/87)
In article <0VUc38y00Uha4Dk041@andrew.cmu.edu> mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes: > grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) writes: > > > All the Perry's A2000+1 box pays for PC compatibilty is the extra > > connectors for the PC/AT slots. This is no big deal compared to > > the cost of the PC board, power supply and metal work. > > Then why do the MiniRack-C and MiniRack-D cost several hundred > dollars less than the 2000-and-1? Really, I don't want to pay > for two A1000 form-factor slots plus all the PC slots and the > coprocessor slot. A) Power supply - more slots, more capacity needed, more $$$ B) Casework - the A2000+1 I think is supposed to be more complicated > Plain and simply put, if I had the money to buy the 2000-and-1 > box (or the $1000 for the 1000 ==> 2000 upgrade) I would simply > buy a hard disk for my 1000 and be done with it. By the time I > can afford these options, they won't be available to me anymore. > My expansion desires are very simple; a few meg of memory and a > reasonable-sized hard disk. It was hard enough to afford A1000 > expansion before the 500/2000 came out; the new machines will > only make it worse by drying up the A1000 market. I'm not > bellyaching about the fact the A1000 expansion market will be > trashed; what I am complaining about is that nobody is offering a > *****LOW COST***** way to use A2000 peripheral cards. I'm sure > at least one other person on the net feels the same way I do. I would expect someone to sooner or later blow off a copy of the original "Zorro" backplane board from the Expansion Architecture Manual. Works good on the A1000 if you use less radical terminators and LS buffers instead of F parts. Of course it couldn't be a product what with the FCC and all, but one could make a kit of the PC board, connectors and PAL's. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: out to lunch... Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)