page@ulowell.UUCP (02/10/87)
Compute! has sent its dealers three (so far) telegrams - gradually becoming more insistent that they return all copies of the magazine, or at least not sell them for a week or two until CBM formally announces the A2000. Meanwhile ... EE Times has an article this week on the machine. It says that the A2000's graphics chips can do 640x400 w/o interlace - is this for real? I think not (since there's a new long persistence monitor available). It also says the parallel and serial ports no longer carry power to the pins - is this for real? If so, that means you can't use Digi-View, the Mimetics Sampler, the MicroBotics hard drive, etc. on the new machine. One exciting feature is the slot (nine slots! wow!) for VIDEO. Can you say real-time digitizer? Custom (1024x1024x24) Graphics? Upgraded Denise & Paula? Sure. I knew you could. Thanks for the ST506 and SCSI controller cards! The $500 A2080 long persistance monitor sounds like a great buy - is it usable with the A1000 ? EE Times reports that CBM is offering memory expansion because they were fed up with third-party prices. Unfair! A1000 memory manufacturers had to build a case, the board had to be custom soldered on one side (unless you don't pass the bus) and has to be FCC compliant. Except for the incompatibilities (which won't affect 90% of existing Amiga owners), this baby looks like a great machine. The price is fantastic. With CBM providing memory, disks and Mess-DOS compatibility, they could have a winner on their hands. Let's hope they MARKET it this time... ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (02/11/87)
In article <1028@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes: >Compute! has sent its dealers three (so far) telegrams - gradually >becoming more insistent that they return all copies of the magazine, >or at least not sell them for a week or two until CBM formally >announces the A2000. Meanwhile ... > > EE Times has an article this week on the machine. It says that >... Please! The Compute! article is at least factual, while the EE Times article is mostly a rehash of all the rumors to date. Many of these are either wrong or do not reflect what will actually be announced RSN.... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
page@ulowell.UUCP (02/14/87)
sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) wrote in article <510@linus.UUCP>: >> Can you say real-time digitizer? Custom (1024x1024x24) Graphics? >> Upgraded Denise & Paula? Sure. I knew you could. > >How could better graphics be accessible from software, since the >highest-res graphics mode defined for the Amiga is 640 x 400? >Wouldn't AmigaDOS, Intuition, etc., have to be changed as well? They don't have the restrictions, the hardware does/did. Note there's a PAL Amiga - it runs the same software, only the custom chips are different. You'll notice that the structures for graphics, intuition, layers, etc, use 8-bit values for lookup tables? Why, when the chips only support 5 (6 if you count H&M) planes? Because future chips may support more! Applications software may not work if developers did naughty things like put information in those upper two bits (shades of 68000 -> 68020!), but I doubt you'll see many (if any!) like that. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (02/16/87)
> In-reply-to: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu's message of 10 Feb 87 19:54:22 GMT > Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.36.1 of Thu Feb 12 1987 on linus (berkeley-unix) > This may sound really naive, but....Could you really upgrade the Amiga > 2000 with better custom graphics? Would this be possible with the > Amiga's architecture, bus, etc.? How could better graphics be > accessible from software, since the highest-res graphics mode defined > for the Amiga is 640 x 400? Wouldn't AmigaDOS, Intuition, etc., have > to be changed as well? > > Steven Litvintchouk You'd have to change the low level graphics stuff, definately, to take advantage of higher resolutions. Of course, any program that goes through these layers of software (hopefully all programs out there) would run just fine such a new chip set. The GfxBase structure already has information that tells you the largest possible display available; programs that use this have no problem taking full advantage of both NTSC and PAL machines (a hires PAL screen is 256/512 pixels high, versus the 200/400 of NTSC). Of course, whether you application could take FULL advantage of a new display mode depends on how generally the program was written. If you ask Intuition for a fixed, 640x200 window, and write your program assuming 640x200 as hardwired constants, you can't expect to be anything more than a 640x200 window ever, even if next year you run on some super Amiga with ten times that resolution. But you'd very likely be able to run your 640x200 window on this great and expended workbench screen. If you checked the maximum size of the screen and adjusted accordingly, you'd be able to immediately use the enhanced resolutions all the way. What this requires is a new chipset and at least a few new Amiga libraries (these could be loaded via the ROM TAGS in RAM facility, but depending on the differences in a new chipset, they'd more likely be incorporated as part of a new general release). The whole idea of the Amiga's run-time libraries is to provide you with painless upward compatibility with future hardware or software. As long as the applications don't start jumping into the middle of library routines, hardcoding the library locations (which isn't always possible, anyway), or "POKE"ing around in memory like they do on C64s or IBM PCs, todays software should be useful for many new machines to come. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh "You can keep my things, they've come to take me home" -Peter Gabriel ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~