Problems with the A4000
Marc N Barrett
of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would have
been had SCSI been used.
The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged in,
and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE. I will get back to the issue
of SCSI & IDE in a minute, but I would first like to explain what other
problems this has. Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
in particular the 2M Agnus chip. The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM. But since
the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
2M Agnus chip, none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM. The
use of the A3000 architecture also has other problems, namely the
restriction of 16M of fast RAM on the motherboard. This was not a problem
several years ago with the A3000 was designed, but 16M is not all that
much anymore, with RAM prices at $34/megabyte for 60nS static-column memories.
OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged
in. Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development costs
to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it and
replacing it with something else. The costs of including SCSI in the A4000,
then, would have been practically zero in development costs.
In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
situation, IMO, but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.
As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.
But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000. These
development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
these costs as quickly as possible. This means boosting the list prices
to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
soon as these development costs have been payed for. In the short-term, then,
the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will be higher than if they
had used a SCSI design.
---
| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
Skip Sauls
>
>For about a week or so, I've been promising to post my detailed explanation
>of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
>has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would
>have been had SCSI been used.
No, you've been promising that ever since you sent me the information on
the A3400/A4000 several weeks ago. The information that you got from
that developer was close to the real thing, but not exact.
>The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
Okay, Mr. Know-It-All, what are the names of these engineers? Tell us more
about the "good systems" that were canceled. Hell, you were bitching about
those systems last fall, yet now you say that they are good. Why don't you,
in your infinite wisdom, tell us what the A4000 should have been. I know
that you are CS, but you're such a genius that I'm sure that you could have
done a better job.
>The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
>the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged
>in, and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE. I will get back to the
What did you expect? As for being "kludged in", could you please elaborate?
Do you realize that most of your bitching sounds more like one of the
assholes who write for magazines than anything else? In other words, you
bitch and moan about surface details without having the first clue as to
how anything really works. Grow up and learn to back up your whining with
facts instead of more complaints.
>issue of SCSI & IDE in a minute, but I would first like to explain what other
>problems this has. Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
>The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
>in particular the 2M Agnus chip. The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
>replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM. But since
>the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
>2M Agnus chip, none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM. The
2M Chip RAM is more than the 1M VRAM on the SVGA boards and equal to the
amount of VRAM on some Mac Quadras. Do you really expect to use more than
2M for most applications? Hell, I've never run out of memory on my A3000
with 2M Chip RAM, even when trying to.
>use of the A3000 architecture also has other problems, namely the
>restriction of 16M of fast RAM on the motherboard. This was not a problem
>several years ago with the A3000 was designed, but 16M is not all that
>much anymore, with RAM prices at $34/megabyte for 60nS static-column memories.
How many Macs, PCs, etc. have 16M or more on the motherboard? How many
people actually need 16M for typical use? And if RAM is so cheap, use
the money that you save for one of the 64M Zorro III cards. Don't be
such a dumbass.
>OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged
No, you've established that even you can be more of an asshole than ever.
>in. Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development
>costs to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it
>and replacing it with something else. The costs of including SCSI in the
>A4000, then, would have been practically zero in development costs.
You moron. In case you haven't noticed, a couple of C= engineers have
stated that IDE is cheaper than SCSI.
> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
>designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
Don't kid yourself into thinking that designing an IDE interface is as
complex as designing the A3000's SCSI interface.
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>situation, IMO, but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
>existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.
The A4000 motherboard is not the A3000 motherboard with a couple of changes.
Somehow I doubt that the IDE interface was a big portion of the development
cost for the A4000.
Sheesh, I don't know why I bother responding to you. It's not like your
bitching is going to change anything, nor will my reply do anything to
stop you from being such a whiner.
>As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
>new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.
And if the A4000 design is going to be used for lower end models, this lower
cost will become even more important. If the savings over SCSI, including
the Demac chip, the SCSI chip, the drive, etc. were $50, this would result
in at least a $150-$200 lower retail price. While this may not seem like a
huge amount of money in a $3000-$4000 system, I can assure you that it is
significant in a $1000-$2000 system.
>But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
>very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
>simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000. These
Why make such claims when you don't have a clue as to what really went on?
>development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
>these costs as quickly as possible. This means boosting the list prices
>to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
>soon as these development costs have been payed for. In the short-term, then,
>the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will be higher than if they
>had used a SCSI design.
The pricing policy that you describe is not unique to Commodore. While I
do expect prices to drop sometime in the future, I don't believe that the
price of the A4000 is unreasonable. Of course, some bozos are going to
bitch that C= doesn't have an AGA based 030 machine for $500, but that is
to be expected given their mental age.
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
Go to hell Marc.
Skip Sauls
sk...@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
2ftq...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
I have to disagree with this, if Commodore had business sense they
wouldn't be looking at the payback period to set price but would
recover the price over the life of the Computer using discounted
cash flows. So they won't IMO lower the price in 6 months or
whatever because they think they've recovered the development
costs of the IDE. If they lower the price it would be for other
reasons, i.e. people are simply willing to pay more for a brand
NEW product than they are for a product with year-old technology,
but they would have included this in their DCF also. Just my 2 cents...
Steven Joseph Chmura
>2M Chip RAM is more than the 1M VRAM on the SVGA boards and equal to the
>amount of VRAM on some Mac Quadras. Do you really expect to use more than
>2M for most applications? Hell, I've never run out of memory on my A3000
>with 2M Chip RAM, even when trying to.
Well, if DPaint V does indeed support AA, then those "hires-modes" will
be almost unusable with 2MB of chip ram. 1280x400x8+overscan
will be like working with an A500 with 512K of chip at 640x400x4+overscan.
I still want to know why C= can't get 800x600x8 deinterlaced.
My PC is displaying that right now.
>Skip Sauls
>sk...@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
--
"Given enought time the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable,
and the probable inevitable..." - George Wald - "The Origin of Life"
Steven Chmura ///////// University of Chicago School of Medicine (M1)
Peter da Silva
> You moron. In case you haven't noticed, a couple of C= engineers have
> stated that IDE is cheaper than SCSI.
Negligably. IDE is only cheaper on the PC because it's designed for the PC
bus limitations.
Whether MB is right or not (based on past performance, I suspect he's... um...
exxagerating) IDE is a dumb idea.
--
Peter da Silva. <pe...@sugar.neosoft.com>.
`-_-' "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
'U`
Daniel S. Riley
>A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
>designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software.
Marc, could you cite some sources for your contention that the IDE
driver is a new design? I have been told that the driver to make IDE
look like SCSI *is* in the A600--you can run HDToolBox (or RDPrepX, if
you like) on the A600, pointed at the ide driver, and they will
happily talk scsi-direct to it.
As for the hardware, The SDMAC chip has always had hooks in it for
AT/IDE style interfaces, so I doubt the hardware was a big deal.
So it sounds to me like the IDE interface on the A4000 was not a big
additional investment (*trivial* compared to the AA development
costs).
That said, I'll agree with one thing--going with IDE was still stupid.
The A3000 has a killer scsi interface (once the driver bugs are fixed),
which is a *major* asset for multimedia work, where high io-bandwidth
and the CDROM support are needed. Moving to IDE for the A4000 makes
no sense at all.
--
-Dan Riley Internet: d...@lns598.tn.cornell.edu
-Wilson Lab, Cornell University HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr)
Harri Juhani Holopainen
>>The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
>>in particular the 2M Agnus chip. The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
>>replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM. But since
>>the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
>>2M Agnus chip, none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM. The
>
>2M Chip RAM is more than the 1M VRAM on the SVGA boards and equal to the
>amount of VRAM on some Mac Quadras. Do you really expect to use more than
>2M for most applications? Hell, I've never run out of memory on my A3000
>with 2M Chip RAM, even when trying to.
You soon will if u use a decent-sized wb (800*600 and up) with a nice 16-color
(or maybe 256 color) Calvin & Hobbes backdrop picture and a public screen for a
bunch of niftyterms.
Even with the older chipsets & 2.0 the 1M chip limit is a constant pain
at least for me.
This 2M limit sounds much, much worse than whether there sould be an IDE or
a SCSI hd to me. Wonder how much chip will a normal-sized 256k picture eat?
>No, you've established that even you can be more of an asshole than ever.
:-)
>>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>
>Go to hell Marc.
>
>Skip Sauls
:-) :-)
--
Harri Holopainen
s36...@taltta.hut.fi
Simon Cope
> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
> The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
>the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged in,
>and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE. I will get back to the issue
Sort of.
>designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
Not completely.
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>situation, IMO, but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
>existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.
(various drivel deleted)
I would suspect that the IDE interface is DMA, to retain adequate performance.
Based on this, C= only had to change half their interface, namely 1 chip. The
Western Digital scsi chip has been replaced by an ide bus controller. Based
on this (I don't have details) the disk system would be register compatible,
due to the Super DMAC chip remaining. This would then only require software
changes. The ide chip would not be that hard to design, because ide is
basically a derivative of ISA slots, which are at the spastic level in terms
of technology.
At least they're optioning a good SCSI card.
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
Ken Dyke - Amiga Networking
>
> For about a week or so, I've been promising to post my detailed explanation
>of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
>has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would have
>been had SCSI been used.
Yes, we've hardly been able to stand the suspense.
> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
I'd be *really* careful Marc about who you call "junior" engineers. Did you
have anyone at C= in mind?
Strike one.
> The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
>the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged in,
>and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE. I will get back to the issue
>of SCSI & IDE in a minute, but I would first like to explain what other
>problems this has. Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
>The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
>in particular the 2M Agnus chip. The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
>replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM. But since
Oh really? Last time I checked the current rev of Alice could only address
2Mb.
Strike two.
>the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
>2M Agnus chip, none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM. The
>use of the A3000 architecture also has other problems, namely the
>restriction of 16M of fast RAM on the motherboard. This was not a problem
>several years ago with the A3000 was designed, but 16M is not all that
>much anymore, with RAM prices at $34/megabyte for 60nS static-column memories.
>
> OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged
No, it seems that you've established that you don't know what you're talking
about.
>in. Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development costs
>to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it and
>replacing it with something else. The costs of including SCSI in the A4000,
>then, would have been practically zero in development costs.
>
> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
>designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
Strike three, Marc. The thing Randell Jesup (I''m sure he'd appreciate it
if you could spell his name correctly, BTW) did was to write some special
> As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
>new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.
>But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
>very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
IDE is incredibly simple, Marc. From what I've been told by a number of
the hardware guys, doing an IDE interface is almost a no-brainer in comparison
to a DMA SCSI device.
>simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000. These
>development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
>these costs as quickly as possible. This means boosting the list prices
>to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
>soon as these development costs have been payed for. In the short-term, then,
>the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will be higher than if they
Marc, the A4000 could cost $1500, have 1280x1024 48-bit graphics, have a
32-bit SCSI-2 DMA HD controller, and you'd still bitch about it because
nobody could afford the monitor it would require.
As always, these are only my personal opinions, and not those of Commodore.
-Ken
--
Kenneth Dyke All of the above opinions are my
Commodore-Amiga Networking Group own and not necessarily those of
email: k...@cbmvax.commodore.com my employer.
"You'll get over it. If not, you'll learn to live with it."
Randell Jesup
>> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>>A4000's design, though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
>>designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
>>the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600. The problem is
>>that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
>>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>>Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
>
>Strike three, Marc. The thing Randell Jesup (I''m sure he'd appreciate it
>if you could spell his name correctly, BTW) did was to write some special
Ken seems to have lost a line here - he probably meant to say that
I wrote some special _software_ to make IDE look like SCSI.
The main point that Marc missed here is that I did all that work
(to make a scsi.device that actually is an IDE driver) for the A600. I did
almost no work for the A4000 version of IDE. The only differences was a
different interrupt routine (~30 lines), and some minor tweaks to the "is there
a drive out there" code. Say one day's work total.
>> As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
>>new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.
>>But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
>>very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
>>simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000.
Totally wrong. Also, the board space in the A4000 is limited, so
retaining SCSI on the motherboard would have added layout and debugging time.
Not that it couldn't be done, just things would have been tougher to lay out.
>Marc, the A4000 could cost $1500, have 1280x1024 48-bit graphics, have a
>32-bit SCSI-2 DMA HD controller, and you'd still bitch about it because
>nobody could afford the monitor it would require.
I'm sure Marc would find more to bitch about than just the monitor...
:-(
BTW, I don't read c.s.a.m regularily.
--
"Rev on the redline, you're on your own; seems like a lifetime, but soon it's
gone..." Foreigner
-
Randell Jesup, Jack-of-quite-a-few-trades, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, je...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
David Jones
>very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
>simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000. These
>development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
>these costs as quickly as possible. This means boosting the list prices
>to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
Not to mention that a "multimedia" machine such as the 4000 would have
its users wanting things such as tape drives and CD-ROM. So easy with
SCSI, but I guess A4000 users are going to have to pay even more to
get a SCSI interface for their 4000s.
I've actually seen SCSI hard disk prices lower than IDE prices for the
SAME hard disk model, manufacturer AND vendor. Check the ads in BYTE!
You are not saving much by going to IDE, and you're screwing many high
end users. I wonder if Amiga Unix knows about IDE...
--
David Jones, 6730 Tooney Drive, Orleans, Ontario K1C 6R4 CANADA
email: d...@qpoint.ocunix.on.ca Fido: 1:163/109.8
AMIGA: Advanced Multimedia with Interactive Graphics and Audio
Michael Sinz
... about IDE...
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software. This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
>situation, IMO, but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
>quite a lot to develop, and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
>existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.
Well, Marc, you really know how to be completely wrong about things.
I will not push the issues too much, but this is one that is so completely
*wrong* that I had to tell the real story. (But then, if Marc ever
posted something that was not all washed up, I would think the net would
be worried that the "end of the world" was about upon us...)
The IDE interface on the A4000 has no new hardware to do anything special other
than standard IDE. In fact, it is functionally almost exactly the same as the
A600. In fact, the driver for it is exactly the same source code with just
a few equates different for the addresses of the registers. What you call
the "SCSI" work-a-like was work that Randall had done even for the A600.
This is why the IDE driver is called scsi.device. HDToolBox works with
it unmodified. In fact, programs that do scsi-direct do too. And this
is true in the A600 and the A4000.
/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
| /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
| /// Operating System Development Group |
| /// BIX: msinz UUNET: m...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
|\\\/// From the home of the irrational deadlines: |
| \XX/ "It will take 2i weeks to do that project." |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Spencer Shanson
In article <1992Sep12.0...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>
> For about a week or so, I've been promising to post my detailed explanation
>of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
>has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would have
>been had SCSI been used.
Oh thank you. I have been looking forward to this for ages.
> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
Really? You seem to know a lot more about the internals of Commodore Engineering
than I do. Seeing as you already know so much about the A4000, maybe you should
take a look at the motherboard sometime. There, in the bottom right hand side,
are the names of the designers - Berlin and Haynie. Are these the junior
engineers you are waffling about?
<More waffle deleted>
>in particular the 2M Agnus chip. The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
>replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM. But since
Hmm. Lets see. Nope, according to the AA specs (I have them here, written by the
chip designers themselves), Alice can only address 2Mb of Chip RAM. But I bow to
your superior knowledge.
Dave and/or Randell are better qualified to talk about IDE than I am.
>
>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spencer Shanson - Amiga Software Engineer | email: spe...@commodore.COM
| or uunet!cbmvax!spence
All opinions expressed are my own, and do not | Bix: sshanson
(necessarily) represent those of Commodore. | "Copper? I hardly even
| know her!"
William F Bennett
up) writes:
>>
>>Strike three, Marc. The thing Randell Jesup (I''m sure he'd appreciate it
>>if you could spell his name correctly, BTW) did was to write some special
>
> Ken seems to have lost a line here - he probably meant to say that
>I wrote some special _software_ to make IDE look like SCSI.
>
> The main point that Marc missed here is that I did all that work
>(to make a scsi.device that actually is an IDE driver) for the A600. I did
>almost no work for the A4000 version of IDE. The only differences was a
>different interrupt routine (~30 lines), and some minor tweaks to the "is ther
e
>a drive out there" code. Say one day's work total.
>
I'm getting confused here. I have a 2000 with a GVP combo-board SCSI
controller. Attached to it are several SCSI devices: Seagate 80 meg drive,
Syquest 44meg Removable drive and a DMI floptical drive. Will I be able to use
these drives (for which I have paid a lot of money) with the 4000. Will I need
a SCSI controller card? Will the 4000 accept a SCSI card? Does this "look like
SCSI" have any affect on my current drives?
>Randell Jesup, Jack-of-quite-a-few-trades, Commodore Engineering.
>{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, je...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup
>Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
--
*******************************************************************************
Bill Bennett Dept of Radiology The Ohio State University
********************* wben...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu ********************
Andrew L. Hansford
dej> Not to mention that a "multimedia" machine such as the 4000 would
dej> have its users wanting things such as tape drives and CD-ROM. So
dej> easy with SCSI, but I guess A4000 users are going to have to pay
dej> even more to get a SCSI interface for their 4000s.
So, instead of being stuck with the two year old SCSI you can get a
new SCSI-II, and then (hopefully) use that on at least the next couple
of generations of the machine. In the process saving you from buying
an SCSI over and over again. The IDE on the A4000 is almost at no
cost and not including it on the mother board simplified the mother
board design and debug and development cost.
dej> I've actually seen SCSI hard disk prices lower than IDE prices
dej> for the SAME hard disk model, manufacturer AND vendor. Check the
dej> ads in BYTE! You are not saving much by going to IDE, and you're
dej> screwing many high end users. I wonder if Amiga Unix knows about
dej> IDE...
Why do people think its the drive prices that are dramatically
different. I've only seen at most a 10% difference. The IDE reduces
cost of the 4000 because it is much simpler than the SCSI in the 3000
even. The added development cost is minimal and is offset by the
savings of not jamming it on the A4000 board and the saved production
cost.
For those who want SCSI it will be available from C=. Hopefully they
will offer a configuration with the SCSI card and SCSI drive and the
IDE shut off. (I take it that the IDE interface can be bypassed.)
Yes, you paid a little more because it's not on the board, but how
much difference does that make to Mr. High End buyer.
dej> -- David Jones, 6730 Tooney Drive, Orleans, Ontario K1C 6R4
dej> CANADA email: d...@qpoint.ocunix.on.ca Fido: 1:163/109.8 AMIGA:
dej> Advanced Multimedia with Interactive Graphics and Audio
-- Andrew Hansford
ahan...@wpi.wpi.edu
Andrew L. Hansford
mks> The IDE interface on the A4000 has no new hardware to do anything
mks> special other than standard IDE. In fact, it is functionally
mks> almost exactly the same as the A600. In fact, the driver for it
mks> is exactly the same source code with just a few equates different
mks> for the addresses of the registers. What you call the "SCSI"
mks> work-a-like was work that Randall had done even for the A600.
mks> This is why the IDE driver is called scsi.device. HDToolBox
mks> works with it unmodified. In fact, programs that do scsi-direct
mks> do too. And this is true in the A600 and the A4000.
Really? I thought that IDE drives just couldn't do some things that
the SCSI drives do. Like low level formats. Not really up on IDE
drives though. Sounds like the best has been made of the IDE.
Question: Can a system support both IDE and SCSI drives at the same
time. That is say I buy one and use the IDE and later decide to get a
SCSI card. Could I still use the IDE and can I boot off the SCSI and
use the IDE as a secondary dirve?
mks> /----------------------------------------------------------------------\
mks> | /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
mks> | /// Operating System Development Group |
mks> | /// BIX: msinz UUNET: m...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
mks> |\\\/// From the home of the irrational deadlines: |
mks> | \XX/ "It will take 2i weeks to do that project." |
mks> \----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Dave Haynie
> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
As usual, Mark is, to put it bluntly, talking out of his ass here.
There was ONE system discussed at DevCon, something called I called the A3000+.
It, like the A4000, was based on the A3000 system architecture and the AA
chips. I had some other goodies put in there, and I had hoped that this would
go on as a production machine, but it was just a development platform. We
did development with it, then moved onto real production. The A4000 is the
first fruit of that development effort.
The A4000 project was headed by Greg Berlin, the other half of the main A3000
engineering team. Greg is the only hardware designer who's been here longer
than I have, by about six months. I was heavily involved in the A4000 design
in the "AA" and Expansion subsystems. No, it wasn't a full-time job for me,
basically because most of this had been prefected already, and Greg had two
junior guys and one other senior guy (Scott Schaeffer, who did the '040 module)
helping out on day-to-day debugging, etc. Which is just the way I wanted it --
I started working on "AA" stuff back in the fall of '90, and by the time the
A4000 project started I was moving onto other things.
> The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
>the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged in,
>and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE.
The AA chipset is hardly "kludged" in. The form of the AA chipset is something
me, Greg, and the AA people (Bob Raible and Bill Thomas) discussed at length
back before there was an AA. It was designed to drop fairly easily into an
A3000-class machine, much like ECS did. Actually, the A4000 design is
considerably cleaned up over my A3000+ prototype, in that Greg's people did a
new gate array, Bridgette, which manages much of the system's datapaths more
efficiently than the 9 or so TTL buffers the A3000+ used to do the same job.
Again, Mark, why do you always post stuff you have absolutely no knowledge
about? Especially things like the genesis of the A4000 and AA, a subject upon
which only a very few people could produce a real authoritative post.
>Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
Correct. In point of fact, the AA chipset was designed for the A3000, as I
explained above.
>The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
>in particular the 2M Agnus chip.
The RAMSEY and Buster chips have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with managing the
chip bus.
Gary and a couple of PALs manage the chip bus in both the A3000 and A4000.
The signals from Gary are very generic, they work as well with AA as they do
with ECS. Most of the control for a particular chip set comes from the chip
bus controller, Alice in AA, Agnus in ECS. Gary just provides a few chip
selects and a bit of buffer control logic (eg, it's basically controlling
the CPU gating on and off the Chip bus, which is real simple).
>The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the replacement for Agnus -- can
>potentially address 4M of chip RAM.
No it can't.
> OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged
>in. Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development costs
>to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it and
>replacing it with something else. The costs of including SCSI in the A4000,
>then, would have been practically zero in development costs.
The inclusion of IDE cost a few months of Joe Augenbraun's time. Joe was a
junior engineer working for Greg (he left C= a little while back to go invent
HDTV in Princeton or some-such). Say what you will about IDE's inability to
address lots of cool devices, I'll agree. But it cost practically nothing to
develop, it's a very, very simple interface. And it costs very little to
build, it's basically a PAL and a couple TTL buffers, not a full controller
like SCSI. IDE was designed to be nearly free to add back when the PClone
industry whipped it up.
> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>A4000's design,
We're now having to pay to remove SCSI from the A4000!?! Buy yourself a
clue, man!
>The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
>make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
>Amiga software.
Randell did do the software. Far as I know, it's pretty much the same in both
A600 and A4000, and in both cases, the IDE driver pretends to be a SCSI device,
since most hard disk utilities know how to deal with SCSI devices. A good idea
IMHO, no really big deal.
>In the short-term, then, the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will
>be higher than if they had used a SCSI design.
Not on your life. You obviously know nothing about computer development to
come up with this conclusion (not that anyone here had any doubts in the first
place). I'll make up some numbers just to give you your first lesson (eg, I
don't know what these things cost, but we'll ballpark it). Let's say that
SCSI cost $25 per system, IDE $2 per system. Let's say that Randell and Augi
each spent 3 months on IDE. I don't know what Randell and Augi made, but I
guess around $25,000 would cover the two of them for three months (better than
cover them, since they're doing other things at the same time).
So how many machines to I need to make to cover the costs of IDE development.
The differential here is $23, I need to make $25,000. So I'm making a profit
on this change, all else being equal, on machine number 1087. Again, these
are made up numbers, I suspect that the IDE stuff is actually paid for much
sooner, since most of Randell's work was already done for the A600.
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
{uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
"Work like a horse, drink like a fish" - Psychefunkapus
Bob Raible - LSI Design
>
>In article <1992Sep12.0...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>>
(In the interests of brevity long thread has been deleted)
I can only thank the gods above that this gentleman hasn't become versed in
VLSI design, o/w my shortcomings would no longer remain hidden :3) !
Hopefully the s/w and h/w designers here at Commodore will take Marc's
criticisms in the constructive vein it was intended, and in the future
consult with him to avoid these errors.
Now back to lurking ...
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Robert J. Raible EMAIL:rai...@cbmvax.commodore.com
VLSI Program Manager or: {uunet|rutgers|pyramid}!cbmvax!raible
Commodore Business Machines "my comments, not Commodore's, ok ?"
Segmentation Fault
>For those who want SCSI it will be available from C=. Hopefully they
>will offer a configuration with the SCSI card and SCSI drive and the
>IDE shut off. (I take it that the IDE interface can be bypassed.)
>Yes, you paid a little more because it's not on the board, but how
>much difference does that make to Mr. High End buyer.
Right you are, when I go out to buy a 4000, the added cost of a SCSI device
is not likley to be too tragic. What IS nasty is that I will have to give up
one of my precious zorro3 slots. (Mr. High End Buyer certainly wants his
slots free for other more exciting boards, such as a sampler to get the
sound enhancement that C= should have added as well.)
-steve galle
te...@wavefront.wti.com
ud...@mcl.ucsb.edu
Michael....@cs.cmu.edu
> the A4000 Dave Hay...@cbmvax.commo (6491)
> Correct. In point of fact, the AA chipset was designed for the A3000,
> as I
> explained above.
In that case, although we know C-A has no intention of doing it, it
would be interesting if you, or one of the other CA engineers, felt
disposed to muse about the possibility of a third party developer making
a kludge to get the AA set into a 3000.
michael
Colin Adams
[sarcasm directed at Marc deleted]
>
> Now back to lurking ...
>
Lurk all you like, I'm just glad you are still at C=. I
thought you must have been fired or something. I think I've
been listening to Marc too much, though I've recently stopped
paying any attention to anything he says...
>Robert J. Raible EMAIL:rai...@cbmvax.commodore.com
>VLSI Program Manager or: {uunet|rutgers|pyramid}!cbmvax!raible
--
Colin Adams Honours Student - James Cook University of North Queensland
"And if I seem a little strange, well that's because I am." - The Smiths
sp...@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
> In article <1992Sep12.0...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>
>> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
>>rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
>>a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
>>that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
>>the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
>>were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
>
> As usual, Mark is, to put it bluntly, talking out of his ass here.
>
> There was ONE system discussed at DevCon, something called I called the A3000+.
> It, like the A4000, was based on the A3000 system architecture and the AA
> chips. I had some other goodies put in there, and I had hoped that this would
> go on as a production machine, but it was just a development platform. We
> did development with it, then moved onto real production. The A4000 is the
> first fruit of that development effort.
>
Dave , why was the AT&T DSP taken out of the A4000's design? The new Atari
machines have one. And what were the other things in the A3000+ design
left out of the A4000?
> The AA chipset is hardly "kludged" in. The form of the AA chipset is something
> me, Greg, and the AA people (Bob Raible and Bill Thomas) discussed at length
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Commodore has only 2 people working on designing new graphics chips?
I had hoped they'd have 4 or 5. No wonder development is so slow. C='s
engineering dept is seriously underfunded.
> The inclusion of IDE cost a few months of Joe Augenbraun's time. Joe was a
> junior engineer working for Greg (he left C= a little while back to go invent
> HDTV in Princeton or some-such). Say what you will about IDE's inability to
> address lots of cool devices, I'll agree. But it cost practically nothing to
> develop, it's a very, very simple interface. And it costs very little to
> build, it's basically a PAL and a couple TTL buffers, not a full controller
> like SCSI. IDE was designed to be nearly free to add back when the PClone
> industry whipped it up.
>
>> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
>>A4000's design,
>
> We're now having to pay to remove SCSI from the A4000!?! Buy yourself a
> clue, man!
>
Dave, if IDE is so great then why didnt the A3000 design use it. It was
certainly around at the time of the A3000's creation. I also remember you
doing some serious ragging on IDE in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy. What changed
your mind?
Thanks
Scott Corley
Stephen J.Smith
>In article <35...@cbmvax.commodore.com> rai...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Bob Raible - LSI Design) writes:
>[sarcasm directed at Marc deleted]
>>
>> Now back to lurking ...
>>
>Lurk all you like, I'm just glad you are still at C=. I
>thought you must have been fired or something. I think I've
>been listening to Marc too much, though I've recently stopped
>paying any attention to anything he says...
I stopped listening to Barf a long time ago..... :)
>>Robert J. Raible EMAIL:rai...@cbmvax.commodore.com
>>VLSI Program Manager or: {uunet|rutgers|pyramid}!cbmvax!raible
>--
>Colin Adams Honours Student - James Cook University of North Queensland
> "And if I seem a little strange, well that's because I am." - The Smiths
--
Stephen J.Smith - Physics - James Cook University of North Queensland
Technical Officer - phsjs#marlin.jcu.edu.au
Richard A Romano
>
{Intereresting stuff deleted}
>The AA chipset is hardly "kludged" in. The form of the AA chipset is something
>me, Greg, and the AA people (Bob Raible and Bill Thomas) discussed at length
>back before there was an AA. It was designed to drop fairly easily into an
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>A3000-class machine, much like ECS did. Actually, the A4000 design is
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>considerably cleaned up over my A3000+ prototype, in that Greg's people did a
>new gate array, Bridgette, which manages much of the system's datapaths more
>efficiently than the 9 or so TTL buffers the A3000+ used to do the same job.
>
>Again, Mark, why do you always post stuff you have absolutely no knowledge
>about? Especially things like the genesis of the A4000 and AA, a subject upon
>which only a very few people could produce a real authoritative post.
>
>>Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
>
>Correct. In point of fact, the AA chipset was designed for the A3000, as I
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>explained above.
>
Why then is it "impossible" to make a daughter card containing the AA chipset
for use in the A3000? Or is it just that it would be too much of a kludge
for Commodore to touch.
I would think judging from the responses here that a 3rd party company
could make a lot of money with such a kludge.
>--
>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
> {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
> "Work like a horse, drink like a fish" - Psychefunkapus
Pardon my ignorance in asking since I have no imformation on the AA chip set
and can't guess at the feasibility.
I have a few questions:
Is it a 32 bit data bus?
I assume the chip command/register bus (terminology?) is now 16 bit from 8 or
is it a completely new approach used?
Is the data bus 14 MHz zero wait state ie 60 - 70 ns DRAMS? I've heard
something about it being a 28 MHz bus, does it use a burst mode?
Why can't it handle any line frequencies above 31kHz? 1280x400x8 bit
sounds like the pixel rate could get high enough to support 800x600
noninterlaced or is the 1280x400 interlaced with a deinterlacer at the
output stage? Is the 640x400 interlaced with a deinterlacer?
Thanks a lot.
Rich
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Romano SPACE FOR RENT
Manager - System Development If you would like to rent this space
Iowa Driving Simulator Call 555-5555.
Glenn Doiron
> of exactly why Commodore's use of a super-cheap IDE HD interface in the A4000
> has very likely pushed the initial list prices higher than what they would have
> been had SCSI been used.
Tune in next week for Marc's explanation of why Surface Mount Technology
pushes price higher than conventional assembly methods.
> The problem comes down to the architecture of the A4000 itself. As has been
> rumored before, several good systems were canceled not long after DevCon '91,
> a year ago. What has not been said is that these included all of the systems
> that Dave Haynie designed that incorporated the AA chipset. Indeed, none of
> the new Amiga systems -- including the A4000 -- were designed by him. They
> were designed in a rush by junior engineers at Commodore.
Whose names Marc will withhold because He Doesn't Know.
> The whole design of the A4000 can be summed up in a fairly short sentence:
> the A4000 is an A3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the AA chipset kludged in,
> and with the SCSI subsystem replaced with IDE.
Here it is folks- the great Marc Barrett facts.
> I will get back to the issue
> of SCSI & IDE in a minute, but I would first like to explain what other
> problems this has.
> Basically, the A3000 was not designed for the AA chipset.
Well, one fact in an entire article is pretty good for -MB-.
> The Ramsey and Buster chips in the A3000 were designed for use with the ECS,
> in particular the 2M Agnus chip.
Ramsey and Buster have nothing to do with ECS. Ramsey controls the fast
ram arrays/SCSI address generation. Buster controls the Zorro3 bus.
Neither Ramsey nor FAT Buster (which is the correct name for the chip in
the A3000) have anything to do with ECS, indeed they are only connected to
the local CPU bus (and Ramsey is, of course, connected to the motherboard
fast RAM). Chip RAM arbitration is somewhat complicated, but I'll
simplify:
1. Chip RAM is made up of 2 16-bit (512k or 1meg, depending on how much
chip RAM you have) banks. Special "Bridge" circuitry electrically connects
the two data busses together. When Agnus wants to access the "near" 16-bit
bus the bridge circuits do nothing. When Agnus accesses the "far" 16-bit
bus the bridge circuits kick in, moving the "far" 16-bit data onto the
"near" bus for Agnus to get at. When the CPU accesses chip RAM, *BOTH*
busses are accessed SIMULTANEOUSLY (bridge & cpu logic are provided via the
morass of PAL's on the A3000's motherboard). So, now you can see, Ramsey
and Buster have *not a thing in the world* in common the the ECS chips,
except that they might be in the same machine.
> The new Alice chip in the AA chipset -- the
> replacement for Agnus -- can potentially address 4M of chip RAM.
Sources please? Do you have Barrett (TM) X-RAY VISION that lets you see
schematic diagrams thousands of miles away in Westchester, PA? Or perhaps
you glanced a peek at the top layer of a multi-layer motherboard and
deduced all the traces?
> But since
> the Alice chip has been kludged to work with other chips intended for the
> 2M Agnus chip,
Err.. yeah, whatever. You should check your "inside" sources at Commodore
again.
> none of the new Amigas can use more than 2M of chip RAM.
This may or may not be the case of the Alice chip. Since I don't have any
technical specs either, I'm not going to overtrump your BS with my BS.
Suffice it to say that I as a developer have received *NOTHING* that states
that Alice can address 4 megs of RAM.
> The
> use of the A3000 architecture also has other problems, namely the
> restriction of 16M of fast RAM on the motherboard.
Yes, but how that suddenly became a restriction or why you can't use the
ProRAM-3000 boards in the A4000, only you know...
> This was not a problem
> several years ago with the A3000 was designed, but 16M is not all that
> much anymore, with RAM prices at $34/megabyte for 60nS static-column memories.
Duh, like it would be cheaper to redesign Ramsey to address more RAM. Few
people even have the whole 16megs that they can in their machine.
> OK, I've established that the A4000 is an A3000 with the AA chipset kludged
> in.
No, you've established that you have absolutely not a (ahem) CLUE about
what you're talking about. But, I digress. You've already proven that
many times.
> Now it makes sense to me that it would have cost less in development costs
> to simply leave the A3000's SCSI design there instead of removing it and
> replacing it with something else.
Pretty ridiculous. So your whole bullshit argument revolves around the
bullshit which you've tried to prove with bullshit. Eeew, what did I just
step in?
> The costs of including SCSI in the A4000,
> then, would have been practically zero in development costs.
Just about as much as including IDE, maybe more, considering what IDE
really is. All the s/w work was done by Randell Jesup for the A600 anyways.
> In addition to the costs involved in removing the SCSI subsystem from the
> A4000's design,
...this should read: "...involved in not putting SCSI in there in the first
place"
> though, we also have to consider the costs involved in
> designing the IDE design. These costs would have been practically zero if
> the A4000 had simply used the same IDE design as the A600.
Hardware-wise it's trivial. Software wise it's trivial too- all the work
was already done on the A600.
> The problem is
> that it does not -- the IDE design used in the A4000 is a whole new design.
Wooooooooweeeeee. Big farts. Even if it is a "new design", it still costs
less to put IDE on than SCSI, although I don't agree with the decision on a
design level myself.
> The new design was created by Randall Jessup, and includes extra hardware to
> make the IDE interface and HD look somewhat like a SCSI interface and HD to
> Amiga software.
All that "new design" is in fact "old design" because it was already done
on the A600 which was also announced at the show.
> This is a reasonable effort to make the most of a bad
> situation, IMO,
No, my reply is a reasonable (IMHO) effort to make the most of a bad
situation (more -MB- facts).
> but the simple fact is that a design like this must have cost
> quite a lot to develop,
New machines do have a tendency to be that way.
> and would not have been necessary had the A3000's
> existing SCSI design simply been left in the design for the A4000.
Since your point is moot (as pointed up above), this statement simply does
not apply.
> As Dave Haynie and Randall Jessup have already pointed out, IDE -- even the
> new one in the A4000 -- costs next to nothing in terms of manufacturing costs.
Therefore it will cost less to produce each unit.
> But the development costs involved in creating this IDE design must have been
> very substantial compared to the costs that would have been involved in
> simply carrying over the A3000's existing SCSI design to the A4000.
Development on SCSI was already done. Development on IDE was already done.
Since carrying over SCSI would mean carrying over extra chips like the
WD33C93A/SuperDMAC/glue logic, it would be more expensive than the itty
bitty piece of space on a chip they use for IDE logic.
> These
> development costs are still costs, and Commodore is going to want to recoup
> these costs as quickly as possible.
Yep. Expensive first, cheaper later.
> This means boosting the list prices
> to pay the development costs, and then lowering the list prices later as
> soon as these development costs have been payed for.
Duh.. was Economics one of those courses you weren't sleeping through?
> In the short-term, then,
> the prices on the A4000 and other new systems will be higher than if they
> had used a SCSI design.
Yeah, sure. Whatever.
> ---
> | Marc Barrett -MB- | email: bar...@iastate.edu
> --------------------------------------------------
Glenn Doiron
--
Amiga UUCP+
Origin: uunet!starpt!doiron (Organization:68K Software Development)
BIX: gdoiron
** Not enough memory to perform requested operation. Add 4 megs and retry.
Robert I. Eachus
I don't work for Commodore, and I am not under any non-disclosure,
so I think I can answer. Let's say someone walked into Dave's office
six months ago and said:
"Now that we have the AGA chipset, why don't you see about
designing that upgrade for the 3000..."
Okay, several possibilities to check:
1) Replace existing custom chips, probably with a daughter board
with the new chips directly mounted. Hmmm, to make it work we need
32-bit wide memory replacing the chips on the motherboard, access to
all these signals,...
Three possible answers:
a) There is a signal we didn't know we would need, that is
simply not accessable. (Unlikely.)
b) There is simply not enough clearence to put the new board in.
(Likely.)
c) It would cost too much. (Unlikely.)
d) Timing and lead capacitance make it a nightmare if it works
at all. (Very likely--it might be doable as a hack, but
totally beyond the pale as a field upgrade. You might have
to select parts and do other tweaking.)
2) Put a new board in the CPU slot.
a) There are needed signals not available. (Very likely.)
b) Conflict with new CPU boards...do we put a 68040 on it?
c) Timing and noise problems, see above.
3) Put a board in the video slot.
a) Need DIG, since the custom chips still have to support the
other peripherals. (Certain.)
b) Need to redesign the chips slightly to operate in the new
environment. (Possible.)
4) Replace the motherboard.
a) Not a kludge, in fact a very nice new machine, but the cost
will be VERY high: (new 68030, new 68882, etc., etc.)
So the engineers come back and say that the motherboard upgrade is
the clean solution, and a video board may be possible down the road.
But marketing says:
1) The cost of the motherboard upgrade is just too high, if we do
it, we should release it as a new machine in the 3000 case, and anyone
who wants to upgrade their motherboard can buy one through mainentance
channels. (In the A3000T/040 case, it looks much more attractive.
Commodore may have factored the motherboard upgrade into the current
price.)
2) We are doing DIG, but once that is available the third party
boards will probably have the upgrade market cornered, so there is no
reason to do the chip and board development. If we want to sell to
some of these potential customers, price the A4000 agressively.
Now assuming all this is true, what does it mean for Amiga 3000
owners? They have three choices:
Buy a 4000. Commodore is agressively pushing this on price, and
may do more. If I bought a 3000 intending to get a 68040 board and a
graphics upgrade, $3000 is not bad, and I still have a 3000 to use or
sell... (Not my problem but possibly my solution, I have a 2500/30 at
work.)
Buy a third party graphics board, and hope that the board vendor or
Commodore will provide DIG soon. (Not a bad bet with some of the
graphics vendors. I suspect that AmigaDOS 2.1 is a lot closer to DIG,
and that at worst vendors will need to wait for 3.1 to be able to
provide complete support.
Live with what they have and see what develops. Not a bad call,
since most users don't push the current graphics to the limit. The
3000 is a nice machine and if you are not doing heavy graphics, wait
six months and see what develops.
One last point, everything about the A4000 box screams mid-range.
I'm sure that Commodore considers the A3000T case the high-end box. I
am certain we will see an AGA solution for those users soon, and
Commodore has stated that the A3000T/040 will soon have a new
motherboard...
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
Michael Sinz
>time. That is say I buy one and use the IDE and later decide to get a
>SCSI card. Could I still use the IDE and can I boot off the SCSI and
>use the IDE as a secondary dirve?
Yes, on all counts. You just need to mark the partition you wish to boot
on as the highest priority. We were running some 2091 drives at WOC in
some of the A4000 machines.
/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
| /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
| /// Operating System Development Group |
| /// BIX: msinz UUNET: m...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
|\\\/// Luck sometimes visits a fool, |
| \XX/ but never sits down with him. |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Jeff Hanna
shot holes in MB's lunatic rantings.
Is there a new entry in the Commodore Employee's Handbook that reads
MARC BARRET
Whenever possible, a C= employee must post on the UseNet and show
everyone that Marc Barrett knows nothing about our company and has
never written anything truthful about Commodore, the Amiga, or
any other computer ever invented.
If this isn't in the Employee's Handbook, can you get it put in there?
Please?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+|----------------------|+|------------------------------|+
+| |+| Studio J Video Productions |+
+| Jeff Hanna |+| PO Box 3086 |+
+| Animation Consultant |+| West Lafayette, IN 47906 |+
+| |+| (317) 743-2983 |+
+|----------------------|+|------------------------------|+
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+|-----------------|+|-----------------------------------|+
+| GEnie: J.HANNA5 |+| InterNet: sa...@gn.ecn.purdue.edu |+
+|-----------------|+|-----------------------------------|+
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stefan Boberg
>ahan...@wpi.wpi.edu (Andrew L. Hansford) writes:
>>Question: Can a system support both IDE and SCSI drives at the same
>>time. That is say I buy one and use the IDE and later decide to get a
>>SCSI card. Could I still use the IDE and can I boot off the SCSI and
>>use the IDE as a secondary dirve?
>Yes, on all counts. You just need to mark the partition you wish to boot
>on as the highest priority. We were running some 2091 drives at WOC in
>some of the A4000 machines.
Hmm... I may have missed something, but wouldn't that cause a name-
collision for the device-drivers (scsi.device) since the IDE interface
`impersonates' a SCSI drive??
>| /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
--
Stefan Boberg - AP & EE student at Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden
Author of LhA, ArjA and LhArcA. Co-author of Alien Breed, Project X ...
EMail: bob...@lysator.liu.se, l...@augs.se FIDO: 2:204/404.7
UUCP: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmswe!team17!boberg
Violator
or at least the best answer to how things should be vs how they are going
on in the Amiga computers. I would very much like to hear what he has to
say about the A4000 design and the possibilities available for AA chipset
upgrade for the older Amiga models.
Mike
John Dudley
Erik Funkenbusch
>Dave , why was the AT&T DSP taken out of the A4000's design? The new Atari
>machines have one. And what were the other things in the A3000+ design
>left out of the A4000?
>
>certainly around at the time of the A3000's creation. I also remember you
>doing some serious ragging on IDE in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy. What changed
>your mind?
It's already been pointed out that IDE was a cost reduction move, and i'd bet
that SCSI-II wasn't ready yet for the 4000, and they NEEDED to get the machine
out there to show people they were working on things. Most likely the same
reason the DSP is still a few months off.
.--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| UUCP: {amdahl!tcnet, crash}!orbit!pnet51!chucks | "I know he's come back |
| ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!chu...@nosc.mil | from the dead, but do |
| INET: chu...@pnet51.orb.mn.org | you really think he's |
|-------------------------------------------------| moved back in?" |
| Amiga programmer at large, employment options | Lou Diamond Philips in |
| welcome, inquire within. | "The First Power". |
`--------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Colin Adams
Dave recently said in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy that it would be possible to
add the AGA chipset to the A3000 on a Zorro III card. Some changes
to the system software would be needed though and software that banged
the hardware wouldn't work.
Dave *only* said it was possible, not that they were doing it, or intended
to do it. Personally, I hope they don't. C= should spend their
resources on creating new systems, not prolonging the life of old ones. The
last thing we need is 4.0 (or anything else) to be delayed because C=
have wasted a couple of months getting AGA in the A3000 to please a small
group of vocal disgruntled users.
These are only my opinions, A3000 owners are welcome to disagree.
Paul Gittings
>
> The AA chipset is hardly "kludged" in. The form of the AA chipset is something
> me, Greg, and the AA people (Bob Raible and Bill Thomas) discussed at length
> back before there was an AA. It was designed to drop fairly easily into an
> A3000-class machine, much like ECS did.
Dave,
The A3000 is an "A3000-class" machine !:-) but the current offical word from
C= is that the AA chipset won't work in it!:-( Is the AA chipset you refer
to the same as the one released (AGA)? Or does C= really mean that THEY
won't be the ones to come up with the solution?
[ more stuff deleted ]
> Correct. In point of fact, the AA chipset was designed for the A3000, as I
> explained above.
Same questions.
[lots of stuff deleted ]
> --
> Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
> {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
> "Work like a horse, drink like a fish" - Psychefunkapus
Cheers,
Paul Gittings
Telectronics Pacing Systems- 7 Sirius Rd, Lane Cove, NSW 2066, Australia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_ | pa...@tplrd.tpl.oz.au OR pa...@tps.com
_ // Amiga users | 61-2-4136963 (voice: work)----------------------------
\X/ make it happen| 61-2-4136868 (fax) |A Welsh/Canadian/Australian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No matter how much I beg, Telectronics will not allow me to express any
opinions on its behalf.
Michael Sinz
>m...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz) writes:
>
>>ahan...@wpi.wpi.edu (Andrew L. Hansford) writes:
>>>Question: Can a system support both IDE and SCSI drives at the same
>>>time. That is say I buy one and use the IDE and later decide to get a
>>>SCSI card. Could I still use the IDE and can I boot off the SCSI and
>>>use the IDE as a secondary dirve?
>
>>Yes, on all counts. You just need to mark the partition you wish to boot
>>on as the highest priority. We were running some 2091 drives at WOC in
>>some of the A4000 machines.
>
> Hmm... I may have missed something, but wouldn't that cause a name-
>collision for the device-drivers (scsi.device) since the IDE interface
>`impersonates' a SCSI drive??
Nope. This is the cool part of our scsi.device. Since you could always
place more than one A2091 in a machine (few do, but you can) the scsi.device
will notice if there is already one there and make it's name 2nd.scsi.device
(and so on...) It seems to work fine here. (A2091 in an A4000...)
/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
| /// Michael Sinz - Senior Amiga Systems Engineer |
| /// Operating System Development Group |
| /// BIX: msinz UUNET: m...@cbmvax.commodore.com |
|\\\/// |
| \XX/ Quantum Physics: The Dreams that Stuff is made of. |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Dave Haynie
>> the A4000 Dave Hay...@cbmvax.commo (6491)
>> Correct. In point of fact, the AA chipset was designed for the A3000,
>> as I explained above.
Note that what I explained is that the AA chipset was designed to drop
neatly into the A3000 architecure. "Neat" on Apollo display screen with the
Agnus page being change to an Alice page doesn't necessarily equate to
"neat" as a drop-in hack to existing systems.
>In that case, although we know C-A has no intention of doing it, it
>would be interesting if you, or one of the other CA engineers, felt
>disposed to muse about the possibility of a third party developer making
>a kludge to get the AA set into a 3000.
I'm always able to help out developers with information they would need
to do this kind of thing.
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
"The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
"You lie so much you believe yourself" -Metallica
Dave Haynie
>Dave , why was the AT&T DSP taken out of the A4000's design?
The AT&T DSP was never in the A4000 design. It was in the A3000+ design
mainly because I put it there. But I can put practically anything I like
into a development platform, we're probably only going to ever make 50 or
so of such a PCB. The Marketing People have to decide what's actually in
a production unit.
>The new Atari machines have one.
The Atari machines have a baby DSP, assuming they ship as rumored. Pretty
good as a sound processor, not much for complex or precision high speed
mathemetics.
>> The AA chipset is hardly "kludged" in. The form of the AA chipset is something
>> me, Greg, and the AA people (Bob Raible and Bill Thomas) discussed at length
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Commodore has only 2 people working on designing new graphics chips?
C= had two people on two chips. Not especially complex chips, either --
Lisa is like 125,000 transistors, Alice probably less than 60,000. Those
two guys had working prototypes something like 6 months after the project
began. You don't need zillions of designers to build every little thing,
in fact, too many designers get in the way of things. What you do need is
a couple of smart people who work hard (Ok, they don't have to be here at
2:30AM, they don't have to sleep 4 hours or less, but it sometimes helps)
and commitment on the part of the company to make the designs things real.
>Dave, if IDE is so great then why didnt the A3000 design use it.
I'm not claiming IDE is "so great", just that it has its place in the
world.
>I also remember you doing some serious ragging on IDE in
>comp.sys.amiga.advocacy.
IDE is what it is. When compared to A3000 SCSI, IDE sucks system bandwidth.
The system winds up waiting for IDE, since transfers are driven by the CPU.
I don't like the idea of the system waiting for anything, even you typing
at the keyboard. So I'm not a big fan of programmed I/O in general, and
IDE is generally driven programmed I/O. I have even worse things to say
about SCSI that's driven programmed I/O, like the SCSI you find on most
Macs. At least IDE has a 16-bit data path, with SCSI, you get an 8-bit data
path.
>What made you change your mind?
I'm also a big fan of modular systems. My ideal motherboard has very little
on it, probably some CIA chips, a very programmable DRAM controller, and a
motherboard controller that worries about letting modules talk to one another.
In such a machine, everything that's likely to change or likely to be optional
plugs in a slot of some kind: Amiga chips, CPU, expanison, disk interface,
DSP, whatever. This is just a model, of course, it isn't necessarily possible
to put everything on an option card, since this can raise the cost of the
fully integrated system.
Anyway, in this senario, something like IDE can give you a free hard disk
controller. So it goes on the motherboard, along with all the other stuff
that won't really need replacing. If you want SCSI, you pay for it, but
otherwise, just to have hard disk, no appreciable extra cost is incurred.
This lets me build a more powerful system for less money. That is a good
thing.
Ultimately, the cost of the SCSI solution, the likelihood of its being
replaced, and the target of the machine would determine where it should
go. I would have put SCSI on the A4000 motherboard had I my druthers, but
on the other hand, we'll probably wind up with SCSI controllers on Zorro III
that have much greater performance than the A3000 SCSI implementation we
would have stuck with for any new A3000-architecture system.
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
"The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
Dave Haynie
>Pardon my ignorance in asking since I have no imformation on the AA chip set
>and can't guess at the feasibility.
>I have a few questions:
>Is it a 32 bit data bus?
Chip RAM, the CPU, and the Lisa chip see a 32-bit data bus. Alice and Paula
see a 16-bit bus, though of course Alice manages 32-bit fetches for Lisa.
>I assume the chip command/register bus (terminology?) is now 16 bit from 8 or
>is it a completely new approach used?
Things are still managed on an 8-bit RGA bus.
>Is the data bus 14 MHz zero wait state ie 60 - 70 ns DRAMS? I've heard
>something about it being a 28 MHz bus, does it use a burst mode?
The bus still works like a 14MHz 68000 cycle, eg, four clocks at 14.3MHz
defines a cycle. However, within each of these 280ns cycles, Lisa can
fetch 64-bits of data, since the DRAM can be ready with a page-mode
style fetch.
>Why can't it handle any line frequencies above 31kHz?
It can, far as I know. The horizontal and vertical frequencies in AA,
like ECS, are very flexible. What's not very flexible is your choice
of pixel size. You can have 35ns, 70ns, or 140ns pixels. Arrange them
however you like, work the mathematics, and you'll discover the
horizontal and vertical rates necessary to support that particular display.
>Is the 640x400 interlaced with a deinterlacer?
Depends. There is no "de-interlacer" in the A3000 sense. You can have a
640x400 interlaced display if you want one. Or it can be non-interlaced.
There is a special mode to allow non-interlaced 70ns or 140ns pixel modes
to scan double, such that software can promote non-interlaced NTSC or PAL
screens to non-interlaced 31kHz screens without aspect ratio distortion.
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
"The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
Dave Haynie
>Check comp.sys.amiga.advocacy..... he's still there and ticking!
Perhaps I should re-arrange my .newsrc file...
Been kinda busy lately. Actually, since 1986 or so, but especially lately.
Somehow I ended up blowing off tonight's night-time work and just reading
news. Seems I came back to work just to grab a few papers and files. But,
you know what they say, "All work and no angst makes Dave a dull boy".
Violator
wanted to see one to two years ago and now its here and people are still
complaining. Granted its not exactly what I wanted to see but take a
look at other computers. Lets say Apple, no one seems to complain too
much about thier machines. How does it go again? Mac 512ke, Mac Plus,
Mac SE, Mac Classic, Mac Classic II? What the hell is that? Mac LC
Mac LC II? Give commodore just a little credit?
Mike
Joel Edward Swan
>wanted to see one to two years ago and now its here and people are still
I think you hit the nail on the head to answer your own question.
>complaining. Granted its not exactly what I wanted to see but take a
>look at other computers. Lets say Apple, no one seems to complain too
>much about thier machines. How does it go again? Mac 512ke, Mac Plus,
>Mac SE, Mac Classic, Mac Classic II? What the hell is that? Mac LC
>Mac LC II? Give commodore just a little credit?
How about Quadra? (I'm not a mac freak so I don't know if that would
qualify too.)
Look at all those models and upgrades in the same time we saw the 1000,
500/2000, 3000.
>
>Mike
>
I'm not against the 4000. Some GREAT stuff in there. However, your
arguement seems to go more against what you said than for.
-Joel
-------
========================================================================
/ Joel E. Swan....Pres./...Media Specialties, Ltd., Oak Forest, IL.USA /
/ & Senior Producer..../...Moody Broadcasting Network, Chicago, IL. USA /
/ Portal ID: joeles..../...joe...@cup.portal.com /
========================================================================
***** PORTAL NOW HAS TELNET, IRC AND FTP ACCESS FOR ITS USERS! *****
ALL FISH DISKS, LARGEST AMIGA SOFTWARE BASE, NIGHTLY CONFERENCES!
FOR <$2/HOUR AT 9600BPS! (w/PCPursuit)
Michael van Elst
>The Atari machines have a baby DSP, assuming they ship as rumored. Pretty
>good as a sound processor, not much for complex or precision high speed
>mathemetics.
Hrmpf... How comes that I use them for real-time (4-8fps) image processing ?
Regards,
--
Michael van Elst
UUCP: universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
Internet: p55...@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
"A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
Benoit Sevigny
>Note that what I explained is that the AA chipset was designed to drop
>neatly into the A3000 architecure. "Neat" on Apollo display screen
>--
>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
> "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh BIX: hazy
> "You lie so much you believe yourself" -Metallica
So you guys at CBM are working with Mentor Graphics, aren't you?
--
-=* *=-
__ Skipping every ?86 numbered lines in your code will remove all your
__/// remaining bugs and bottlenecks 8^)
\XX/ Benoit W Sevigny, software engineering student, sev...@info.polymtl.ca
Richar...@bbs.actrix.gen.nz
> mainly because I put it there. But I can put practically anything I like
> into a development platform, we're probably only going to ever make 50 or
> so of such a PCB. The Marketing People have to decide what's actually in
> a production unit.
What is the estimated price for the ATT DSP board for the A4000?
Less than $400US I hope so everyone can afford it. Will it run on the
A3000 too and be ready by the end of this year?
>
> Anyway, in this senario, something like IDE can give you a free hard disk
> controller. So it goes on the motherboard, along with all the other stuff
> that won't really need replacing. If you want SCSI, you pay for it, but
> otherwise, just to have hard disk, no appreciable extra cost is incurred.
> This lets me build a more powerful system for less money. That is a good
> thing.
The IDE is not free if it uses up 50% of the $500 68040's time
and still only manages mediocre transfer speed! It is a waste of
the $300 IDE drive because everyone will avoid using it. Reports
from the Pasadena WOC indicated that the A4000 took 7-8 seconds to
load small files. What was the transfer speed of the drive and
how large was the buffer? Eight seconds for a 512 KB file would
mean the transfer speed is only 64 KB per second? This is a
$3000 machine we're talking about!
Benoit Sevigny
>>The Atari machines have a baby DSP, assuming they ship as rumored. Pretty
>>good as a sound processor, not much for complex or precision high speed
>>mathemetics.
That baby DSP is the same one we find in the NeXT Cube and the SGI Indigo.
I would be glad having a 56001 in my Amiga, it's still a 15+ mips fixed
point processor.
I agree that it's not suited for high precision computation, so if you want
more for future Amigas, you better come up with something like a C40 or a
96000. Otherwise you will deceive me.
Steve Sheldon
>>
>> Anyway, in this senario, something like IDE can give you a free hard disk
>> controller. So it goes on the motherboard, along with all the other stuff
>> that won't really need replacing. If you want SCSI, you pay for it, but
>> otherwise, just to have hard disk, no appreciable extra cost is incurred.
>> This lets me build a more powerful system for less money. That is a good
>> thing.
> The IDE is not free if it uses up 50% of the $500 68040's time
>and still only manages mediocre transfer speed! It is a waste of
>the $300 IDE drive because everyone will avoid using it. Reports
>from the Pasadena WOC indicated that the A4000 took 7-8 seconds to
>load small files. What was the transfer speed of the drive and
>how large was the buffer? Eight seconds for a 512 KB file would
>mean the transfer speed is only 64 KB per second? This is a
>$3000 machine we're talking about!
Oh give me a break. IDE is not that slow. I'm currently get transfer
speeds of 800 Kb/s from a Western Digital Caviar-80 plugged into a
386SX-16.
That's about 200 Kb/s faster than I ever got with a Quantum LPS 105S
plugged into a Xetec Fasttrak-500.
Actually I truly doubt that given an A4000 with a 100 Meg IDE drive,
and an A4000 with a 100 Meg SCSI drive, you'd see much difference in
performance between the two. Whatever performance SCSI may give with
DMA access will be overshadowed by 8 bit accessing, vs. 16 bit under
IDE.
There is, of course, SCSI-2. But I don't know if there is any SCSI-2
adaptors available for the Amiga. I also don't know of any SCSI-2
harddrives of only 100 Megabytes. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
But I'm sure that a SCSI-2 host adaptor, or even SCSI would have
probably added $200-400 to the cost of the A4000. Plus this would have
added to the development time, and we'd probably not see the A4000 for
another couple months, or more.
--
Steve Sheldon she...@iastate.edu
Iowa Cooperative Soil Survey Resource Unit
2142 Agronomy, Iowa State University (515) 294-5429
Paul Griswold
DH> mainly because I put it there. But I can put practically anything I like
DH> into a development platform, we're probably only going to ever make 50 or
DH> so of such a PCB. The Marketing People have to decide what's actually in
DH> a production unit.
DH>
How do you feel about the Marketing People doing this? I have felt for a long time that the marketing folks at C= were some of the worst I have ever seen. I have spoken with a couple of them and they seemed very close minded when it came to pushing the Amiga.
I work in commercial film and I am very aware of marketing and the psychology behind it... I can't see any it Commodore's.
So what do you guys think?
Paul Griswold
--- Via UCI v1.02 (C-Net Amiga)
alex matthews
That's really silly. I don't know a damn thing really about the difference
between IDE and SCSI, but my old amiga 1000 with an IDE drive hacked onto
it doesn't take more than 1 second to load ANYTHING, no accelerator, no
nothing. There must have been something else wrong.
--
*****Test Sig*****
Ed Brown
> Oh give me a break. IDE is not that slow. I'm currently get transfer
> speeds of 800 Kb/s from a Western Digital Caviar-80 plugged into a
> 386SX-16.
Ok but so what? You obviously were not at WOC in Pasadena nor have you
seen the A4000 with its IDE drive in action (inaction?). I agree that IDE
is adequate on a PC clown. I have one at work that is acceptable if not
speedy... on a 486-33. Whether or not this applies to the A4000 is in
dispute at the moment. It appears very much not to be an apples to apples
comparison... so to speak. Although I wasn't able to get to the WOC show
and try it for myself, someone I know went and was definitely unimpressed
with the A4000's HD and sound capability. Everything else looked good to
him. If there wasn't at least something to it, he would not have mentioned
it. Maybe C= ought to offer A4000S and A4000I models? Let the marketplace
decide the fate of IDE on the A4000... as it did on the fate of the 16 MHz
A3000.
* Edward E. Brown II * Internet: e...@pro-freedom.cts.com *
* Chemist On A Mission From GOD! * FidoNet: 1:105/135 *
* ------------------------------ * --------------------------------- *
*EVERYTHING* is radioactive and toxic... it's just a matter of dose*
jeffrey.p.grundvig
>>>The Atari machines have a baby DSP, assuming they ship as rumored. Pretty
>>>good as a sound processor, not much for complex or precision high speed
>>>mathemetics.
>
>I would be glad having a 56001 in my Amiga, it's still a 15+ mips fixed
>
>more for future Amigas, you better come up with something like a C40 or a
>96000. Otherwise you will deceive me.
If you need to do floating point, those 15+ MIPS aren't going to give
many MFLOPS. The 96000 and the C40, are powerful and expensive floating
point devices, and unless you are gong to take advantage of all their
features you'd be better off with C30 or 32C which are also single cycle
floating point chips but less expensive. Or if your smart you'd seriously
consider the 3210 which is even less expensive, was specifically designed
to work as a coprocessor in a PC environment, comes with some nice DSP
routines and host interface software, and still gives you
single cycle floating point!
jeff grundvig
j...@aloft.att.com
John Ata - FSO
>Again, Mark, why do you always post stuff you have absolutely no knowledge
>about? Especially things like the genesis of the A4000 and AA, a subject upon
>which only a very few people could produce a real authoritative post.
THEORY: Maybe by making absurd statements, a person is trying to
goad Commodore into releasing technical information that s/he
doesn't have. I wonder, though, if they ever thought of just
asking?
>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
--
John G. Ata - Technical Consultant | Internet: a...@hfsi.com
HFS, Inc. VA20 | UUCP: uunet!hfsi!ata
7900 Westpark Drive MS:601 | Voice: (703) 827-6810
McLean, VA 22102 | FAX: (703) 827-3729
Benoit Sevigny
Benoit Sevigny
>many MFLOPS. The 96000 and the C40, are powerful and expensive floating
>point devices, and unless you are gong to take advantage of all their
>features you'd be better off with C30 or 32C which are also single cycle
>floating point chips but less expensive. Or if your smart you'd seriously
>consider the 3210 which is even less expensive, was specifically designed
>to work as a coprocessor in a PC environment, comes with some nice DSP
>routines and host interface software, and still gives you
>single cycle floating point!
>
Then, speaking of performance/$ ratio, I'd suggest to take a look at the
C31, at less than $1 per MFLOP, it's a winner. I use it at work (and also
the 56001) to do real-time speach compression. It is code compatible with
the C30 (altough it !only! has one data bus and one address bus instead of
two of each) and it delivers 33 MFLOPS for $30!!!
Also, TI's C compiler is a winner when it comes to use the parallel
capabilities of the chip (far better than Moto's GCC56k). The only problem
is that TI still can't keep up with the demand.
John Bono
horsepower as the 25mhz 3000, but once an '040 is dropped in, you can't tell
the difference between the machines. The main reason why the A4000 has IDE(and
while I thought it was a dumb idea at the time, I don't anymore) is so that
*low end* machines can be introduced and the costs kept down. Remember that
CBM has stated flatly that SCSI-II will be introduced soon as a Zorro III
board. As a result, you will see a lot of mid-range machines with '020s and
'030s in them that are based on IDE, and eventually the 4000 will be introduced
with SCSI II. In addition, it appears that the reason for the introduction of
the A4000 *now* is not as a highend multimedia system, but more as a pathfinder
system, a system whose main purpose is to give a spotlight onto the Amiga's
future. It is a *major* redesign from the A3000, and what isn't on it is as
important as what is. While it supports 24-bit graphics, it is still stuck
with the old paula chip. While it has a 25mhz '040, it also has an IDE
controller on the motherboard. The CPU is on a daughterboard along with the
RAM, indicating that there is upward and downward expansion. The machine has a
layout similar to the A2000, indicating that it might be considered the
replacement for that machine. The 4000 isn't high end, it is a rather
convoluted midrange.
John
Ed Brown
> Hey, Hold on there! I bought a 16mhz 3000!
No prob. It's a decent machine; just not one that is produced any more.
> ...once an '040 is dropped in, you can't tell the difference...
How true... and would I ever LOVE to do that to my 25 MHz A3000. Of
course, there probably will be 33 and 40 MHz versions of the 040
eventually. ;-)
> The main reason why the A4000 has IDE(and while I thought it was
> a dumb idea at the time, I don't anymore) is so that *low end* machines
> can be introduced and the costs kept down.
Ok, that's the plan. But in the opinion of MANY Amiga users, it IS kind of
a dumb idea. The savings seem miniscule for the resulting loss in
performance and expandability. If you want a CD-ROM drive, tape drive,
etc. you'll just have to buy a SCSI card anyway. How about that IDE HD?
Have to sell it and then buy a new SCSI drive? Hmmm...
> The 4000 isn't high end, it is a rather convoluted midrange.
Agreed. Hence the confusion that parts of this design is causing. While
most Amiga users are not engineers, systems analysts, CS, etc. we ARE
fairly computer literate. At least sufficiently so to at least question C=
when something looks flakey... and IDE looks that way to lots of us.
Nice as the A4000 is, I feel no real need to rush out and buy one. It
definitely appears to be a platform still under construction. Once the
video standard (DIG/RTG), improved sound, and the SCSI things have been
solved to general satisfaction, we can worry about floppy down that long
green. I guess I'll just have to suffer along with my A3000 25-100 until
then. ;-)
Michael....@cs.cmu.edu
> the A4000 Ed Br...@pro-freedom.cts (1899)
> How about that IDE HD? Have to sell it and then buy a new SCSI drive?
Can't see why. From what I've read, there's plenty of space inside for
both the IDE drive as well as a scsi drive (and a CDRom drive). I'd tend
to keep it and use it to store things like games, where disk speed isn't
the problem. I've got a seagate scsi drive in my a3000 as well as the
quantum it came with, because I had it already, and if you've got it,
you might as well use it.
The IDE thing won't affect whether I get a 4000. The only objection I
have to IDE is that there seem to be 400 incompatible versions of it,
and I can't tell which is which (I tried to get a disk controller for
one of my father's PCs, but gave up in confusion). But that's not a
problem if you get the drive and controller with the computer.
Brett Bourbin
Sinz) writes:
> What you call
> the "SCSI" work-a-like was work that Randall had done even for the A600.
> This is why the IDE driver is called scsi.device. HDToolBox works with
> it unmodified. In fact, programs that do scsi-direct do too. And this
> is true in the A600 and the A4000.
This is interesting. What happens when, like any high-end workstation user
would do, I add my Zorro III SCSI-II card to my A4000? Does this mean that
the scsi.device now does IDE AND SCSI work? How will this impact 3rd party
developers?
-- __
Brett Bourbin \ / /(_ /\/ 11440 Commerce Park Drive
br...@visix.com \/ / __)/ /\ Reston, Virginia 22091
..uupsi!visix!brett Software Inc 703.758.8230
Ed Brown
> drive as well as a scsi drive (and a CDRom drive).
Yeah, IF you want two drives. If not...
> The only objection I have to IDE is that there seem to be 400
> incompatible versions of it...
There's always that... and isn't that ONE of the reasons for SCSI in the
first place? Of course, the PC crowd even managed to muck that up with
4000 different flavors of SCSI! :-/