[From    ] Dave Mitchell[REC'D] [MSG 375 OF 543]
[To] Nick Blazanovic[Reply To 371]  [Has Reply 434]
[Date    ] 20 Mar 92  12:54:43
[Subject ] Re: New Amigas

Ok, this here is from UseNet, and it's not a joke this time...
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From: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: CeBIT, A600 was shown (LONG) !
Keywords: cebit
Message-ID: <1992Mar13.015025.6153@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de>
Date: 13 Mar 92 01:50:25 GMT
Sender: news@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de (News Administrator)
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld, Technische Fakultaet.
Lines: 178


First of all, get a cup of coffee and a bag of chips, before you continue to
read on here :-)

Today i went on the CeBIT exhibition, the worlds biggest Computer and Bureau
Communications exhibition (500000 visitors) in Hannover/Germany. Of course i
went to Commodore, i even spoke half an hour to Uwe Trebien,  German Commo
guy, very neat and competent. We spoke about, all of you may know now, the new
A600 and A600HD, he really answered to all of my questions, even a bit too
much, and he asked me not to post about the price and about some things which
could be happen in near  future :-)

So there he is, the new treasure of Commodore, 3 pieces were shown on the
CeBIT brandnew, just next to the evergreen C64 (most sold Computer of the
time) :)
He looks like an A500(+) with a cutted keyboard, the numeric-keypad is
missing, the cursor-keys have benn moved just right to the ALT-key, the
Help-Key is moved next to the F10-Key, DEL is placed near BS. 1 cm (half an
Inch) next to the  RETURN-Key the Case is finished. Above the F-Keys, there is
only 4 cm  (One Inch ?) left, then the case is finished, there too.
The thingie has been shrunked colossaly, it's even smaller than the C64 :-)

On the right there is, as usual, the Floppy, a bit sloping, hope this makes no
trouble, the eject-button has been performed (small detail :-), the  unmissing
Mouse/Joystick-connectors are there, too.
On the left side then could be found the senstation, a Memory-Flash-Card-Port,
a small hole of  4 x 0.5 cm wide for those Flash-Ram-Cards.The connector is
also known as "PCMCIA", is compatible to the industrie standard, is being
constructed only Intel (as far as i know) yet. Also only 0.5 MB (?) are avail
yet, but Cards upto 128 MB (!) shall be avail in near future, though very
expensive and not an alternative to a HD. The Flash-RAM can be accessd as RAM
and as a Device ,e.g. Pseudo-HD. As a good example may be seen the game a
Gamecompany showed us: Plug in the Flash-RAM, reboot the Amiga, and within a
second, the game was ready to play. Officially it has been noticed that a
Flash- RAm can't be read and copyied to HD or Floppy, so there is a nice
Anti-Pirate Game possible, though i doubt that, there is already Hardware to
read out the contents of such cards avail. Interesting feature is, that you
can plug off the card from your Amiga and go to another Amiga, teh content is
stored via a buildt-in batterie.
Commo is not the first company using Falsh-Cards, see HP and other
Laptop-Companies, as they have a common standard there might be a neat new
media coming up !) The Flash-Cards from the CDTV are (or will be) compatible.
This Flash-Card-Port is the ONLY expansion-port of the A600, the old
expansion- port of the A599(+) is gone.

Let's look on the rear:
 Monitor, serial, parallel, sound, power, Floppy, notin new here.
 New are: TV-Modulator (Antenna) and Composit-Video-Output (FBAS), from now on
father's TV is occupied :-)

So far nothing new from the utside, ah,no, a new LED :-)
This one is for the HD, yes the A600HD has a buildt-in HD! (The A600 can
easily be upgraded (software ?) ) One may ask, where to move that HD ?
It's a 2" (Inch) HD , i was told, left from the Flopper.
And what a connector ? AT-Bus (aka IDE or 40-pin connector) ! Really
surprising! As there is SCSI on it's way, they begin with AT-Bus ?
Well, (the athor knows about) only 2 Pal's and some 74LS are needed, this is
simple to addm the controller is on the HD itself. The HD's are very common on
the PC-market (almost 80% of the ne ones have IDE HD's), they are cheaper than
the SCSI-pendants and are almost of the same speed, i expect about 800- to 900
k/sec xfer-rate. I don't know if it runs DMA (forgot to ask).
On the market, there are not so much 2" HD's yet, Conner and Quantum inbetween
them so there is quality :) From 20 to 120 MB is every size available.  Rests
the question, how to connect a second HD's the controller allows this.

Just looked on the bottom, the typical lid for the Memory-expansion can be
seen, but uh .. THe connector is NOT the same .. They had to build a bew
one...

Well, i couldn't open it ( pity :-) but i was told that the inner has
completely redesigned. Only the ROM-chip is still the same. The rest (the
wohle rest!) is SMD (surface mounted devices, glued and soldered), all custom
chips are in SMD form now. (still, they consume much energy). This means:
Modern technologie, saves much place and fast assembling (Taiwan, eh ? :-).
A laptop can't be buildt with that, but a portable, at least, the basic
technologie is done. One problem: A shooted CIA is not easy to replace :-)

Okay, now i just take the Commodore-Advertisement, and type the official
Dates:
 Hardware:A600 (HD)
 Prozessor:68000/16 Bit
 CoPro:Nix.
 tfrequenz:7.14 MHz
 Main Mem:1 MB
 max. ext.:10 MB
 Harddrive (HD):20-120MB
 CD-ROM:Nope (No expansion-port-version of A570 CD-ROM yet)
 Floppy:880 KB (The software allows 1.76 MB of course)
 Mem-Card-Interface:     512KB - 128 MB (Flash-RAM)
 Erw. Slots:Nope
 CPU-Slot:Nope
 SCSI-Interface:Nope
 Serial RS232:1
 Par. Centronics:1
 RGB-Analog:1
 PAL Composit:1
 HF-Modulator:1
 Midi-In/Out:Nope
 Size BxTxH:36 x 24 x 7 cm (sorry for metrics :-)
 NT/Watt:N.M.
 Workbench 1.3:Nope
 Workbench 2.0:Yes
 Unix V.4 & X Win:Nope :-)
 Standard-colors:4096
 optionale colorscale:   Nope
 Video-Imagefreq.:50 Bilder /sec
 Genlock, optional:Yep
 Stereo Audio:8 Bit
 AMIGA VISION, optional: Ya

Mouse not mentioned ? Stillthe standard-two-button mouse (the old design).

So, this it was first of all. Had thanked Uwe , and been off to see the other
halls full of Computers and incridable PC's :)
(saw the new SG 'Crimson' , nice machine, DEC annoncd 300 MIPs Alpha ...)

Then, as arranged, we (some of the german internet/usenet/irc-net) met at the
Unix-Amiga, where we also met Dr. P. Kittel, the already famous Commodore guy.
Well, we chatted around (some of us for the first time via voice :-), and had
much fun..

Then i gave Peter a hot one, asking him to show us the A600 with WB 2.1 (!) he
uncarfully mentioned :-) Kind as he is, he moved us to the A600, spoke some
words with the Bitmapbrother-guy, that one ripped off his Flash-Ram-Game and
thus the A600 was bootd from his internal HD with Wb 2.1. The Version was alas
checked and showed us (officially released from Commo-West-Chester) this:
KS 37.300 , WB 38.17
Heh :-) Fast, the locale.library was found, from now on we had german (and
many other european languages are avail) menues and textes in the requesters
and programms.
We found a sound.prefs, Postscript-Prefs, CrossDos-Prefs (!), new ScreenModes
(of which even Peter didn't knew the effects yet, e.g. Euro72 and Euro36 :-).
We saw a new drawer 'Storage'. Aha, from now on the mountlist is obsolete,
just copy an icon from 'Storage' into 'Devs' and from next boot on, the device
is mounted automagically (such as wbstartup starts on WB-load),
Mountlist-entries in Tooltypes.
Somting new in the other drawers?
Yes, a WB-guided 'Format'. Oh ? Device CC0: ? Aha, the Flash-RAM, fast
clicked, we found out that the Flash-RAM can eitehr been formatted as RAM or
as a 'Pseudo-HD'. BTW, all programms are supported by locale.library, all
textes (hardly translated from Peter :) in german (or whatever language).

Well, i fastly tried out my ASwarmII and found it run's on WB 2.1, even with
the new screenmodes (NO Modes.list in WBstartup anymore) (sorry for that
advertisment :-) Couldn't find the Amiga-guide yet, but we were told that this
comes soon (hopefully).
While we're on Blankers, the Commo-Blanker (still 10 kb huge :-) is a , hm.. a
Spliner-Clone :-)

Very neat! Couldn't imagine any progress in 2.04 ? Now here is 2.1 ! :)

Well, that's it then.

Was it worth it ? I think so. The A600 gives me hope for newer Amiga's.
I think the SMD Chips are a huge step into a better future ( I have SMD Chips
on my good ol Omti-Controller :-) The Flash-RAM .. we will see about,
expansion for other Amiga's to use Flash-RAM won't be taht easy, you need a
device-driver, which is included in the 37.300 ROM ..

For those who can't wait to see sopme pictures: Check ab20.lac.nasa.gov
/incoming/amiga/A600*
Some kind guy uploaded a scanned copy of the images shown in a german
Amiga-Mag.

*Yawn* Thanx for reading upto here! Flames to Sys:trashcan or alt.flames :)
Comments to this group.

Bis die Tage.

--
Markus IllenseerPhone: (+49 521) 106-2933(internal only);
-5329
Universitaet BielefeldFax: (+49 521) 106-2992
Technische FakultaetEMail: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Angewandte InformatikSnailMail: Postfach 8640, D-4800 BIELEFELD 1
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Tah Dah. All the info you could want... or maybe not.

 Dave?
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