#A5000 rumor
12 messages in this thread
To anyone who may be interested;
I pulled this off of the AMIGABBS in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I think
someone here is Putting their dreams down on paper (phosphor?). Would any
of you care to comment on the feasibility of such a system? Might make for
an interesting thread.
Charlie.
*****************************************************************
*********** First reports of the A5000 ************************
*****************************************************************
Commodore have gone for much like the A2000 large case to contain the
power of this new machine. on the front panel it supports two 3.5" drive
(one as standard) and two 5.25" (one holding a CD-Drive). This is the
first machine to really support multi-tasking with it's three processors
on board.
Processors
———-
The A5000 will incorperate the new motorola 68060 + two 68EC040
processors, the '060' is clocked at over 35MHz and the two '040' clocked
at 25Mhz will give the A5000 a total speed at over 60MHz. The '060' with
sit on a seperate card in the cpu slot (as in the A4000) and both the
'040' will sit on the motherboard. The '040' have been design to help the
'060' ,this will be most evident at times of heavy multi-tasking. As a
result of this configuration the A5000 will have a new kickstart.
Kickstart/Workbench
——————-
The A5000 will have kickstart/workbench 4.0 (beta version has 3.2). This
kickstart is required to control the three processors , earlier kickstarts
will not be able to access the '040' (but the '060' can). This kickstart
will not be released for the older machines although 4.1 will. This
kickstart/workbench will enable the '040' to be assigned to different
tasks and as shiped one will handle all screen and sound processing and
the other will handle all of the I/O devices. This kickstart is a 1Mb chip
and will be shipped on the hard drive (to be confirmed). If it is released
in chip form then the chip will be placed on it's own card. This kickstart
will have a user-selectable kickstart screen so the user can select which
kickstart to load (either in slot or on harddrive) and the A5000 has been
tested with kickstart 1.2 upwards so there will be no more compatability
problems.
Chipset
——-
Commodore have done it again in changing the chipset as there are several
new chips. The A5000 with workbench 4 is now capable of operating in all
modes with a 512 colour pallet. To maintain the speed require to operate
in this mode one of the '040' can be assigned to the screen display (as it
is shipped). The maximum screen resolution is 4096 x 4096 with over 32
million colours on screen. This new chipset will be able to detect which
chipset it should use (orig. ,ECS ,super-ECS or AGA , super AGA ) by
detecting which kickstart is currently running or which is selected at a
cold boot.
Ram
—
As the new chipset has a higher resolution and more colours more chip ram
is required and commodore have responded by having 16Mb of chip ram on the
motherboard (expandable to 64Mb) and 16Mb of fast ram (theoretically
expandable to 1024Mb, tested to 256Mb). The chip and fast ram have been
organised on a 32-bit wide structure as in the A3000 + A4000.
Drives
——
The harddrive interface is the new scsi2 standard with a 210Mb slimline
hardrive mounted as standard. The floppy drive is a high density type and
the CD-drive is a standard A2000 internal drive.
Sound
—–
The sound is now 16-bit as the A4000 was supposed to have.
Internal Connectors
——————-
There are eight zorro III expansion slots with three IBM slots in parallel
with three zorro slots. There is no cpu slot as the '060' is on it's own
board and thus can easily replaced. If the kickstart is to be shipped on
the harddrive there will be an empty slot to place a new kickstart.
External Connectors
——————-
It has all the standard ports (disk drive, serial, etc.) and the keyboard
connector (same pins as the A4000) at the back, the mouse ports are on the
right side towards the back.
Price
—–
Well that depends on what pack you want as as of this moment there are two
1 all above = $3499 (Appox.)
2 all above plus
Amax v3.0 Mac emulator (100% compatable with all known software) +
Golden gate IBM emulator = $3999 (Approx.)(uses two zorro III slots)
Charlie Badalati
APing from Wurselen,Germany
Given the issues with the shared memory requirements of exec as well as a
number of other technical issues (such as the screen resolution…), I
feel that it is safe to say that this is along the lines of all the other
hoaxs that we have see along the way…
Charlie,
This was posted here a little while ago. I believe it was discounted to be
someone's wishlist, not actual fact. Sounds good though, huh? <grin> Too
good to really be true.
Chris
Chris;
I agree, it sounds wonderful and a little bit impossible.
Charlie Badalati
On AutoPilot, in W\rselen, Germany
I would add the same file was widely distributed here, and caused (unfounded)
great expectation.
Don't you think such hoaxes hurt sales of actual high-end Amigas?
(i.e. people may think "why should I buy an A4000?, I'll wait for that
A5000!").
Regards.
Fernando.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fernando;
I thought about that but the dream/hoax was so fantastic and seemed
aimed at the very high end user that I thought that the people that this
machine would attract would see through it right away. I had hoped to
hear some discussion about a system with two 68040's and a 68060 and if
that was a useful configuration. I guess I missed it when It first went
around.
Charlie Badalati
On AutoPilot, in W\rselen, Germany
Charlie,
one point immediately sticks out: the 32 million colors. Sounds like yet
another ignorant teenager trying to improve all current specs; in this case,
they've got egg all over their face. The reason you don't see microcomputer
graphics go beyond 16 million colors is simple: that number represents 24 bits
per pixel. A nice, round number in computer terms. To have 32 million colors
would be (a) complicated — why add a 9th bit to either the red, green or blue
component? and (b) totally useless, as 256 shades of each primary color are
more than enough to satisfy the human eye.
Blaq!
Charles;
There >are< a number of points that seem fishy, Thanks.
Charlie Badalati
On AutoPilot, in W\rselen, Germany
Charlie,
I think this A5000 description appeared here on April Fool's Day…
Perhaps someone in Amsterdam thought it was serious and copied it to their
BBS…
– Barry Jarrett
careening around CIS on my Amiga!
Really Bogus stuff,
I think they ment 32 bit not 32 million colors, 32 million colors is about 8
to the 25th (actuall more like 33.4 million) and why would you use the old
68040EC why not just use another 68060 or a DSP or a PowerPC chip or a Pentium.
I think that the new amiga will have DSP and hopefully it will migrate to the
PowerPC 601 and above processors.
Well the Pentium in approx. the same grunt as the '040 so it wouldn't add
much.
regards, Lu
Charlie:
I have a little knowledge of the next generation of Amigas and while some
of the innovations will make it a very desirable computer, I don't think
it will be quite as described in your posting from the Amsterdam BBS!
Greg