@cdimauro

Quote:

You've already reported this, and it again confirms: - how incapable were the engineers which remained (since they still do NOT understand the chipset, after so long); - that they have no clue on how to continue (completely different ideas); - how they were unable to correctly evaluate the situation, status of a project, and realistic deadlines (and here the fault was of your beloved Porter).

Wrong. The REAL problem is a lack of leadership with relevant skills. It's a chaotic mess without REAL leadership.

Again, Porter argued for 8 bitplanes with 16 million colors and it was ignored.

From Commodore - The Final Years,

Porter specifically wanted 1000 by 800 resolution with 8 bit planes
and 16 million colors


CSG LSI team started 8 bitplanes with 256 colors and a 4096 color palette for C65 chipset R&D by stealth. C65 reveal has pressured Rubin to allow AGA's R&D in 1989, hence removing "read my lips, no new chips" on graphics R&D. AGA R&D is implemented on A3000.

Without Bill Sydnes's and Jeff Frank's June 1991 takeover, the A3000's late 1991 release would be a 256 color display capable AA3000 variant and larger volume production AA1000plus.


The minimum effort is 256 color "JackinTosh" Apple's Mac LC series on time and in large production volume.

Quote:

Porter might have wanted what he dreamed of, but we have seen that he was unable to set a realistic deadline for the A3000, as YOU YOURSELF reported.

AmigaOS 3.0 includes other areas beyond 256 color mode support. Refer to the listed working features in March 1991.

From Commodore - The Final Years book

By March 27, when the tested AA chips were ready, the list of stable
features was impressive. AA could display 256 colors from a palette
of 16 million colors. It could theoretically play 24-bit digital video
(although presently it could only display 8-bit video) due to a four
times increase in bandwidth (and using the digital-to-analog
converter chip in the A3000 Plus). It could use 64-bit sprites, which
could now be controlled in the border areas. It had the
aforementioned new 8-bit HAM mode, called Super HAM. And finally,
the scan doubling and deinterlacing hardware, formerly on Amber,
was now handled right on the chip.


The correct path is to modify AmigaOS 2.04 with just AGA support e.g. AmigaOS 2.1.

AmigaOS 2.1 (Kickstart 2.1) wasted R&D on A300/A600. AmigaOS 3.0 R&D has other distractions.

I prefer my H1 1992 A3000 to be AA3000 instead. The OS issue can be upgraded later.

Quote:

Absolutely no: Mary could have worked with Agnus remaining 16-bit and Mary using a 32-bit bus. Lisa is a clear example of that.

Wrong. AA Lisa is purposely designed for modified ECS Agnus 2MB aka. Alice.

AA Lisa was designed by the CSG LSI team, while the Amiga chip engineers focused on AAA. Remember, the CSG LSI team studied Amiga graphics architecture and didn't bother with Amiga audio. For C65, the CSG LSI team copied and pasted the SIDs into the stereo use case.

Commodore - The Final Years book includes a story about pasting the SIDs into the stereo use case, and they didn't have anyone who understood SID's implementation, and it would take about a year to study the SID's design. CSG brain drain is real. Refer to Ensoniq breakaway.


Bill Sydnes's and Jeff Frank's June 1991 takeover has halted both AGA and AAA R&D for more than 6 months.

Glenn Keller stayed with the AAA R&D project.

From Commodore - The Final Years,

AAA Progress
James Redfield would now lead the development of the four AAA
chips. If all went according to his schedule, the team would have
working silicon by early 1990. Initially there were six other chip
designers working on the chipset: Bob Schmid, Jeff Dean, Paul
Anderson, Terry Hudson, Glenn Keller, and Victor Andrade.
(skip)
The chips would have to remain backward compatible with the
previous Amiga chipset in order to continue supporting the existing
library of Amiga titles. The most important person on the team for
this aspect was Glenn Keller, due to his experience on the Original
Chip Set. “I worked on three chips,� says Keller. “I redid some of the
blitter stuff, I redid some of the video stuff.�


Glenn Keller moved from AAA Mary to AAA's blitter and video stuff. There aren't enough engineers who know Amiga's design. Ex-Amiga engineers are busy designing 3DO.

After more than 6 months' delay by Bill Sydne, AAA reached the testing stage in the summer of 1993.


Quote:

It ALSO hit the metal.

For graphics, "hitting the metal" is not allowed on the Mac platform.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Aug-2025 at 04:58 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Aug-2025 at 04:45 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Aug-2025 at 02:31 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Aug-2025 at 02:24 AM.

_________________

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro VGA is both bit-plane and byte-plane. VGA is backward compatible with EGA. In VGA's 16-color mode, the system uses a four-bit plane mode to represent colors. 4 bits spread across 4 planes. https://wiki.osdev.org/VGA_Hardware#Memory_Layout_in_16-color_graphics_modes The VGA has four planes, and for each pixel, and each plane holds one bit of each pixel drawn In VGA's 256 color mode, it uses byte plane mode. Mode X/Mode Y uses four byte-planes. VGA clones expanded VGA's 256-color mode to 512 KB of video memory since VGA's 256 color mode already supports 400 line mode i.e. 320x400p 256 colors.

Again, that's not the point.

VGA, exactly like EGA, accesses 4 bytes "in parallel" (see below) each time. Those bytes were combined because they contained planar graphics with the EGA, or they are left as they are on the VGA when the 256 colours mode was selected.

From an high-level perspective, this is what the Amiga did with its chipset, with the remarkable difference that for every access it reads (or writes, when using the Blitter) one planar data at the time. So, a 16 colours screen needed 4 x 16-bit accesses to gather all needed data.

I don't know how the EGA and VGA cards implemented it, but either they had a 32-bit data bus which allows to read (or write) all 4 bytes at the same time, or they had an 8 bit (but very fast) data bus which required 4 x 8-bit accesses (so, like the Amiga, but with half the data read).

Anyway, that's irrelevant for the topic. The important thing is that the Amiga worked differently because it required accessing a single bitplane data at the time, and this data must have been 16-bit in size.

So, implementing what the EGA and VGA did remains a non-sense, because enhancing the Amiga chipset would have required completely different solutions (either expanding the data bus size to 32 or more bits, or increasing the frequencies. Both solutions could have been applicable, but also more costly).

That's purely from a performance AKA bandwidth needed to compete.

Implementing a 256 colours screen mode would have required a solution conceptually similar to the VGA one (well, easy to understand: one byte = one of the 256 colours), but with a completely different implementation (which takes into account how the Amiga chipset worked. Read: NOT the case for the Amiga engineers, which haven't understood it -> AKIKO is the clear proof of that).

Note: this has NOTHING do with SIMD, as you've written on EAB. SIMD is a completely different thing.

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: You've already reported this, and it again confirms: - how incapable were the engineers which remained (since they still do NOT understand the chipset, after so long); - that they have no clue on how to continue (completely different ideas); - how they were unable to correctly evaluate the situation, status of a project, and realistic deadlines (and here the fault was of your beloved Porter). Wrong. The REAL problem is a lack of leadership with relevant skills. It's a chaotic mess without REAL leadership.

As you can see from the above three points which directly came from your writings, what was missing was the TECHNICAL leadership: the Amiga engineers were NOT able to support the management from this PoV.
Quote:

Again, Porter argued for 8 bitplanes with 16 million colors and it was ignored. From Commodore - The Final Years, Porter specifically wanted 1000 by 800 resolution with 8 bit planes and 16 million colors

Porter continues to impress me with his shooting. Such a screen, for display alone, would have required MORE THAN TRIPLE the memory bandwidth of the AGA (read: NOT the OCS/ECS). And I repeat: just to display those graphics, and without even taking into account the bandwidth required to process graphics at that resolution and depth.

Add to that the fact that it would have required the display circuitry to work at far higher frequencies, and you can well understand how Porter was living in a dream world of his own.
Yes, because even with the ECS alone it was impossible to support more than 4 colours from a palette of only 64 for the SHRES mode (which, as I've already mentioned, requires LESS THAN ONE THIRD of the bandwidth needed for the mode Porter would have wanted).

I would say there is nothing more to add....
Quote:

CSG LSI team started 8 bitplanes with 256 colors and a 4096 color palette for C65 chipset R&D by stealth. C65 reveal has pressured Rubin to allow AGA's R&D in 1989, hence removing "read my lips, no new chips" on graphics R&D. AGA R&D is implemented on A3000.

Again, that's because Rubin engineers were complete inepts and uncapable to even define the specs of the chipset.

So, and after that he saw the work of the LSI team, he was forced to take this decision.
Quote:

Without Bill Sydnes's and Jeff Frank's June 1991 takeover, the A3000's late 1991 release would be a 256 color display capable AA3000 variant and larger volume production AA1000plus.

As I've already reported in the past, Sydnes and Frank arrived 6 (SIX!) years after that the first Amiga was presented.

What the Amiga engineers have made during all this period? I repeat it again: SIX YEARS.
Quote:

The minimum effort is 256 color "JackinTosh" Apple's Mac LC series on time and in large production volume.

Which was an easy task, at least for the LSI team. The Amiga engineers were shocked after that they have seen it...
Quote:

Quote: Porter might have wanted what he dreamed of, but we have seen that he was unable to set a realistic deadline for the A3000, as YOU YOURSELF reported. AmigaOS 3.0 includes other areas beyond 256 color mode support. Refer to the listed working features in March 1991. From Commodore - The Final Years book By March 27, when the tested AA chips were ready, the list of stable features was impressive. AA could display 256 colors from a palette of 16 million colors. It could theoretically play 24-bit digital video (although presently it could only display 8-bit video) due to a four times increase in bandwidth (and using the digital-to-analog converter chip in the A3000 Plus). It could use 64-bit sprites, which could now be controlled in the border areas. It had the aforementioned new 8-bit HAM mode, called Super HAM. And finally, the scan doubling and deinterlacing hardware, formerly on Amber, was now handled right on the chip. The correct path is to modify AmigaOS 2.04 with just AGA support e.g. AmigaOS 2.1. AmigaOS 2.1 (Kickstart 2.1) wasted R&D on A300/A600. AmigaOS 3.0 R&D has other distractions.

And from where those "distractions" were coming? From the management or from the engineers?
Quote:

I prefer my H1 1992 A3000 to be AA3000 instead. The OS issue can be upgraded later.

Impossible, because the chipset wasn't production-ready.
Quote:

Quote: Absolutely no: Mary could have worked with Agnus remaining 16-bit and Mary using a 32-bit bus. Lisa is a clear example of that. Wrong. AA Lisa is purposely designed for modified ECS Agnus 2MB aka. Alice.

Lisa required 2 more DMA channels to reach the needed 8 to display 256 colours (or 16 + 15 for the Dual Playfield, or for the HAM8), so such change to the new Agnus AKA Alice was needed.

But accessing more memory (2MB instead of 512kB of Chip Mem) hasn't required any change like that.
Quote:

AA Lisa was designed by the CSG LSI team, while the Amiga chip engineers focused on AAA. Remember, the CSG LSI team studied Amiga graphics architecture

Well, they were the only once which (quickly) understood it...
Quote:

and didn't bother with Amiga audio.

Which shouldn't have been the case, since the Amiga engineers had the engineer which originally architected Paula.

So, I assume that he understood how Paula worked (!) and he should know how to enhance it.
Quote:

For C65, the CSG LSI team copied and pasted the SIDs into the stereo use case.

Evidently the SID was too much complicated.
Quote:

Commodore - The Final Years book includes a story about pasting the SIDs into the stereo use case, and they didn't have anyone who understood SID's implementation, and it would take about a year to study the SID's design. CSG brain drain is real. Refer to Ensoniq breakaway.

In fact. But nobody would have stopped to ask support to Ensoniq. Like Apple did for its Apple II GS...
Quote:

Bill Sydnes's and Jeff Frank's June 1991 takeover has halted both AGA and AAA R&D for more than 6 months.

See above: this changes very little, since the big problem was that the Amiga engineers did NOTHING in SIX years.
Quote:

Glenn Keller stayed with the AAA R&D project. From Commodore - The Final Years, AAA Progress James Redfield would now lead the development of the four AAA chips. If all went according to his schedule, the team would have working silicon by early 1990. Initially there were six other chip designers working on the chipset: Bob Schmid, Jeff Dean, Paul Anderson, Terry Hudson, Glenn Keller, and Victor Andrade. (skip) The chips would have to remain backward compatible with the previous Amiga chipset in order to continue supporting the existing library of Amiga titles. The most important person on the team for this aspect was Glenn Keller, due to his experience on the Original Chip Set. “I worked on three chips,� says Keller. “I redid some of the blitter stuff, I redid some of the video stuff.� Glenn Keller moved from AAA Mary to AAA's blitter and video stuff. There aren't enough engineers who know Amiga's design.

Precisely. Even after so long. Read: the Amiga engineers were inepts.
Quote:

Ex-Amiga engineers are busy designing 3DO.

Good for them.
Quote:

After more than 6 months' delay by Bill Sydne, AAA reached the testing stage in the summer of 1993.

Same as above: you can't compare this 6 months delay with the 6 YEARS delay. There's more than an order of magnitude of difference.

BTW, why you don't reply to my questions? Who took the decision for the Amiga 3000 case, to be incompatible with the Amiga 2000 cards? The management or the engineers?

@cdimauro

Quote:

Who took the decision for the Amiga 3000 case, to be incompatible with the Amiga 2000 cards?

Z2 and Z3 cards are compatible, if you are ranting about the format of the CPU cards, you will see me surprised.

The A2000 is a design made for a 8MHz clock, the bus wont run faster and the address pins are restricted to a 24Bit address range.

http://www.l8r.net/technical/t-a2000-cpu.shtml

The A3000 has a 32 Bit address range connector and a 16 / 25MHz bus design for CPU card.

After all this OT techno babble from your side I'm surprised about your lack of knowledge and I'm glad they had some people at C= who did this part right.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 19-Aug-2025 at 06:50 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 19-Aug-2025 at 06:50 PM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Who took the decision for the Amiga 3000 case, to be incompatible with the Amiga 2000 cards? Z2 and Z3 cards are compatible, if you are ranting about the format of the CPU cards, you will see me surprised.

No, I was ranting about the A3000 CASE (as I've already mentioned), where the A2000 cards don't fit. A notable example: the Video Toaster.

I'd like to know who was the "genius" that decided to design such case so that all existing cards could not have been inserted (and used, of course).

Was it a management or technical (our beloved engineers. On their own) decision?
Quote:

The A2000 is a design made for a 8MHz clock, the bus wont run faster and the address pins are restricted to a 24Bit address range. http://www.l8r.net/technical/t-a2000-cpu.shtml The A3000 has a 32 Bit address range connector and a 16 / 25MHz bus design for CPU card. After all this OT techno babble from your side I'm surprised about your lack of knowledge and I'm glad they had some people at C= who did this part right.

I'm surprised about your lack of knowledge, because 68k processors used an asynchronous bus, which adapted the transactions depending on the given peripheral.

So, the A2000 design wasn't strictly limited to a 8Mhz clock.

However, the A3000 had a 68030, which is perfectly able to handle transactions at 8Mhz or even much less, and with data size of 1 to 4 bytes (including the odd 3 bytes). In fact, it can access without problems the 8-bit CIAs which were running at... 0.7Mhz.

Yes, the A2000 was limited to a 24 address space, but that's part of the Zorro-II address space, which the A3000 was perfectly able to handle.

This clarified, the above, much more important, question remains.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @OneTimer1 [quote] OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro [quote] Who took the decision for the Amiga 3000 case, to be incompatible with the Amiga 2000 cards?

Clearly not the developers of the main board and chip set.

But those few professional Video Toaster users where free to use other cases, or the A3000T

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: I was ranting about the A3000 CASE (as I've already mentioned), where the A2000 cards don't fit. A notable example: the Video Toaster.

In fairness to Commodore, the Video Toaster plugged into the video slot, not a Zorro II card slot. And it wasn't just a card, but a card with two daughterboards. It took up far more room than other video slot cards for the A2000. If it had been a Zorro II card it would have taken up two slots due to its width. Furthermore Newtek released the Video Toaster in December 1990, long after the A3000 had been designed and 5 months after it was released in June 1990.

Quote:

I'd like to know who was the "genius" that decided to design such case so that all existing cards could not have been inserted (and used, of course).

According to Brian Bagnall's book Commodore the Final Years, Herb Monsteller was in charge of the case design. However Bagnell says many of the engineers detested the A2000 case. He quotes Hedley Davis (A3000 project manager) as saying "The A2000 was clunky. It's a big, big box. We decided to put the expansion card [sic] sideways in the A3000. We had that so we could lower the overall profile without changing the Zorro form factor".

But what was that form factor? The A500/A2000 technical reference manual has a drawing of the video card dimensions:- 114.5mm high (same as Zorro II cards) by 210mm long. The Video Toaster greatly exceeds this length when the RAM daughterboard is installed. However the maximum card width is not specified in the TRM. Commodore simply assumed that card designers would be 'sensible' and not make it too big.

It's unfortunate that the Video Toaster didn't fit in the A3000. However that wasn't all Commodore's fault. Newtek pushed the limits in the extreme, figuring they would get away with it because the card fitted in the A2000. Then after the A3000 was released they stuck to the incompatible design when releasing the Video Toaster 5 months later.

The A3000 was not the best choice for the Video Toaster for other reasons too, including possible overheating with the horizontal cards in the smaller case. That was OK though because the A2000 was available for those who needed more space - until it wasn't. Commodore's real gaffe was discontinuing the A2000 in 1991.

Last edited by bhabbott on 20-Aug-2025 at 09:18 AM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Who took the decision for the Amiga 3000 case, to be incompatible with the Amiga 2000 cards? Clearly not the developers of the main board and chip set.

And you're clearly wrong.

From the above Bruce's post:

Hedley Davis (A3000 project manager) as saying "The A2000 was clunky. It's a big, big box. We decided to put the expansion card [sic] sideways in the A3000. We had that so we could lower the overall profile without changing the Zorro form factor".

From one of the Hammer's post from which I've extract this ( https://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=45508&forum=16&start=420&viewmode=flat&order=0#880632 ):

The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the
machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September
with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time,
Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? …
Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next
video chips.�

The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a
hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to
begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise
the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins
wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit
architecture. No one could agree.

With this situation, it looked like the next generation chipset had
every possibility of being bogged down for months.

Hedley was one of the key technical experts for the chipset...

Now we know who is culprit for this decision.

And now I understand why Hammer systematically refused to provide an answer to my questions...
Quote:

But those few professional Video Toaster users where free to use other cases,

Red Herring.

And of course: they were FORCED to use an A2000 for that.
Quote:

or the A3000T

Same here, plus this machine was released one year after...

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: I was ranting about the A3000 CASE (as I've already mentioned), where the A2000 cards don't fit. A notable example: the Video Toaster. In fairness to Commodore, the Video Toaster plugged into the video slot, not a Zorro II card slot.

That's fine: the A3000 had one as well.
Quote:

And it wasn't just a card, but a card with two daughterboards. It took up far more room than other video slot cards for the A2000. If it had been a Zorro II card it would have taken up two slots due to its width. Furthermore Newtek released the Video Toaster in December 1990, long after the A3000 had been designed and 5 months after it was released in June 1990.

Nevertheless, the VT was announced three years before. So, Commodore engineer knew that this big product was coming.

But that's also irrelevant for the discussion. The point is that whatever Zorro II card and video card designed for the A2000 won't fit on the A3000.
Quote:

Quote: I'd like to know who was the "genius" that decided to design such case so that all existing cards could not have been inserted (and used, of course). According to Brian Bagnall's book Commodore the Final Years, Herb Monsteller was in charge of the case design. However Bagnell says many of the engineers detested the A2000 case. He quotes Hedley Davis (A3000 project manager) as saying "The A2000 was clunky. It's a big, big box. We decided to put the expansion card [sic] sideways in the A3000. We had that so we could lower the overall profile without changing the Zorro form factor".

Thanks. That's the key information which I needed, and which clarifies everything.
Quote:

But what was that form factor? The A500/A2000 technical reference manual has a drawing of the video card dimensions:- 114.5mm high (same as Zorro II cards) by 210mm long. The Video Toaster greatly exceeds this length when the RAM daughterboard is installed. However the maximum card width is not specified in the TRM. Commodore simply assumed that card designers would be 'sensible' and not make it too big. It's unfortunate that the Video Toaster didn't fit in the A3000. However that wasn't all Commodore's fault. Newtek pushed the limits in the extreme, figuring they would get away with it because the card fitted in the A2000.

The only relevant point here is this: is the VT card fulfilling the specs for the A2000 cards, or not? Consequently, are those "extreme limits" still valid limits for the VT?
Quote:

Then after the A3000 was released they stuck to the incompatible design when releasing the Video Toaster 5 months later.

See above on this.
Quote:

The A3000 was not the best choice for the Video Toaster for other reasons too, including possible overheating with the horizontal cards in the smaller case.

That's again another problem of who designed the A3000. They missed nothing (!) regarding the list of failures with their decisions.
Quote:

That was OK though because the A2000 was available for those who needed more space - until it wasn't. Commodore's real gaffe was discontinuing the A2000 in 1991.

We know that Commodore had bad engineers and bad managers. A beautiful couple...

@cdimauro

Quote:

I'm surprised about your lack of knowledge, because 68k processors used an asynchronous bus, which adapted the transactions depending on the given peripheral.

Being asynchronous doesn't mean they don't have latency.

Latency in nanoseconds can roughly translate into MHz.

_________________

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: I'm surprised about your lack of knowledge, because 68k processors used an asynchronous bus, which adapted the transactions depending on the given peripheral. Being asynchronous doesn't mean they don't have latency. Latency in nanoseconds can roughly translate into MHz.

Hammer's PADDING...

@cdimauro
Quote:

Hedley Davis (A3000 project manager) as saying "The A2000 was clunky. It's a big, big box. We decided to put the expansion card [sic] sideways in the A3000. We had that so we could lower the overall profile without changing the Zorro form factor".

From Commodore - The Final Years book

Commodore had released the A2000-CR in the same case
Commodore Germany had used for the A2500 (later renamed
A2000). Porter wanted something sleeker and cost reduced for the
Amiga 2000. “We needed something that could satisfy the business
marketplace, and I didn't want it being so big fat and ugly,� he
explains.

Porter assigned mechanical designer Herb Mosteller to work on a
new case which he dubbed the A2001. He planned to place the new
cost-reduced A2000 motherboard in the new case.

After Dave Haynie completed the A2000-CR project, it was time for
him to get to work on the next iteration of Commodore’s high-end
line of Amigas. The new project, which the engineers dubbed the
A3000, would also reside in the new A2001 case. And much like the
Super A500, it would use the hi-res Amiga chipset, a Motorola
68020 chip running at 14.2 MHz (double the clock speed of the
A2000), high density floppy disks storing up to 1760 KB, 2 MB of
VRAM, and a SCSI interface. The computer would also use Bob
Welland’s MMU card


Herb Mosteller designed A2001 case a.k.a. A3000. No one reviewed Herb Mosteller's case work with Video Toaster (released in December 1990).

"Super A500" had a VRAM boosted hi-res Amiga chipset. 1989's A500 Rev6A is a cost-reduced ECS capable without VRAM.

A3000 project recycled "Super A500" VRAM boosted ECS!

A1000plus/A1200 has EC020 @ 14 MHz and 2MB Chip RAM, but with 32-bit lower latency FPM DRAM instead.



System Plans for 1988

After George Robbins completed the Amiga 500 and accompanying
A520 video adapter, it was time to move on to the next project. With
the prototype hi-res Agnus and Denise chips expected soon, Jeff
Porter began discussing the next iteration of the A500 with Robbins.
It was a given the new A500 would use the hi-res chips, but the two
also decided to use the Motorola 68020 processor, which would give
faster performance. The engineers also wanted 1 megabyte of
expensive VRAM in the system.

Porter dubbed the new computer the Super A500. The total cost of
goods came in at $399, meaning it would sell to dealers for $799
and retail to consumers for a whopping $1000. This was a far cry
from the $500 goal the team originally had with the B52. Why was it
so expensive? Commodore would have to spend $77 for the 68020
chip plus $100 for VRAM on top of the basic $230 cost of the original
A500 (minus redundant costs for memory and processor). It was
questionable whether or not the Super A500 would appeal to the
existing base of A500 users.

Porter expected to see a prototype Super A500 in January 1988.





Quote:

Now we know who is culprit for this decision. And now I understand why Hammer systematically refused to provide an answer to my questions...

That's a wrong unstanderstanding.

The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the
machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September
with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time,
Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? …
Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next
video chips.�

The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a
hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to
begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise
the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins
wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit
architecture. No one could agree.

With this situation, it looked like the next generation chipset had
every possibility of being bogged down for months.


Hedley Davis wanted to revise the existing Agnus/Denise architecture, but since no one agrees, the existing ECS was the fallback.

You don't have a credible dictator to issue a management directive for the 32-bit Amiga graphics project for A3000 (known as A2001).

A2001/A3000 initially has VRAM boosted ECS from "Super Amiga 500".

VRAM boosted 1024x1024 monochrome ECS was rendered obsolete in the 1987-1988 time period.

VRAM boosted ECS has 4 colors 640x400p/512p, and monochrome 1024x1024p.


From Commodore The Final Years

Amiga 3000 Stalled

After missing CeBIT, it seemed like the engineers did not have the
same sense of urgency they had when putting out the Amiga 500
and Amiga 2000 under former CEO and President, Thomas Rattigan.

Rattigan had a definite plan of intercompany competition to motivate
the engineers. He believed nothing spurred on designers like
knowing another team might beat them to the punch. However,
under the leadership of Irving Gould and Henri Rubin, there was no
such urgency. Both men lacked the experience to get their soldiers
moving.

On the A3000 project, those soldiers consisted of George Robbins
(and the VLSI team) on the Hi-Res chipset, Bob Welland on the
MMU board, and Jeff Boyer (and the VLSI team) on the SCSI hard
drive controller. Heading up the group was Dave Haynie on the
motherboard, as well as the new 32-bit Zorro III expansion bus. It
would be up to him to pull along and cajole the rest of the team to
complete their parts of the project.


The system engineering group's VLSI team is mentioned.

The existing Hi-Res chipset is recycled for the A3000 project.

Last edited by Hammer on 23-Aug-2025 at 06:33 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 23-Aug-2025 at 06:21 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 23-Aug-2025 at 06:09 AM.

_________________

@thread

That story about the "Make a Wish Foundation" kid who wanted an A500 Bundle, in Part 3 of the story, had me fully sobbing out loud.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami
Quote:

That story about the "Make a Wish Foundation" kid who wanted an A500 Bundle, in Part 3 of the story, had me fully sobbing out loud.

Those are the real heroes!

_________________
Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Hedley Davis (A3000 project manager) as saying "The A2000 was clunky. It's a big, big box. We decided to put the expansion card [sic] sideways in the A3000. We had that so we could lower the overall profile without changing the Zorro form factor". From Commodore - The Final Years book Commodore had released the A2000-CR in the same case Commodore Germany had used for the A2500 (later renamed A2000). Porter wanted something sleeker and cost reduced for the Amiga 2000. “We needed something that could satisfy the business marketplace, and I didn't want it being so big fat and ugly,� he explains. Porter assigned mechanical designer Herb Mosteller to work on a new case which he dubbed the A2001. He planned to place the new cost-reduced A2000 motherboard in the new case. After Dave Haynie completed the A2000-CR project, it was time for him to get to work on the next iteration of Commodore’s high-end line of Amigas. The new project, which the engineers dubbed the A3000, would also reside in the new A2001 case. And much like the Super A500, it would use the hi-res Amiga chipset, a Motorola 68020 chip running at 14.2 MHz (double the clock speed of the A2000), high density floppy disks storing up to 1760 KB, 2 MB of VRAM, and a SCSI interface. The computer would also use Bob Welland’s MMU card Herb Mosteller designed A2001 case a.k.a. A3000.

So, I assume that Porter was top in charge (e.g. he was responsible for the Amiga projects, and Hedley was one of his engineers).
Quote:

No one reviewed Herb Mosteller's case work with Video Toaster (released in December 1990).

Evidently engineers had other "distractions" (cit.)...
Quote:

"Super A500" had a VRAM boosted hi-res Amiga chipset. 1989's A500 Rev6A is a cost-reduced ECS capable without VRAM. A3000 project recycled "Super A500" VRAM boosted ECS! A1000plus/A1200 has EC020 @ 14 MHz and 2MB Chip RAM, but with 32-bit lower latency FPM DRAM instead. System Plans for 1988 After George Robbins completed the Amiga 500 and accompanying A520 video adapter, it was time to move on to the next project. With the prototype hi-res Agnus and Denise chips expected soon, Jeff Porter began discussing the next iteration of the A500 with Robbins. It was a given the new A500 would use the hi-res chips, but the two also decided to use the Motorola 68020 processor, which would give faster performance. The engineers also wanted 1 megabyte of expensive VRAM in the system. Porter dubbed the new computer the Super A500. The total cost of goods came in at $399, meaning it would sell to dealers for $799 and retail to consumers for a whopping $1000. This was a far cry from the $500 goal the team originally had with the B52. Why was it so expensive? Commodore would have to spend $77 for the 68020 chip plus $100 for VRAM on top of the basic $230 cost of the original A500 (minus redundant costs for memory and processor). It was questionable whether or not the Super A500 would appeal to the existing base of A500 users. Porter expected to see a prototype Super A500 in January 1988.

As usual, engineers had confused ideas on what it was really needed...
Quote:

Quote: Now we know who is culprit for this decision. And now I understand why Hammer systematically refused to provide an answer to my questions... That's a wrong unstanderstanding.

Not wrong. My writings:

I'd like to know who was the "genius" that decided to design such case so that all existing cards could not have been inserted (and used, of course).

Was it a management or technical (our beloved engineers. On their own) decision?

Porter is one of the key Amiga engineers. Chipset included.

So, I was right.
Quote:

The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time, Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? … Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next video chips.� The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit architecture. No one could agree. With this situation, it looked like the next generation chipset had every possibility of being bogged down for months. Hedley Davis wanted to revise the existing Agnus/Denise architecture, but since no one agrees, the existing ECS was the fallback.

Thanks for confirming again the great work (!) of the Amiga engineers...
Quote:

You don't have a credible dictator to issue a management directive for the 32-bit Amiga graphics project for A3000 (known as A2001).

?!?
Quote:

A2001/A3000 initially has VRAM boosted ECS from "Super Amiga 500". VRAM boosted 1024x1024 monochrome ECS was rendered obsolete in the 1987-1988 time period. VRAM boosted ECS has 4 colors 640x400p/512p, and monochrome 1024x1024p.

Which was clearly (!) NOT needed.

Even the DRAM bundled with the Amiga 1000 has enough bandwidth to generate monochrome screens of around 700x700@60Hz. And this DRAM was very slow, as we know.

You either need a DRAM which has double the frequency (which was already available at the time, and costed much lower than the VRAM) or you simple double the bus width to 32-bit (as it was planned, anyway) to gain the needed bandwidth.

As usual, Amiga engineers were living on the unicorns worlds...
Quote:

From Commodore The Final Years Amiga 3000 Stalled After missing CeBIT, it seemed like the engineers did not have the same sense of urgency they had when putting out the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 under former CEO and President, Thomas Rattigan. Rattigan had a definite plan of intercompany competition to motivate the engineers. He believed nothing spurred on designers like knowing another team might beat them to the punch. However, under the leadership of Irving Gould and Henri Rubin, there was no such urgency. Both men lacked the experience to get their soldiers moving. On the A3000 project, those soldiers consisted of George Robbins (and the VLSI team) on the Hi-Res chipset, Bob Welland on the MMU board, and Jeff Boyer (and the VLSI team) on the SCSI hard drive controller. Heading up the group was Dave Haynie on the motherboard, as well as the new 32-bit Zorro III expansion bus. It would be up to him to pull along and cajole the rest of the team to complete their parts of the project. The system engineering group's VLSI team is mentioned. The existing Hi-Res chipset is recycled for the A3000 project.

Thanks for reporting another interesting thing:

After missing CeBIT, it seemed like the engineers did not have the
same sense of urgency they had when putting out the Amiga 500
and Amiga 2000

the engineers...

@cdimauro

Quote:

So, I assume that Porter was top in charge (e.g. he was responsible for the Amiga projects, and Hedley was one of his engineers).

Be specific on "Amiga projects".

Note that the corrective AA3000 project was supposed to be released in Q4 1991, but Bill Sydnes and Jeff Frank cancelled AA1000plus and froze AA3000 after Bill Sydnes' June 1991 takeover.

From Commodore - The Final Years,

Henri Rubin, the instigator of the new project, wanted to go after the Macintosh by adding
noninterlaced monochrome video for the Amiga. “Management's directive was to produce a
high-resolution, monochrome business computer,� says developer Bryce Nesbitt. “This is what we were supposed to work on.�


Henri Rubin's management directive was to produce a high-resolution, monochrome business computer.

Without CSG's C65-driven competitive corporate politics, Porter could NOT mandate his 8-bit planes with 16 million colors (effectively AGA).

Without a well-defined hierarchical structure, equally ranked headstrong engineers will not automatically cooperate.

From Commodore - The Final Years, Hedley Davis' push for improved PC graphics handling, rejected by upper management.


Hedley Davis, the system software developer on the CDTV-CR, was
also having bad experiences with his manager. “I had resorted to
playing tricks on management, which is something that I don't like,�
he says. “In the CDTV-CR there's a bitplane-to-pixel converter. I was
told, ‘No, you can't do that,’ by this guy who wanted to be the boss.�
Davis wanted it so badly, he decided to trick his boss. “He wanted a
list of all the features that we're putting in the CDTV-CR design so
that this is what we agreed to do,� says Davis. “I write a list of these
nine features that we were putting in the CDTV-CR and I hand it to
him and he takes it. I know he's not going to fucking read it or pay
attention to it or really think about it. He's just bossing me around
and just being the boss.�

One of those features was the forbidden bitplane-to-pixel converter,
disguised slightly. “The CDTV-CR comes out and lo and behold there
is this bitplane-to-pixel converter,� recalls Davis. “He's like, ‘I can't
believe you did that, it wasn't on the list. We had an agreement and
you're going to be fired.’�

Davis insisted the item was on the list. “He's like, ‘It wasn't on the
list.’ I said get the list out. It was at like number eight and I worded
it so I never used the nouns ‘bitplane to pixel converter’ but rather
came up with some obtuse wording about allowing better graphics
processing by minimizing processor overhead for conversion
between bitplane or whatever. It was in there but I tricked him by
putting it in such a way because I knew he wouldn't read it.�

Understandably, Davis’ relationship with his boss soured to the
point that Davis refused to go to his boss’ office when called. “He
wanted my head and he couldn't get it,� says Davis. “I got called by
someone a couple of management levels up, asking, ‘Why are you
doing this and why don't you even go into the guy's office?’ He's
calling me into his office because he wants to have the home turf so
he can try to win the argument based upon home turf, and I'm just
not doing it.�

Soon, Davis began to feel uncomfortable working at Commodore.
“The threat level was just insane,� he says. “We're playing these
stupid games. We aren't really doing the right stuff.�


The project manager for the A2001 (A3000) project doesn't mean Hedley Davis has governance over Amiga graphics chipset design.

From Commodore - The Final Years, Amiga's graphics upgrade debates didn't stop due to Rubin's leadership being incompetent.


The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the
machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September
with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time,
Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? …
Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next
video chips.�

The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a
hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to
begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise
the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins
wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit
architecture. No one could agree.


Bob Welland's anti-Amiga graphics argument effectively blocked Hedley Davis' and George Robbins' next Amiga graphics evolution arguments i.e. Bob Welland's filibuster.

Rubin didn't crush Bob Welland's filibuster and go for 32-bit Amiga graphics evolution. Full 32-bit Amiga graphics evolution would be AGA with 32-bit Alice instead of 16-bit Alice.

Rubin refuses to risk his position after the monochrome hi-res debacle, hence the inaction.

As a C900 supporter, Bob Welland argues for Unix workstation graphics without Amiga graphics backwards compatibility.

After the filibuster, Bob Welland left Commodore and joined Apple in early 1988.

Bob Welland argues for a RISC CPU with MMU, Unix OS, and Unix workstation graphics. With Apple, Bob Welland got his MMU with RISC ARM 610.

Unlike Bill Sydnes/Jeff Frank's administration, Herni Rubin's administration allowed corrective AGA R&D in 1989 after C65's 256-color chipset reveal.

ECS A3000's failure didn't affect A500's sales boom for 1990 and 1991, but corrective AA3000 and AA1000plus must be released to execute a 256 color "Jackintosh" move against Apple's best-selling 1992 Mac LC II model and set up the early logistics for AA500's very large volume production.

Last edited by Hammer on 26-Aug-2025 at 03:03 AM.

_________________

@Thread

Commodore Inc
Announced products:
Tablet CTAB 64 PLUS
Unisoc Tiger T616 8 Core
RAM 8GB DDR
256GB
Android 13
4G LTE
WiFi
2.4&5G
Mobile communication









































































Laptop ORION SLIM 15 GEN6
Intel Core i9-14900HX with 24 cores
GeForce RTX 4060 Graphics Card or RTX 4070.

@Thread

Commodore 64 Ultimate price lowered to ~258€:
















Commodore 64x:














Still no news about Commado X16 going Commodore:

@OneTimer1

Those PC computers are made by an Italian company that is registered as Commodore Industries S.r.l., and has nothing to do with the actual Commodore. From what I've gathered, they haven't licenced the trademark, but used some legal loopholes.

That Italian company has made a press release in which they discuss about the recent Commodore purchase by Perifractic: https://commodore.inc/press-release-of-23-july-2025/

Popcorn?

Last edited by Magitius on 29-Aug-2025 at 04:25 PM.
Last edited by Magitius on 29-Aug-2025 at 04:25 PM.

Magitius Quote:

Those PC computers are made by an Italian company that is registered as Commodore Industries S.r.l., and has nothing to do with the actual Commodore. From what I've gathered, they haven't licenced the trademark, but used some legal loopholes.

One of the best websites about the Commodore IP squatters and con men is the following.

The Great Commodore Brand Heist
https://www.nostalgianerd.com/commodore-heist/

One of the best websites about the Amiga IP squatters and con men is the following.

Amiga Documents
https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/

Until Christian "Peri" Simpson makes a Commodore & Amiga Dumbest Criminals video to further expose them, investigate, interview, send to regulators, use at trials, put on TV, etc., this is the best we have. They would go away faster if informed Commodore & Amiga fans would stop supporting them by buying their products. They make it difficult to bring out "official" products when constantly under assault and these IP squatters and con men will not properly invest in the brands and cut corners knowing they could lose what flimsy IP claims they have successfully stolen at anytime. They also drain finances in fighting them, deliberately in some cases with the intention of putting the IP owners out of business so they can claim the IP for themselves.