<computer, games> A range of home computers developed by Commodore Business Machines. Amigas are popular for games, video processing and multimedia. One notable feature is a hardware blitter for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen.
The integrated circuit containing the blitter, DMA channel allocation, RAM refresh was known as "The Copper". Another graphics co-processor, responsible for effects timed to the real-time position of the video scan, such as midscreen palette changes, sprite multiplying, and resoloution changes, was known as the "Agnus". Different versions (in order) were: "Agnus" (could only address 512K of video RAM), "Fat Agnus" (in a PLCC package, could access 1MB of video RAM), "Super Agnus" (slightly upgraded Fat Agnus), and "Obese Agnus" (or "SuperFat Agnus"). Agnus and Fat Agnus came in PAL and NTSC versions, the other two came in one version, jumper selectable for PAL or NTSC.
Other chips were "Gary" (I/O, addressing, glue logic), "Paula" (floppy disk, serial ports, 4 channel 8 bit DMA sampled audio), "Denise" (outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the Vidiot), the "Vidiot" (A hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12 bit video data from Denise into RGB to the monitor), "Amber" (A "flicker fixer", used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), "Buster" (The bus controller for the ZorroII/III bus), "Ramsey" (The RAM controller), "DMAC" (The DMA controller chip for the WD33C93 SCSI controller used in the A3000 and on the A2091/A2092 SCSI controller card for the A2000; and to control the CD-ROM in the CDTV).
There were several Amiga chipsets: the "Old Chipset" (OCS), the "Enhanced Chipset" (ECS), and AGA. OCS included Paula, Gary, Denise, and Agnus.
ECS had the same Paula, Gary, Agnus (could address 2MB of VRAM), Super Denise (upgraded to support Agnus so that a few new screen modes were available). With the introduction of the Amiga A600 Gary was replaced with "Gayle" (though the chipset was still called ECS). Gayle provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's PCMCIA port.
The AGA chipset had Agnus with twice the speed and a 24 bit pallette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous "HAM" (Hold And Modify) trick allows pictures of 256,000 colours to be displayed. AGA's Paula and Gayle were unchanged but AGA Denise supported AGA Agnus's new screen modes. Unfortunately, even AGA Paula did not support High Density floppy disk drives. In order to use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to Paula. Also the 8 bit
When Commodore Bussines Machines went bankrupt on 29 April 1994 the Amiga's future looked rather uncertain until the German company Escom AG bought it on 21 April 1995 and the Commodore Amiga became the Escom Amiga. Escom are (April 1996) apprently making the Amiga range again but the Amiga has yet to return to the shelves in Australia.
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Look for directory aminet, amiga or fish under pub.
See Amoeba, bomb, gronk, guru meditation, sidecar, slap on the side, Vulcan nerve pinch.
(22 Jul 1996)