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- Path: sparky!uunet!nevada.edu!jimi!equinox!pyramid!rigby
- From: rigby@pyramid.unr.edu (Wayne Rigby)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
- Subject: The Amiga 4000 at WOC
- Message-ID: <4458@equinox.unr.edu>
- Date: 13 Sep 92 23:41:09 GMT
- Sender: news@equinox.unr.edu
- Organization: University of Nevada, Reno Department of Computer Science
- Lines: 116
-
- OK, I returned from WOC this morning and now have recovered enough to think
- once again. As I see no articles about WOC or the 4000, I'm sending off
- this short description of the 4000. (Of course, between reading news Sunday
- and finishing writing this, news about the cancelling of the Usenetter
- luncheon, which was posted Wednesday, came in. I hate this site's usenet
- capabilities... Oh, well...)
-
- The Amiga 4000
- 25 MHz 68040 in a removable processor module
- 2 MB 32 bit Chip RAM
- 4 MB 32 bit Fast RAM (expandable up to 16 MB on board via SIMMs)
- AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture (TM)) chipset
- 512 kB ROM
- Standard A3000-like keyboard
- 2 Mouse/Joystick ports
- 1 RS-232 port (25 pin)
- 1 Centronics Parallel
- 1 RGB/RGBI (15kHz - 31 kHz)
- Right and Left Stereo audio
- Internal and External Floppy drive ports
- Internal IDE port
- 200 pin CPU slot
- 4 Zorro III slots
- 1 Extended 24-bit Video slot (in-line with 1 Zorro-III)
- 3 IBM PC/AT slots (in-line with the other 3 Zorros)
- 2 button Optomechanical mouse
- 1 3.5 inch HD floppy drive
- 120 MB IDE hard drive
- 110 volt/60 Hz 150 Watt power supply
-
- Bays
- 2 front and 2 rear 3.5 inch bays
- 1 front 5 1/4 inch bay
-
- Dimensions
- 15 1/4" deep x 15" wide x 5" high
- Weighs about 20 lbs
-
- Software
- AmigaDOS 3.0
- CrossDOS
-
-
- OK, that's the quick reference, now observations and other junk...
- The 4000's case is not as slick as the 3000's, but it's pretty nice and much
- better looking than the 2000's. On the front there is a keylock similar to
- the 3000T's and those on many IBMs. The power switch is once again on the
- front. The two joystick/mouse ports are on the left side of the case and all
- the other ports are on the back. The mouse that seems to come with it is the
- old standard mouse and not the nice 'pregnant' mouse. All the A4000's on
- display had the 1960 monitor, which seems pretty nice and a small improvement
- over the 1950. The 5 1/4" bay is near the top of the case, between the
- power switch, which is on the upper right edge of the case, and the key
- lock, which is slightly to the right of the center of the front at top.
- The 3 1/2" bays are in-line with the leftside of the 5 1/4" bay's right side
- and the top 3 1/2 bay holds the floppy. The lower 3 1/2 appears to only be
- perhaps 2/3rds the height of the upper one and doesn't appear to be big
- enough to contain a second floppy. The specs mention only 2 front 3 1/2" bays
- so this could be an illusion, but I think not.
-
- The 120 meg hard drive probably occupies one of the rear 3 1/2" bays. Of
- everything that comprises the 4000, the only complaint I really have with
- it is why IDE? The spec sheets mention an optional SCSI adaptor, but that's
- most likely just a Zorro II/III SCSI card. The hard drive felt sluggish
- loading 24 bit pictures and the drive light blinked off often while loading.
-
- The AGA Chipset... The AmigaWorld preview sheet mentions the Alice, Lisa
- and Paula chips, but there was no information on the chips and there specific
- capabilities, just the performance and options under WB 3.0. There were
- several new additions to the ScreenMode selector, and most of them supported
- up to 256 colors. I didn't check them all and forget the various resolutions,
- but an 8 bit WorkBeench screen at decent resolutions is now a reality.
- The pallette is 24 bit and a pallette selector exists under Prefs that gives
- one a color wheel. Color sharing between applications is now possible,
- evidently. New HAM modes allow up to 256,000 colors at once, on screen.
-
- Screen resolutions mentioned in the spec sheets:
- All standard NTSC and PAL Amiga Screen Modes up through the ECS chipset
- (320x200, 320x400, 640x200 and 640x400 with or without overscan. ECS
- 640x480, 640x960 Productivity, 1280x200 and 1280x400 SuperHiRes modes also
- have overscan)
- The only AGA mode resolution mentioned is 800x600. The AmigaWorld preview
- article mentions that this is one of the Super72 modes and, of course,
- overscan is possible.
-
- AmigaDOS 3.0
- The only difference between 2.1 and 3.0 seem to be that 3.0 requires
- kickstart 3.0 and supports the AGA chips, whereas 2.1 uses the 2.04 ROMs and
- only supports ECS and down. I missed the talk about these so there may
- be other things not apparent. The prefs has a few new additions and changes.
- The color pallet support. The mouse pointer now has two resolutions, hi-res
- and the old normal resolution. PostScript is suported with a PS printer
- driver. New drawers similar to 2.04's Monitor drawer exist. They are
- Monitors, Keymaps, Printers and DOS Drivers. There are four of them total and
- four storage drawers for drivers and stuff not currently being used are
- logically placed. There is a 'Locale' icon in the Prefs area. This is a map
- of the world with one time zone that can be hilighted to tell your computer
- what time to use. A nice little addition and allows Amigas to have a
- universal time stamp for programs on disk. CrossDOS is included and supported.
- Arexx is still there and support for AGFA fonts. No new fonts, though. Just
- the old CG Times, CG Triumvirate, and LetterGothic. Supports scaling of
- bitmap fonts (didn't try this, but says it does...). Fountain has been
- renamed (forget what to...). Has the 2.0 look. A program comes with it to
- add things to the Tool Menu. Claims faster and more reliable floppy access.
-
- OK, that's a quick rambling of it all. I'm sure I missed things, but there
- were a lot of people there who can fill in the gaps. AGA will not be
- available for the 3000 or any of the others is what they stated. Seems that
- if you want it in them, you'll have to wait for 3rd party hacks. Alusions
- were made to other models coming out using them, though. And the 4000
- has the module for an '040, indicating that other processor modules would
- be coming out. One of the 4000's had an '030 in them, even though 040 was
- stated on the case.
-
- Wayne Rigy
- rigby@cs.unr.edu
-