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From: dz@papaya.ucsb.edu (Daniel James Zerkle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Summary of A3000 answers
Message-ID: <5712@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 7 Jun 90 02:05:27 GMT
Sender: news@hub.ucsb.edu
Reply-To: dz@cornu.ucsb.edu (Daniel James Zerkle)
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
Lines: 52

Earlier, I posted a whole lot of questions.  I was asked to summarize
some of the answers, so here they are:

General:  A3000 has 4 Zorro 3 slots.  2 are inline with AT slots, 1 with
video slot, 1 with CPU slot.  Putting a card in a slot may cover the
inline slot, rendering it useless.

Bridgeboard:  The two bridgeboards out now will work with the A3000, but
cover slots.  They can drive a VGA card in the other slot.  They can
control thier own hard drive.  Amiga side and bridgeboard side can use
partitions on each other's hard disks, but it is slow.  Software will
let you read MS-DOS disks with the Amiga drives.  Bridgeboard can not
use Amiga serial port (like modem), and modems in the AT slots are
not usable by the Amiga side.  Display modes supported by the bridgeboard
are text and CGA (editorial: and EGA mode would be a big improvement, and
the Amiga hardware could handle it easily).

UNIX:  These are all rumors, and should be treated as such.  Port of
Sys V.4 expected for Fall including tape drive and lots of 4.3BSD stuff.
Cost totally unknown, but I expect $1500 - $2000.

RAM:  Can take up to 4 ZIPS, each holding 1 or 4 megs of 32-bit RAM.
Normal Amiga RAM cards can be used, but will be 16-bit.  ZIPs available
through computer shopper for < $100/meg.  Can probably do ok with the
2 megs, but compiling with optimization should take a lot more.  I expect
to use at least 6 megs, and go up.  General rule:  get as much as you can.
I think I would not worry once I got up to 7 megs.

1950:  Normal multisync, but supposedly high quality.  The .31 dot pitch
is not the greatest (.28 is best), but supposedly handles certain video
modes better than others.  One person said it is "mushy", whatever that
means.

SCSI:  Plug & play, controller included in box.  Got conflicting reports
about termination.  My guess is that it would be safest to terminate any
new devices.  Note:  the 3000 has only 1 available drive bay after the
hard disk and floppy disk are installed.  Might be best to make second
floppy external, so new hard drive can be internal.

Graphics modes with > 4096 colors:  12 bit graphics are built into the
data paths on the motherboard, so new modes would have to come from a
card.  These will be non-standard, most likely.  Commodore says (in Byte)
"We are working on both short term and long term solutions."  In other
words:  "Don't hold your breath."

OS updates:  OS currently loads into RAM, so updates will be on floppy.
Will eventually be put into ROMs.

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