Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: For all you who want more advertizing
Message-ID: <15725@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 8 Nov 90 17:51:25 GMT
References: <34005@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <15331@cbmvax.commodore.com> <29099@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1990Oct24.113939.9535@hod.uit.no>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 34

In article <1990Oct24.113939.9535@hod.uit.no> borgen@stud.cs.uit.no (Boerge Noest) writes:
>In article <29099@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU writes:

>>I know I shouldn't add fuel to the fire, BUT Jay Miner has been quoted as
>>saying it'd take him about six months to bring a 32-bit chip set to market.

That's silly, and I really doubt that Jay said it, at least in the context
of an Amiga chipset.  Sure, you could design a 32 bit graphics display chip
using gate arrays.  Keep it simple, like the Macintosh IIci video gate array,
and you might have it out on the market in six months, assuming it worked on
the first revision.  A full custom Amiga style chip set would take much 
longer.  Heck, the first one took what, 5 years or so?  Certainly the design
tools are better now, but the design is that much more complex if you mean
a real 1990s type upgrade of the whole set when you say "32 bit chip set".

>Am I the only person in the world that has read the interview with Jay
>Miner (Amiga User International June(?) 1988) where he said he had
>completed a new chipset with 2M addressing and some 1000x1000 resolution,
>based on VRAM? 

There was apparently some work done toward adding a monochrome-only mode
that worked with VRAM, but no chips were built toward that end.  Unless you
count the current Fat Agnus, which in theory has the ability to support a VRAM
fetch cycle, though you'd need something other than Denise to do anything 
with whatever data got into those shift registers.  And for any reasonable
mapping of that data on-screen, you'd need lots and lots of low density
VRAMs replacing the relatively few 1 MB density parts currently used on the
Chip bus.

>>David Navas                                   navas@cory.berkeley.edu
-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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	Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold	-REM