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From: rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: AMIGA Specs
Message-ID: <1991Feb8.051049.17515@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 8 Feb 91 05:10:49 GMT
References: <1991Feb3.121355.5874@marlin.jcu.edu.au> <91037.172827CXW148@psuvm.psu.edu> <1420@ewu.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius)
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In article <1420@ewu.UUCP> mpierce@ewu.UUCP (Mathew W. Pierce) writes:
>In article <91037.172827CXW148@psuvm.psu.edu>, CXW148@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>> three chips called the Agnes, the Blitter, and the Portia).  These same chips
>                                                     ^^^^^^
>What the h*ll is Portia, you really need to get your facts straight, there is no
>Portia chip.
  Portia=Paula! The Amiga chips were renamed when the Amiga500/2000 were made.
Portia=chip that controls the ports. (the name fits the function) The
Denise chip originally had a different name too.

>> are responsible for the multitasking power of the Amiga.  The 68K CPU is free
>Don't forget to give credit to the operating system, and the CPU, they also play
>a very important part in the Amiga's amazingly powerful system.
>
>> to attend to other operations while Portia handles the port accessing, and the
>> Blitter and Agnes operate the graphics and sound. 
>Again, read a book and get your facts straight, and remember label the proper task`
>with the proper chip, and to include other chips like Gary and Denise, they are
>important too. 

  Well, the original message did have some facts wrong, but it is essentially
correct. Portia (Paula) handles Sound, and Agnus plays an integral part
is Sprite DMA, BitMap DMA, DISK DMA, Sound DMA, etc. And the Copper is
located in Agnus. So it can be said that Agnus handles graphics and
sound (and everything else) , however Denise is specialized in display
output, and Portia(Paula) in sound/ports.

>> Amiga is due to these three chips, which Commodore has been slow to revise and
>> upgrade.  The only exception being the new 'Fat Agnes' which can access 1 meg
>> of video memory at a time, and the new ECS (Enhanced Chip Set ).
>Don't for get to include Buster, and Super Denise with her amazing programmable
>dispisplay modes, you seem to be leaving quite a lot out, and not getting what is 
>here corect.

Nor Amber,RAMsey, Super DMAC, and Gary!

>.
>                  You should both get your facts straight, and read industry-
>> wide publications instead of product specific publications.  Every system has
>> it's limits.  Read Byte instead.

  The real limitation of the Amiga is the speed of the chip bus. Once
the 16bit/NMOS bottlenecxk is overcome, the custom chips can once again
take the lead in the industry, however, I really don't see the need to
keep making new custom chips, the real work needs to be done in display 
independence.

>>                                 Chris Winward
>>                            userid CXW148 on PSUVM
>
>You should make your words short and sweet, I sense that you may have had to eat them
>in the past.  YOU should readup on what YOU are talking about, go beyond byte, pickup
>or borrow a hardware manual, they are much more informative.

 While the original poster made a few mistakes, he was essentially correct.
You made a few mistakes too so don't get so high on your horse. Everyone
makes mistakes. (And Portia is a REAL CHIP!)

>Matt Pierce