Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU!hatcher
From: hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: hardware 'upgrades'
Message-ID: <8703080038.AA29007@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sat, 7-Mar-87 19:38:59 EST
Article-I.D.: ingres.8703080038.AA29007
Posted: Sat Mar  7 19:38:59 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 16:38:00 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 24

In article <831@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk>, Paul Smee says:

>My information is that Commodore have explicitly stated that they will
>*not* provide upgrades to ROM for their loyal customers who bought the
>early Amigas with the system on disk.

Not exactly. Commodore has provided the new upgraded software for
a nominal $15 charge, which seems reasonable.

What you are thinking of is the *hardware* upgrade of putting this software
in ROM rather than the default RAM. Commodore does not ship systems with
this option, nor sell such an upgrade. There are third party manufacturers
who do provide this enhancement.

There are advantages (extra memory & fast boot) and disadvantages (more
difficult to upgrade to still later software) to having this stuff in ROM,
but keep in mind that the tradeoffs are slightly different than with the ST.
The Amiga has an extra memory board for this boot software, so you are not
penalized for having it in RAM rather than in ROM. Quite the opposite: it is
a nice *bonus* to get that extra RAM if you get the 3rd party ROM upgrade.

So a 512K Amiga is actually a 768K Amiga, the way I understand it, but
that extra 256K is usually invisible (without the upgrade).
	Doug