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From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: hardware 'upgrades'
Message-ID: <163@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Sat, 7-Mar-87 22:40:18 EST
Article-I.D.: rocky.163
Posted: Sat Mar  7 22:40:18 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Mar-87 02:39:12 EST
References: <8703031635.AA09265@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <831@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk>
Reply-To: ali@rocky.UUCP (Ali Ozer)
Distribution: world
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 29

In article <831@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk> Paul Smee writes:
>Or, to pick a popular 'right-now' comparison:
>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.

Earliest Amigas came with 1.0, later ones came with 1.1, and now they
come with 1.2, all on disk. Commodore made alpha and beta versions of the OS
available to the developers and anyone else who wanted them; they were
shipping new releases every few weeks at one point. Right now anyone who
wants to can go and purchase a 3-disk 1.2 operating system can do so;
this "Enhancer" kit (as it is known) comes with a ~100 page manual
describing the updates, includes some new (and very nice) utilities, 
the 1.2 version of AmigaBasic, and costs only $15 --- Very reasonable.
Commodore incorporated a lot of the wishes of the Amiga community into
1.2, and they also fixed the bugs of 1.0 and 1.1.  There are also a lot
of performance improvements.

Amiga 2000 will be shipping with the same version of 1.2, but in ROM.
Thus all Amiga users will have 1.2, some in ROM, some in disk. Amiga 1000
owners who wish to have their OS in ROM can go and purchase third-party
kits that allow them to do so. 

As a Amiga 1000 owner I am excited about the A2000, and in no way feel that
Commodore is forgetting about the A1000 owners, even if they discontinue the
A1000 someday. After all, we've got the same OS, and the differences in 
hardware can be remedied by boards that fit on the A1000 expansion. 

Ali Ozer, decwrl!rocky.stanford.edu!ali, ali@score.stanford.edu