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From: bakken@tahoma.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: A2000 questions
Message-ID: <176@tahoma.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 15:19:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: tahoma.176
Posted: Tue Sep 29 15:19:50 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Oct-87 08:48:30 EDT
Organization: Boeing Commercial Airplane Co., Seattle, WA
Lines: 68
Keywords: SCSI, ST506, keyboard, 68020, 68881, MMU, V.2, production

I just reread the initial AmigaWorld and Byte articles on the A2000
and they raise some questions that I don't recall being answered in
comp.sys.amiga (forgive me if something slipped by me and was already
answered).


1) 	What information, if any, from the AW and BYTE articles (which were
	written 8-9 months ago) is incorrect or obsolete?

2)  	Amiga World (March/April '87) stated that the SCSI controller
	board CA was developing had a data transfer rate of 1.2 MByte/sec.  I 
	have seen new SCSI chips announced in the last 6 months that sport
	4-5MByte/sec rates with quantity prices in the $16-25 range.  Is 
	there a chance this board will incorporate these new chips?  If
	not, this seems like a good opportunity for a 3rd party company
	(wink, wink @ Perry).

	BTW, approximately what is the data transfer rate of an ST506
	drive, an AT hard card [which may be the same as ST506 for all
	I know - I'm blissfully ignorant of the IBM PC compatible 
	world  :-)  ], and of the current A1000 floppy drives?   How
	much can 40MB SCSI drives be found for, and how is this likely
	to change in the next year (don't the new Macs have SCSI ports
	or peripheral boards?) ?

3)	The keyboard doesn't slide under the unit :-(.  If it is unpluged and
	then pluged back in again when the machine is running could this
	cause damage to the hardware or the something to hiccup?

4)	Mr. Clive Smith is quoted in BYTE as saying there will be a 68020 
	based V.2 with an MMU for the A2000.  I have heard elsewhere (I 
	can't remember where) of CA developing a 68020/6881 board.  Is 
	CA planning to release more than one board?  Any educated guesses,
	rumors, or CA confirmations  about the timetables and prices?  Was 
	the 2000 designed with 32 bit paths to take maximum advantage of such 
	a board?  
	
	Is it fairly easy/quick for a program to sense if a 68881 is in the
	system and then use it?  I hope Amiga software developers start
	including this in their programs.

5)	How much will the LP monitor and the 2MB and 8MB memory boards
	cost (both minimally and fully poplated), and when will they be 
	readily available?  

6)	How smart will the autoconfiguration be with extra ports connected
	to an XT or AT slot?  For example, if I get a serial cards will 
	they be able to be addressed as SER1:, ... ?  Will it be fairly
	easy to hook up dumb terminals to them?  (this would be an
	important selling point with a 68020/68881 V.2 system).  And
	would it be reasonably easy for an application program to sense
	how many ports are present or would it have to query the user?
	A good example of this would be a multiuser BBS.

7)	About how many units will ship in the next 6 months?  I hope
	the production is ready to spit out a lot of them so it isn't
	8-12 months before the supply catches up with the demand and we get
	some competitive pricing.


Thank you very much for any replies, especially from the horse's mouth.
I suspect I am not the only person who follows comp.sys.amiga that is
interested in the answers :-).
-- 
Dave Bakken
Boeing Commercial Airplane Company
uw-beaver!ssc-vax!shuksan!tahoma!bakken
Disclaimer:  These views are my own, not my employers.