Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A2000 questions Message-ID: <2467@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Oct-87 11:29:37 EDT Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2467 Posted: Mon Oct 12 11:29:37 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 14-Oct-87 05:58:19 EDT References: <176@tahoma.ARPA> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 67 in article <176@tahoma.ARPA>, bakken@tahoma.ARPA (Dave Bakken) says: > Keywords: SCSI, ST506, keyboard, 68020, 68881, MMU, V.2, production > > 1) What information, if any, from the AW and BYTE articles (which were > written 8-9 months ago) is incorrect or obsolete? Both of these articles reviewed the German designed A2000. The only system being legally sold in the USA is the West Chester, PA designed A2000, sometimes called the "B2000" (which was an internal designation we used to avoid the "which A2000" question any time someone mentioned "A2000"). So the machines you can actually buy are similar to those reviewed in the aforementioned articles, but with a few differences. 1 meg of memory on the motherboard instead of 512K. A better video expansion slot. > 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? Providing you plug and unplug in the proper way, you'll be safe even when running. If you try to plug it in wrong, you could very easily cause a system reset (equivalent to Control-Amiga-Amiga) to occur. Mine usually gets stuck on top of the monitor when not in use, just like I used to do with my C.Itoh terminal. > 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. The Amiga OS tries a 68881 instruction early on in its startup code. If the coprocessor is present, the instruction is executed and a flag for 68881 is set in ExecBase. Otherwise an F-line trap occurs, and no 68881 flag is set. The OS also indicates if 68000, 68010, or 68020 are installed, and some OS services change base on the processor in place (like the GetCC() function). > 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? So far, the 2 meg board, hard disk controller, and PC-XT bridge card are available. I'm not sure of the retail prices. > 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. Well, since a PC doesn't autoconfigure, it's not all that easy to many the Amiga autoconfigure PC-side resources. However, it would be reasonable to write a serial.device that included any PC-side serial devices as additional serial units. Probably the best thing to do would be to write such a serial device as an Expansion drawer device that's bound by the presence of the bridge card. A mountlist entry could allocate serial units on the PC side and call them SER1: or whatever. This system will certainly have to have some PC side code as well, just like the PC side hard disk code does. If there's any good way to determine in software how many serial devices exist on the PC, then your device could allocate these automatically instead of each explicitly via Mount commands. > Dave Bakken -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The B2000 Guy" PLINK : D-DAVE H BIX : hazy "Computers are what happen when you give up sleeping" - Iggy the Cat