Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Death of the 1000 (was: Re: Transactor, Vol 1 Issue 3) Message-ID: <5546@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 21 Dec 88 18:57:34 GMT References: <3363@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Distribution: na Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 52 in article <3363@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, jmpiazza@sunybcs.uucp (Joseph M. Piazza) says: > I would like to see a discussion of expansion boxes: are they too > difficult to make? Would the basic machine (e.g., an Amiga 500) need to > be significantly redesigned to accommodate such an expansion? An expansion box isn't all the hard to design, electronically speaking. It's probably more of a challange to design one that'll pass FCC certification, which is a concern of anyone selling finished commercial units. The actual electronic design of a Zorro II compatible box is reasonably well detailed in the booklet "Schematics and Expansion Specifications" book, available from CATS. More thinking would have to go in to also support a CPU slot, but I believe it's possible. You're out of luck on supporting a video slot in such an expansion box, however. The most difficult part, especially where the A500's concerned, is the mechanical design of the box. Like, where do you put the darned thing? Still, even if no commercial design can be done, it would certainly be possible to do a kit type design, along the lines of LUCAS. But again, the electronics in this case are the easy part (of course, you're talking to an electronics guy here; maybe there are lots of mechanical designers out there with ideas on this too?). > * an Amiga 1100 that has a CPU and a Video slot and offer an > expansion box that has Zorro II slots and two or three drive bays? > OR > * an Amiga 1200 which has three or four Zorro II slots, no PC > slots, and a CPU and a Video slot, and one or two drive bays? And you could probably sell this "1200" machine for maybe $100 or even $200 less than an A2000, retail. All you're cutting out, it would seem, is the cost of a few edge connectors and a little case area. The "1100" idea would certainly make for a nice little '020 or '030 machine; you put something like an A2620 in the CPU slot, add on a HD controller, and you have a 5 meg machine. Then again, building an adaptor that only houses a CPU slot device for the A1000 or A500 would not be all that difficult, either. But passthrough is always trouble. Maybe what you really want is an add-on that sports one CPU slot and one or two ZII slots. But again, the next guy won't want the CPU slot, but instead want two or three ZII slots (2 meg cards are certainly cheaper than 68020 cards with RAM). > Flip side, > joe piazza -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession