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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: koren@fc.hp.com (Steve Koren)
Subject: REVIEW: Commodore Amiga 4000
Message-ID: <1992Oct26.173622.22620@menudo.uh.edu>
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Keywords: Amiga, computer, hot topic, commercial
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Nntp-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Reply-To: koren@fc.hp.com (Steve Koren)
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 17:36:22 GMT
PRODUCT NAME:
Amiga 4000
BRIEF DESCRIPTION:
This is a review of the Amiga 4000, the latest machine in the Amiga line
of personal computers from Commodore.
The machine as reviewed is:
Amiga 4000
Commodore 1960 Multisync Monitor
6 Mb RAM
68040 CPU/25 MHz
120 Mb HD
1.76 Mb floppy drive
"AGA" chipset
This particular machine was apparently one of the first 200 produced.
LIST PRICE:
Check with your dealer. The original MSLP is US$3699, but the street
price seems to be quite a bit cheaper. Prices certainly vary
geographically as well.
COMPANY INFORMATION:
Commodore Business Machines, Inc.
1200 Wilson Drive
West Chester, PA 19380 USA
(The machine is produced in England, and the keyboard and mouse are
produced in Malaysia).
OBTAINING THE MACHINE:
I had a very difficult time hunting down a place to buy a 4000. Four
successive calls to the "Commodore Dealer Locator" got me phone numbers
of supposed dealers, but in all cases the dealers either had gone out of
business, or no longer sold Amigas when I called. This was a bit
frustrating. After two weeks of searching, I eventually found a dealer
about 75 miles away by talking to someone who had bought an Amiga there
a while ago. The chore of finding the computer in the first place was
one of the few bad things I have to say about this machine. I don't
think most people would go through the trouble I did in order to buy the
system. I believe it would be beneficial for Commodore to 1) vastly
increase its dealer base in the US, and 2) keep its dealer database up
to date, since calling 8 non-existent dealers does not give a very
professional image of the company.
HARDWARE:
The 4000 comes in a desktop style case, a bit smaller than an Amiga
2000. The keyboard is essentially identical to the 2000's keyboard, but
mouse is a more rounded "beetle" style mouse, instead of the more
angular 2000 mouse. The 4000 has a key and lock which can be used to
shut off all keyboard and mouse input to the machine (including the
C-A-A reboot combination, but not including the power switch). The
power switch is on the front, along with LEDs for power and the internal
HD.
UNPACKING AND SETTING UP:
This task went very quickly and painlessly. The system as shipped is
essentially ready to plug in and go - the operating system is already
installed on the hard drive, and the hard drive is configured for
booting. There was just one small glitch on my machine - on some early
4000s, the hard drive was formatted in the OFS ("Old FileSystem")
format, which is substantially slower than the newer FFS ("Fast
FileSystem"). From what I hear, Commodore has since corrected this
problem. It was not much trouble for me to reformat the hard drive and
reinstall the operating system. Although this isn't a recommended
approach, I got through it with no trouble without reading the
documentation, just by booting the install disk and clicking on things.
The OS install utility is quite user friendly and intuitive, and you can
pick what parts of the operating system you do and do not wish to
install.
One thing I noticed immediately is that the 4000 is a quiet machine. My
old 2000 is fairly loud, and the 4000 seems to be only about half as
loud when running. The hard drive is essentially silent, and only the
fan can be heard, but it is quieter than the 2000's fan.
INITIAL SYSTEM CONFIGURATION:
The operating system originally boots in 640x200 mode, similar to a 2000
or 500. However, the AGA ("Advanced Graphic Architecture") chipset in
the 4000 supports many other higher resolution modes. There are monitor
configuration files that control the resolution and scan rate of the
various graphic modes supported by the 4000. The Workbench screen can
be run on any of these and changed by a tool in the preferences drawer.
After some amount of fiddling, I settled upon the "SUPER72 Super High
Res Interlace" mode. On my system, this mode gives a solid display of
896x628 pixels (which I'll round to 900x630 for simplicity, although it
is a 4x2 pixels short of that in reality). The scan rate in this mode
is 25 KHz, which is enough faster than the 15 KHz interlace modes in the
2000 that it seems to eliminate flicker. However, this might depend a
little on lighting conditions. When I booted the system in this mode at
the dealer, I could detect a bit of interlace flicker, but when I tried
this mode at home, the display appears quite solid. With my anti-glare
screen on the monitor, I cannot detect any flicker in this mode at all,
unless I look very closely for it. It certainly seems to be a genuinely
usable mode, quite unlike 640x400 on non-flicker-fixed A2000's. In
order to display it, I had to adjust the vertical size knob on the
monitor.
WORKBENCH 3.0
The Amiga 4000 includes a new release of the Amiga operating system.
Release 3.0 includes support for the AGA chipset of the 4000. The AGA
chipset can support up to 256 directly accessible colors in any
resolution mode from a 24 bit palette, and up to 252,208 simultaneous
colors in "HAM8" mode. (HAM8 mode is excellenct for graphics
applications, but isn't suitable for word processing or textual
applications).
The Workbench 3.0 screen can be configured to any depth from 1 to 8
planes. Depending on your resolution mode and tolerance to update
rates, you may find that anywhere from 4 to 8 planes provides a suitably
fast environment. In my 900x630 workbench (actually a 1024x768 virtual
workbench displayed in a 900x630 physical display), I find the update
rate adequate at 5 or 6 planes (32 or 64 colors). Seven and 8 plane
displays can get slow at this high resolution, but they do better at
lower resolutions such as 640x400. In fact, when I was playing with
this system at the store, I compared the interactive performance of the
4000 to a nearby 386/33 machine running windows 3.1. Both machines were
running 8 plane displays at an identical resolution, and the Amiga was
quite a bit faster than the 386 for window updates. Although I didn't
time either one, here is my subjective impression of the speed of the
4000 user interface compared to several other systems I have used a
reasonable amount. The rating factor is "snappiness", whatever that
means. Remember, this is subjective, and compares things like moving
windows, scrolling scroll lists (which depends less on resolution), the
speed with which windows pop up, etc. So graphics performance isn't
directly correlated with this, and "tricks" of the OS, such as AmigaDos
3.0's method of only scrolling needed bitplanes for CLI windows, can
affect things:
System & UI approx system cost "snappiness" of UI
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga 3000, 1 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 2.0
Amiga 3000, 2 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 1.0
Amiga 3000, 3 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 0.7
Amiga 4000, 4 plane WB, 640x400 $3K-4K 2.5
Amiga 4000, 4 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 1.5
Amiga 4000, 5 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 0.8
Amiga 4000, 8 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 0.6
80386/33 clone, Windows 3.1, 800x600x8 $1K-2K 0.3
HP 720 workstation, 8 plane, 1280x1024 $8K-12K 3.0
Workbench 3.0 supports the use of IFF images as backgrounds for both
the workbench screen, and workbench windows. I currently have a
640x400 image of a bicycle in the background of my workbench (which is
a backdrop window), and have a smaller 320x200 image in the background
of my workbench windows. Although this doesn't provide any real
"functionality", it does look very nice and provides an easy way to
visually distinguish windows. The effect is quite pleasing. All
workbench windows share a common image, but since the edges of the
windows will tend to use many different colors, it is easy to see
where one window stops and another starts.
Workbench running on a 900x630 screen looks very nice. The extra
resolution allows the use of higher resolution fonts on screen, which
makes for a much more professional look. I am using a 20 point
Compu-Graphic Times font for my window titles, which is a readable size
on this display, a 15 point font as the system default, and a 15 point
proportional font for icons. The 15 point font takes about as much
screen real-estate as a 9 point font did on the 2000's 640x400 interlace
screen, but provides much more resolution for nice looking characters.
In addition, the display is much sharper and easier to read.
The display quality of the 4000's output is very high. Although my old
2000's display was inferior, I feel the 4000's output, when sent to a
suitably good monitor, is truly of workstation quality. I use a
1280x1024 Sony display attached to an HP workstation every day at my
job, and while it gives more resolution than the 4000 does, I don't
think the 4000 lacks anything in sharpness or clarity in comparison. In
fact, since most people with 4000s will probably use a 14" monitor,
900x630 is about as much resolution as is practical at this size. In
order to move to 1024x768, I believe that at _least_ a 16" monitor is
needed. Since there is a minimum physical size of text that is
comfortable to read, having more resolution on a small monitor meets
diminishing returns after a point. Larger monitors than 14" are quite
expensive.
At any rate, the 4000's display in 900x630 mode is, in a word,
beautiful. The only potential problem is that some people need a 10% or
so faster refresh in order to no be bothered by the interlace, but I
don't think this will be a problem for most people under most lighting
conditions.
AmigaDos 3.0 and the AGA chipset support HAM8 in any resolution mode.
This means that it is possible to have a 900x630 display in up to 252000
simultaneous colors from a 24 bit pallete, for near 24-bit quality
graphics. Further, it is possible to animate HAM8 graphics in any
resolution mode (although the practical limit is probably 640x400 due to
bandwidth restrictions in this generation of graphics chips). As far as
I know, there are no animation players yet which support HAM8 animation,
but that should change fairly soon. The few HAM8 still-frame images I
have seen look wonderful.
HARDWARE EXPANSION:
The 4000 has 4 card slots, one 5.25" drive bay, and two 3.5" drive bays.
The 3.5" bays can accept either two 1" tall devices each (for a total of
four 3.5" devices), or one larger device. Commodore ships the machine
with 1.5" tall devices, so you will need to replace one or both of them if
you wish to install 2 devices in each bay. Further expansion will need an
external case and power supply (which costs US$40-$85). The 4000 can use
Amiga 3000 Zorro-III cards, which gives it a good supply of expansion
devices already on the market, such as 64 Mb RAM cards. It can also use
Amiga 2000 Zorro-II cards, although these will not take advantage of the
4000's superior bus speed. The 4000's CPU is on a daughterboard and can be
upgraded when faster versions come out. There have been rumors of future
CPU boards with an on-board DSP. It is not yet known whether the 4000 is
upgradable to the next generation of AGA chips. I hope the answer is
"yes".
SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY:
Most properly written applications seem to work fine under AmigaDos 3.0.
Immediately after powering up my 4000, I transferred my bare minimum
"working set" of software, which consists of the following:
SKsh 2.1 beta
GNU Emacs 18.58 (port by David Gay)
ISpell 3.1ljr (port by Loren Rittle)
Half a dozen commodities
All of the above installed and worked without any trouble at all, and in
fact, I am currently using GNU emacs and ISpell to type this review.
Emacs is talking to ISpell through ARexx without any trouble at all, in
exactly the same manner as on my 2000.
I have only tried a few software packages so far other than the above.
These I have found to work:
DPaint IV
Excellence!
A-10 Tank Killer 1.5
Most 2.0 freeware Commodities or utilities
I have tried a few PD "screen hacks" and such which failed on the 4000:
Oing! (a screen hack with bouncing ball sprites)
World (puts a 3d rotating globe in a workspace)
On the other hand, a few other screen hacks ("Wavebench") seem to work.
It seems a fair assessment that compatibility for properly written
software is very high, but games or utilities which break the rules
stand a good chance of not running under AmigaDos 3.0.
A number of popular AmigaDos software suppliers have already announced
AGA versions of their products, and a few are already on the market.
Since 2.0, software which opens custom screens should allow the user to
choose the monitor file for the screen resolution to be used. Such
software, even if written under 2.0, will run with the higher resolution
modes under 3.0 with no changes. However, some software which is not
that smart will still use old modes. If several screens each have
different scan rates, the multisync monitor will have to re-sync when
the user changes screens on the Amiga, which adds a slight delay of
about 0.5 sec. If a screen of one resolution is dragged partially down
over a screen of another, the front-most screen sets the scan rate of
the output.
OS 3.0 FEATURES & BUGS:
AmigaDos 3.0 supports object classes. I haven't had a chance to play
with these too much yet, but I can describe the basic concept. If, for
example, a desk top publishing program wants to load in an image for
inclusion in a document, it previously had to understand the format of
the image. I.e., it had to call the IFF shared library to read in IFF
images, or include code to read jpeg or GIF images if it wanted to read
those formats. If a new format came along, the program had to be
re-shipped. With AmigaDos 3.0 file classes, all that changes. A
program can read an image class, and AmigaDos will call the appropriate
handler to extract information from the image itself without the program
having to even know what type of image it is. Thus, if a new image type
called "zpeg" comes along, all that needs to be done is install a new
object class for zpeg images, and all the old software will be able to
suddenly understand the new image type. The same applies for sounds,
text, animations, and any other type of object. This is a powerful new
feature in AmigaDos 3.0 that has not been developed much yet, but has
great potential.
CLI windows in AmigaDos 3.0 seem to be smarter than they were in 2.0.
The console device, apparently, only scrolls the bitplanes that
absolutely need to be scrolled. This means that if you are just
displaying text in the standard color, the console device may only have
to scroll one or two bitplanes instead of the 5 or 6 there may be in
your screen. This makes using CLI windows fast even on deep workbench
screens. (Disclaimer: I don't know for sure that this is what is
happening but I suspect it quite strongly.)
There are some bugs in AmigaDos 3.0 yet. The "multiview" object viewer
crashes easily, and occasionally the palette preference tool does odd and
unexpected things to your palette. But overall, I have not yet found any
critical bugs which would prevent me from using the system. Most of the
ones I have found are just minor inconveniences which I'm sure will be
fixed for future versions of 3.0.
BENCHMARKS:
The following benchmarks compare the Amiga 4000 to:
- An Amiga 500, 68000/ 8 MHz, no fast RAM
- An Amiga 2000, 68000/ 8 MHz, fast RAM
- An Amiga 2500, 68020/20 MHz, fast RAM
- An Amiga 3000, 68030/25 MHz, fast RAM
The tests were all performed with AIBB_4.65, ("Amiga Intuition Based
Benchmarks", by LaMonte Koop). In all cases, the 3000/25 is used as a
comparison base:
Machine: 500/00 2000/00 2500/020 3000/030 4000/040
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Integer tests:
WritePixel 0.25 0.26 0.68 1.00 2.81
Sieve 0.11 0.11 0.56 1.00 1.11
Dhrystone 0.18 0.18 0.48 1.00 3.43
Sort 0.13 0.14 0.45 1.00 2.68
Matrix 0.10 0.11 0.52 1.00 1.52
IMath 0.05 0.05 0.51 1.00 2.29
Memtest 0.16 0.17 0.61 1.00 1.20
TGTest 0.50 0.52 0.82 1.00 1.44
InstTest 0.17 0.17 0.44 1.00 1.78
Float/Double:
Savage 0.01 0.01 0.51 1.00 1.19
FMath 0.05 0.05 0.40 1.00 4.72
FMatrix 0.14 0.14 0.46 1.00 1.04
Beachball 0.01 0.03 0.39 1.00 6.50 (!!)
SWhetstone 0.02 0.03 0.38 1.00 0.56
DWhetstone 0.02 0.02 0.37 1.00 3.40
FTrace 0.01 0.01 0.42 1.00 3.10
CplxTest 0.04 0.04 0.47 1.00 3.25
Generally, it can be seen that the 4000 averages about 2 to 2.5 times
faster than the 3000 for integer operations, and about 3 to 3.5 times
faster than the 3000 for floating point operations. For the Beachball
test (which ray traces a beachball on the screen), the 4000 is a
staggering 650 times as fast as an unexpanded Amiga 500, and about 215
times faster than an Amiga 2000 with fast ram. Most of the CPU bound
tests of the 4000 come out about 5 to 10% slower than my PP&S 68040 card
on my 2000, which runs at 28 MHz instead of 25. However, the 4000 feels
snappier in actual operation due to the AGA chipset. CPU board upgrades
to 33 and 40 MHz 68040s promise even more speed from the machine. The
CPU performance of the 68040, coupled with the AGA chipset's enhanced
color modes, make this essentially the perfect 3D rendering platform for
those who can't afford a Silicon Graphics workstation.
The following is a performance test of the 4000's internal disk drive
using DiskSpeed 4.1:
CPU: 68040 OS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA
Device: sys: Buffers: 128
Comments: Amiga 4000 internal disk
CPU Speed Rating: 3097
Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Create file: 26184 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 84%
Write to file: 26462 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 85%
Read from file: 158488 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 50%
Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Create file: 157322 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 78%
Write to file: 163083 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 79%
Read from file: 213989 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 74%
Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Create file: 329347 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 72%
Write to file: 375143 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 71%
Read from file: 559055 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 54%
Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer.
Create file: 429040 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 69%
Write to file: 550858 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 64%
Read from file: 909545 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 33%
Average CPU Available: 68% | CPU Availability index: 2106
Those needing more disk speed than this can get it when fast Zorro-III
SCSI cards become available. (Actually, Zorro-II cards can be used now
at some cost in speed). The speed of the internal IDE drive is
acceptable, although the CPU utilization gets a bit high during high
speed transfers. However, I doubt many people will notice this, and
SCSI is always available for those who need the high end.
WARRANTY:
The machine and monitor come with a "Commodore Gold Service" warranty. If
the machine breaks in a period of one year, they will pick it up for free,
fix it, and send it back also for free, by overnight express mail.
On-site service is available for a small, annual fee ($49 or $79).
PROBLEMS:
Aside from my initial difficulty in finding an Amiga dealer within a 3
hour drive of my house, I have had few problems with the 4000. Although
I have yet to try most of my old software, most of what I have tried has
worked. The only exception is that some games and a few "screen hacks"
have failed, but I expected that, and it isn't the fault of the 3.0
operating system, but rather the fault of the games themselves.
The 4000 could really use more than 2 Mb of chip ram. 4 Mb would be
appropriate.
There is really just one significant problem I have run into. The 4000
has a feature called "mode promotion", which does two things. First, it
attempts to force application screens that would have opened in 15 KHz
interlace mode to open at a higher scan rate to avoid flicker. Second,
it attempts to force application screens with a resolution of 200
vertically to "scan-double" their output and eliminate visible scan
lines. This effect is very pleasing - all those old 640x200 screens
suddenly are a lot more pleasant to look at. However, on my 4000, scan
promotion seems to force screens far to the right of the monitor, such
that there is no way to see the whole screen. Neither fidding with my
monitor or the overscan preferences was able to help. I'm not sure what
the problem is, but for now I've kept scan conversion off so that the
application screens are reasonably centered and visible.
CONCLUSIONS:
The A4000 presents a significant expansion in the capabilities of Amiga
computers. The original Amiga's graphics, while fantastic by the
standards of 1985 when they were introduced, have recently begun to show
their age. The AGA chipset gives the Amiga a true 24 bit palette and
the ability to use hundreds of thousands of colors in any resolution
mode. The potential improvements of future Amigas now lie primarily in
graphics speed, and to a lesser extent, increased resolution.
I bought my first Amiga 1000 in 1985, with 256 Kb of memory and later
upgraded to an accelerated 2000. When I became interested in the Amiga
4000, I was at first unsure whether the abilities it provided were
significant enough to warrant upgrading from my current system. Now
that I have worked with the 4000, I am confident the answer is "yes".
The 4000 takes a large step towards making the Amiga into a workstation
class computer system.
COMMENTS:
I can be reached electronically at:
koren@fc.hp.com
or via phone:
303-226-4985 (USA)
---
Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu
Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu
General discussion: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu