116 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
116 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
***************************************************************************
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****************** First reports of the A5000 *************************
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***************************************************************************
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Commodore have gone for much like the A2000 large case to contain the power
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of this new machine. on the front panel it supports two 3.5" drive (one as
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standard) and two 5.25" (one holding a CD-Drive). This is the first machine
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to really support multi-tasking with it's three processors on board.
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Processors
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----------
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The A5000 will incorperate the new motorola 68060 + two 68EC040 processors,
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the '060' is clocked at over 35MHz and the two '040' clocked at 25Mhz
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will give the A5000 a total speed at over 60MHz. The '060' with sit on a
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seperate card in the cpu slot (as in the A4000) and both the '040' will
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sit on the motherboard. The '040' have been design to help the '060' ,this
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will be most evident at times of heavy multi-tasking. As a result of this
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configuration the A5000 will have a new kickstart.
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Kickstart/Workbench
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-------------------
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The A5000 will have kickstart/workbench 4.0 (beta version has 3.2). This
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kickstart is required to control the three processors , earlier kickstarts
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will not be able to access the '040' (but the '060' can). This kickstart
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will not be released for the older machines although 4.1 will. This
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kickstart/workbench will enable the '040' to be assigned to different tasks
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and as shiped one will handle all screen and sound processing and the other
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will handle all of the I/O devices. This kickstart is a 1Mb chip and will
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be shipped on the hard drive (to be confirmed). If it is released in chip
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form then the chip will be placed on it's own card. This kickstart will have
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a user-selectable kickstart screen so the user can select which kickstart to
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load (either in slot or on harddrive) and the A5000 has been tested with
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kickstart 1.2 upwards so there will be no more compatability problems.
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Chipset
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-------
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Commodore have done it again in changing the chipset as there are several
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new chips. The A5000 with workbench 4 is now capable of operating in all
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modes with a 512 colour pallet. To maintain the speed require to operate
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in this mode one of the '040' can be assigned to the screen display (as
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it is shipped). The maximum screen resolution is 4096 x 4096 with over
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32 million colours on screen. This new chipset will be able to detect which
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chipset it should use (orig. ,ECS ,super-ECS or AGA , super AGA ) by
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detecting which kickstart is currently running or which is selected at a
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cold boot.
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Ram
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---
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As the new chipset has a higher resolution and more colours more chip ram is
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required and commodore have responded by having 16Mb of chip ram on the
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motherboard (expandable to 64Mb) and 16Mb of fast ram (theoretically
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expandable to 1024Mb, tested to 256Mb). The chip and fast ram have been
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organised on a 32-bit wide structure as in the A3000 + A4000.
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Drives
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------
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The harddrive interface is the new scsi2 standard with a 210Mb slimline
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hardrive mounted as standard. The floppy drive is a high density type and
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the CD-drive is a standard A2000 internal drive.
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Sound
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-----
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The sound is now 16-bit as the A4000 was supposed to have.
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Internal Connectors
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-------------------
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There are eight zorro III expansion slots with three IBM slots in parallel
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with three zorro slots. There is no cpu slot as the '060' is on it's own
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board and thus can easily replaced. If the kickstart is to be shipped on
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the harddrive there will be an empty slot to place a new kickstart.
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External Connectors
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-------------------
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It has all the standard ports (disk drive, serial, etc.) and the keyboard
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connector (same pins as the A4000) at the back, the mouse ports are on the
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right side towards the back.
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Price
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-----
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Well that depends on what pack you want as as of this moment there are two
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1 all above = $3499 (Appox.)
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2 all above plus
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Amax v3.0 Mac emulator (100% compatable with all known software) +
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Golden gate IBM emulator = $3999 (Approx.)(uses two zorro III slots)
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This information has been confirmed by Commodore.
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