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Author Topic: Amiga Ranger Prototype Found!  (Read 7606 times)

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Offline psxphill

Re: Amiga Ranger Prototype Found!
« on: July 17, 2015, 10:18:39 PM »
Quote from: danwood;792447
Wow, Brian Bagnall has just posted about the Amiga Ranger prototype that has been found by Dale Luck!

Unless I'm missing something this doesn't have any Amiga chipset in it at all, it appears to be the reference design of the Zorro expansion for the A1000. Similar to what third parties released http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/paljr

This explains why c00000 memory is referred to as Ranger ram though. The PalJr flyer http://amiga.resource.cx/adcoll/adcoll.pl?id=paljr&pg=5 says it supports 1mb of memory at c0000, although it's real fast ram and not just chip ram that can't be used as chip ram that you find on fat agnus systems. Kickstart 1.2 doesn't care how the memory works, it probes the area and if ram is there then it's added. Essentially Kickstart 1.2 is the software support for Ranger.

Ironically this makes the Amiga 1000+Ranger, the prototype for the german Amiga 2000. Zorro-I and Zorro-II are essentially the same expect for the form factor because commodore Germany wanted it to be more PCish.

I'm still not convinced either way about the new improved chipset, it's entirely possible they did a design for a vram agnus/denise that could do 1024x1024. I am less convinced that any silicon was ever produced.

The Amiga 1k prototype http://chrisxyz.smugmug.com/Amiga-1k-prototype/ should probably be labelled Amiga Lorraine prototype. The Amiga 1000 name didn't exist for a long time after this and the hardware will be very different. If the reported history is true then this will be outputting a composite video signal natively and not rgb, so if ham works (not a given) then it should be possible to do the effects that it was originally designed for.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2015, 11:08:32 PM by psxphill »
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Amiga Ranger Prototype Found!
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2015, 02:14:36 PM »
Quote from: Gulliver;792741
I disagree, it should be named "Joe Pillow", because of the name of the airplane ticket they took to carry it to the famous CES show where it was shown for the 1st time ;)

Joe Pillow was a pillow that they used to protect Lorraine.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/08/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-3/3/

I do wonder if anyone kept him.

Quote from: chrisxyz;792740
Dale was pretty adamant that Ranger DID NOT have a new chip design, it was not the purpose.

My point was that even if a new chip set was being worked on then it won't be found in this as it's only an add on for the A1000 and doesn't contain any Amiga chipset (OCS or whatever).

The Ranger concept may only have been what this prototype represented, or it might have been a whole new computer. My gut feeling is that when commodore Germany cobbled together the A2000, Jay wanted to keep control he probably over egged what benefits continuing with Ranger could provide & in that situation the claims might be more like smoke and mirrors (*). As commodore Germany wouldn't be able to compete with creating a new chipset he probably thought that would be a winning hand, but like poker you might be playing with the deck stacked against you. With hindsight you could argue that commodore should have listened to Jay as they were pretty incapable of creating a new chipset. Everything that came later was just a hack on the original work, although there is no evidence that Jay would have been any better.

(*) I suspect this was why he claimed the Fat Agnus concept wouldn't work either.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2015, 02:31:43 PM by psxphill »
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Amiga Ranger Prototype Found!
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2015, 08:00:11 PM »
Quote from: chrisxyz;792793
Whats interesting is that a few weeks ago I was standing with Dave Needle, Bob Burns and Dale Luck and I mentioned "lorraine", Dave said "ok what is that, I cant remember?" Bob Burns remark was "well the internet says it was ....".

Supposedly it was a code name to hide exactly what it was they were working on. As such you can't blame the internet as what it says was reported in the press before the world wide web even existed. As the press could only know what they were told they should probably look closer to home for any inaccuracies. I'd love to know what it was actually used for, as well as when the "Amiga PC" name came and went.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2015, 08:13:01 PM by psxphill »