Hewlett Packard Amiga A1200 graphics chips?

[StevenJGore]

I took my A1200HD apart yesterday to install an internal flicker-ficker and scan-doubler, which, I might add, works perfectly and is very impressive for what is basically a motherboard hardware hack.

Anyway, to get to the point, I noticed that the Amiga's Lisa graphics chip was made by Hewlett Packard, whereas the Alice graphics chip was made by Amiga Technologies.

I had no idea that HP was ever involved (or contracted) in the making of Amiga components. Did I miss something? Can anyone shed any more light on this?

I'm just curious, that's all!

[filson]

maybe they just did some of the ASIC productions?

[xeron]

Quite a lot of Commodores chip production was done by HP, it would seem. Which is interesting, because Commodore's price advantage in the early 80s was due to them owning MOS tech and manufacturing their own chips.

[DaveP]

Maybe they were even manufactured in the Far East?

Oh no!!!!!!!!

[bloodline]

Would HP still have the masks I wonder? (not that they would be of any significant use now...)

I think is was amazing to look inside an A1200 and see that 99% of it was made by Commodore (including the OS and most of the chips...). Look inside a computer now and every little component is by a different company (Including the OS). Economiy of scale I suppose.

[trgse]

Yes. but for some reason someone at commodore decided to sell MOS,

HP was heavily involved with commodore at the end.
the RISC computer Commodore was working on would use a CPU from HP, most of the custom chips was made by HP, all the prototypes was made by HP. not to mention that HP was interested in buying Amiga prior to Commodore going bust, but they instead opted for another company which also made 68k workstations.

btw. commodore was earlier than the hombre working on another RISC computer which used the Transputers (it was being developed in germany) which really promised quite a lot.