What if ?

[swift240]

Ok sitting here with nothing else better to do.........
I thought to myself, if the A600 and A1200 were to be re-sold as from the years when they first ever came out, and you had 1 single chance of having something on these machines as bog standard what would it be?

USB ?
An PCI slot ?
More than 2 meg of chip ram as standard ?
Fast Ethernet as standard?
Minimum 20Gig HD as standard ?

Or what if you had your choice of things as standard? Straight from the shop.
How would you like the 600 and 1200 or even 4000 to be as standard?

I don`t mean to keep up with these days PC`s, let`s leave that out of it. But a standard Amiga, how would you like to buy it as a bog standard machine?  With what inside ?

Mike.

[spihunter]

I would want a A4000T with Zorro & PCI slots standard w/ two video slots. One that would auto switch from NTSC/PAL and the other had built in scandouble/flickerfixer?

 :-D

[Boot_WB]

68060 on board with option for socketed PPC.
DDR memory slots would be nice.

[X-ray]

A1200: more than 2mb chip, definitely. That was the biggest pain for me. And one SIMM slot on the mobo.

A4000T: four more SIMM slots on the mobo and no 16mb limit. Better case, so you don't have to turn it sideways to open.

[oddmario]

Faster and more memory would help.

[AmigaPete]

PCI slots, because they would allow all of the other things - USB, Ethernet, Firewire, Video, whatever. Of course this is as long as there were drivers.

Every time I look at networking my A2000 I just cannot bring myself to spend $100+ to get a 10Mbit ethernet card, when I can buy a Gigabit PCI card for <$30. Same with USB controller & video.

Pete

[leirbag28]

@swift240

Let me see if I can answer you "Swiftly" :-)


1) 8Mb ChipRAM standard (upgradable to 32mb via 72pin SIMM)
2) 68060 as standard (removable) and all chips removable
3) 4 SIMM slots on the Mobo (up to 512mb RAM) or maybe PC133 RAM
4) S-Video OUT as standard with the ability to force PAL into NTSC always 100% ON  or NTSC to PAL for UK users
5) a seperate VGA out with the output already scan doubled while still maintianing S-Video OUT in NTSC via the RGB and S-Video Ports
6) AAA Chipset (or at least an entirely new Gfx mode thats compatible with AGA and ECS but displays 16 Million on WB. It should be real cheap to do this as one can maybe Pay ATI for the rights on one of their old NTSC chipsets or even Faroudja (preferably)
7) 24bit sound chips with MP3 decoder x4 (Can decode 4 MP3 at once)
2 Gigabyte sized Kickstart ROM or at least capable to add this. (Why?  so you can put more software in it, like DVD display menu, VCD Menu, AudioCD menu.....(Think CD32 or Sony PSOne) WinAMP type Visuals in the ROM so one can play CD with Visuals and control them as well as add your own Gfx.....You have No idea how ESSENTIAL this is!
9) USB 2.0 as standard.......or Ethernet Port or 32bit CardBus instead of PCMCIA
10) SATA Harddrive port instead as well as the IDE one (Buffered)

Thats my Top Ten list in that exact order  for an A600/A1200

[amigagr]

@leirbag28: not bad choice!!! i'm with you :-)

[swift240]

Well thats a cracking start, I like that lot myself.
But to be honest, I think it will be far better to have at least 64Mb of Chip ram and 512 Fast ram.

Hmmm there must be something else we can stick in there someplace?


 

[leirbag28]

@swift240

Well yes.........I would prefer 64mb of CHIPRAm if it wer to be done.......able to be upgraded to 2gigs of ChipRAM/Video memory.  and 4 gig FastRAM. I belive this to be totally doable and totally necessary for anyone to be interested..........

There is one more option I wanted to add to the list:

11) A Pentium 4 Chip Slot to drop in a P4 chip if one gets a hold of one........and uses the Amiga Mainboard for all the necessary components it needs..........such as Sound, Video/Gfx input and outpts...........with Amiga Drivers on the PC side if necessary so that no other components are neceassry.................think of it as an ATOnce type thingy that they had for the Amiga 500....except its Pentium 4 and embedded into the Motherboard so that one can run WindowsXP natively at at least 1ghz speed. Imagine being able to pull down the Workbench screen and right behind it is WindowsXP!   and running through the S-Video OUT port as well and the RGB port.......giving WindowsXP TRUE native Video OUT rther than the Squished Blurry crap it outputs now.

I can only dream of this........and See it as rather simple and should have been a necessary inclusion by Commodore even in 1994......of course back then it would have been a Pentium II option....heck I would have settled for Pentium I.

A friend of Mine overheard Irving Goulds daughter telling him about How her Father (or uncle...cant remember)  was Irving Gould and how he Ruined the opportunity to make Millions by bringing the company down........his own daughter/niece said this to my Amiga owning friend on the phone, who happened to be her Cable TV installer or something like that.

I thought it was an interesting coincidence and interesting conversation..............she lives here in NY.

Mayb I should try to contacte her myself for the Full Down Low :-)
You know........I may be willing to rehire Jack Tramiel to be the Owner of Commodore again and reopen its doors.......or at least to show me the ropes if I was owner of Commodore. Then I would release the Greatest Amiga the world has ever seen.

[Plaz]

PCI slots, because they would allow all of the other things

Ah, but he said PCI SLOT. USB would allow more expanions if were were only allowed one slot.

Plaz
Being nit-picky today.

[swift240]

So far in this topic, there is not any thing that can not be done.
Its just a case of doing it.
Yes I know its not merely as simple as that, but my point is simple being, it can be done.

Any thing can be done.

The Amiga in its day was years ahead, it should have stayed that way.

[Doobrey]

leirbag28 wrote:
@swift240

Well yes.........I would prefer 64mb of CHIPRAm if it wer to be done.......able to be upgraded to 2gigs of ChipRAM/Video memory.  and 4 gig FastRAM. I belive this to be totally doable and totally necessary for anyone to be interested..........

One slight problem... you're using a 32bit CPU, it can't address more than 4GB. Also, some of the OS functions can only return addresses within 2GB

Which brings me to ask, what the hell you need that much memory for in an Amiga, especially if you're still using a 68k CPU ?

But I'm with you on the 16/24bit gfx in PAL/NTSC modes..gimme gimme gimme
And onboard ethernet and a faster parallel port (or 2)

[Hyperspeed]

Well something the PowerVixxen should have if it is still being worked on is onboard 3D acceleration.

It's a crying shame there wasn't a Blizzard 1230-V with some kind of 3D accelerator on it (a bit like the SuperFX for SNES or SVP/32X for Megadrive).

The Amiga died rapidly around the time the first wave of 3D consoles came out in '94/'95...

Oh, and a dedicated mouse port and two joypad ports so we don't have to fumble at the back of the machine when playing multiplayer!

;-)

[leirbag28]

@Doobrey

Quote:
Which brings me to ask, what the hell you need that much memory for in an Amiga, especially if you're still using a 68k CPU ?
---------------------------------------------------------------

For many many things!  For one........leaving your Amiga on For days Rendering Frames into FastRAM!  this will be faster!..............but also as an Example.........I constantly Run Multiple Video Applications at once and load Tons if not Hundreds of Animations into RAM for Rapid display LIVE......If I could load 1000 Animations into RAM I would......I use SCALA MM300 and Elan Performer and Max them Out totally..........then I do some Live VJing whenever I am at an event I was invited to or at the Night Club I used to work at, where I had my Amiga connected to 3 Projectors and probably 20 more Video nmonitors at once for 4 hours straight displaying different animations in realtime to the beat of the music.

Using about 4 applicatins at once.........just imagine if I didnt have to switch to a different app to get different visuals.or never running out of Animations or Video.

@Hyperspeed

Quote:
Oh, and a dedicated mouse port and two joypad ports so we don't have to fumble at the back of the machine when playing multiplayer!
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Yeah!  thats what I forgot!    4 joystick ports that each support more than 6 buttons for the Joypad and even Vibration feedback. :-)