Back Page Rumors
AMIGAphile Volume 1 Number 3 (SEPTEMBER 1992)
OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM COMMODORE!!!
Commodore Canada has officially announced a number of products.
- Hard Drive for CDTV expansion slot (presumably 2.5" IDE ala A600)
- DCTV upgrade card for CDTV (for CDTV video slot)
- Amiga 4000 an official product!!! To be shown to the public at WOC Pasadena on September 12! It ***WILL*** have the AA ChipSet! Finally the speculation is about to end!!
- AA ChipSet (as said above) officially announced.
- 600HD officially announced and SHIPPING with *40* meg drive, not the 20 meg the European versions have. It will retail for $799 Suggested Canadian Retail, with street price likely to be lower in most centres (definitely so if the units start selling in quantity).
- A570 officially announced. No word on whether it will have internal RAM and HD expansion like the UK final-revision does (which was added at the last minute). Officially ready to ship any time now.
- A3000T/040. Tower A3000 with '040 on a card in the CPU slot, 5 megs of RAM, and a 200 meg HD. The '030 and '882 slots are empty. I couldn't find out pricing, other than to get an official comment that it would be "much better" than adding an '040 card to a normal A3000T.
The A4000 and new CDTV add-ons to ship "this quarter" (read what you like into that), but I was told that it will **DEFINITELY** ship before the end of the year, come hell or high water. If you have the dosh sitting in the bank, you WILL be able to have a AA ChipSet equipped A4000 before Christmas. These announcements were made at a local show called the Multimedia Event (hosted by Commodore and a local dealer). I had the scoop on all of them a few days before the show, though I can't reveal my source. And I have the scoop on one other (only slightly less official). AmigaVision 3.0 Professional! As far as I can discern, this was not an error on my source's part though I'm trying to validate that he didn't mean to say 2.0. Possibly this means there will be an AmigaVision 2.0 'consumer' release. Your guess is as good as mine.
[Ed. -- I was unable to confirm any of this so I'm leaving it as rumor except for the A3000T/040 and the A3640 card which are new products. AV 2.0 may be released with the A4000.]
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All information on the AA chipset is based on rumors. Commodore has not announced the new chipset. A lot of people believe the will make an announcement in September at the World Of Commodore Show in California, and at Fall Comdex.
The rumored specs about the AA chipset are:
- 25 Bit Color Palette (Extra bit used as Transparency Color (Genlock Use))
- 256 Color Modes in Most Resolutions
- 256,000 Extended Ham mode in most resolutions
- Double Buffering Feature to allow for faster view of graphics
- Larger Sprites with a larger color palette
- Sprites can no be Hi-res and independent of the actual screen res.
- Main Resolutions are, 320x200/400, 640x200/480, 800x300/600 10??x10??
- Can boot with old ECS chips for 100% compatibility
The only thing I believe 100% so far is that they are indeed working on the AA chipset and it should be released along with the A4000.
[Ed. -- By the time you read this, the World of Commodore show will be over and all our suspicions will be confirmed]
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A Wing Commander I Demo is available for the Amiga. It looks like Mindscape's popular IBM game is being ported. The opening animations are well done. They run smooth and the colors look good. The titles all look trashy with too much dithering from the converting of IBM 256 color palette to the 32 colors they appear to be using on the Amiga. Once inside the cockpit, where most of the game will be played, it becomes evident that over-dithering will play a big part in the graphics. There was no sound in the demo I watched but it is my guess that good sound effects will not make up for the annoying graphics. If they spend more time fixing up the colors, I'd say this could be a good port but that lies in the hands of Mindscape.
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The rumored WorkBench 2.1 should be a disk based upgrade using the 2.04 ROMs (2.05 for the A600). WB 2.1 was officially shown (as beta) at CeBIT fair in Germany.
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NewTek might not be making any more Video Toaster Workstations due to the long-time tensions between Commodore and NewTek. Evidently, NewTek no longer covers the Amiga plate on the front of the machine but that wasn't enough. Commodore informed their dealers that if they became NewTek Workstation dealers, they would be dropped. Anyway, it looks as if the last of the Video Toaster Workstations are those left in NewTek's warehouse. Remember this only rumor but it would shut up all those shoody Mac users with Video Toaster Workstations who don't know they own an Amiga. It may also have something to due with the Toaster not being compatible with the new AA chipset...
