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Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models: the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030. The Amiga 4000 system design was generally similar to that of the A3000, but introduced the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) chipset with enhanced graphics. The SCSI system from previous Amigas was replaced by the lower-cost Parallel ATA. The original A4000 is housed in a beige horizontal desktop box with a separate keyboard. Later, Commodore released an expanded tower version called the A4000T. Technical information Processor and RAM The stock A4000 shipped with either a Motorola 68EC030 or 68040 CPU, 2 MB of Amiga Chip RAM and up to 16 MB of additional RAM in 32-bit SIMMs. There is a non-functional jumper that was intended to expand the "chip RAM" to 8MB. Later, third-party developers created various CPU expansion boar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore International
Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), was a significant participant in the development of the home personal computer industry in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The company developed and marketed the world's best-selling computer, the Commodore 64 (1982), and released its Amiga computer line in July 1985. With quarterly sales ending 1983 of $ (equivalent to $ in ), Commodore was one of the world's largest personal computer manufacturers. History Founding and early years Commodore co-founders Jack Tramiel and Manfred Kapp met in the early 1950s while both employed by the Ace Typewriter Repair Company in New York City. In 1954, they formed a partnership to sell used and reconditioned typewriters and used their profits to purchase the Singer Typewriter Company. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motorola 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the Motorola 68000 series, 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68LC060 and the 68EC060. Architecture There is an LC (Low-Cost) version, without an FPU and EC (Embedded Controller), without MMU and FPU. The 68060 design was led by Joe Circello. The 68060 shares most architectural features with the P5 (microarchitecture), P5 Pentium. Both have a very similar superscalar tree traversal, in-order dual instruction pipeline configuration, and an instruction decoder which breaks down complex instructions into simpler ones before execution. However, a significant difference is that the 68060 FPU is not pipelined and is therefore up to three times slower than the Pentium in floating point applications. In contrast to that, integer multiplications and bit shifting instructions are signifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such as a computer terminal, and a ''DCE'' (''data circuit-terminating equipment'' or ''data communication equipment''), such as a modem. The standard defines the electrical characteristics and timing of signals, the meaning of signals, and the physical size and pinout of connectors. The current version of the standard is ''TIA-232-F Interface Between Data Terminal Equipment and Data Circuit-Terminating Equipment Employing Serial Binary Data Interchange'', issued in 1997. The RS-232 standard had been commonly used in computer serial ports and is still widely used in industrial communication devices. A serial port complying with the RS-232 standard was once a standard feature of many types of computers. Personal computers used them for connection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Pen
A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. It allows the user to point to displayed objects or draw on the screen in a similar way to a touchscreen but with greater positional accuracy. A light pen can work with any CRT-based display, but its ability to be used with LCDs was unclear (though Toshiba and Hitachi displayed a similar idea at the "Display 2006" show in Japan). A light pen detects changes in brightness of nearby screen pixels when scanned by cathode-ray tube electron beam and communicates the timing of this event to the computer. Since a CRT scans the entire screen one pixel at a time, the computer can keep track of the expected time of scanning various locations on screen by the beam and infer the pen's position from the latest time stamps. History The first light pen, at this time still called "light gun", was created around 1945–1955 as part of the Whirl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Mouse
A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer. The first public demonstration of a mouse controlling a computer system was in 1968. Mice originally used two separate wheels to track movement across a surface: one in the X-dimension and one in the Y. Later, the standard design shifted to utilize a ball rolling on a surface to detect motion. Most modern mice use optical sensors that have no moving parts. Though originally all mice were connected to a computer by a cable, many modern mice are cordless, relying on short-range radio communication with the connected system. In addition to moving a cursor, computer mice have one or more buttons to allow operations such as the selection of a menu item on a display. Mice often also feature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joystick
A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a centre stick or side-stick. It often has supplementary switches to control various aspects of the aircraft's flight. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick. Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras, and zero turning radius lawn mowers. Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones. Aviation Joystic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DE-9 Connector
The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smallest connectors used on computer systems. Description, nomenclature, and variants A D-sub contains two or more parallel rows of pins or sockets usually surrounded by a D-shaped metal shield that provides mechanical support, ensures correct orientation, and may screen against electromagnetic interference. D-sub connectors have gender: parts with pin contacts are called ''male connectors'' or ''plugs'', while those with socket contacts are called ''female connectors'' or ''sockets''. The socket's shield fits tightly inside the plug's shield. Panel mounted connectors usually have #4-40 UNC (as designated with the Unified Thread Standard) jackscrews that accept screws on the cable end connector cover that are used for locking the connectors together and offering mechanical strain relief, and can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direct Memory Access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU). Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is typically fully occupied for the entire duration of the read or write operation, and is thus unavailable to perform other work. With DMA, the CPU first initiates the transfer, then it does other operations while the transfer is in progress, and it finally receives an interrupt from the DMA controller (DMAC) when the operation is done. This feature is useful at any time that the CPU cannot keep up with the rate of data transfer, or when the CPU needs to perform work while waiting for a relatively slow I/O data transfer. Many hardware systems use DMA, including disk drive controllers, graphics cards, network cards and sound cards. DMA is also used for intra-chip data transfer in multi-core processors. Computers that have DMA channels can trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Original Amiga Chipset
The Original Chip Set (OCS) is a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. It was succeeded by the slightly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) and greatly improved Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA). The original chipset appeared in Amiga models built between 1985 and 1990: the Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, Amiga CDTV, and Amiga 500. Overview of chips The chipset which gave the Amiga its unique graphics features consists of three main "custom" chips; ''Agnus'', ''Denise'', and ''Paula''. Both the original chipset and the enhanced chipset were manufactured using NMOS logic technology by Commodore's chip manufacturing subsidiary, MOS Technology. According to Jay Miner, the OCS chipset was fabricated in 5 µm manufacturing process while AGA Lisa was implemented in 1.5 µm process. All three custom chips were originally packaged in 48-pin DIPs; later versions of Agnus, known as Fat Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hold-and-modify
Hold-And-Modify, usually abbreviated as HAM, is a display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses a highly unusual technique to express the color of pixels, allowing many more colors to appear on screen than would otherwise be possible. HAM mode was commonly used to display digitized photographs or video frames, bitmap art and occasionally animation. At the time of the Amiga's launch in 1985, this near-photorealistic display was unprecedented for a home computer and it was widely used to demonstrate the Amiga's graphical capability. However, HAM has significant technical limitations which prevent it from being used as a general purpose display mode. Background The original Amiga chipset uses a planar display with a 12-bit RGB color space that produces 4096 possible colors. The bitmap of the playfield was held in a section of main memory known as ''chip RAM'', which was shared between the display system and the main CPU. The display system usually used an indexed colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surface-mount Technology
Surface-mount technology (SMT), originally called planar mounting, is a method in which the electrical components are mounted directly onto the surface of a printed circuit board (PCB). An electrical component mounted in this manner is referred to as a surface-mount device (SMD). In industry, this approach has largely replaced the through-hole technology construction method of fitting components, in large part because SMT allows for increased manufacturing automation which reduces cost and improves quality. It also allows for more components to fit on a given area of substrate. Both technologies can be used on the same board, with the through-hole technology often used for components not suitable for surface mounting such as large transformers and heat-sinked power semiconductors. An SMT component is usually smaller than its through-hole counterpart because it has either smaller leads or no leads at all. It may have short pins or leads of various styles, flat contacts, a matrix ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
