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Enhanced Chip Set
The Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) is the second generation of the Amiga computer's chipset, offering minor improvements over the original chipset (OCS) design. ECS was introduced in 1990 with the launch of the Amiga 3000. Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore CDTV. Other ECS models were the Amiga 500+ in 1991 and lastly the Amiga 600 in 1992. Notable improvements were the '' Super Agnus'' and the ''HiRes Denise'' chips. The sound and floppy controller chip, '' Paula'', remained unchanged from the OCS design. Super Agnus supports 2 MB of Chip RAM, whereas the original Agnus/''Fat Agnus'' and subsequent ''Fatter Agnus'' can address 512 KB and 1 MB, respectively. The ECS Denise chip offers ''Productivity'' (640×480 non-interlaced) and ''SuperHiRes'' (1280×200 or 1280×256) display modes (also available in interlaced mode), which are however limited to only 4 on-screen colors. Essentially, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS Technology Agnus
The MOS Technology "Agnus", usually called Agnus, is an integrated circuit in the custom chipset of the Amiga computer. The Agnus, Denise and Paula chips collectively formed the OCS and ECS chipsets. The Agnus is the Address Generator Chip. Its main function, in chip area, is the RAM Address Generator and Register Address Encoder which handles all DMA addresses. The 8361 Agnus is made up of approximately 21000 transistors and contains DMA Channel Controllers. According to Jay Miner, original Agnus was fabricated in 5 μm manufacturing process like all OCS chipset. The Blitter and Copper are also contained here. Agnus features: * The Blitter, a bitmap manipulator. The Blitter is capable of copying blocks of display data, or any arbitrary data in the on-board memory, at high speed with various raster operations as well as drawing pixel perfect lines and filling outlined polygons, while freeing the CPU for concurrent tasks. * "Copper", a display synchronized co-processor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprite (computer graphics), sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) is the third-generation Amiga graphic chipset, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. Before release AGA was codenamed Pandora by Commodore International. AGA was originally called AA for Advanced Architecture in the United States. The name was later changed to AGA for the European market to reflect that it largely improved the graphical subsystem, and to avoid trademark issues. AGA is able to display graphics modes with a depth of up to s per pixel. This allows for in indexed display modes and (18-bit) in Hold-And-Modify (HAM-8) modes. The palette for the AGA chipset has 256 entries from (24-bit), whereas previous chipsets, the Original Chip Set (OCS) and Enhanced Chip Set (ECS), only allow out of 4096 or 64 colors in Amiga Extra Half-Brite (EHB mode). Other features added to AGA over ECS are super-hi-res smooth scrolling and 32-bit fast page memory fetches to supply the graphics data bandwidth for 8 bitplane graphics modes and w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS Technology Integrated Circuits
MOS or Mos may refer to: Technology * MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor * Mathematical Optimization Society * Model output statistics, a weather-forecasting technique * MOS (filmmaking), term for a scene that is "motor only sync" or "motor only shot", or jokingly, “mit out sound” * Mobile operating system, operating systems for mobile devices Computing * Acorn MOS, an operating system used in the Acorn BBC computer range * Media Object Server, a protocol used in newsroom computer systems * Mean opinion score, a measure of the perceived quality of a signal * MOS (operating system), a Soviet Unix clone * My Oracle Support, a support site for the users of Oracle Corporation products, known until October 2010 as "MetaLink" *macOS, an operating system for Macs Government and military * Master of the Sword, the title for the head of physical education at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point * Member of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphics Chips
A video display controller or VDC (also called a display engine or display interface) is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video-signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing or game system. Some VDCs also generate an audio signal, but that is not their main function. VDCs were used in the home computers of the 1980s and also in some early video picture systems. The VDC is the main component of the video signal generator logic, responsible for generating the timing of video signals such as the horizontal and vertical synchronization signals and the blanking interval signal. Sometimes other supporting chips were necessary to build a complete system, such as RAM to hold pixel data, ROM to hold character fonts, or some discrete logic such as shift registers. Most often the VDC chip is completely integrated in the logic of the main computer system, (its video RAM appears in the memory map of the main CPU) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga Chipsets
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. Fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Home Computers By Video Hardware
This is a list of home computers, sorted alphanumerically, which lists all relevant details of their video hardware. Home computers are the second generation of desktop computers, entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. A decade later they were generally replaced by IBM PC compatible "PCs", although technically home computers are also classified as personal computers. Examples of typical early home computers are the TRS-80, Atari 400/800, BBC Micro, the ZX Spectrum, the MSX 1, the Amstrad CPC 464 and the Commodore 64. Examples of typical late home computers are MSX 2 systems, and the Amiga and Atari ST systems. Note: in cases of manufacturers who have made both home and personal computers, only machines fitting into the ''home'' computer category are listed. Systems in the personal computer category, except for Early Macintosh PCs, are generally based on the VGA standard and use a video chip known as a Graphics Processing Unit. Very early PCs used one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hombre Chipset
Hombre is a RISC chipset for the Amiga, designed by Commodore, which was intended as the basis of a range of Amiga personal computers and multimedia products, including a successor to the Amiga 1200, a next generation game machine called CD64 and a 3D accelerator PCI card. Hombre was canceled along with the bankruptcy of Commodore International. History In 1993, Commodore International ceased the development of the AAA chipset when they concluded conventional PC clones would have similar performance shortly after the AAA machines would be released. In the place of AAA, Commodore began to design a new 64-bit 3D graphics chipset based on Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC architecture to serve as the new basis of the Amiga personal computer series. It was codenamed Hombre (pronounced "ómbre" which means ''man'' in Spanish) and was developed in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard over an estimated eighteen-month period. Backward compatibility Hombre does not support any planar mode, nor any e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore AA+ Chipset
This was the last classic Amiga compatible chipset that Commodore announced in 1992. They planned to release it in 1994 for low-end Amiga computers along with AAA. History In 1991 Commodore realized that AAA cost was going high, so they postponed it until 1994 and hesitantly designed AGA and released it in 1992 to keep up with the competitors. Commodore was convinced that even in 1994 AAA systems with their four custom chips (six chips in the 64-bit systems) would be very expensive to use in a low price A1200 like computer or CD32 like console. So unlike Commodore's habit of designing one custom chip for both high end and low end computers to save development costs, Commodore decided to design two custom chips: AAA for the high end computers and AA+ for the low end ones. In January 1993 at Devcon in Orlando, Florida, Lew Eggebrecht Commodore VP of Engineering at the time stated the following: "AA+ will be a more profitable version of AA with all the things we wished we'd got in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga Advanced Architecture Chipset
The AAA chipset (Advanced Amiga Architecture) was intended to be the next-generation Amiga multimedia system designed by Commodore International. Initially begun as a secret project, the first design discussions were started in 1988, and after many revisions and redesigns the first silicon versions were fabricated in 1992–1993. The project was all but abandoned in 1993 after it was projected that PCs were to equal the AAA shortly after release, so a further jump was needed, leading to project Hombre. AAA was not designed to be AGA compatible. Design goals AAA was slated to include numerous technologies. * 32/64 bit data bus. * 256 deep CLUT entries 25-bit wide each (256 indirect colors indexed through 24-bit palette with extra genlock bit like AGA has). This mode runs in the native AmigaOS display. * Direct 16 bit-planes planar pixels without CLUT entries, since this mode doesn't contain a palette or a CLUT it requires some kind of ReTargetable Graphics (RTG) driver like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga Custom Chips
In addition to the Amiga chipsets, various specially designed chips have been used in Commodore Amiga computers that do not belong to the 'Amiga chipset' in a tight sense. System logic Gary CSG 5719 ''Gary'', short for ''Gate Array'', has been used in the Amiga 500, 2000(B) and CDTV. Gary provides glue logic for bus control and houses supporting functions for the floppy disk drive. It integrates many functions built discretely in the earlier Amiga 1000 in order to reduce costs. Fat Gary ''Fat Gary'' was Gary's upgrade for the 32-bit A3000/T and A4000/T. Gayle ''Gayle'' replaced Gary in the A600 and A1200. It also incorporates the control logic for the PCMCIA and internal ATA interface on these systems. Akiko ''Akiko'' is the CD32's all-purpose 'glue' chip and forms part of the AGA chipset used in that system. Akiko is responsible for implementing system glue logic that in previous Amiga models were found in the discrete chips Budgie, Gayle and the two CIAs. In detail, it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga Ranger Chipset
Amiga Ranger is an unreleased prototype personal computer by Commodore which was intended to be the second generation Amiga chipset, prior to ECS. It was designed by the original Los Gatos Amiga team including Jay Miner. Overview After the release of the Amiga 1000, Jay Miner began to design its intended successor, between 1986 and 1987. Code-named Amiga Ranger, it was planned to be highly expandable like Amiga 2000 with better graphics and CPU. The Ranger is said to have possibly included a 68010 or 68020 CPU. Information for this new chipset remains unclear. However, the sound system may have still been the same as the original chipset. According to R. J. Mical, the new chipset kept the original 13-bit DAC for its CLUT but with quadrupled color registers from 32 to 128. The color palette would have remained at 4096 colors but the resolution could go up to 1024×1024 pixels with 128 colors (7-bit color depth). Additionally the chipset can address up to of Chip RAM space. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
