Amiga Primer
There are 3 graphical chipsets:
OCS, ECS, AGA.
OCS and ECS are essentially the same except there is the addition of "ExtraHalfBrite" mode in ECS which displays 64 colours on screen. HAM mode gives something like 12bit video.
AGA is sort of Amiga's answer to VGA and can display up to 256 colours on screen in normal screen modes. It has pseudo 24 bit display via "HAM" screen modes (typically not used in games).
All chipsets' audio are 8 bit, 4 channel, stereo (2 channels left, two channels on the right).
There are 3 styles of Amiga's. The wedge type (think of C=64), the "big box" amigas (think of PC's), and the "console" types. Oh, but the Amiga 1000 is an exception to the rest. wink
Amiga1000 -> Original Amiga Model.
-Typically equipped with a 7mHz 68000 CPU
-"OCS" graphical chipset
-Colour Composite Out and RGB.
-It has an expansion slot in the front (hidden) for ram, expansion slot on the side which is similar to the Amiga500's except it's wired differently.
-unless hacked, it will need a start up disk to load up the system's Kickstart (think of it as a sort of BIOS). Since this was the first Amiga model and the AmigaOS wasn't stable at the time, they decided to put the BIOS in ram that had to be loaded up. There are hacks allowing you to put in a ROM chip.
-This is sort of like the C=128D, you have a rectangular box, with a detached keyboard that can be slid under the box.
-Note: On the inside of the top cover, you will find signatures of all the people that worked on this model.
Amiga 500:
-Wedge Design, most popular model
-typically equipped with a 7mHz 68000 CPU
-OCS chipset, Kickstart on ROM (usually 1.3)
-B&W Composite out, and Amiga RGB out.
-Has a ram expansion on the bottom, expansion slot (aka "Zorro 1") which typically is used for Harddrives/SCSI boards but also for CPU modules (usually 68030/40mHz). Can also be converted to use "Zorro 2 cards."
Amiga 500+
-See Amiga 500 but put in Kickstart 2.x and an ECS chipset.
Amiga CDTV:
-An Amiga 500 that was disguised as stereo equipment. It looked okay, and was the first Amiga with a CDRom drive.... It flopped. You can buy an attachement for the Amiga500 that will make it CDTV compatible.
-I believed it had Amiga RGB, SVideo and Composite out.
Amiga 600:
-It's an Amiga 500+ without the Zorro Slot, and numeric keypad. It's a Tiny System but quite frankly not many people liked it because it lacked the Zorro slot making it almost impossible to upgrade.
-Is equipped with a PCMCIA slots but it missed a few lines to make it compatible with many.
-Don't know it's outputs.
Amiga 2000:
-First big box amiga, had several Zorro 2 slots (autoconfigurating cards), a video slot (usually used for genlocking, or for hardware that would sync up Amiga's RGB signal for use with PC monitors) and a CPU slot (oh and ISA slots)
-Thinks are built like a brick.
-Quite a few iterations of this one: Amiga 1500 and Amiga 2000 with 2 floppy drives, Amiga 2500 and amiga with 68030-25mHz expansion, extra ram, SCSI Card + Harddrive and a flicker fixer.
-Think it had composite out (not sure) and Amiga RGB.
Amiga 3000:
-Smaller then the A3000, expansion cards lie horizontally but the case was too small to use the VideoToaster with (see more on VideoToasters)
-Came standard with OS 2.x (early versions loaded the Kickstart in ram, but you can add in ROM chips .
-Equipped with built in SCSI controller, flicker fixer, typically equipped with an 68030-16mHz or 25mHz CPU.
-Uses ZIFF ram chips, these are a PAIN to use thank god for the CPU expansion slot
-First Amiga with 2 megs of chip ram, and some models have high density Floppy.
-A CPU expansion slot that can accomodate PowerPC accelerators. (Some accelerators can take in RAM chips, have SCSI/IDE controllers and even Video Cards.)
-Video card slot
-Zorro 3 slots (compatible with Zorro 2, but can also take Zorro 3 cards, these cards are faster.)
-ISA slots (as well.)
-These slots are on a Daughter card.
-AmigaRGB + VGA monitor out.
A3000UX:
-An Amiga 3000 meant to run C= Unix. It includes a Tape drive.
A3000Tower:
-Official C= A3000 in a tower case. Many people drool over this one. I can't tell you exactly whichs one are worth while though.
The AGA machines:
A3000+:
-Prototype, shoehorned AGA and a DSP on an Amiga3000 board, it apparently doesn't work and there are only a few in existance.
A4000:
-68040-25mHz or 68030-33mHz equipped.
-AGA graphics, KS 3.x
-motherboard takes 16megs in SIMMs.
-2 megs chip
-Amiga 3000 compatible CPU slot
-Zorro 3 Slots, ISA slots, 1 video-slot
-AmigaRGB out
-Built in IDE (not directly compatible with CDRom drives, requires a software hack.)
Amiga 1200:
-68020-14mHz CPU, AGA
-2 megs chip.
-Wedge Style case
-Trap-door expansion slot for CPU, Video, harddrive controllers, ram, etc. (Compatible with some PPC accelerators.)
-IDE controller built in (can mount 2.5'' IDE harddrives internally.)
-"clock port" expansion has been used for augmented Serial/Parrallel Port and even Sound cards.
-PCMCIA slot (see Amiga 600).
There are kits to towerize most Amiga's. There are kits to put in PCI slots on towerized Amiga 4000's and 1200's.
AGA, OCS, and ECS are a bit of a joke compared to most modern cards. There are several Amiga graphics cards that can be used now a days, although they are more costly then the PC equivalents. wink Most of these are Zorro2 or Zorro3. Zorro3 is of course faster. Some of them plug into certain CPU accelerators.
Most soundcards are Zorro 2, and some use the A1200's clockport.
Most network cards are Zorro 2 and are limited to 10baseT and some PCMCIA cards will work on the A1200/600.
The AmigaVideoToasters are more of a Video-Switcher with Genlocking capabilities. Imagine something like a TV newscast, where you have multiple cameras. All of the cameras are feeding in live signal, with a Toaster you could control which camera to select, overlay graphics (ie: names), and add transitions effects. I'm unsure if the VT does chroma keying (aka Blue Screen). The Video Toaster only works for NTSC signals though. If you live elsewhere you might want to take a look on GVP's Impact Vision 24, it has some of the same capabilities.
There is also the "Video Toaster Flyer" which is a Non-Linear editor. In short, you can record video on your computer and edit it. It's not that special nowadays but back when it was first introduced it was a big deal.
Hmm... Was there anything else?
Oh the Amiga CD32 is an Amiga 1200 jammed into a Console with a CD drive. It can become a VCD player via an MPEG module. Some CD32 titles will work with an Amiga1200/4000 equipped with a CDRom drive, but some of them are picky.
If you just want an Amiga to play with I would say to go for an Amiga1200.
If you want it to do anything "serious" then I'd suggest an Amiga 2000-3000 w/video card or an Amiga4000 if AGA compatibility is important. Most amigas can be upgraded to use OS 3.x.
If you are in the US you can look at <a href="http://www.softhut.com/" target="_blank">http://www.softhut.com/</a> just to see what's available.
A PPC amiga is coming out and an official PPC computer that is Amiga Compatible is available now.
It's a bit sad now, but the fastest amiga's around for the moment are emulated.
Final note:
Some games are picky. Alot of the older games won't work on anything other then an ECS/OCS based machine with KS 1.3, 1 meg chip, no fast ram and a 68000 CPU running at 7 mHz. Some games are AGA only, etc. The AGA based Amiga's and KS3.x based ones will (I think) have an early start up menu that will allow you to "downgrade" some parts of your system, others just won't work unless you have a stock A500.
<small>[ January 24, 2003, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: td741 ]</small>
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