the story of amiga | part 14 - the arrival of amiga 3000
- jebbidan
- Aug 29, 2021
- 2 min read
developed at commodore's American headquarters, the ECS integrated the super Agnus, capable of now addressing 2mB of chip RAM and a hi-res Denise chip. to go with the traditional RAM space, the blitter could copy display regions later than 1024x1024 pixels in one operation and display sprites in border regions. Denise could now pump out a "productivity" resolution of 640x480 without interrelation, akin to the standard IBM PC compatible VGA, resolution which windows 3, released in May.
in addition, super hi-res at 1280x256 or 1280x512 interlaced was now possible along with other custom scan rates. these were all welcome additions, which particularly helped the productivity and graphics applications, commodore of America were still keen on pursuing but did little to benefit the games market currently booming over in Europe.
compatibility wise, ECS was intended to be fully compatible with OCS software but the changes did mean that the odd title refused to run, and given that some revision 8A enhanced chipsets made it into 1991 production run 500 models, it caused a degree of headache for the odd consumer who unaware of the changes lurking under the hood.
the first official machine to integrate the technology was the Amiga 3000. released in June 1990, the 3000 was a culmination of work by David Haynie who begun the work on the Zorro III expansion but architecture in 1989 continuing the AutoConfig standard from the 2000 series, allowing a similar experience to the plug and play PCI bus on IBM PC compatibles.
alongside Greg berlin, Hedley Davis, jeff boyer, and Scott hood, haynie's vision for the 3000 was quite an overhaul to the original amiga specifications and was designed as a high-end workstation from the outset, much in part due to demands from the current 2000 owners. the 68000 CPU was replaced with the new 32 bit Motorola 68030 processor in either 16 or 25MHz flavors, alongside a 68882 maths co-processor and 32-bit memory bus.
alongside the 2mB capable enhanced chipset, fast RAM can also be added up to 16MB, and with there's plenty of room in the case for a SCSI hard drive, twin floppy drives in either double or high density, as well as all the connectors we expect from the amiga machines. a custom chip called amber also removed flicker from the video output and allowed display on cheaper VGA compatible monitors.
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Great piece, Jebbidan! The Amiga 3000’s jump to a 32-bit 68030 processor and its beefy chipset was a game-changer, like serving up a high-performance feast for tech enthusiasts. It reminds me of Firehouse Subs’ catering options, where you can fuel a retro computing session with their hearty platters—think Hook & Ladder subs stacked high to keep the crew energized. The 3000’s workstation vibes and Zorro III expansion really set the stage for innovation. Loving this Amiga journey!
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