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Technical Overview

[Amiga] [Apollo] [Atari] [Mac II] [Mac Entry Level] [Mac Quadra] [Mac AV] [NeXT Architecture] [Radius Rocket] [Sun 3 Series]

Overview

This page attempts to document the Amiga computer. The first computer introduced was the Amiga 1000. The second batch of computers was the Amiga 2000 and then the Amiga 500, both with a 7MHz 68000 processor. The Amiga 500 was amazingly popular in the consumer market; I personally remember seeing them sold in Sears and Audio/Visual electronic shops. In contrast, Macintoshes were nowhere to be found. Later the marvel Amiga 3000 was introduced which had an new chipset and faster SCSI. The Amiga 3000 ran at 16MHz or 25MHz using the new MC68030. The Amiga 3000 was a competent machine in contrast to Macintosh and Intel PC Clones. Also around this time the Amiga 2500 was introduced which had a 14MHz 68020 and then later a 25MHz 68030. The Amiga 3000 did not remain popular because the famous Toaster board would not fit within the casing enclosure of the desktop Amiga 3000 until the arrival of the Amiga 3000T. A few years later the Amiga 4000 (50/25MHz1 68040) and the Amiga 1200 (68EC020) featuring AGA chipset was introduced, but by this time the Amiga platform was being displaced possibly due to lack competence of Comodore executives.

The Amiga remained non-interoperable with other technologies, did not adopt retargetable APIs (device independent abstraction layer), and was non-competitive with emerging hardware technologies. Fortunately hardware vendors and software vendors have filled the void where this is concerned.

Here are some examples of technologies that are not apart of standard Amiga hardware or apart of the standard Amiga OS. Many however have been resolved by third party vendors or through freeware and shareware.

Hardware Technologies:

Software Technologies:

Linux/m68k

Generally Linux/m68k runs on any MC68020 with an external MC68551 PMMU (Paged Memory Management Unit) processor. Other processors after the MC68020 have a built-in MMU (Memory Management Unit) with exception of the MC68EC030 and other EC processors which cannot work with Linux/m68k. It is good to have an FPU (Floating Point Unit) or math co-processor as it is slow to use an emulator and difficult to configure. Commonly, MC68881 math processor is used with the MC68020 and the MC68882 is used with the MC68030. The newer MC68040 contains a built-in math coprocessor. The MC68LC040 does not have the built-in math coprocessor.

The Amiga platform is the first platform to have Linux/m68k support. The platforms should include the Amiga 2500/030, Amiga 3000, Amiga 3000T, the Amiga 4000, and the Amiga 4000T.

The base Amiga 1200 and Amiga 2500/020 will not work becuase there is no option for adding an PMMU chip. The Amiga 4000/030 will not work as well because this includes an MC68EC030 which does not have an built-in MMU.

Any clones derived from supported architectures will be supported as well. Other computers may be supported as well if equipped with accelerators of supported processors. A large variety of popular hardware is supported as well.

Components

Ports

This ports were available on some amigas.

Statistics

Amiga CDTV (Released in 1991)

  • Processor: 7.16 MHz MC68000
    • Bus Speed: 7 MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: ECS, 1MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo 8bit output
  • Expansion:

Amiga CD32 (Released in 1993)

  • Processor: 14.19 MHz MC68EC020
    • Bus Speed: 14 MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: AA Chipset, 2MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo 8bit output
  • Expansion:

Amiga 500 (Released in 1987)

  • Processor: 7.16 MHz MC68000
    • Bus Speed: 7 MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: OCS, ECS for A500+
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo output
  • Expansion: Accelerator Card slot

Amiga 600 (Released in 1991)

  • Processor: 7.16 MHz MC68000
    • Bus Speed: 7 MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: ECS with 1MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo output
  • Expansion: PCMCIA Slot

Amiga 1000 (Released in 1985)

  • Processor: 7.16 MHz MC68000
    • Bus Speed: 7MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: OCS
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo output
  • Expansion:

Amiga 1200

  • Processor: 14MHz MC68EC020
    • Bus Speed: 14MHz, 32bit
  • Chipseet: AGA, 2MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo output, 8bit
  • Storage: 16bit, IDE Interface for 2.5" HD, 44pin
  • Expansion: 1 PCMCIA Type-II slot, CPU Slot (150pin)
 

Amiga 2000 (Released in 1987)

  • Processor: 7.16 MHz MC68000
    • Bus Speed: 7MHz, 16bit
  • Chipset: OCS (Original ChipSet), 512k ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 channel stereo output
  • Expansion: 5 Zorro II (16bit) slots, 1 Video Slot, 2 8 bit ISA slots, 2 inline 16bit ISA slots, 1 FAST5 (cpu direct) slot

Amiga 2500/020

  • Processor: 14MHz MC68020
    • Bus Speed: 14MHz
  • Chipset: ECS (Extended ChipSet), 1MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo output
  • Storage: A2091 SCSI (Expansion card)
  • Expansion: 5 Zorro II (16bit) slots, 1 Video Slot, 2 8 bit ISA slots, 2 inline 16bit ISA slots, 1 FAST5 (cpu direct) slot

 

Amiga 2500/030

  • Processor: ??MHz MC68030
    • Bus Speed:
  • Chipset: ECS (Extended ChipSet), 1MB ChipRAM
  • Audio: 4 Channel Stereo Sound
  • SCSI: A2091
  • Expansion: 5 Zorro II (16bit) slots, 1 Video Slot, 2 8 bit ISA slots, 2 inline 16bit ISA slots, 1 FAST5 (cpu direct) slot

Amiga 3000 (Released 1990)

  • Processor: 16MHz or 25MHz MC68030, 16MHz 68881 or 25MHz 68882
    • Bus Speed: 16MHz or 25MHz, 32bit
  • Chipset: ECS (Extended Chipset), 2MB ChipRAM (Fatter Agnus)
  • Audio: 4 Channel 8bit Stereo output
  • SCSI: Western Digital WD33C93 (SCSI DMA)
  • Expansion: 5 Zorro III (32bit) slots, 1 inline Video Slot , 2 inline 16bit ISA slots, 1 FAST5 (cpu direct) slot

 

 Amiga 4000/030

  • Processor: ??MHz MC68EC030 (no MMU)

  Amiga 4000

  • Processor: 50/25MHz1 MC68040
    • Bus Speed: 25MHz, 32bit
  • Audio: 4 channel 8 bit
  • Expansion:1 A3640 CPU slot, ...
 

Amiga 4000T

  • Processor: 50 or 25MHz MC68060
  • Bus Speed: 25 MHz, 32bit
  • Chipset: AA Chipset
  • Audio: 4 channel Stereo, 8 bit
  • Stroage: 16bit IDE interface, 40pin, SCSI-II NCR53c710
  • Expansion: 5 Zorro III (32bit) slots, 4 ISA slots (3 inline with Zorro slots), 2 Amiga Video slots (inline with Zorro slots), CPU Slot (200pint)
     

Features

Amiga 3000

More features will be added later. Obvious to many is the ability to output high resolutions to broadcast quality signals.

Other Pages of Interests

Nothing at the moment, but I'm open to suggestions

Notes:

  1. All MC68040 are clocked doubled processors. Thus a advertised 25MHz 68040 processor has actually an internal clock speed of 50MHz and an external clock speed of 25Mhz. Since other processor vendors, especially Intel, advertised the internal processor speed, as is this the case with the DX2, DX3, DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro, and Pentium II, this page will also show the internal clock speed as well.
  2. Some Amiga models, e.g. A4000, A3000, A2000, have ISA slots. A needed third party bridge board is needed to support utilization of ISA cards. Also, the needed drivers for the bridge board and drivers for the desired ISA cards are needed for any given OS, e.g. Linux/m68k or AmigaOS.
  3. There are many third party solutions for Ethernet (10Base-T and/or BNC) including Hydra Ethernet and Adriadne which offer ZorroII solutions. Commodore also originally offered the A2232 Ethernet card.
  4. Though the interface is completely identical to that of an IBM PC AT, it is completely incompatable with PC AT keyboard. Also, the Amiga keyboard is also incompatable with the IBM PC AT or clone as well.
  5. Though this slot was called a FAST slot, it is really actually slower than the Zorro slots because the internal bus on older Amiga 2000 was 7MHz data path. It might be more appropriate to call the slot a SLOW slot! Both the ZorroII and FAST slot on the Amiga 2000 were more similiar to local bus slots, transfering data at the speed of the processor. The FAST slot actaully is fast on later models with faster 32bit processors.



These pages were created to illustrate the basic machine information of the Amiga Family as a service to the Amiga and Linux/m68k community. I would deeply appreciate any suggestions people may have regarding additional information they would like to have added. Email darknerd@mailexcite.com.