Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

1, The first ne w chip in the Wa lke r is the Supe r I / 0 chip.
Thu ca n control I high-spe e d, bi-dire ctiona l se ria l,
parallel a nd N4101 porta
2. The now ma chine will ha ve two SI M M socke ts which will
hold diffe re nt-size d SI M I lis up to 1 2 6 M b of Fa st RAM
1 Anothe r ne w chip, Tony, will re pla ce ma ny of the functions
of some of the e xisting custom chip se t
4. The We lke r's e xpa nsion slot will hold a ba ck pla ne tha t
will a cce pt Zone I I , Zone U I a nd PC I ca rds
the FastRAM expandable to 128Mb via two
SIMM sockets that will accept different-sized.
SIMMs, the Chip RAM expandable to 2Mb —
and a quad-speed CD-ROM drive. It will cost
between 1000 and 1600DM (E500 E800)
when it comes out for the Christmas '96 market
and will be based around an ECO30 chip
running at 40MHz, no FPU, no MMU.
The case design is a novel one with a single..
multipurpose slot on the motherboard to
accommodate a backplane which could have
Zorro II, Zorro III or even ISA and possibly PCI
slots for graphics cards, processor upgrades or
whatever, Depending on what size backplane
the user fits, the case will have to be extended
upwards with spacers, which may result in the
machine becoming a mini-tower system rather
than a hoover look-alike, as has been suggest.
ed by German wits at the show.
Another change for this machine is the new
Super1/0 chip which doesn't yet have a groovy
name like the rest of the Amiga's chipset This
chip will be responsible for high-speed,
bi-directional serial and parallel ports and has
the bandwidth to provide several of them, or
related types of I/O like MIDI. The Walker will
5. The Wa lke r ca n still he plugge d into a norma l te le vision
through this R F modula tor
6. This ha rd-to-se e PC M C I A slot might not ma ke it to the
final ve rsion of the Wa lke r
7. The ne w ma chine will ha ve a littb Kicke ta rt R OM shown
in a two-chip forma t he re
Although this mothe rboa rd is still a prototype , I t is a lre a dy
an a rna yingiy 'cle a n' boa rd. The fi na l ve rsion might be
Smaller ye t, a llowing for more room for e xpa nsion
come with the new Workbench 3.2 and will
have a 1
. expansions to the OS.
11,4b The design shown in the photos on these
Rpages O is only a prototype and Amiga
Technologies M may well change the case's
colour and make the motherboard smaller,
t
There o is some question whether the Walker will
ship
fi
with a floppy drive at the moment, the
reasoning being that CD-ROM helps to prevent
t
casual piracy, and even some wild rumours
s
that you will need t w o
floppy
o
drives — one for old standard Amiga
disks m (low density ones, that is) and one for a
new e high density format that will use a standard
o PC floppy disk drive. Heinz Wroebel
assures f me that the machine will ship with a
floppy t drive and that it will be a PC high density
drive, h but he fears that compatibility with the
old e Amiga high density format will be lost
p The machine will also be able to boot from
the r internal CD-ROM, opening the way for
games o manufacturers to merge their CD32 and
Walker p development Gilles Bourdin reckons it
omight
also mean that games houses that have
sleft
the Amiga might return now that they are
e
d
1.1 Some e xclusive
shots of the inside of
Amiga Te chnologie s
new ba by - The Wa lke r
ICROVITEC
n t a r r y Thurston .111d Lh,rim, Phfi lfpq
looking pM a se d, de spite the ta ct tha t the re
wean't a mingle Amiga on the ir sta nd
assured of a standard CD-based machine to
work with.
Gilles doesn't feel at all worried about the
future of the Amiga. He believes its strengths
and dedicated userbase will see it through
these admittedly lean times. He sees the Walker
as an intermediate step towards the
PowerAmiga next year, and hopes that onetime
Amiga developers will return to the fold
when they see the quality of the new machine.
On Workbench 3.2, Gilles had this to say:
some of the main changes will be networking
abilities, more colourful icons (it hasn't been
decided whether to use the MagicWB set or
another, or design one from scratch), more
utilities etc
- REVISIONS
Workbench 3.2 will be the last revision made
for 680x0 machines according to Bourdin,
future revisions will only take place for the
PowerAmiga. Just to cheer old-time Amiga users
up, Gilles revealed that Dave Haynie and Andy
Finkel are consulting for Amiga Technologies on
the implementation of Workbench and design
matters for the new machines, along with Olaf
Barthel and Heinz Wroebel. The Walker isn't
going to be a stopgap machine, however. It will
be upgradeable to the PowerPC chip, when it
becomes available. Speaking of PowerPCs, the
PowerAmiga project is actually running slightly
ahead of schedule at the moment and Amiga
Microvitec were one of the other few stands showing Amiga-based
products. Their new 15" and 17
- vast monitors
improvement on the current 1438. Both the 15 and 17" monitors will
whave eextremely r e flat black matrix screens in contrast to the goldfish bowl
bappearance e i of nthe 1438. g Both monitors will sync down low enough for
sstandard h Amiga o modes, w but n have the bandwidth to display 38kHz screens
aas well, so nfinally there d will be an all-in-one solution for Amiga owners who
lwant a graphics o card o too. The 17" monitor will apparently display screen-
k
modes up to 1280 x 1024 in 'brilliant colour and will display modes at
frequencies up to 64kHz_
a
AMIGA COMPUTING
M A Y 1 9 9 6