TITLE : First reports of the A5000 AUTHOR : ?? E-Mail DATE : 20/03/94 Commodore have gone for much like the A2000 large case to contain the power of this new machine. on the front panel it supports two 3.5" drive (one as standard) and two 5.25" (one holding a CD-Drive). This is the first machine to really support multi-tasking with it's three processors on board. Processors ---------- The A5000 will incorporate the new Motorola 68060 + two 68EC040 processors, the '060' is clocked at over 35MHz and the two '040' clocked at 25Mhz will give the A5000 a total speed at over 60MHz. The '060' with sit on a separate card in the CPU slot (as in the A4000) and both the '040' will sit on the motherboard. The '040' have been design to help the '060' ,this will be most evident at times of heavy multi-tasking. As a result of this configuration the A5000 will have a new kick-start. Kick-start/Workbench ------------------- The A5000 will have kick-start/workbench 4.0 (beta version has 3.2). This kick-start is required to control the three processors , earlier kick-starts will not be able to access the '040' (but the '060' can). This kick-start will not be released for the older machines although 4.1 will. This kick-start/workbench will enable the '040' to be assigned to different tasks and as shipped one will handle all screen and sound processing and the other will handle all of the I/O devices. This kick-start is a 1Mb chip and will be shipped on the hard drive (to be confirmed). If it is released in chip form then the chip will be placed on it's own card. This kick-start will have a user-selectable kick-start screen so the user can select which kick-start to load (either in slot or on harddrive) and the A5000 has been tested with kick-start 1.2 upwards so there will be no more compatibility problems. Chipset ------- Commodore have done it again in changing the chipset as there are several new chips. The A5000 with workbench 4 is now capable of operating in all modes with a 512 colour pallet. To maintain the speed require to operate in this mode one of the '040' can be assigned to the screen display (as it is shipped). The maximum screen resolution is 4096 x 4096 with over 32 million colours on screen. This new chipset will be able to detect which chipset it should use (orig. ,ECS ,super-ECS or AGA , super AGA ) by detecting which kick-start is currently running or which is selected at a cold boot. Ram --- As the new chipset has a higher resolution and more colours more chip ram is required and commodore have responded by having 16Mb of chip ram on the motherboard (expandible to 64Mb) and 16Mb of fast ram (theoretically expandible to 1024Mb, tested to 256Mb). The chip and fast ram have been organised on a 32-bit wide structure as in the A3000 + A4000. Drives ------ The harddrive interface is the new scsi2 standard with a 210Mb slimline hardrive mounted as standard. The floppy drive is a high density type and the CD-drive is a standard A2000 internal drive. Sound ----- The sound is now 16-bit as the A4000 was supposed to have. Internal Connectors ------------------- There are eight zorro III expansion slots with three IBM slots in parallel with three zorro slots. There is no cpu slot as the '060' is on it's own board and thus can easily replaced. If the kick-start is to be shipped on the harddrive there will be an empty slot to place a new kick-start. External Connectors ------------------- It has all the standard ports (disk drive, serial, etc.) and the keyboard connector (same pins as the A4000) at the back, the mouse ports are on the right side towards the back. Price ----- Well that depends on what pack you want as of this moment there are two 1 all above = $3499 (Approx.) 2 all above plus Amax v3.0 Mac emulator (100% compatible with all known software) + Golden gate IBM emulator = $3999 (Approx.)(uses two zorro III slots) This information has been confirmed by Commodore.