Workshops / Background reports / Book introductions
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Workshops / Background reports / Book introductions
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I'd like to introduce the whole story with a commemoration of Douglas Adams, who lately passed away, with one of my favorite excerpts out of his book "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Many of his characters and names have found their way into Amiga hard- and software. For instance in the Zaphod Service Task of the Commodore AT bridgeboard or in the Amiga 1000 Sidecar.
"Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance."
Yes, it is true there really was a Phoenix Board for the Amiga 1000, which was pitched as a complete replacement for the originally installed board. Only the power supply, housing, keyboard and mouse remained from the original. The modification made the A1000 strongly resemble an A3000. Only the 68000 processor remained.
But now for the details:
To get hold of the idea behind of the Phoenix board, we have to backtrack in time for several years for those users who came to later versions of the Amiga.
1985: Most home-computer users work with the Commodore C64/C128, Schneider CPC, Atari etc. (the order is not meant as a ranking), In those days you had to pay as much for a PC as for a mid-class car.
In this year the Amiga 1000 was released with astonishing features: 68000 processor with 7,14 MHz, 256 KByte RAM, 4096 colours, multitasking, BASIC interpreter and more. The OS specs are well known to every Amiga user.
Only the initial price was a nasty shock at the introduction, you had to hand over more than 7000 DM (at that time appr. 4000 US$).
When Vobis [German distributor] included the Amiga 1000 in its catalog in 1986, the price dropped to slightly below DM 4000. At the end of 1987 Vobis (and probably other distributors as well) lowered the price to 1698 DM, an acceptable price for the rank and file, and the A1000 started its ultimate triumphal march. This was the time when I sold my C128, to change system :-)
A few software generations later it was becoming clear that 512 KBytes of chipmem quite easily were used up. For instance in Deluxe Paint it was possible to work on a picture with 16 colours and 640 x 512 pixels, but there was not sufficient memory left for a big brush or the undo function.
Harddisks became cheaper as time passed, but there was no way to connect one. Not even an internal slot system for a controller or RAM expansion was available.
As owner of an A1000 you quickly found out that expansions to be hooked up to the external Zorro-I connector were very expensive.
Probably this was the market gap which Phoenix Microelectronics recognized and planned to plug with the Phoenix board in 1991. The technical data were completely up-to-date and in my opinion there was no other Amiga offering this price-performance ratio.
The special features were:
According to infos of the previous owner of my A1000 Phoenix (here many thanks to Patrick Werner for his patience when answering my questions) the board itself had cost 950.- DM. For the modification the computer had to be sent in, and the original board was discounted. Additionally the ECS Denise had to be bought for DM 65.-, and miscellaneous small parts put another DM 60.- on the bill.
This produced an acceptable computer for an in those days reasonable price, and you could go on using the A1000 housing, which already had cult status. (The idea of stowing the keyboard directly under the computer was simply ingenious.)
So much for the 1st part. By the next edition I will have the chance to use a digital camera and supply a few photographs with explanations.
Until then I am
Your Werner Brennecke <wb@pag.mayn.de>
