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REVIEW: Commodore Amiga 4000
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: [email protected] (Steve Koren) Subject: REVIEW: Commodore Amiga 4000 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Keywords: Amiga, computer, hot topic, commercial Sender: [email protected] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Nntp-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Reply-To: [email protected] (Steve Koren) Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 17:36:22 GMT PRODUCT NAME: Amiga 4000 BRIEF DESCRIPTION: This is a review of the Amiga 4000, the latest machine in the Amiga line of personal computers from Commodore. The machine as reviewed is: Amiga 4000 Commodore 1960 Multisync Monitor 6 Mb RAM 68040 CPU/25 MHz 120 Mb HD 1.76 Mb floppy drive "AGA" chipset This particular machine was apparently one of the first 200 produced. LIST PRICE: Check with your dealer. The original MSLP is US$3699, but the street price seems to be quite a bit cheaper. Prices certainly vary geographically as well. COMPANY INFORMATION: Commodore Business Machines, Inc. 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 USA (The machine is produced in England, and the keyboard and mouse are produced in Malaysia). OBTAINING THE MACHINE: I had a very difficult time hunting down a place to buy a 4000. Four successive calls to the "Commodore Dealer Locator" got me phone numbers of supposed dealers, but in all cases the dealers either had gone out of business, or no longer sold Amigas when I called. This was a bit frustrating. After two weeks of searching, I eventually found a dealer about 75 miles away by talking to someone who had bought an Amiga there a while ago. The chore of finding the computer in the first place was one of the few bad things I have to say about this machine. I don't think most people would go through the trouble I did in order to buy the system. I believe it would be beneficial for Commodore to 1) vastly increase its dealer base in the US, and 2) keep its dealer database up to date, since calling 8 non-existent dealers does not give a very professional image of the company. HARDWARE: The 4000 comes in a desktop style case, a bit smaller than an Amiga 2000. The keyboard is essentially identical to the 2000's keyboard, but mouse is a more rounded "beetle" style mouse, instead of the more angular 2000 mouse. The 4000 has a key and lock which can be used to shut off all keyboard and mouse input to the machine (including the C-A-A reboot combination, but not including the power switch). The power switch is on the front, along with LEDs for power and the internal HD. UNPACKING AND SETTING UP: This task went very quickly and painlessly. The system as shipped is essentially ready to plug in and go - the operating system is already installed on the hard drive, and the hard drive is configured for booting. There was just one small glitch on my machine - on some early 4000s, the hard drive was formatted in the OFS ("Old FileSystem") format, which is substantially slower than the newer FFS ("Fast FileSystem"). From what I hear, Commodore has since corrected this problem. It was not much trouble for me to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Although this isn't a recommended approach, I got through it with no trouble without reading the documentation, just by booting the install disk and clicking on things. The OS install utility is quite user friendly and intuitive, and you can pick what parts of the operating system you do and do not wish to install. One thing I noticed immediately is that the 4000 is a quiet machine. My old 2000 is fairly loud, and the 4000 seems to be only about half as loud when running. The hard drive is essentially silent, and only the fan can be heard, but it is quieter than the 2000's fan. INITIAL SYSTEM CONFIGURATION: The operating system originally boots in 640x200 mode, similar to a 2000 or 500. However, the AGA ("Advanced Graphic Architecture") chipset in the 4000 supports many other higher resolution modes. There are monitor configuration files that control the resolution and scan rate of the various graphic modes supported by the 4000. The Workbench screen can be run on any of these and changed by a tool in the preferences drawer. After some amount of fiddling, I settled upon the "SUPER72 Super High Res Interlace" mode. On my system, this mode gives a solid display of 896x628 pixels (which I'll round to 900x630 for simplicity, although it is a 4x2 pixels short of that in reality). The scan rate in this mode is 25 KHz, which is enough faster than the 15 KHz interlace modes in the 2000 that it seems to eliminate flicker. However, this might depend a little on lighting conditions. When I booted the system in this mode at the dealer, I could detect a bit of interlace flicker, but when I tried this mode at home, the display appears quite solid. With my anti-glare screen on the monitor, I cannot detect any flicker in this mode at all, unless I look very closely for it. It certainly seems to be a genuinely usable mode, quite unlike 640x400 on non-flicker-fixed A2000's. In order to display it, I had to adjust the vertical size knob on the monitor. WORKBENCH 3.0 The Amiga 4000 includes a new release of the Amiga operating system. Release 3.0 includes support for the AGA chipset of the 4000. The AGA chipset can support up to 256 directly accessible colors in any resolution mode from a 24 bit palette, and up to 252,208 simultaneous colors in "HAM8" mode. (HAM8 mode is excellenct for graphics applications, but isn't suitable for word processing or textual applications). The Workbench 3.0 screen can be configured to any depth from 1 to 8 planes. Depending on your resolution mode and tolerance to update rates, you may find that anywhere from 4 to 8 planes provides a suitably fast environment. In my 900x630 workbench (actually a 1024x768 virtual workbench displayed in a 900x630 physical display), I find the update rate adequate at 5 or 6 planes (32 or 64 colors). Seven and 8 plane displays can get slow at this high resolution, but they do better at lower resolutions such as 640x400. In fact, when I was playing with this system at the store, I compared the interactive performance of the 4000 to a nearby 386/33 machine running windows 3.1. Both machines were running 8 plane displays at an identical resolution, and the Amiga was quite a bit faster than the 386 for window updates. Although I didn't time either one, here is my subjective impression of the speed of the 4000 user interface compared to several other systems I have used a reasonable amount. The rating factor is "snappiness", whatever that means. Remember, this is subjective, and compares things like moving windows, scrolling scroll lists (which depends less on resolution), the speed with which windows pop up, etc. So graphics performance isn't directly correlated with this, and "tricks" of the OS, such as AmigaDos 3.0's method of only scrolling needed bitplanes for CLI windows, can affect things: System & UI approx system cost "snappiness" of UI ------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga 3000, 1 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 2.0 Amiga 3000, 2 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 1.0 Amiga 3000, 3 plane WB, 640x400 $1K-3K 0.7 Amiga 4000, 4 plane WB, 640x400 $3K-4K 2.5 Amiga 4000, 4 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 1.5 Amiga 4000, 5 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 0.8 Amiga 4000, 8 plane WB, 900x630 $3K-4K 0.6 80386/33 clone, Windows 3.1, 800x600x8 $1K-2K 0.3 HP 720 workstation, 8 plane, 1280x1024 $8K-12K 3.0 Workbench 3.0 supports the use of IFF images as backgrounds for both the workbench screen, and workbench windows. I currently have a 640x400 image of a bicycle in the background of my workbench (which is a backdrop window), and have a smaller 320x200 image in the background of my workbench windows. Although this doesn't provide any real "functionality", it does look very nice and provides an easy way to visually distinguish windows. The effect is quite pleasing. All workbench windows share a common image, but since the edges of the windows will tend to use many different colors, it is easy to see where one window stops and another starts. Workbench running on a 900x630 screen looks very nice. The extra resolution allows the use of higher resolution fonts on screen, which makes for a much more professional look. I am using a 20 point Compu-Graphic Times font for my window titles, which is a readable size on this display, a 15 point font as the system default, and a 15 point proportional font for icons. The 15 point font takes about as much screen real-estate as a 9 point font did on the 2000's 640x400 interlace screen, but provides much more resolution for nice looking characters. In addition, the display is much sharper and easier to read. The display quality of the 4000's output is very high. Although my old 2000's display was inferior, I feel the 4000's output, when sent to a suitably good monitor, is truly of workstation quality. I use a 1280x1024 Sony display attached to an HP workstation every day at my job, and while it gives more resolution than the 4000 does, I don't think the 4000 lacks anything in sharpness or clarity in comparison. In fact, since most people with 4000s will probably use a 14" monitor, 900x630 is about as much resolution as is practical at this size. In order to move to 1024x768, I believe that at _least_ a 16" monitor is needed. Since there is a minimum physical size of text that is comfortable to read, having more resolution on a small monitor meets diminishing returns after a point. Larger monitors than 14" are quite expensive. At any rate, the 4000's display in 900x630 mode is, in a word, beautiful. The only potential problem is that some people need a 10% or so faster refresh in order to no be bothered by the interlace, but I don't think this will be a problem for most people under most lighting conditions. AmigaDos 3.0 and the AGA chipset support HAM8 in any resolution mode. This means that it is possible to have a 900x630 display in up to 252000 simultaneous colors from a 24 bit pallete, for near 24-bit quality graphics. Further, it is possible to animate HAM8 graphics in any resolution mode (although the practical limit is probably 640x400 due to bandwidth restrictions in this generation of graphics chips). As far as I know, there are no animation players yet which support HAM8 animation, but that should change fairly soon. The few HAM8 still-frame images I have seen look wonderful. HARDWARE EXPANSION: The 4000 has 4 card slots, one 5.25" drive bay, and two 3.5" drive bays. The 3.5" bays can accept either two 1" tall devices each (for a total of four 3.5" devices), or one larger device. Commodore ships the machine with 1.5" tall devices, so you will need to replace one or both of them if you wish to install 2 devices in each bay. Further expansion will need an external case and power supply (which costs US$40-$85). The 4000 can use Amiga 3000 Zorro-III cards, which gives it a good supply of expansion devices already on the market, such as 64 Mb RAM cards. It can also use Amiga 2000 Zorro-II cards, although these will not take advantage of the 4000's superior bus speed. The 4000's CPU is on a daughterboard and can be upgraded when faster versions come out. There have been rumors of future CPU boards with an on-board DSP. It is not yet known whether the 4000 is upgradable to the next generation of AGA chips. I hope the answer is "yes". SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY: Most properly written applications seem to work fine under AmigaDos 3.0. Immediately after powering up my 4000, I transferred my bare minimum "working set" of software, which consists of the following: SKsh 2.1 beta GNU Emacs 18.58 (port by David Gay) ISpell 3.1ljr (port by Loren Rittle) Half a dozen commodities All of the above installed and worked without any trouble at all, and in fact, I am currently using GNU emacs and ISpell to type this review. Emacs is talking to ISpell through ARexx without any trouble at all, in exactly the same manner as on my 2000. I have only tried a few software packages so far other than the above. These I have found to work: DPaint IV Excellence! A-10 Tank Killer 1.5 Most 2.0 freeware Commodities or utilities I have tried a few PD "screen hacks" and such which failed on the 4000: Oing! (a screen hack with bouncing ball sprites) World (puts a 3d rotating globe in a workspace) On the other hand, a few other screen hacks ("Wavebench") seem to work. It seems a fair assessment that compatibility for properly written software is very high, but games or utilities which break the rules stand a good chance of not running under AmigaDos 3.0. A number of popular AmigaDos software suppliers have already announced AGA versions of their products, and a few are already on the market. Since 2.0, software which opens custom screens should allow the user to choose the monitor file for the screen resolution to be used. Such software, even if written under 2.0, will run with the higher resolution modes under 3.0 with no changes. However, some software which is not that smart will still use old modes. If several screens each have different scan rates, the multisync monitor will have to re-sync when the user changes screens on the Amiga, which adds a slight delay of about 0.5 sec. If a screen of one resolution is dragged partially down over a screen of another, the front-most screen sets the scan rate of the output. OS 3.0 FEATURES & BUGS: AmigaDos 3.0 supports object classes. I haven't had a chance to play with these too much yet, but I can describe the basic concept. If, for example, a desk top publishing program wants to load in an image for inclusion in a document, it previously had to understand the format of the image. I.e., it had to call the IFF shared library to read in IFF images, or include code to read jpeg or GIF images if it wanted to read those formats. If a new format came along, the program had to be re-shipped. With AmigaDos 3.0 file classes, all that changes. A program can read an image class, and AmigaDos will call the appropriate handler to extract information from the image itself without the program having to even know what type of image it is. Thus, if a new image type called "zpeg" comes along, all that needs to be done is install a new object class for zpeg images, and all the old software will be able to suddenly understand the new image type. The same applies for sounds, text, animations, and any other type of object. This is a powerful new feature in AmigaDos 3.0 that has not been developed much yet, but has great potential. CLI windows in AmigaDos 3.0 seem to be smarter than they were in 2.0. The console device, apparently, only scrolls the bitplanes that absolutely need to be scrolled. This means that if you are just displaying text in the standard color, the console device may only have to scroll one or two bitplanes instead of the 5 or 6 there may be in your screen. This makes using CLI windows fast even on deep workbench screens. (Disclaimer: I don't know for sure that this is what is happening but I suspect it quite strongly.) There are some bugs in AmigaDos 3.0 yet. The "multiview" object viewer crashes easily, and occasionally the palette preference tool does odd and unexpected things to your palette. But overall, I have not yet found any critical bugs which would prevent me from using the system. Most of the ones I have found are just minor inconveniences which I'm sure will be fixed for future versions of 3.0. BENCHMARKS: The following benchmarks compare the Amiga 4000 to: - An Amiga 500, 68000/ 8 MHz, no fast RAM - An Amiga 2000, 68000/ 8 MHz, fast RAM - An Amiga 2500, 68020/20 MHz, fast RAM - An Amiga 3000, 68030/25 MHz, fast RAM The tests were all performed with AIBB_4.65, ("Amiga Intuition Based Benchmarks", by LaMonte Koop). In all cases, the 3000/25 is used as a comparison base: Machine: 500/00 2000/00 2500/020 3000/030 4000/040 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Integer tests: WritePixel 0.25 0.26 0.68 1.00 2.81 Sieve 0.11 0.11 0.56 1.00 1.11 Dhrystone 0.18 0.18 0.48 1.00 3.43 Sort 0.13 0.14 0.45 1.00 2.68 Matrix 0.10 0.11 0.52 1.00 1.52 IMath 0.05 0.05 0.51 1.00 2.29 Memtest 0.16 0.17 0.61 1.00 1.20 TGTest 0.50 0.52 0.82 1.00 1.44 InstTest 0.17 0.17 0.44 1.00 1.78 Float/Double: Savage 0.01 0.01 0.51 1.00 1.19 FMath 0.05 0.05 0.40 1.00 4.72 FMatrix 0.14 0.14 0.46 1.00 1.04 Beachball 0.01 0.03 0.39 1.00 6.50 (!!) SWhetstone 0.02 0.03 0.38 1.00 0.56 DWhetstone 0.02 0.02 0.37 1.00 3.40 FTrace 0.01 0.01 0.42 1.00 3.10 CplxTest 0.04 0.04 0.47 1.00 3.25 Generally, it can be seen that the 4000 averages about 2 to 2.5 times faster than the 3000 for integer operations, and about 3 to 3.5 times faster than the 3000 for floating point operations. For the Beachball test (which ray traces a beachball on the screen), the 4000 is a staggering 650 times as fast as an unexpanded Amiga 500, and about 215 times faster than an Amiga 2000 with fast ram. Most of the CPU bound tests of the 4000 come out about 5 to 10% slower than my PP&S 68040 card on my 2000, which runs at 28 MHz instead of 25. However, the 4000 feels snappier in actual operation due to the AGA chipset. CPU board upgrades to 33 and 40 MHz 68040s promise even more speed from the machine. The CPU performance of the 68040, coupled with the AGA chipset's enhanced color modes, make this essentially the perfect 3D rendering platform for those who can't afford a Silicon Graphics workstation. The following is a performance test of the 4000's internal disk drive using DiskSpeed 4.1: CPU: 68040 OS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: sys: Buffers: 128 Comments: Amiga 4000 internal disk CPU Speed Rating: 3097 Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 26184 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 84% Write to file: 26462 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 85% Read from file: 158488 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 50% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 157322 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 78% Write to file: 163083 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 79% Read from file: 213989 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 74% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 329347 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 72% Write to file: 375143 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 71% Read from file: 559055 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 54% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 429040 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 69% Write to file: 550858 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 64% Read from file: 909545 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 33% Average CPU Available: 68% | CPU Availability index: 2106 Those needing more disk speed than this can get it when fast Zorro-III SCSI cards become available. (Actually, Zorro-II cards can be used now at some cost in speed). The speed of the internal IDE drive is acceptable, although the CPU utilization gets a bit high during high speed transfers. However, I doubt many people will notice this, and SCSI is always available for those who need the high end. WARRANTY: The machine and monitor come with a "Commodore Gold Service" warranty. If the machine breaks in a period of one year, they will pick it up for free, fix it, and send it back also for free, by overnight express mail. On-site service is available for a small, annual fee ($49 or $79). PROBLEMS: Aside from my initial difficulty in finding an Amiga dealer within a 3 hour drive of my house, I have had few problems with the 4000. Although I have yet to try most of my old software, most of what I have tried has worked. The only exception is that some games and a few "screen hacks" have failed, but I expected that, and it isn't the fault of the 3.0 operating system, but rather the fault of the games themselves. The 4000 could really use more than 2 Mb of chip ram. 4 Mb would be appropriate. There is really just one significant problem I have run into. The 4000 has a feature called "mode promotion", which does two things. First, it attempts to force application screens that would have opened in 15 KHz interlace mode to open at a higher scan rate to avoid flicker. Second, it attempts to force application screens with a resolution of 200 vertically to "scan-double" their output and eliminate visible scan lines. This effect is very pleasing - all those old 640x200 screens suddenly are a lot more pleasant to look at. However, on my 4000, scan promotion seems to force screens far to the right of the monitor, such that there is no way to see the whole screen. Neither fidding with my monitor or the overscan preferences was able to help. I'm not sure what the problem is, but for now I've kept scan conversion off so that the application screens are reasonably centered and visible. CONCLUSIONS: The A4000 presents a significant expansion in the capabilities of Amiga computers. The original Amiga's graphics, while fantastic by the standards of 1985 when they were introduced, have recently begun to show their age. The AGA chipset gives the Amiga a true 24 bit palette and the ability to use hundreds of thousands of colors in any resolution mode. The potential improvements of future Amigas now lie primarily in graphics speed, and to a lesser extent, increased resolution. I bought my first Amiga 1000 in 1985, with 256 Kb of memory and later upgraded to an accelerated 2000. When I became interested in the Amiga 4000, I was at first unsure whether the abilities it provided were significant enough to warrant upgrading from my current system. Now that I have worked with the 4000, I am confident the answer is "yes". The 4000 takes a large step towards making the Amiga into a workstation class computer system. COMMENTS: I can be reached electronically at: [email protected] or via phone: 303-226-4985 (USA) --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: [email protected] Request information: [email protected] General discussion: [email protected]