24 Apr
1998
24 Apr
'98
5:58 p.m.
Pardon my forwarding this from the "Team Amiga" mailing list, but I figure
some people here might find this very interesting.
Zane
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 00:54:25 -0400 (EDT)
To: <teamamiga(a)thule.no>
From: Dave Haynie <dhaynie(a)jersey.net>
Subject: Re: Commodore 900
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On Thu, 23 Apr 1998 23:55:49 +0500, amorel <amorel(a)xs4all.nl> jammed all
night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
Cool! I would love to have one of those.
The C900 was the Commodore "next generation" machine, before we bought
Amiga. It had unfortunately been through a few different design teams
before it really worked. I never worked on it -- I was on the C128 at
the time. George Robbins and Bob Welland really got it going; the same
guys who created the A500 architecture. The C900 was about ready to ship
when we bought the Amiga. Commodore was hurtin' then -- we had been
through four rounds of layoffs, the only time it got worse was in later
'93/early '94 when they bought the farm. C= put everything behind the
Amiga -- emotionally, in retrospect, the right thing to do. But I can't
help but wonder if the C900 might not have gone gangbusters, especially
in Europe. At the time, the only megapixel UNIX workstations came from
Sun and Apollo...
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
When
Commodore Holland went bust, there stuff got sold to different
traders. At a fair
in Nov. 1995, in Holland(HCC beurs) I bought an
interesting machine, called the Commodore 900. The machine is a Unix workstation.
It actually ran Coherent, a UNIX clone from Mark-Williams.
Inside there is a shitload of electronics. At
least there's no room for
a lot more, like extension cards.
Actually, it did take expansion cards, but kind of a novel design --
they stacked, one on top of the other. If you've ever seen PC/104 cards,
you'll get the idea. The 8563 chip, the 80 column chip in the C128, was
originally designed as a "dumb terminal" display chip for the C900.
Apparently, the idea was to have this chip, and a 6502 or some-such, and
an RS-232 chip (like the 6551), togther in a character-based monitor,
for cheap multiuser systems built up around the C900. There was also a
blitter based graphics card (the built-in monochrome display has no
blitter), with a Welland-done blitter (a bit more sophisticated in some
places than the Amiga, for example, like AAA, it would work in real
pixel coordinates, rather than offset/modulo).
The motherboard has Zilog 16 bit CPU (16 bit
version of the Z80?)
The Z8000. It wasn't a 16-bit version of the Z-80, but something new. It
wasn't quite as cool as the 68000, since the model was definitely
16-bit. But much better than the 8086/8088 of the time.
and one which might be scsi and more.
The DMA chip on the A2090/A2090A controllers for the Amiga, was
originally designed for this system.
The great thing is, it even works! :-)
Cool!
Anyway, has anyone any info about this?
You know pretty much what I know. I don't know if there's anything else,
I can ask around, see if George has any details. Gimme a direct mail if
you'd like to continue offline.
Until now I have not had any sign of anyone on
internet who knows
about this.
Rarer than the A3000+, I suspect. A definite collector's item.
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, PIOS Computer | http://www.pios.de
Be Dev #2024 | DMX2000 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
Buy my house! Take the tour at http://www.jersey.net/~dhaynie