Amiga Chipsets: OCS, ECS & AGA

Featured on http://www.retrogamingcollector.com/Retro-Computers/CommodoreAmiga.html#A500

A description of the three different chipsets used in Commodore Amiga computers.
The Original Chip Set (OCS) used in the 1000, 500, 1500, 2000 and CDTV.
The Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) used in the 500+, 600 and 3000.
The Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) used in the 1200, 4000 and CD32.

The chips discussed are Agnus, Denise, Paula, Gary, Alice, Lisa, Gayle, and Ramsey.

There is also a quick demonstration of a couple of games... Geoff Crammond's F1 Grand Prix demonstrating the OCS graphical capabilities, and Alien F1 (later, Virtual grand Prix), demonstrating AGA.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Commodore
• Amiga
• chip
• set
• chipset
• chipsets
• Original Chip Set
• OCS
• Enhanced Chip Set
• ECS
• Advanced graphics Architecture
• AGA
• 500
• 500+
• 600
• 1000
• 1500
• 2000
• 3000
• 4000
• CDTV
• CD32
• Agnus
• Denise
• Paula
• Gary
• Alice
• Lisa
• Gayle
• Ramsey

[markvergeer]

Yeah Amiga porn! Great information on the OCS, ECS and AGA. The Amiga - still amazing systems even today. Say did you ever tried that emplane software allowing you to run MacOS on the Amiga?

[SteveBenway]

@markvergeer Empalant... no, but I did run a very similar program that came out slightly later called Shapeshifter. On my 060 Amiga it could run 68k Mac software faster than any 68k Mac Apple ever made... which was nice :D

[retread01]

Dr. Benway?

[SteveBenway]

@retread01 William Burroughs rocks :D

[christo930]

You should get an old 486 low profile heat sink and put in on the 060. I've seen them only a few mm's high and shouldn't have any problem clearing the case.

Great video, very informative.

[SteveBenway]

@christo930 I know you maybe couldn't see, coz the light wasn't great, but there is no space between the CPU and case to fit a heat sink. But after 15 years without a heat sink, I think it's safe to say it's not going to overheat.

[hotrodswe]

@SteveBenway I'd like to add that ShapeShifter was really good but Fusion was amazing too and especially if you used just the chipset. It used HAM-8 mode when you used MacOS with 15-bit modes and 8-bit modes was really fast! A lot faster than 8 bit modes was in AOS itself strangely enough. I was amazed by that emulator back then, they where the kings of emulators. Same guys that did Emplant AFAIK.

[richardmaudsley77]

@SteveBenway Fatter angus does 2meg mate.

[d0dge25]

On the issue of compared "power" of the 060 to a Pentium I one must take in consideration the CISC architecture of the 680x0 series, which was groundbreaking at the time and paved the way for the ARM family. Coding assembler on these 680x0 cpus is a real treat compared to the x86 series ... which is a downright nightmare :)

[d0dge25]

love the accent. Very british presentation.

For the matter of "cooling" the 68060, that's not necessary. I've got mine over 10 years by now too and nothing went wrong with it.

That is different for the 68040. This thing needs a cooler fan.

[pandy071]

Agnus is responsible for all DMA timing also for external video synchronization - Denise is more like video data serializer, collision detection, other video related logic. Gary is simple glue logic - nothing fancy, similar is Gayle on A600.

ECS introduce flexible video timing ie different video modes than only PAL/NTSC.

512KB "FAST" ram is so called Slow Fast ram due of this that it is connected to CPU by the same bus as CHIP ram ie CPU is limited with access (limited amount of cycles for CPU)

[Gooberslot]

There were A500's with the fatter agnus released in the US but you had to do a hardware mod to be able to access the full 1mb chip ram.

[Retrosofer]

Great video dude, really interesting one this was, knew the names of the chips but didm't really know what they did, the A1200 tower is awesome.

[RetroGamerVX]

Naked computers, pure geek porn, as blogtv buggered up, I thought I would catch up with your vids :o)