Amiga 4000

 Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

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From: koren@fc.hp.com (Steve Koren)

Subject: REVIEW: Commodore Amiga 4000

Message-ID: <1992Oct26.173622.22620@menudo.uh.edu>

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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:

      koren@fc.hp.com

  

  or via phone:

      303-226-4985 (USA)

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews

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