Commodore-insinööri myy Amiga-prototyyppejä
Commodoren tekniikkaosaston johtajana aikoinaan toiminut Dave Haynie pisti kevätsiivouksen ja hyväntekeväisyyden merkeissä pystyyn astetta järeämmän huutokaupan. Haynie näet myy eBayssä varastostaan löytynyttä todellista Amigan ja Commodoren historiaa, mukaan lukien Amiga-tietokoneiden ainutlaatuisen harvinaisia prototyyppejä.
Myynnissä on erilaisten emolevyjen ja ohjekirjojen ohessa muun muassa ihan aito ja autenttinen Amiga-yhtiön valmistama joystick, ajalta ennen Amiga-tietokonetta.
Myös esimerkiksi Commodore Plus/4:n Super Cartridge ja Amiga 3000 Tower -protot herättävät vanhassa amigistissa ihastusta.
Kokoelman helmi on kuitenkin itse oikeutetusti keskeneräiseksi ja julkaisemattomaksi jäänyt seuraavan sukupolven Amigan kehitysversio, AAA-grafiikkapiireineen kaikkineen.
Nyx AAA Prototype -Amigoita on olemassa täsmälleen kolme kappaletta, joten tämä on vähintäänkin ainutkertainen tilaisuus hankkia itselleen pala todella harvinaista Commodoren historiaa. Huudon lähtöhintakin sen mukainen, 1000 dollaria.
Lainattakoon näin harvinaisen laitteen kohdalla myyjän tuotekuvausta pitkän kaavan mukaan:
Ok.. I really had to think about this one, and hope I didn’t shock anyone by listing this. There are only three of these in existence, and it’s the last big thing I did at Commodore. On the other hand, this sits in a box in my cellar for 364 out of every 365 days, and more than anything, I get sad when I look at it. And it’s a little tiring — I get requests for loans of the board, which I’ve done from time to time, but I’m always a little curious if I’ll actually get it back or not. It would be better for me if this brought someone joy…. and raised a big pile of money to fight breast cancer. And I do mean big.. this one has a reserve.
So this board… the Nyx project came out of our need, at Commodore, to test the new Advanced Amiga Architecture chips. This was never intended as a commercial product, but the idea was to develop the things that might get us there. You can learn more about Nyx and AAA on the Haynie Archives at www.thule.no, many docs are posted.
Since this wasn’t commercial, I put in a bunch of other things I wanted to seen in Amigas. Chip RAM was on a custom module, which allows us to use either DRAM or VRAM on the same motherboard — the AAA architecture had separate chip bus and graphics bus, so the old style of VRAM made things much faster. There’s a third 8520 on the board, and a wired network based on Arcnet (this was a bit before 100-Base-T took over and made networking cheap). The ROM is on a SIMM, and the module format supported the high voltage (+12Vdc) you needed for flash programming in those days.
This also comes with some other stuff. There’s a certificate of authenticity, a photo of the board, and a photo of me showing this off at DevCon 1993. There’s also documentation, and a set of schematics, printed on the ”big plotter” at Commodore.
Most of the AAA chips are not on this board, so don’t even think to yourself ”will it run”. Also, no ROM or memory modules… I have no idea what became of them. We had only two functional sets of AAA chips. I left those on the other two boards, which went with some of the AAA chip designers. They were far more responsible for what we did accomplish here (read the specs — it was really cool) than I was.
Haynie lahjoittaa puolet huutokaupan tuloista syöpätutkimuksen hyväksi.
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