PowerUP boards were dual-processor accelerator boards designed by Phase5 Digital Products for Amiga computers. They had two different processors, a Motorola 68000 series (68k) and a PowerPC, working in parallel, sharing the complete address space of the Amiga computer system.
In 1995, Amiga Technologies GmbH announced they were going to port AmigaOS to PowerPC. As part of their Power Amiga plan, Amiga Technologies was going to launch new Power Amiga models using the PowerPC 604e reduced instruction set computer (RISC) CPU and in cooperation with Amiga Technologies Phase5 would release AmigaOS 4-compatible PowerPC accelerator boards for old Amiga 1200, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000 models. [1] [2] However, in 1996 Amiga Technologies' parent company ESCOM entered into deep financial problems and could not support Amiga development. Due to a lack of resources, the PowerPC project at Amiga Technologies stalled and Phase5 had to launch accelerators without a PowerPC-native AmigaOS. As a stopgap solution, a new PowerUP kernel was created allowing new PPC-native software run parallel with 68k Amiga OS. [3] To complicate things even further, former Commodore International chief engineer Dave Haynie questioned Phase5's plans to develop PowerPC boards without Amiga Technologies: "Their approach on the software front is kind of a hack, and on the hardware front it's just too much like the old Commodore; at best, they'll wind up with interesting, non-standard, and overpriced machines that can't keep up with the rapid changes in the industry." [4]
Nevertheless Phase5 had decided to go their own way and develop a PowerPC-based AmigaOS-compatible computer without Amiga Technologies. They also announced plans to write a new Amiga OS-compatible operating system. [5] Wolf Dietrich (managing director of phase5) earlier commented that "we found that Amiga Technologies offers us no sort of outlook or basis for developing into the future". [6]
There is no detailed information about how many PowerPC accelerator boards Phase5 (and later DCE) sold. According to Ralph Schmidt in an AmigActive article featuring MorphOS, there were about 10,000 people using Phase5 PowerPC accelerator boards. [7] The unofficial PowerUP support page estimates similar figures. [8]
PowerUP kernel is a multitasking kernel developed by Ralph Schmidt for Phase5 PowerPC accelerator boards. [9] The kernel ran alongside the AmigaOS where PPC and 68k native software could run parallel. [10]
The PowerUP kernel used Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) as the executable format and supported runtime linking, relocations and custom sections; it used GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) as its default compiler. [11] This caused controversy in the Amiga community when developers thought that phase5 was bringing "too Unixish stuff" to Amiga. [12] [13] It was feared that PowerUP kernel introducing shared objects and dynamic linking would replace the original shared library model and shared objects were indeed adapted into AmigaOS. [14] [15]
Another controversy was caused by different designs and purposes of Blizzard PPC and Cyberstorm PPC boards. The Blizzard PPC was designed to fit Amiga 1200 as a standalone device which would not need installing additional software but utilised Amiga's unique Autoconfig feature. This caused problems to some 3rd party developers who developed their own PPC kernels for PowerUP cards since they could not work on Amiga 1200 without removing the PowerUP kernel first. [16]
A few hundred titles were released for PowerUP including TurboPrint PPC, Amiga datatypes, MP3 and MPEG players, games ( Quake and Doom video games to mention few) and various plugins including Flash Video plugin for Voyager web browser. [17] [18]
On May 12, 1997, Phase5 announced PowerUP accelerator board for the Amiga 2000 line of computers. [19] [20] The card never got past the prototype stage and hence never released to the public.
Also known as Blizzard 603e, [22] this accelerator board was designed for the Amiga 1200 and plugged into the trapdoor slot. It used a low cost, low end PowerPC 603e processor designed for portable and embedded use. [23]
This accelerator board was designed for the Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000. The accelerator board was famous for its high performance due to its 64 bit wide memory bus and PowerPC 604e processor. [25] According to Phase 5 it could sustain memory transfers up to 68 MB/s on the 68060 and up to 160 MB/s on the 604e.
CyberVision PPC and BlizzardVision PPC (BVision PPC) were graphics board add-ons for the CyberStorm PPC [27] and Blizzard PPC accelerator boards. The BlizzardVision PPC could be installed into an Amiga 1200 desktop case. [28] They had a random-access memory (RAM) digital-to-analog converter (DAC, RAMDAC) with a bandwidth of 230 MHz able to display resolutions with 80 Hz vertical refresh rate up to 1152×900 pixels at 24 bits, or 1600×1200 pixels at 16 bits.
| Resolution | 8 bits | 16 bits | 32 bits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 640 × 480 | 60 – 140 Hz | 60 – 140 Hz | 60 – 120 Hz |
| 800 × 600 | 60 – 120 Hz | 60 – 120 Hz | 60 – 120 Hz |
| 1024 × 768 | 75 – 120 Hz | 75 – 120 Hz | 75 – 120 Hz |
| 1152 × 900 | 75 – 120 Hz | 75 – 100 Hz | 75 – 100 Hz |
| 1280 × 1024 | 60 – 100 Hz | 60 – 90 Hz | N/A |
| 1600 × 1200 | 60 – 80 Hz | 60 – 75 Hz | N/A |
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.
The Motorola 68060 ("sixty-eight-oh-sixty") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68LC060 and the 68EC060.
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Amiga 500 for cost reduction. Expansion capabilities include two 3.5" drive bays and one 5.25" bay that could be used by a 5.25" floppy drive, a hard drive, or CD-ROM once they became available.
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the Efika and mobileGT. Since MorphOS 2.4, Apple's Mac mini G4 is supported as well, and with the release of MorphOS 2.5 and MorphOS 2.6 the eMac and Power Mac G4 models are respectively supported. The release of MorphOS 3.2 added limited support for Power Mac G5. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop.
The Amiga 4000, or A4000, from Commodore is the successor of the Amiga 2000 and Amiga 3000 computers. There are two models: the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030.
Phase5 Digital Products is a defunct German computer hardware manufacturer that developed third-party hardware primarily for the Amiga platform. Their most popular products included CPU upgrade boards, SCSI controllers and graphics cards.
This is a list of models and clones of Amiga computers.
The Amiga is a family of home computers that were designed and sold by the Amiga Corporation from 1985 to 1994.
The Amiga computer can be used to emulate several other computer platforms, including legacy platforms such as the Commodore 64, and its contemporary rivals such as the IBM PC and the Macintosh.
AmigaOS is the proprietary native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. Since its introduction with the launch of the Amiga 1000 in 1985, there have been four major versions and several minor revisions of the operating system.
Microprocessors belonging to the PowerPC/Power ISA architecture family have been used in numerous applications.
AmigaOS 4 is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner. "The Final Update" was released on 24 December 2006 after five years of development by the Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment under license from Amiga, Inc. for AmigaOne registered users.
WarpOS is a multitasking kernel for the PowerPC (PPC) architecture central processing unit (CPU) developed by Haage & Partner for the Amiga computer platform in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It runs on PowerUP accelerator boards developed by phase5 which contains both a Motorola 68000 series CPU and a PowerPC CPU with shared address space. WarpOS runs alongside the 68k-based AmigaOS, which can use the PowerPC as a coprocessor. Despite its name, it is not an operating system (OS), but a kernel; it supplies a limited set of functions similar to those in AmigaOS for using the PowerPC. When released, its original name was WarpUP, but was changed to reflect its greater feature set, and possibly to avoid comparison with its competitor, PowerUP.
The Amiga 1200, or A1200, is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom and $599 in the United States.
Eyetech Group Ltd is a company founded in 1983, in order to provide commercial companies with automatical data collection systems. They had already been involved in the provision of the automatic toll collection systems used at the Dartford River Crossing, as well as many of the bar code based tracking systems used by UK national parcel service.
Warp3D was a project, founded by Haage & Partner in 1998, that aimed to provide a standard API which would enable programmers to access, and therefore use, 3D hardware on the Amiga.
Haage & Partner is a German company established in 1995. The company distributes software products where they usually are the exclusive distributor. Products are aimed at Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, and has been aimed at AmigaOS in the past. The primary destination countries are Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Retargetable graphics is a device driver API mainly used by third-party graphics hardware to interface with AmigaOS via a set of libraries. The software libraries may include software tools to adjust resolution, screen colors, pointers, and screenmodes. It will use available hardware and will not extend the capabilities in any way.
A new version of AmigaOS was released on December 24, 2006 after five years of development by Hyperion Entertainment (Belgium) under license from Amiga, Inc. for AmigaOne registered users.
The DraCo, also known as DraCo Vision in one of its later models, was a non-linear video editing workstation created by MacroSystem Computer GmbH in 1994, based on the Amiga platform.
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