Talk:Amiga/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Operating system

I've just added some more paragraphs about AmigaOS, but then I realized there is already a separate AmigaOS article ;-) However, the structure of that article is such that I wouldn't really know where to put my stuff... what do you suggest? LjL 21:31, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whoever wrote this section seems to think that hardware documentation is a bad thing. Amiga gave detailed documentation of the graphics hardware so that programmers would not be limited to what was spoon fed to them by a priesthood of API programmers. This ensured that the first generation of Amiga programmers would be able to push the graphics hardware to the limit. Perhaps this argumant is lost on programmers brought up on OS-heavy machines manufactured since Amiga's demise.--Drvanthorp 00:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with you. It's rather POV by suggesting that going through the API would have been better (it may be unthinkable to suggest otherwise now, but things were much different with the limited hardware in the 80s), and seems to imply that the Amiga was alone in this choice (e.g., wasn't hitting the hardware common to some degree on DOS, and proper APIs only appeared with Windows 95?) I'm not sure how best to rewrite it - does anyone object to it being removed? There's not even evidence supplied that this was a significant cause of instability. Mdwh 22:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to take a look at this section. I have a bit of ... knowledge about the issue.  ;-) jesup 03:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was common practice on early personal computers to directly access the graphics and sound hardware. Some early machines had little or no API support for these features, so they were often accessed directly. The Atari 400/800 computers are a great example, because Atari actually intentionally left the best graphics features undocumnented in the belief that this would hamper third party game developement and give Atari an advantage in marketing their own games. These hidden hardware features were quickly discovered by programmers that dissasembled Atari's game software, and better documentation became available from third party sources, but never from Atari themselves. Commodore, on the other hand, published programmers reference guides describing the function of every byte of memory in the Vic-20 and C-64. Amiga was founded by hardwear-guru Atari defectors, and marketed by Commodore, so it was only natural that EVERYTHING was documented.--Drvanthorp 16:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There was a classic series of arguments I had (I can't remember if it was comp.sys.amiga.tech or some such, or if it was on the BIX developer support forums) with some of the 3rd party game devs from Europe about going through the OS versus overriding it. With rare exceptions, it was better to go through the OS, even if you ignore whether the software works on the next minor rev of the hardware. And we worked HARD to make the OS not break badly-broken games - I once spent around a week with a hardware trace box tracking down why a (silly) children's program broke with the alpha of 2.0. Final reason: they depended on some scratch register (A1? D1?) to happen to get set to a device structure by OpenDevice() on the console (if I remember the details correctly). So we put one of many patches in to avoid breaking these programs that didn't follow the rules.

The ones that went totally direct to the hardware were worse: I analyzed a book written in the UK on how to access the floppy directly (targeted at game programmers). I can catagorically tell you that it would fail on some random percentage of Amigas because they didn't understand things like rotation speed tolerances. And in fact some games did fail when we changes floppy mechanism makers, even though it was totally in-spec. And this is just one of the simpler examples; ignoring how much some of the other stuff could help - or could get out of your way in a smooth manner while handling all the other stuff you didn't _need_ to access directly -- if you bothered to ask the OS, that is.jesup 17:04, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking more in terms of stuff that demo coders did. These were the guys that wanted to do things with the (usually graphics) hardware that the hardware designers had never thought of doing, and which would not, and could not have been part of any OS or API that the manufacturer could have supplied. When you did this analysis on all of this software to try to keep the OS revisions compatible, did you ever run into any programming tricks of that sort?--Drvanthorp 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Pretty much no. "Demos" that nuked the OS pretty much were ignored. In fact, I don't even remember looking at any of the euroDemos at the time. We were interested in commercial games, and unlike now there was no very easy distribution of patches/updates (though it did happen), so avoiding breaking things was more important. And updates for copy-protected games were even harder. We had a whole series of patches just to keep things from breaking especially in 2.0 and 2.04. jesup 15:07, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Of all the things that you would bypass the OS for, floppy disk access is not one that quickly comes to mind.--Drvanthorp 00:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

needs a rewrite

The opening paragraph is pretty bad. "memory mapped I/O"? weee. "plug and play"? Gratuitous reference to mainframes. No mention that the Amiga project started out as a game machine.

Then correct it! Everyone can edit - Adrian Pingstone 07:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. It's more factual and less hyped now.

Yes, I agree. I've changed it just a bit by adding a link to AmigaOS -- the OS is an important part of Amiga computers, and since there is an article that talks about it, I thought it should be linked somewhere very visible. I feel the need to justify my edit because there are already links to the AmigaOS article... however, I missed them myself the first time I read the article -- which might either mean that I don't read carefully enough, or that they aren't visible enough ;-)

Retromadness

Even with the link now pointing directly to the Amiga 4000T [1] page, I still think that link doesn't belong here. Look at the other links: they're all big sites with vast amounts of information (only pouet.net leaves me some doubts... it sure is a big site, but how is it Amiga-related, at least at a first glance?). The contrast with a page depicting an A4000T and briefly mentioning its hardware component is evident to me.

Before removing the link again, I'd like to hear some opinion, especially that of the link author. Thanks.

LjL 14:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, delete it. Mirror Vax 15:21, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

trueSpace

Another famous 3D program that originated on the Amiga is Caligari trueSpace. www.caligari.com

Article title: why not "Commodore Amiga"?

I have been wondering for a time now why on Earth the title of this article isn't "Commodore Amiga" rather than just "Amiga". Most, if not all, articles on other computers include the manufacturer's name in the model name, so I don't quite see why this doesn't apply to the Amiga as well. Please comment. If no reasonable arguments appear in favor of keeping the present title, I may change it before long. --Wernher 11:00, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I too have wondered this. I think it should be renamed as "Commodore Amiga". In the early days, Commodore (in the U.S) wanted to distance itself from the Amiga. Instead "Commodore Amiga", it was usually referenced as "The Amiga from Commodore". I don't know the official reason for this, but they could have been trying to stop the "Toy computer" image they gained in the early 80's from affecting the Amiga. Pixel8 11:18, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

If you're in a renaming mood, how about A1000, A2000, etc. Are you an administrator? Because of course the redirect pages would have to be deleted to enable the move. Mirror Vax 13:47, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that up; renaming the Axxx-articles should also be done. In fact, that's an even surer thing than the "Amiga" to "Commodore Amiga" one. I'm an admin, so actually performing the moves should be OK once we decide on the action as such. --Wernher 02:19, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I haven't decided yet whether to support a renaming to "Commodore Amiga". But perhaps the reason that it has this name now is that the Amiga computer had a history before Commodore bought the company. Amiga, Inc. manufactured joysticks (one of which I have) to support the development of the computer that they were developing. Val42 17:16, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the Amiga also has some history after the demise of Commodore. An article by the name of Commodore Amiga would have to be purely historical.

These two points are the reason I haven't just done the renaming already; I thought we should take the time to discuss the pros and cons of a move to "Commodore Amiga". An argument supporting the renaming of the article is the fact that the Amiga was a CBM product for the majority of the period when it was a serious contender in the market. Before CBM, the Amiga was a mostly unknown (company/)product, and after CBM it must be said to (have) be(en) more of a hardcore CBM hacker scene thing (*ducking to avoid incoming burning arrows from the Amiga crowd*). Any comments on that? --Wernher 02:19, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am strongly against renaming this article. Amiga != Commodore. It's true that it's been owned by Commodore for most of the time, but on these grounds, most articles should roam around all the time depending on the changing winds. It's just a stupid idea IMHO. LjL 23:22, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Wernher, the *most notable and significant* history of the Amiga happened during its ownership by Commodore. Everything else is a footnote in comparison... Besides renaming, I propose we should have the following articles:

Amiga Corporation: Early history (1982-1984), how the amiga came about, events up to the purchase by Commodore

Commodore Amiga: Commodore-Amiga, Inc. (1985-1994), more history, models etc.

Amiga Technologies: Escom/gateway era.

Amiga Inc. :

I know you wasn't sure about this LjL (see "History" section above), but I feel we cannot squeeze all this into the current Amiga article, it should copyedited to the relevant ones. The "Amiga" article could be turned into a chronological summary, bringing together the above articles. Just a thought... Pixel8 00:12, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

I still don't quite like it, but if it has to be done, then yes, I would definitely favour an "Amiga" article with links to the relevant "sub-articles" (and, perhaps, some content of its own, like a short summary of what's to be found in the sub-articles; also, if the articles is divided according to the owning company, the "Amiga" article should probably give some information about which technologies can be found under which sub-articles: while from a "company" point of view it makes sense to make the split Amiga Technologies / Amiga Inc., from a technical point of view it makes much more sense to separate Amiga m68k / Amiga PPC). LjL 20:34, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fred Fish Collection

If we're going to mention Aminet I think we should have a mention of the Fred Fish collection. I don't know what became of the collection but as someone who used the Amiga extensively during its time, the Fred Fish collection was the best software collection there was and so it deserves mention, especially if someone knows a link to a currently hosted archive.

• And while we are at it, why not name every single game and application out there for the Amiga? The Fred Fish collection was a public domain series, not that it didn't have great tools, but I'd rather point out succesful commercial software to show that the Amiga wasn't just a playfield for hobby-coders.

The Fred Fish collection was notable and unusual for the time. It presaged the rise of ftp/gopher (and later web) free software sites. Also, much of what was distributed was done in the public domain (not even modern OSS licenses).

Hobby coders were a big part of the picture in the US (and elsewhere, to a slightly lesser extent). Commercial programs are all well and good, but one hell of a lot of current top programmers got their start on Amigas in the 1980's and early 1990's. You can thank them for things like DragonFly BSD, ReplayTV, BeOS and more things than I can name. jesup 03:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Custom Chipset

I am missing info about Agnes, Denise, Paula chips, which made the Amiga what it was: More than the sum of it's parts. Also, if I remember correctly, back in the 90's there was a chip called "caipirinha" (by Phase5 / www.phase5.de) or something that was (for it's time) way ahead of time. Unfortunately it has never seen the daylight. Or am I mistaken?

Yes, Caipirinha (a microchip named after a cocktail, of all things) was definitely invented and designed. Whether it was ever produced and released I don't know. — JIP | Talk 13:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

There was also a "Fat Agnus" chip that came out, and (if I remember correctly) was required for certain accelerator boards to function properly. In general, the Custom Chipset section needs to be rewritten to better emphasize the importance of the architecture, how it contributed to a true multitasking environment, and how it was really so far ahead of it's time. --Prujohn 20:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

"Fat Agnus" was the standard A500 chip, I think. You might be referring to "Super Agnus", which could access 1 MiB of Chip RAM and switch between PAL and NTSC. Wonderstruck 11:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was trying to remember. I needed the Super Agnes because we worked on PAL and NTSC projects, and (if memory serves) for compatibility with the "Picasso" 32-bit display board. --Prujohn 04:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Caipirinha was meant to be included in the A\box by Phase 5, but neither the chip nor the computer ever appeared. I've added details about them under "Unreleased models (after Commodore)". Mdwh 23:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I found the specs for the Caipirinha. They might be interesting, though I don't know if they belong here or should be under some "Never released CPU's" chapter of WikiPedia:

The corner-stones of the CAIPIRINHA design:

• 128-bit high performance UMA (Unified Memory Architecture) controller, using fast SDRAMs with a clock frequency of 100 MHz and a maximum band width of up to 1.6 G-bytes/second
• 64-bit processor bus with a maximum clock rate of 100 MHz
• two 24-bit video DMA units with freely addressable access, with integrated 24-bit video DAC's
• four 16-bit audio outputs, 44.1 KHz with any number of virtual tracks, sample output, FM and AM synthesis
• video-in ports for 2 independent video inputs in Y/UV 4:2:2 quality
• audio inputs in 16-bit stereo CD quality
• LCD (TFT) controller according to the VESA standard
• a PCI-bus interface for medium-performance I/O applications
• a local 16-bit DMA bus with 66.7 MHz and a maximum band width of 132 M-bytes/second for universal low-cost applications
• an integrated IEEE 1394 firewire controller for digital I/O applications
• a desktop bus interface.

Funny thing is that, when looking at the specs, it pretty much explains why it is named after a cocktail.

More at http://hem.passagen.se/laoh/aboxe.html

Reading it again (at the time it sounded awesome) it seems more like a hoax (Phase5 is gone?) than something that would really be built.

Phase5 are out of business, but they were certainly a genuine company, who produced many Amiga hardware products both before and after the A\BOX announcement (including PowerPC accelerator boards). It's surprising that they decided to announce such an ambitious product (a new computer platform, new graphics chipset and a new OS), but I've never heard any evidence that it was a hoax. Mdwh 03:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

A curious question

Wikipedia may or may not be the best place to ask a question like this, but after much googling, WP is the only thing showing me any info for this, so here goes.

The page mentions community access TV channels being run from classic amiga machines. I happen to recieve one of these channels in my area (Even managing to see the system go down with a guru meditation error, on screen for a day).

Does anybody know of what software package(s) are used for this purpose? I have seen the "slides" if you will, being edited on the air via a popup menu, where one could select the background, font size, etc of the text. The top of the screen always shows the time and local temperature, the middle has the "slides", and the bottom is a scrolling ticker showing a local weather forecast.

Any information would be greatly appreciated! THANKS! 69.146.97.123 07:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

There are multiple ways of doing this, but basically any application that runs on the Amiga can be output to an analog television system with the onboard hardware, or overlayed and timed properly with an external (or internal) "Genlock" (it's a misnomer). --tonsofpcs _(Talk) 07:35, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

My guess is you're looking for "Gala". I can't remember the publisher or author and Google is not helping either today, but I used to use this software and have seen it in use in many TV-stations.

You probably mean Scala. It started on the Amiga as broadcasting software (Scala 500) it is now available for PC as Infochannel. Many local TV stations still use Amiga Scala software for this purpose. Felsir 19:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Dang... It was at the tip of my tongue... I meant Scala indeed. Sorry for that.

User Base:

Ive added an article on the Amigas userbase, i hope everyone finds it acceptible - i'm not sure if the last bit sounds neutral enough but i think it makes an important point to potential developers that they can learn something from 'old' hardware and principles - any comments or minor adjustments are welcome, especially if someone thinks it can be put in a better way - but i think this was an important point lacking from the article. --Insignia1983 17:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Remember that the style of writing which is good for something like an editorial or essay isn't necessarily good for an encyclopedia. I've tried to improve it - it's not so much that I disagree with what's said, but that we shouldn't be expressing subjective things like hopes and opinions in what we write for Wikipedia. I hope that makes sense. Mdwh 23:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou for your adjustments Mdwh - i'm new to this, and although i tried to keep it encyclopedic i think i need more practise getting the language right. I can learn a lot from your adjustments so hopefully avoid the same pitfalls in the future. The essence of what i said is there, except now it sounds more professional and fluent! Thanks for your guidance! One point though... i thought Doom used the 'first generation' of very early 3d cards, you know the 2d/3d card combos i think existed? I must admit i wasnt a pc user at the time, but anyway i suppose its an irrelevant point as i was just trying to use an illustration for the point about getting more performance out of the machine. Are illustrations necessary in an article such as this or is it best to leave external sources to describing the details of the broad points made in the article? Thanks, id appreciate any advice you can give!--Insignia1983 00:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Doom used software rendering as far as I know; it didn't use an algorithm comparable to what 3D cards do (i.e., drawing texture mapped polygons), instead it draws the walls in vertical slices (see Doom engine). Even Quake originally still used software rendering, and it wasn't until Quake II I believe that 3D hardware could be used as standard. I guess there are other illustrations that could be given (e.g., the various expansions for the A1200) but I don't have an opinion on whether it's needed. Mdwh 02:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Doom never used hardware acceleration; it ran using the power of the CPU only. It didn't do proper 3D. It broke the screen into vertical lines, like scanline rendering but vertical. Amiga could never accelerate anything other than flat colour fills, stipple effects, lines of single pixel's width, and blitting. There was a game that used a Doom engine-like approach but it never came close to Quake-like 3D. The blitter just couldn't do textures. - Richardcavell 03:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually there were "Quake-like 3D" games - indeed, Quake and Quake 2 themselves were ported - but yes, the Amiga's chipset couldn't be used to accelerate the 3D, which instead had to be done in software or on a 3D card. Mdwh 03:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

... and colour cycling, which is what gave the famous "Boing!" animation it's appearance of 3D rotation. Wonderstruck 11:13, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

No my dear Mdwh and Richardcavell. On Amiga it existed also very performing 3D games Doom-like as Breathless, Other screenshots (it deserves someone to write a Wikipedia article for it). Breathless was a little Amiga pearl. Users could also change resolutions on the fly and play it in tiny windows on unaccelerated Amiga1200, and raise to higher resolutions on accelerated Amigas with or without graphic cards. Textures of pixels could be modified to 1x1, 2x2, 4x4, etc. to gain render speed. These games like Breathless were AGA only, and came too late to be noticed that Amiga "can do it": Alos they were of no interest for a majority of Amiga machines running OCS and ECS chipset. Also Commodore was, by then, a dead company and none supported official 3D step for the Amiga classic machines. 3D advance came along with "new" Amigas such as AmigaONE and Pegasos (I am affirming it by having clearly in mind the consequencies I consider these machines as "new" Amigas and people who instead would not consider these as heirs). Althoug these 3D games existed, but weren't noticed as Amiga was considered dead along with Commodore. Sincerely, --Raffaele Megabyte 15:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The scene

Hi, Amiga fans.

I added a considerable amount of material today. I added more of the hacking, the 'scene', the peculiarities of Amiga software, etc. Hope you like it. Please feel free to comment or modify the text, etc. - Richardcavell 14:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC) (confessed Amiga nostalgic)

This article needs to be split up

This article is now 35 kilobytes long and needs to be split up. But which sections to split? I'm thinking of moving the sections about the user base to another article but am not really sure how to group them or what to call the new article. JIP | Talk 06:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The article should not be split up! It is obsolete ancient history with no relevance for today's world. It should be removed not split.--AirportTerminal 11:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

• I am curious. What do you mean by "removed". Removal of the entire article?

Splitting the article

I'd suggest moving the emulated operating systems to their own article; they're a little tangential. Also, some of the stuff that I added could be given an article, but I'm not sure what the article should be called. 'Amiga culture', 'Amiga user base', etc... I'd like to add more, actually, about the relationship of the Amiga user base to the 'hacking' culture. I use the word 'hacking' in the legal, friendly sense of the term. - Richardcavell 06:46, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Guys, I've made some big changes here, all in good faith. Please be sure to look over and make sure you're happy. We need to shorten this article; I've created 'Amiga software piracy' and added some of my stuff to 'Amiga demos'. - Richardcavell 08:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

This article keeps on growing out of the 30 kilobyte limit. Maybe we'll have to move the entire hardware section to a new article? Or at least the custom chipset? JIP | Talk 11:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Made some rather large changes to reduce the article's size. I moved the blitter and copper stuff over to the OCS page. More importantly I rewrote the AmigaOS article. The new article is a bit negatively inclined, but I'm sure someone will fix that. (But do try to keep the size within reason).Anss123 08:21, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Amiga virtual machine

Noting that Amiga emulation was moved out from here, I thought I'd point out the article Amiga virtual machine which has also appeared recently, and is proposed for deletion. Comments from additional editors would be useful, as there appears to be quite a bit of disagreement over the issue. Mdwh 23:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes! delete it. Please do not add it here as it just gives them more attention. Amiga died a long time ago. Let it die and quit cluttering up wikipedia with unnotable articles! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AirportTerminal (talk • contribs).

Leave it. A HAL VM is different from a full emulation. The possibility of combination with a strong point of differentiation may be beneficial. --tonsofpcs _(Talk) 04:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it's different, but the article simply covers Amiga emulators (which I've now removed at least - dunno if people will try to revert), and "full emulation" of Amiga software (e.g., Amithlon, or the emulation on MorphOS), with the only exception of Amiga Anywhere. So if there is a difference, the article isn't covering this different thing. If you mean it's useful to point out the difference between a VM and emulation, shouldn't that be done in a more general article, as it's not Amiga specific? Mdwh 11:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, why don't we make a "Windows Virtual Machine" and a "DOS Virtual machine" article, as well as a "Macintosh virtual machine" one? After all, DOS programs run under MS-DOS (and derivatives, such as IBM DOS, FreeDOS...), but also as virtual machines under Windows NT and OS/2, and as "semi" virtual machines under Win16. Besides, of course, that those systems mentioned can themselves run under emulators such as Bochs, VMWare (emulator? VM?), etc.

Win16 programs run under Win16 (of course), and as virtual machines under WinNT, OS/2, Wine (which is a compatibility layer just like the ones, I think, AOS4 and MorphOS have, except with no CPU emulation); I think, though I'm not sure, there are some modifications of Wine to add a CPU emulators, or projects to that intent.

Similarly, let's consider Mac OS "Classic" 68k: programs can run, besides on the actual Mac OS, under a software emulator (VM?) like ShapeShifter, which on an Amiga uses no CPU simulator, or with a hardware emulator (as seen on the Amiga again), or under "full blown" emulators; they also run inside Mac OS 8 and 9, using no API emulation but CPU simulation with PowerPC Macs, and under Mac OS X using both CPU emulation and API emulation (while the programs still "look like" they're running natively).

So, if you consider all possibilities, you could probably write a hundred or so articles including this and that and some. Perhaps it would be (much) better to just address things inside their own articles? Like, MorphOS "VM" under MorphOS, Mac issues under Mac OS, Mac OS X and the like...... LjL 16:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on Amiga

Can't believe the first comment was someone asking to delete this article "because noone uses Amigas anymore". That's like saying "Get rid of all the spitfires, the Mustangs, Sopwith Camels and scrap Memphis Belle". The Amiga is part of the history of computing, a part that would leave a vast void with nothing to replace it. I still use my Amiga 1200 quite regularly, in fact I'm currently trying to hunt down a Siamese Networking System so I can have the Amiga and PC running on the same monitor, doing different tasks in different screen resolutions, all on the same desktop.

The Amiga invented "REAL MULTITASKING" something the PC still grinds to a halt on. The Amiga invented "MULTIMEDIA" Microsoft just gave it a name and tried to hijack the feature. In some ways I think if it wasn't for the Amiga and the Atari (to a lesser extent) the PC wouldn't have progressed so far so quickly. I can remember people selling their PCs in the thousands to buy Amigas. The Amiga became mainstream in schools and colleges for it's ease of use and speed. The PC market could have learned a lot from the Amiga, but they preferred the excrutiatingly slow disk based O/Ss and bloatware which is one of the main anchors of the PC tecnology.

You don't really need to compare deleting the Amiga article with anything; everybody reasonable knows it should stay. Some people, me included, have the same positive feelings as you have towards Amiga, but almost all people who know what an Amiga is realize that the Amiga article should stay, however they feel towards it. Just don't feed the trolls, and we'll all be happy. LjL 12:47, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

"When addressing memory all 32 bits of an address register are used" is not correct. the 68000 only decoded the bottom 24(?) bits of its address registers. Tfinn Mon May 29 23:54:46 PDT 2006