Commodore President Harold Copperman introduced the latest entry in the popular Amiga product line at a live multimedia demonstration at New York's Palladium
on April 24th. The powerful and elegant new Amiga 3000 brings enhanced performance capabilities and a new Amiga V2.0 operating system to the company's line of multimedia products.
"The A3000 marks the first step in Commodore's new Amiga product marketing strategy and reinforces our serious bid to capture greater market share within the business, government and higher education markets." said Commodore Vice President of marketing C. Lloyd Mahaffey. "We've delivered an incredibly competitive hardware system featuring lower cost, higher performance and added communications capabilities."
Mahaffey said key product features include a 16 or 25 Mhz, 68030 Motorola processor, a 68881 or 68882 math coprocessor, a true 32-bit architecture, 2 MB of memory standard (with an address space of over one gigabyte) and, as in all Amigas, true multitasking capability. The standard Amiga 3000 comes with a 40 MB hard drive and a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and
features a SCSI interface for added communication capability. Commodore also offers a 100 MB configuration.
Suggested retail price is $3,299 for the 16 Mhz version, $3,999 for the 25 Mhz version and $4,499 for the 100 MB version. Shipments are expected to begin in July.
Demonstration units are available at participating Authorized Commodore Amiga Reseller locations.
Commodore Director of Product Marketing Walt Simpson said the price/performance of the A3000 results from the effective integration of the Amiga's three custom chips with five new custom gate arrays which serve a variety of functions including bus arbitration, RAM memory handling, SCSI device handling and video enhancing.
The Amiga 3000 also features a new operating system, AmigaDOS 2.0, which significantly enhances the look and functionality of the platform, Simpson said. Besides the new look, standards have been created for all system utilities, icons, requesters and gadgets to permit ease-of-use by both users and programmers, he said.
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\ff<Helvetica>Commodore International Announces CDTV at CES\ff<Times>
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Commodore International unveiled its Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) interactive multimedia player June 2nd at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. The player is the first consumer-oriented product to combine the massive storage capabilities of the CD-ROM with the multitasking, audio, graphics, and processing power of an advanced personal computer into a single simple to use, affordable unit. The player connects directly to a television set and home stereo unit to become an interactive information, entertainment, and education center. The unit is controlled by a simple to use infrared remote.
CDTV will have many uses. Through the use of CD-ROM technology, reference materials such as dictionaries, world atlases, and encyclopedias can be accessed and cross referenced at the touch of a button. Packages that teach cooking, sports, and foreign languages as well as those that offer interactive learning for children are planned. Music from rock to opera will be enhanced with computer graphics. Video games will be significantly more sophisticated in depth of play, sound, and
graphics than on any other video game or personal computer format. Commodore plans to have a library of more than 100 applications for CDTV available when the product launches. The majority of discs will carry a suggested retail price ranging between $30 and $100.
Nolan Bushnell, general manager of Commodore's new Interactive Consumer Products division, identifies two groups of consumers for CDTV. The first group consists of enthusiasts who currently have advanced audio, video, and computer systems in their homes. The second group is made up of educated adults who want to provide their families with interactive multimedia education, information, and entertainment, but do not want to learn how to use a conventional computer or buy a limited game machine.
CDTV is the first consumer player to begin to realize the potential of multimedia Compact Disc technology. CD-ROM discs have enormous storage capacity - more than 550 megabytes of data - the equivalent of 250,000 pages of text. This data storage capacity enables program developers to design applications which are significantly more sophisticated, challenging, and more exciting than those available on any existing computer or home entertainment format.
In addition to being able to access data stored on a CD-ROM disc, CDTV can also be used to play conventional audio Compact Discs. In the audio mode, CDTV is fully programmable, and features 8-times oversampling and dual 16-bit D/A converters, a front panel 24-hour clock, stereo headphone jack, and a full-function fluorescent display provides time, track, and volume information at a glance.
The basic CDTV player contains various input and output ports. In addition to the familiar Amiga DB-23 analog RGB video output, the CDTV player has composite video, component video Y-C (S connector type for S-VHS and Hi-8), and RF modulated (F connector) output with optional genlock capabilities via a plug in module. An RS-232 serial interface and a Centronics parallel interface can be found on the unit's rear panel, as well as an external Amiga floppy drive port. Stereo RCA type plugs provide audio out. A front panel personal RAM card port, which allows saving and storing of up to 64K of data, will also be available.
Some additional accessories will include interfaces for an infrared keyboard and an infrared, two-player game controller, a keyboard, an expansion module to house a hard drive, modem, and floppy disk drive, an infrared joystick, and an infrared trackball. There is also a hard-wired alternative to the infrared keyboard, mouse, and joystick.
CDTV is expected to retail for less than $1000. Commodore plans to market the product in the United States through high-end audio/video specialty retailers, upscale department stores, and selected retail chains. Commodore intends to launch CDTV internationally.
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