Classic Computer Magazine Archive COMPUTE! ISSUE 92 / JANUARY 1988 / PAGE 20

Amiga 2000 Confusion

I enjoyed Sheldon Leemon's April 1987 AmigaView column about the new Amiga 2000. In it, I read that the Amiga 2000 has slots for two- or eight-mega­byte RAM cards and a special slot for a coprocessor card, but does not support more than 512K of chip memory or a math coprocessor. What distinction is he drawing?

Bob Trent

As to the memory question, all Amiga computers have a reserved area of 512K bytes of memory known as chip memory. This is the only memory that's accessible to the special hardware chips that control sound and graphics. The microprocessor in the Amiga, on the other hand, can access all the RAM that you can put into the Amiga. Having more chip memory would allow for improved animation and sound. Contrary to some rumors that circulated before the introduction of the 2000, that machine has the same amount of chip memory as the 1000.

The Amiga 2000 does not use a math coprocessor, which would speed up numerical applications like spreadsheets and three-dimensional graphics. However, it does have a special slot that can hold a coprocessor like the 68020, which is an improved version of the 68000 processor that all Amigas use.