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Amiga Original chipset


The Original Chip Set (OCS) was a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. It was succeeded by the slightly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) and greatly improved Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA).

The original chipset appeared in Amiga models built between 1985 and 1990: the Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, Amiga CDTV, and Amiga 500.

The chipset which gave the Amiga its unique graphics features consists of three main "custom" chips; Agnus, Denise, and Paula. Both the original chipset and the enhanced chipset were manufactured using NMOS logic technology by Commodore's chip manufacturing subsidiary, MOS Technology. According to Jay Miner, the OCS chipset was fabricated in 5 µm manufacturing process while AGA Lisa was implemented in 1.5 µm process. All three custom chips were originally packaged in 48-pin DIPs; later versions of Agnus, known as Fat Agnus, were packaged in an 84-pin PLCC.

Agnus is the central chip in the design. It controls all access to chip RAM from both the central 68000 processor and the other custom chips, using a complicated priority system. Agnus includes sub-components known as the blitter (fast transfer of data in memory without the intervention of the processor) and the Copper (video-synchronized co-processor). The original Agnus can address 512 KB of chip RAM. Later revisions, dubbed 'Fat Agnus', added 512 KB pseudo-fast RAM, which for ECS was changed to 1 MB (sometimes called 'Fatter Agnus') and subsequently to 2 MB chip RAM.


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