Posslbly The Most Advanced Personal Computer Ever

The computer is code-named the Amiga Lorraine, and right now it exists only in prototype form. But if it ever reaches production, and at a price even close to what is promised, it could signal the beginning of a completely new genera tion of personal computers.

The Lorraine's graphics are a whole step ahead of any personal computer now on the market. This computer is potentially powerful enough to make an IBM-PC look like a four-function calculator. Judge for yourself.Standard features include:

• A Motorola 68000 microprocessor chip for the central processing unit. This is the same 16/32-bit chip found in the Apple Macintosh.
• 128K of RAM, expandable to 512K internally and several megabytes (lOOOK) externally. 64K of ROM, with built-in BASIC and speech software, including a text-to-speech pro gram. We heard the Lorraine talk in its male and female voices, and both were quite understandable. The BASIC language is said to be very fast and compatible with Applesoft, though with extra commands for graphics and other capabilities.
• Built-in 320K double-sided disk drive; IBM compatible. A second external drive can be powered by the internal power supp!y.
• Built-in 300-bps (bits per second) modem, replaceable with a 1200-bps modem.
• Parallel and serial interface ports, a top "chimney port" for individually powered expansion modules, including more RAM and a hard disk drive; and a front cartridge slot for ROM software or coprocessors, such as an 8088 module for IBM/MS-DOS compatibility.
• Four sound channels, with music capabilities comparable to the Commodore 64's SID chip. We heard this demonstrated with a plug-in organ keyboard; the sound was very impressive. (One sound channel is used by the speech software.)
• Medium-resolution graphics of 320 X 200 pixels (screen dots), and hi-res graphics of 640 X 200 pixels, with a total-of 4096 colors. (That's not a typo. We saw a dramatic rainbow demo which supposedly displayed all 4096 colors on the screen simultaneously, though we didn't have time to count them.)
• Eight sprites (up to 16 colors each) with collision detection and display priorities. Plus another feature called "frame-buffer animation," which lets you pick up any piece of the screen and move it anywhere else. Plus built-in commands for line-drawing, fills, and both horizontal and vertical fine scrolling. Plus split-screen graphics, with each screen "window" capable of displaying different graphics modes while operating independently, even with fine scrolling.
• Outputs for TV, composite video, and two types of RGB (red-green-blue) direct-drive monitors. The TV output shown to us was so pure that 80-column text (also standard) was almost readable from across the room.
• On top of all this, Amiga claims the Lorraine will come bundled with software, including a disk operating system, word processor, and spreadsheet.

However, there's a big difference between design engineering and production engineering, The Lorraine at the June CES was such a rough prototype that it was operated from a remoye terminal. To gear up for production in less than six months will take a herculean effort, and lots of capital.