pouët.net

bifat:
i also have one A500 (that i got NOS, totally packaged, box never opened before) in my collection, that have that wide badge like A500+, but still says A500, kick 1.3 and ECS chipset. they weren't that uncommon actually.

but, to add to your OCS vs ECS frustration, personally, i'm more frustrated with ECS having and be able to use 1mb chip, more than anything else. like, lightyears more!!!
i mean, it's an amazing feature, but it's quite a contrast to original and most common A500/A2000 OCS machines.

all that said, and what i already mentioned before, this year there was a lot "OCS" and "ECS" and "AGA" markings on the info screens, and this was more than enough for me. most of people voting don't even know the difference between AGA and OCS anyway (most of them knowing that there is some difference, but still not aware how big it is, especially when we're talking about A500 vs A1200+060).

of course, we would all love to see separate OCS and AGA compos, but we're still strugling from filling even a combined compo with a proper number of respectable entries, so...

after all, it's 2021, and we're still getting a mind blowing amiga demos (on both chipsets/platforms), so i call that a win!!

Bonefish: I didn't complain about AGA/OCS being thrown into the same compo. Not even the GERP separates AGA and OCS, and even there (with the most expert audience) an AGA demo wins most of the time. My complaint is only that the Revision now also adds ECS to the mix of confusion, and doesn't explain, but rather obfuscates it. The Loaderror/Retrokomp did it right: OCS and AGA were running in the same compo, but the AGA entries in a seperate block within the same compo. And of course, no ECS nonsense. ECS played absolutely no role in demos, it's only now that we get to see ECS demos. (But even that would be fine if they wouldn't be subsumed and disguised as OCS.)

*queues X-Files "good ending"*

So, due to "popular demand", and for the sake of full transparency, I just opened up the Revision 2021 Amiga 500 compo machine, to check. So this thing:

- Has a Rev. 8A, "a.k.a." A500+ motherboard, but without the A500+ goodies/baddies. (As I said.)
- Has a Denise 8362R8, a true "full" ECS A500+ Super Denise would be an 8373, actually
- Has an Agnus 8375 390544-01(!) ECS Super Agnus, which could drive up to 2MB chip RAM, if I'm correct
- Configured with 512K chip RAM only on the motherboard. The other 512K is available as a slow RAM, not as chip RAM, and it's on an expansion card.
- Has, and always had Kickstart ROM 1.3
- Has serial number M017692

It's the factory, unmodified configuration of this system. Which fits into the well known theme of Commodore building systems from whatever was available on the shelf, especially towards the end of the production life of a system. So this whole trail of thought of "Kicstart 1.3 should be OCS only" is entirely bogus. And there's still nothing in the compo rules, which forbids using the ECS hardware at hand, although it's also not promised it will be available. (You can even detect it runtime, and print "ECS sucks, OCS rules" if you want, as this is fully possible.) Next year's compo machine might be an entirely different A500. Or might be not. Full stop.

Pictures here.

On a personal view, this would require an uncensored stream being available on another platform. I really wouldn't want to experience a censored stream as my only choice.
And the additional effort you have to put in to manage that correctly is huge.

bifat:

i do recall some ECS demos back in the days (mostly requiring 1mb chip). don't prefer them, but also don't any have special problem with them. plus, would like to see party nowadays rejecting an amiga entry because it's ECS and not OCS. especially since ECS releases has been for a while on revision, too. some of them won some compos, too.

as for your ONLY problem regarding "obfuscating" ECS with kick 1.3, if you haven't believe what charlie and me already wrote about ECS in 1.3 a500, wikipedia to the help...
Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore CDTV

had an amiga service shop back in the days, so have some tech knowledge about A500 and their chipsets, as well as commodity of them - i actually had a "frankenstein" amiga 500 that i put together by myself, with mechanical clicky keyboard (original commodore!!), "chicken lips" case, with ecs chipset board (no a500+ markings on it!!!!) and i even swapped 1.3 with 1.2 kickstart!! can't recall any problems with her, and i was mostly watching demos. haven't seen kickstart 2.x before A600 started to appear 1-2 years later. i can probably still can get access to it, as i sold to one friend who decided to keep it and sold his, back in the mid-90ties.

Nobody said you were breaking promises. We now just have releases which do not look on OCS as they were looking in Revision stream, that's all. It's nice, more compos to choose from!

Bonefish, Charlie: I believe you that there were A500+ shipped with Kick1.3.

I for myself was pretty much confused with the number of "A500 ECS" labeled entries in the amiga compo. I cant imagine all of the demos that were marked as such really required ECS? Or is 512+512 RAM already considered ECS? That would be new to me...
Maybe its just confusing in the partysystem during submission process and people just chose the first "A500" in the list?

let me then copy whole paragraph:
"Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore CDTV. Other ECS models were the Amiga 500+ in 1991 and lastly the Amiga 600 in 1992."

therefor, it was quite possible to get a ECS A500 in 1990 (and i can assure you that's true from my personal experience), while A500+ appeared in 1991.

I had, and still have, an ECS Agnus A500 w. Kick 1.3. Could swear that it is from 1989 even.

Ok, interesting, although Denise and Agnus chips were frequently exchanged by previous owners. Just what's the point of this - that ECS is the new OCS because ECS chips were found in A500(+)'s?

My A500 back in 1990 was ECS, it had an orange instead of a red light.

I remember that the last part of Mental Hangover screwed up on it, so I sent it back saying it was defective. Unsurprisingly they found nothing wrong with it, and it wasn't until Mirage released Prime '90 (with its hardware info display at the beginning) that my OCS-owning friend and I realised what the issue was. :)

I learned from 2002 on that seperating OCS and ECS on Pouet is futile (c.f. Amiga OCS) and won't go there again. Commodore reality seemingly was a lot more flexible than some Amiga zealots' opinions. Besides: the original OCS had 256 kB Chip and no Fast. Just saying!

So you're saying that the original OCS was able to address only 256KiB of chipmem, correct?

No, but it was shipped as such in early A1000s. Thus the "had".

Yes noname, early A1000. These were rare exceptions. For every A500+ there were thirteen A500 with Kick 1.3 sold, and A500+ were officially shipped with Kick2.x. Individual dealers may have replaced the ROM, that's totally reasonable.

Given the discussion about Amiga details here now, is it safe to assume that almost everyone else had a pretty nice demo shock over the last weekend?

I was indeed very positively surprised by the amount and quality of releases!

I was very happy with what I saw on sunday and early monday night. I really enjoyed the commentary from the hosts, the scenesat compostudio,... It was great seeing/hearing you all again, even if it doesn't reach the in-person contact level. And huge thanks to the organisers for the patience with technically-challenged entries.

AFAIR there were 3 checkbox options: ECS, AGA and Custom. I remember my mushy brain was very confused and wanted to click ECS until I realized I didn't actually have to check any of them.

Targetting a demo to ECS back in early 90s was very unusual, as it would exclude most A500s out there. It's different now, with emulators and youtube (and fewer purists). I would say the best option is correct labelling, which would satisfy the few and be ignored by the many.

twitch restored the channel... with stuff from 2016... last time someone at Twitch saved everything to a USB stick probably.

Now I am confused, when I watch an Amiga demo, where do I choose ECS or OCS in YouTube? ;-P

even though I only followed the stream on friday and saturday it was quite entertaining and fun. thanks to everyone involved making it happen :)