This is cool. In my mind this is what I though the Data General "Eagle" CPU would look like during the events described in the _The Soul of a New Machine_.
It’s crazy to think that this collection of boards and wirewrap would be transformed into a set of chips that became the beloved Amiga.
I assume it goes from CAD to wire wrap and if it "works" the CAD is sent to fabrication on real silicon ?
I helped Dale set up these boards and other materials for the Amiga 040th at the Computer History Museum back in August. I mounted one of the original chip schematic sheets on some foam core board (very carefully) and hung it up. That sheet was neatly hand drawn and I didn't see any CAD in material he brought.
I haven't asked Dale specifically if there was any CAD used for Lorraine but from other things I've read about chip design around that time, CAD was just being introduced and pretty rare. These prototypes were first debugged and brought to a working state over Nov/Dec 83 and were shown in the private room at Amiga's CES booth in Jan 84. In 82/83 any computer even capable of complex chip design would have been an expensive minicomputer with an esoteric graphics terminal add-on and Amiga was a startup on a limited budget.
It’s crazy to think that this collection of boards and wirewrap would be transformed into a set of chips that became the beloved Amiga. I assume it goes from CAD to wire wrap and if it "works" the CAD is sent to fabrication on real silicon ?
I haven't asked Dale specifically if there was any CAD used for Lorraine but from other things I've read about chip design around that time, CAD was just being introduced and pretty rare. These prototypes were first debugged and brought to a working state over Nov/Dec 83 and were shown in the private room at Amiga's CES booth in Jan 84. In 82/83 any computer even capable of complex chip design would have been an expensive minicomputer with an esoteric graphics terminal add-on and Amiga was a startup on a limited budget.