The truth about Ranger?

[Weasel Fierce]

So when people talk about Ranger it ranges from "this was a bunch of stuff on paper" to "it was basically ready to ship".

What reliable documentation do we have for the development state of Ranger, how far it was off from completion and whether it was feasible to complete?


(To clarify I am looking for SOURCES)

[TCD]

Well, apparentely there is a prototype: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/1294091

[Locutus]

The prototype shown in that link was a thermal prototype, essentially a mockup of the case with mechanical proxy components to verify airflow and heat distribution.

That's an artifact you would expect quite far into the project development. But i don't think any other prototype hardware has is known.

[Gorf]

There are some boards that come with that mock-up-case:
https://amigaland.de/amiga-ranger

Essentially some kind of Zorro Backplane and two boards with unclear functions…

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

There are some boards that come with that mock-up-case:
https://amigaland.de/amiga-ranger

Essentially some kind of Zorro Backplane and two boards with unclear functions…

Some more pictures here.

The backplane is marked "Z/R B.Plane 328053-01 REV 1.2". The height suggests it is a Zorro backplane for the A1000.

One board is called "GARGANTURAM". Others have a few dozen logic chips on them, but nothing like the Lorraine prototype of the OCS chipset.

This doesn't seem to be the mythical Ranger chipset.

[Gorf]

Really hard to say what it is or not, or what it supposed to do.
The Garganturam is obviously RAM ... not VRAM but good old DRAM
(256k Bit per chip --> 2 MByte in total)

Edit:
here is the RAM expansion:
https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...ct.aspx?id=976

[pandy71]

Wiki claims that Jay Miner finished Ranger before leaving Commodore and prototype for sure exist - so there is high chance that Commodore before 1989 has Ranger in ready to be deployed state...

[Weasel Fierce]

So Miner said in 1988 the chips were "completed and tested" and that Commodore had them.

The interview with Mical in the wiki links says they "were thinking about" a new chip and that it was "supposed to be done now". It is not dated but it refers to the 2000 being pretty new so 87 88 ish?

Haynie says that some sort of "ranger" existed as a project but does not believe it was ever completed.


Clearly these cannot all be true.

https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=69487.0
From the thread when the prototype case was found, user chrisxyz seems to note that theres no indication of a new chipset in this case.

[Weasel Fierce]

Some questions that come to mind:

Its hard to find concrete quotes but articles discussing the cancelled AAA date the start of those discussions to either 88 or 89.
This seems hard to square with "Commodore had a completely working chip ready to use" the same or the prior year.

Do anyone have dates for when the work on AGA/AA began?

If the hold up was chip cost, why didn't Commodore release the "completely working" chip when costs dropped?
Its hard to square that "a ready to go" chip would be more expensive than beginning design of not one but two new chip sets (ECS and AGA).

The stories given by people involved do not line up, as I mentioned.
And unless Commodore went out of their way to remove all traces (why?), there's no reason Haynie would not have seen documentation.

Is there any confirmation of the actual existence of the final design and its state beyond Miner?

[Weasel Fierce]

Weasels Theory subject to modification upon receipt of concrete data:

The "completed system" that was handed over was a prototype case (which we know Los Gatos was working on) and some preliminary work for a chip set.

Miner may have overestimated just how "ready" this chip was and / or a design problem may have made it unworkable.
Alternatively the specs didn't look that favourable compared to VGA which was rapidly getting entrenched by 89ish.

Throw in 30+ years of reminiscing and the Amiga community already being primed to believe in it and bim bam bosh, the mythological Ranger.

[Pyromania]

This thread is all the Range!

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

This is all the Range!

You might say its far Ranging

[grelbfarlk]

What they should do is add AAAA to the Ranger. Then sell it for $49. With OS4.1 and 3.9 support. And add a neutrino radio.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Throw in 30+ years of reminiscing and the Amiga community already being primed to believe in it and bim bam bosh, the mythological Ranger.

In 1987 Commodore released the Amiga 500. Possibly it was just bad timiing or, let's just speculate for a moment here, Commodore wasn't really interested in releasing an upgraded Amiga around that time. Remember that at that point the C64 was still their cash cow. The AAA chipset or the Ranger are interesting, but if the company that would have to use them to make machines simply has no interest to do so it's all a bit moot to reminisce about 30 years later

[TCD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

What they should do is add AAAA to the Ranger. Then sell it for $49. With OS4.1 and 3.9 support. And add a neutrino radio.

You forgot military spec. Never forget military spec.

[Tigerskunk]

Wasn't the Ranger chipset not that impressive anyway?

Like somebody above said, VGA really upended the tables there.

[chb]

In my opinion Ranger stands for two things, possibly but not necessarily related:
1) The Ranger prototype system presented by Dale Luck. Basically the Los Gatos (original Amiga team) attempt at an expandable system. AFAIK the system would have square expansion boards, a preliminary spec was released at some time, that's why the Garganturam was made. That system was dropped in favour of the A2000A designed by Commodore Germany in Braunschweig, probably reusing the case for the canceled C900.

2) The Ranger chipset. I actually think it was released partially - ECS is very close to the known specs, if you add the additional logic for UHRES (and the VRAM ofc). Sometimes it is reported that Ranger would have supported 128 colors, but imho that's a misinterpretation - it would have been seven bitplanes, but six like on OCS and the seventh on a separate UHRES monochrome screen. It's just my personal theory, I've written a bit more about that in the UHRES mystery thread.

It's perfectly possible that the Ranger chipset was planned for the Ranger system, but we don't know.

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by chb

In my opinion Ranger stands for two things, possibly but not necessarily related:
1) The Ranger prototype system presented by Dale Luck. Basically the Los Gatos (original Amiga team) attempt at an expandable system. AFAIK the system would have square expansion boards, a preliminary spec was released at some time, that's why the Garganturam was made. That system was dropped in favour of the A2000A designed by Commodore Germany in Braunschweig, probably reusing the case for the canceled C900.

2) The Ranger chipset. I actually think it was released partially - ECS is very close to the known specs, if you add the additional logic for UHRES (and the VRAM ofc). Sometimes it is reported that Ranger would have supported 128 colors, but imho that's a misinterpretation - it would have been seven bitplanes, but six like on OCS and the seventh on a separate UHRES monochrome screen. It's just my personal theory, I've written a bit more about that in the UHRES mystery thread.

It's perfectly possible that the Ranger chipset was planned for the Ranger system, but we don't know.

This seems like an answer that is likely to be near the truth of it.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=69487.0
From the thread when the prototype case was found, user chrisxyz seems to note that theres no indication of a new chipset in this case.

Technically there is no sign ANY chipset there - just some SSI/MSI TTL's and probably some programmable logic - anyway too small to implement even ICS/OCS - this looks more like some backplane with some extension cards but definitely not complete computer. No CPU, no LSI...

But i can be wrong... anyway Ranger similarly to AAA would be no future for Amiga...

[Gorf]

The mockup case and the boards are actually nothing else than the Los Gatos A2000:

George Robbins (C900, A500):

Actually, the Los Gatos A2000 prototype was along these lines. It used
an A1000 main-board (*NO* enhancements, folks), *two* more PC boards to
adapt from the A1000 expansion connector to the horizontal slots. It
had 5 "Zorro I" slots, only 4 of which were usable unless you replaced
the RAM/ROM tower with ROM's. There was some sort of arrangment whereby
a ribbon cable would connect a varient of the sidecar/bridgeboard to
the backplane and somehow provide a single PC slot. Externally, it looked
a lot like a PC or the current A2000. I don't think it had the magical
keyboard garage. In short, it had no advantage over the current design,
*except* the "Zorro I" slots and would have had to retail for a much
higher price to cover the cost of all the complications.

It should be admitted the the Los Gatos crew wasn't all that eager to make
this A2000. Their plans had apparently been for something more powerful,
to be delivered at some poorly defined later date.

(fits like a glove, doesn't it?)

Andy Finkel (AmigaOS):

Actually, I don't remember any of us (I used to hang around LG a bit :-)
being especially pleased with the 'Los Gatos' A2000. It was a quick and dirty
machine, had 1 PC slot, and was a mechanical nightmare inside. As
I recall, it was just a hack, and didn't help the machine we
were actually interested in doing (remember Ranger ?) a bit.

So "Ranger" was something else ... but what?
As far as I can see from the old message boards "Ranger" was simply a code for the next Amiga ... the expression is used from 1986 onwards.

Source for the quotes:
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys...m/epQVy3Eq2WoJ