I was reading the other day that Commodore is working on a new set of custom chips for the Amiga. The message (it was a rumor on a HISS) said that it would have more codas and higher resolutions, plus a lot of other undisclosed features. Is this true? When are they coining out? Will this he an easy upgrade like Amiga DOS 2.0? And will I he able to make use of them in my A500? J. An dries New Orleans, Louisiana A: Well, the first tiling I have in say is that one should always take rumors with a large grain of sail, especially when thev are found on BBSs. Some- times people write such “new product’* announcements as a joke, but then they are taken as truth by somebody else, get downloaded and then uploaded again on some other board where no one realizes they were just someone’s pipe dream. With that said, I can tell you it is true that Commodore has been working on a new version of the Amiga’s custom chips for several years now. Official details are not yet available, but it is safe to assume that they will support higher color resolution as well as other enhancements (hopefully very significant ones). At the time I write this (early June), there have been no announcements from CBN I on the specifications or release dates of the chips or the products they are designed to work with. I hope we do hear something this year, and you can be sure that we at Amiga World are just as curious as everyone else about exactly what will be announced and when. Von can also count on us to bring that information to you as soon as we get it. Will it be an easy upgrade like AmigaDOS 2.0 and will it work in the A500 (or other existing Amigas)? 1 can’t yet say, as no details have been released, but if I were to go out on a limb and take a guess, 1 would say that 1 expect the first sign of any new chips By Louis R. Wallace will be in some new model Amiga and not as an upgrade kit for existing machines. Upgrading our existing machines might be a bit difficult, although certainly not impossible. It’s very likely that any new chips will not be pin compatible with the existing chips, so they wouldn’t lit in the same sockets. It’s also possible, perhaps likely, that they will be entirely new chips, and not You can be sure that we at AmigaWorld are just as curious as everyone else about. Exactly what will be announced and when. Just enhanced versions of the older ones (as was the case with the Enhanced Chip Set upgrade). If that’s the case, our existing motherboards won’t be able to use any new chips, and we just might have to get new motherboards in order to take advantage of the new chip set and its features. Finally, in order to use any new hardware that Commodore might develop, tlie Amiga will need some changes to its system software. The challenge to the OS programmers is to adapt Amiga operating software to take advantage of any new features, yet keep it backward compatible with the existing hardware and software.