LAVITSKY@RUTGERS.ARPA (07/24/85)
From: Eric <LAVITSKY@RUTGERS.ARPA> "Our power of imagination makes us infinite..." - Commodore/Amiga 1985 Never in my entire life have I been left so totally awestruck and speechless as I was tonight at the launch of the Commodore Amiga PC. This article will not be an attempt to describe the machines capabilities, those must be seen (and heard) to be fully appreciated. I will try to convey the image Commodore tried to present along with what I feel to be a very strong commitment to continued quality support and innovation. The evening at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater started off rather slowly (it took a while to let the guests enter.). There wasn't much technical talk over cocktails, but I did get a chance to meet with some of the top Commodore/Amiga people (very exciting). At 6:30 they opened the theater doors and people quietly shuffled in not quite knowing what to expect. On the stage were musicians playing an unfamiliar piece, one that would later be reproduced perfectly at the close of the demonstration by the Amiga. The lights dimmed and a pleasant laser light show filled the screen followed by the slogan about imagination. We were introduced to Commodores Chairman and President and finally to the star of the show, the Amiga. The presentation was done using three machines, each displayed in high quality on large projection screens above the stage. The chief engineer responsible for the Amiga (darn, I can't remember his name) was the host for the demo. We were first introduced to the operating system and it's different levels. -------
eric@topaz.ARPA (Eric Lavitsky) (07/25/85)
"Our power of imagination makes us infinite..." - Commodore/Amiga 1985 Never in my entire life have I been left so totally awestruck and speechless as I was tonight at the launch of the Commodore Amiga PC. This article will not be an attempt to describe the machines capabilities, those must be seen (and heard) to be fully appreciated. I will try to convey the image Commodore tried to present along with what I feel to be a very strong commitment to continued quality support and innovation. The evening at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater started off rather slowly (it took a while to let the guests enter.). There wasn't much technical talk over cocktails, but I did get a chance to meet with some of the top Commodore/Amiga people (very exciting). At 6:30 they opened the theater doors and people quietly shuffled in not quite knowing what to expect. On the stage were musicians playing an unfamiliar piece, one that would later be reproduced perfectly at the close of the demonstration by the Amiga. The lights dimmed and a pleasant laser light show filled the screen followed by the slogan about imagination. We were introduced to Commodores Chairman and President and finally to the star of the show, the Amiga. The presentation was done using three machines, each displayed in high quality on large projection screens above the stage. The chief engineer responsible for the Amiga (darn, I can't remember his name) was the host for the demo. We were first introduced to the operating system and it's different levels. Some mention was made of planned products and throughout the presentation we were given glimpses of the machine's amazing graphics capabilities. The stereo sound was superb - one instrument programmed into the machine sounds exactly like an electric guitar chord. One of the people sitting at an Amiga played the chords from 'Smoke On The Water', and it sounded like the real thing! Earlier there had been rumours about IBM compatibility via an add on hardware board. Popular Computing even mentioned a 'Trump Card' to allow people to run IBM software. Well , Commodore surprised everyone last night (including some of there own people) by doing something even much more innovative. One of the machines had two 5-1/4 inch disk drives hooked up to it. After running a program off a special disk in the internal 3-1/2 inch floppy, they pulled out an off the shelf copy of Lotus 123, inserted it in the drive, booted it and did some calculations with it to the astonishment of the audience. Commodore has made a 68000 machine emulate the 8088/8086 of an IBM PC totally in software!!! They claim it will run any major software package like Lotus, Wordstar, Dbase III etc. (I don't know if it will run Flight Simulator). Microsoft Basic comes with the machine. It is Microsoft's best effort to date (according to Microsoft), merges all of the best features from previous versions (PC, MAC etc.) and takes full advantage of the Amiga's multitasking capability. They demoed multiple windows preforming seperate tasks using a program written in Basic. Lattice C will be shipped with development machines and will be available at shipping time. Also available at shipping time will be TLC Logo from The LISP Company, Cambridge LISP from Metacomco (the people who wrote AmigaDOS/Intuition), BASIC from Metacomco, MCC Pascal from Metacomco and Turbo Pascal will be released in 1st quarter '86. Some other companies are planning LISP compilers and other languages. To show off some of the graphics, Commodore had Andy Warhol paint an image of Rock Star/Model Debby Harry which they captured using a frame grabber (she was there too!). To show off the sound they had Roger Powell, formerly with Utopia and two other artists. They put on a 'concert' aided by two Amigas hooked up with MIDI interfaces. There is some revolutionary thing about using MIDI with the Amiga though. The Amiga is powerfull enough to sense the speed and tones of sounds in realtime and Cherry Lane's Harmony program, which uses AI techniques, acompanied them at just the right speed and volume. After the show, we got a chance to see what certain developers had or have in the making. There were a lot of digitizers around (the Amiga could do stuff as well as the $18000 systems I saw at Videotex '85). Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts was there displaying pre-releases of games that his company is doing for the Amiga. Tecmar was displaying a 20 meg hard disk drive (3.5 in.) and streaming tape back up and a 1 megabyte add on with a clock/calendar with battery back up. The possibility of porting their (Tecmar's) PC Ethernet card over to the Amiga was mentioned, but no definite plans as yet. No vendors were commiting to a network which may hurt the Amiga since many office and research groups will want to network the machine. Perhaps some university will develop a card since the machine has such a well documented and open architecture. Free copies of the August issue of Byte were available with a product review (technical review to follow) of the Amiga. There were also copies of AmigaWorld (a la MacWorld), Personal Computing, a small report from Creative Computing and various brochures from Commodore and other vendors along with a press kit. Ok, so I did say a little about the machine itself, now on to my impressions of Commodore and what this machine really means to the industry. Commodore went all out for this launch and it went over perhaps better than they had hoped. The presentation was filled with 'oohs and aahs' and enthusiastic applause for the Amiga. Commodore stressed it's commitment to computer specialty stores and technical support for the machine. They are actively courting third party developers and computer chains to carry the machine. They are stressing a totally open architecture from the machine itself to their support and management. It has been easy for me to contact the software and sales management heads at Commodore/Amiga and get positive feedback to/from them. The machine stands technically far above anything currently on the market and given the price it will be very difficult for anyone to match it's price/preformance ratio. The Amiga is a new step forward in *personal* computing. Never has the door to so much computing power and productivity been opened to the home user, artist, musician, hobbyist or independent professional. It has the potential to revitalize a sagging industry and give it new purpose and direction. What remains to be seen is how the public will accept the machine and how Commodore's marketing strategy works. Forgive me if this report is slightly disorganized or incoherent. It's late at night and my Commodore 64 really makes me feel weak and insecure now that I've seen the Amiga... I will try and answer any specific questions about specs, availability etc. later in the week when I have recovered. I should have all my thoughts organized by then. Eric -- ARPA: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS UUCP: ...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric SNAIL: CPO 2765, CN 700 New Brunswick, NJ 08903
dr_d@sftig.UUCP (D.Donahue) (07/25/85)
> From: Eric <LAVITSKY@RUTGERS.ARPA> > > > "Our power of imagination makes us infinite..." > - Commodore/Amiga 1985 Eric, Your "flash" on lifstyles of the rich and famous was "real insiring". Now that all of us here on the net realize that you are a "big gun" could you please spare us the irrelevancies next time. All of us out here "realize that the Amiga is the best thing to come along since Jesus Christ" :) We know it slices dices, does our electro-magnetic theory homework, engages us in gripping meta- physical conversation, composes, conducts and performs Brahms, Bethoven & Tchaikovsky all at the same time on 256 track machines. Aside from the given; how much is it going to cost and when will it be available? Thanks, Doug Donahue AT&T Information Systems ..!ihnp4!attunix!dr_d
eric@topaz.ARPA (Eric Lavitsky) (07/29/85)
Ahem! So I was a little high in the clouds... I guess you'll have to wait and see for yourself. The Amiga will be on dealer shelves Sept 15th. Here's what'll be available: 256K Amiga wmouse and 880K integral 3-1/2" drive $1295 256K Upgrade to 512K 200 Analog RGB monitor (all 4096 colors, stero speakers) 495 External 3-1/2 drive ~275 External 5-1/4 drive (IBM PC-DOS format - 360K) ~275 There will be about 20 packages available when the machine is released, from games to spreadsheets to a wide variety of languages (C,LISP,LOGO, Pascal,BASIC,Asembler etc.) - compare that to how many the Mac or PC had when they were introduced. A vey workable system (512K and monitor w/external floppy) will really run around $2200. If you don't want to take full advantage of the Amiga's graphics you can use a TV or composite NTSC monitor. Eric -- ARPA: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS UUCP: ...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric SNAIL: 16 Oak St., Flr 2 New Brunswick, NJ 08903
jobusch@isucs1.UUCP (07/31/85)
Where can I get one ! (or when...) Dave Jobusch at Iowa State Univeristy isucs1!jobusch jobusch@iowa-state "...but will it run UNIX..."