bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu (12/27/90)
So. I just went to Industrial Color Labs (our local photo-processor cum Commodore dealer) and spent some time playing with the Amiga 3000 and an Amiga 2500 with a Video Toaster. Just to set things up, I've been doing a good deal of research into the various "personal computers" available, and have boiled it down to the Amiga 3000+ or some form of NeXT (probably a NeXTstaion or old cube). It was difficult to tell how good the video was for the A3000, because it had a regular TV-type monitor attached to a genlock card for the video from a laser disk player. It also had a Commodore 1950 multisync, but that was completely screwed up by the genlock (or so the salesman said), and totally useless. It looked OK, but I'm still not thrilled with the text. It was hard to judge much of anything because: a) there was no software, outside of one drawing package and AmigaVision, and b) the monitor that worked was set up with a large overscan, so the image ran off the top of the screen. There wasn't anything to really try the keyboard out on, but I wasn't impressed. It seemed a little mushy, but I couldn't really try it out. Still, Northgate (I think) sells replacement keyboards (101 key IBM type), with Amiga-related keys. The mouse is nice, it fits in your hand well and has good feedback. It seems kind of lightweight, though. AmigaVision seemed interesting, but it was hard to do anything since there weren't any files to use as input, and the bottom of the screen (where it tells you what the icons are) was scanned off the bottom of the screen. The Video Toaster was pretty cool. They had a camera pointed out the window, and I played around with switching images back and forth between a graphics image (the same two from the Computer Chronicles segment) and the live video. The salesman said that he could have gotten an A3000UX, but was reluctant to tie up that much money in something he wasn't sure had any demand. He said that work was underway on an A3000T -- a tower case A3000 which would have enough room for the Video Toaster and more slots. He also said that he expected the price for an A3000UX with a 200 Mb hard drive and 8 Mb of RAM to be about $4000 (I believe this was educational). Finally, he said that Commodore was apparently changing the educational discount program (and possibly prices) around. He didn't have any forms, but he expected to have some and the new prices by early January. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Hill Cabal "If there's anything insidious going bwdavies@sunrise.bitnet on in the world, the media is behind bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu it!" -T.J. Teru
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (12/28/90)
In-Reply-To: message from bwdavies@rodan.acs.syr.edu Apparently, there is more to A3000 + Toaster compatibility than room. >From what I've been told, Toasters have a tendency to "spark" when they're installed in an A3000...a *big* spark. But an A3000T will be nice nonetheless...I just hope the keep with the current styling, because the A3500 that was shown in AUI was just plain ugly. There wasn't anything to distinguish it from the many tower clones out there, and it looked suspiciously similar to the C= PC60. Sean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> .SIG v2.5 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc RealWorld: Sean Cunningham ARPA: !crash!pnet01!pro-party!seanc@nosc.mil Voice: (512) 992-2810 INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com ____________________________________ // | * All opinions expressed herein | HELP KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ | Copyright 1990 VISION GRAPHICS | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<