kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) (10/12/90)
Please forgive me for not getting back sooner to all who have responded to the
scientific software discussions. I was quite inundated with mail. It was a
complete surprise considering I have brought this same discussion up twice
before in the two previous years with virtually no response.
Possible indications:
1) The Amiga is finally getting into the hands of scientists.
2) Amiga software and/or hardware has progressed to the point of being usable
(or almost usable) to the scientific community.
3) Scientists with Amigas are finally getting connected to UseNet.
4) Scientists with Amigas are finally getting enough time to read UseNet articles.
Responses fell into three categories:
1) "I need software/hardware which does xxx"
2) "I agree, we need a way to connect."
3) "Where's the source, I'll see what I can do."
Well, to the last I can gladly say that the NCSA software is archived
at at the National Center for SuperComputing Applications at the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champ. They placed the code in the
public domain, and have allowed (encouraged?) other developers to play
with it. The source code is usually in "C". It is available via
anonymous ftp from zaphon.ncsa.uiuc.edu. There have been mentions of
other software & sites recently also.
To the second, I can only agree that we need a way of communicating our
capabilities and needs to the Amiga scientific community. Possibly a
mailing list so this stuff won't fill up comp.sys.amiga. Unfortunately
neither I nor any of the respondents seem to have the resources or time
to do this. Any offers to set this up?
I have tried to archive names and information that resulted from this
discussion, but it is in disarray at the current time. Possibly I can
take time to clean things up to make it available.
Thanks,
Kent Polk: Southwest Research Institute (512) 522-2882
Internet : kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu
UUCP : $ {cs.utexas.edu, gatech!petro, sun!texsun}!swrinde!kentragg0270@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Richard Alan Gerber) (10/12/90)
kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) writes: >Well, to the last I can gladly say that the NCSA software is archived >at at the National Center for SuperComputing Applications at the >University of Illinois at Urbana Champ. They placed the code in the >public domain, and have allowed (encouraged?) other developers to play >with it. The source code is usually in "C". It is available via >anonymous ftp from zaphon.ncsa.uiuc.edu. There have been mentions of >other software & sites recently also. A typo, I think. Anonymous FTP at NCSA is actually: zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu or try: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu or try: 128.174.20.50 There's lot of potentially useful stuff there. They would probably like it if some of it was ported to the Amiga. They really want their software to be used and useful. NCSA seems to support Cray, Alliant, Sun, Iris, IBM, and Mac systems (Also VAX running UNIX). They are very heavily into scientific visualization with their emphasis now on (someone from NCSA can correct me if I'm way off base here) software development for Mac color systems and Silicon Graphics Personal IRIS's. Both Apple and SGI have made substantial hardware donations to NCSA, to the benefit of both NCSA and the computer companies in my opinion. I don't know for sure if they'd be interested in porting to the Amiga at the present time, but I'd doubt it. For one thing the data sets (HDF format) assume either 8 or 24-bit color images, something the Amiga can't currently display (yes, I know about HAM, etc. I'm also of the opinion that 256 colors aren't absolutely necessary for this kind of work, for whatever my opinion is worth.) Hopefully with time things might change. Richard Gerber gerber@rigel.astro.uiuc.edu
eric@eklektik.UUCP (/dev/tty000) (10/17/90)
In article <28709@swrinde.nde.swri.edu> kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) writes:
<To the second, I can only agree that we need a way of communicating our
<capabilities and needs to the Amiga scientific community. Possibly a
<mailing list so this stuff won't fill up comp.sys.amiga. Unfortunately
<neither I nor any of the respondents seem to have the resources or time
<to do this. Any offers to set this up?
As I suggested before, I would be willing to do this. The operator
of my local system is willing, so it looks like a go, assuming we
can get it set up right.
I'll post to the net when things are set up.
--
Eric Kennedy eric@eklektik.pgh.pa.us
BIX: ekennedy ...pitt!idis!eklektik!eric
Pittsburgh Commodore Group BBS: (412) 434-5483