visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators) (11/16/89)
AmiEXPO Cologne - 10. - 12.11.89
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This text was made for everyone who did not have the opportunity
to go to the biggest Amiga event in Europe in 1989.
The actual exposition took place in hall 6 of the Cologne Convention
Center. Along with the exposition, a number of courses and discussions
on various topics like C-programming, graphics and video (in the master-
classes); further Amiga BASIC, Office Applications, CLI, Software Piracy,
How to Publish Software, Hardware ongoing, Music, Public Domain (public
discussions) took place in seperate rooms.
Also open for the public was the Amiga Video Theatre. This show consisted
of a collection of non-comercial videos done using or Amigas. Not all of
these were of extraordinary quality. However something called
'Wild Wild West' was very impressive and showed smooth raytracing
animation.
Another event (reserved for dealers) was the Commodore presentation.
I was let in because it was impossible to enter the exposition and
so they had opened all other events (including the expensive master-
classes) for everyone and free.
Amiga-DTV was the topic of this presentation. Dealers were informed
what a user can do with the Amiga and what hard/software he needs for
it. An Amiga 2500 was used to illustrate. As a part of this
presentation, a professsional video (raytracing and other effects) done
using the Amiga by 'Studio 5' was showed. Words can't tell. You must
have seen it. They said it's available now on video tape.
A seperate meeting for dealers and the papers organized by DTM, MICROTRON,
PRINT TECHNIK and VIDEOCOMP took place in a hotel. I was invited by
a Swiss distributor. GVP and Hydra Systems were there. When I looked
in, the Amiga Ethernet Board by Hydra Systems was being presented.
(More about that one later)
Now for the exposition itself.
When I came to hall 6 half an hour after opening, the place was filled
with several hundred people. Half of them were queueing for tickets, the
others at the entrance. It was useless. Late in the afternoon it was
a bit better. But inside it was almost impossible to move. As it seemed,
nobody was prepared for such a large amount of visitors.
I hope that this fact will cause more dealers, papers and professional
users to go for the Amiga. Nobody can pretend that there is no market or
no hard/software.
And these were the highlights of the exposition:
The most important expositors were: AMIGA-Magazin, Commodore, Compustore
(Microbotics), Digital Animation Products, DTM, IM, Kupke, NewTek, X-Pert.
For many software companies, it was a pure sale event. Almost everyone
had special offers, you could buy things for 50 to 80 % of the normal
price. Many products were completely sold out.
Except for at Gigatron and Kupke, all important new hardware came from
USA. Many developpers from USA had come and it was very interesting to
speak to them. For example Allan Hastings answered every question about
Raytracing. And as a special attraction, Jay Miner was giving signatures.
I saw people bringing keyboards and parts of their Amiga1000 to him.
And these are the most interesting hardware news:
* SANG Computer: MegaLink 02:
This is the first Transputer board with an on-board Video system.
The basic version consists of a board with one T800, 1MB CPU RAM,
video system using Inmos G300 Color Video Controller, 1MB video RAM
and an interface board which links to the Amiga. It makes use of
extra pins on PC slots! At last, a reasonable use for PC slots!
Wheter Helios is available now, I asked but was told that this is
not an important point since the current versions of Helios don't
do much more than crash.
One sole T800 (20MHz) has 10 MIPS and is 3-5 times as fast as a
68030-20. But you can install more T800. At the booth of Digital
Animation Products they showed a Tower Amiga with 5 T800. They did
some rendering and Madelbrot sets. They also showed the graphics
capabilities of the board: In the basic version you can already
use 24 bitplanes (16M colors) in a 640 x 480 resolution. There are
other modes, like a 256 out of 16M colors mode with colormapping,
and - very important for video applications - standard PAL/NTSC
interlaced video.
A parallel C compiler which runs with or without (as they assured me)
Helios is available now and has been used by them to make the demos
they showed.
The most important software packages like Sculpt 4D, PixMate,
PhotonPaint were claimed to be available now, adapted!!!
Since they were not shown, I fancy that the user interface takes
place on the Amiga side
Price: DM 7000.- for the basic version
* Gigatron:
Gigatron currently is the most innovative hardware company in Germany.
They offer (among other) the following things: Memory Expansions for
A500 (MiniMax 1.8Mb) and Amiga 2000; Multi-Function board including
memory, A/D- and D/A converter, parallel I/O, HD-controller;
internal(!) harddisk for A500 (2.5" harddrive with 20, 40 or 100 MB
and 450 Kb/sec, but non-SCSI...why????); new motherboard for A500 with
68020 and internal harddisk.
Unfortunately, the most sensational hit was not ready to be shown.
It's a laptop Amiga! As I was told by the developpers, it will be
introduced and ready for sale at CeBIT '90 in March.
The laptop Amiga contains a completely new developped motherboard
which integrates a complete Amiga on a 8 layer 'Europakarte'.
It has 3 internal non-zorro slots for things like a modem-, 68020-,
tranputer- and messdoscards. It can have an internal 2.5" harddisk.
As a display, you can have either a LCD or a plasma display, both
with a resolution of 640x480. The LCD version uses a 16-grey scale.
Because it uses the RGB output as source, Sprites and all Amiga
graphics modes work ok. You can work either in NTSC mode or in PAL
mode, where 32 lines are cut off.
The keyboard has an integrated trackball as a mouse.
The system is said to run 8 hours using one single accu pac. Its chip
memory is claimed to be expandable to 2Mb!
The proud developpers said Commodore did at first not believe them
when they asked for a meeting to show a pre-version. The said
nobody but themself can design an entire Amiga mainboard.
The price will be somewhere between DM 5000.- and DM 7000.-
Gigatron also offered the fatter Agnus for DM 129.- (!)
* X-Pert:
X-Pert was showing the fastest personal computer of the world.
It's a tower Amiga system with a GVP 68030 - 40MHz board.
You can have an additional 4 or 8 Mb card. The 40MHz Amiga is about
17 times faster than a normal and faster than all '486 .
Also to see at X-Pert's: A 1.2 Gb optical removable disk, a 12MHz -
A 2286 AT card, SCSI harddisks and a Framebuffer with 16M colors.
Price for a 40MHz 68030 board: DM 3998.-
4MB 32 bit RAM: DM 3998.-
* Newtek:
At NewTek's it was the Video Toaster that provided action.
It's a video effect board for the Amiga 2000 with realtime high
quality color video digitizer. It works with 16777216 colors and is
able to change video images in realtime. For example, it can
shift around (in front of the video picture coming from the camera)
10 'windows', one in front of the other, each of which shows a (moving)
part of the entire picture, can then turn these widows, mirror or reduce
them. The effects are programmable, so it's always possible to implement
new ones or even to write own software for it. Furthermoer, the Video
Toaster can be used as a Digitizer (the memory can be transferred to
and from the Amiga), Genlock or Framebuffer.
At the moment there's just an NTSC version. (costs US $ 1599.-)
A PAL version will be available in about 9 months. It is going to be a
more expensive because of the more complex PAL standard, as I was told.
Also at NewTek's you could speak to Allan Hastings who was showing a
demo video made using his new Rendering software. He is still working
on it and it's going to include reflection mapping.
* Hydra Systems:
Hydra Systems has made the first Ethernet board for the Amiga.
Using it, you can build an Amiga Network with a central File Server,
or you can put the Amiga into a UNIX network.
The board has a DMA which it can use to transfer data very fast and
without stealing any CPU power. They showed (at a seperate closed
meeting, maybe also at the exposition (?)) 2 Amigas one of which
had access via the network to all file devices of the other. Data
transfer is claimed to be 'faster than with an A 2090 w/ ST-506
harddisk'.
Also a chat mode and remote CLI was demonstrated.
* Commodore:
Commodore had nothing new to show. Overall a bit disappointing.
To mention progress compared to earlier Commodore booths (in Europe)
I can say that the 'design' was very professionally done and thanks to
the well-chosen large texts high over each corner you could easly find
what you were looking for, and know what was being showed even if the
many people completely blocked your view to the screen.
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Overall, it was - in spite of the bad organization - a really great
event. There was something for everyone. And you could see a lot of
interesting people there. Definitely worth the effort to go there (took
me one day to travel by train...)
Let's hope that next year in Cologne, there will be at least 3 halls!
F.BURGEL/SG
/* -------------------------- SG (Simeon Graphics) ---------------------- */
/* Peter Simeon | // // */
/* UUCP: ...visinfo@bernina | // Long live the AMIGA! // */
/* BIX: hardwiz | \X/ \X/ */
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Systems Staff) (11/16/89)
In article <2531@ethz.UUCP>, visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators) writes: > * Hydra Systems: > > Hydra Systems has made the first Ethernet board for the Amiga. Wrong. Ameristar made the first ethernet boards for the Amiga. Since the A1000 days. It is perhaps accurate to state that Hydra was the first European company to sell an Ethernet board. > F.BURGEL/SG Rick Spanbauer Ameristar Technology (516) 698-0834
visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators) (11/22/89)
In article <3957@sbcs.sunysb.edu> root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Systems Staff) writes: >In article <2531@ethz.UUCP>, visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators) writes: >> * Hydra Systems: >> >> Hydra Systems has made the first Ethernet board for the Amiga. > > Wrong. Ameristar made the first ethernet boards for the > Amiga. Since the A1000 days. It is perhaps accurate to > state that Hydra was the first European company to sell > an Ethernet board. > >> F.BURGEL/SG > > Rick Spanbauer > Ameristar Technology Sorry, but we didn't know that Ameristar was first with Ethernet cards on the Amiga. We've never seen an Ameristar Ethernet in any shop or any adverts for it in Europe. Hydra System themselves claimed to be the first company (in Europe?) that has made an Amiga Ethernet. /* -------------------------- SG (Simeon Graphics) ---------------------- */ /* Peter Simeon, UUCP: | // // */ /* visinfo@bernina.ethz.ch | // Long live the AMIGA! // */ /* BIX: hardwiz | \X/ \X/ */ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
pete@i-core.UUCP (Pete Ashdown) (11/26/89)
WOW! Sounds like some pretty impressive stuff was shown. Why don't we get shows like that here in the states? AmiExpo here usually seems to be "new hard drives, new games, new NewTek stuff."
drues@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Michael E. Drues) (11/29/89)
pete@i-core.UUCP (Pete Ashdown) writes: >WOW! Sounds like some pretty impressive stuff was shown. Why don't we get >shows like that here in the states? AmiExpo here usually seems to be "new >hard drives, new games, new NewTek stuff." ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^ Yea, but will it ever be released? 8^) +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Michael Drues | | \X/ Internet: drues@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu | | Bitnet: v2.med@isumvs.bitnet | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+