phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) (08/22/89)
I have been reading the wishlist for ADOS 1.4, Amiga 3000- through 10,000 etc
8-), and the UNIX, MINIX, and ADOS discussions and decided to add my three
cents worth. 8-) 8-) 8-)
1. Operating system - VM look-alike with close adherence to JCL standard.
2. Editor - What else - TSO ( why give up now).
3. Communication - RJE and Bisync ( full steam ahead). Oh yeah, a 300
bps asynchronous line for connecting to OTHERs.
4. Graphics - PLOT10, an established standard.
5. User Interface - In this environment, We're tough, We don't need no
stinking user interface.
THIS IS NO FANTASY! where's FREDDY? He must be around in this dream somewhere.
I am turning very blue now so I will advance to the future and enter my Ami
fantasy. What I would like to see enter our (read as REAL) world. 8-)
1. A 16-bit, multitasking, graphics-based personel computer that is
inexpensive. Dreams do come true it's an Amiga 1000.
2. An upgrade version of item 1 with expansion slots. Not a 1500, but
a 2000.
3. A 32-bit, 68040-based Amiga with 8 megabytes of CHIP ram, 32 megbytes
of main memory, 1280 x 1024 screen resolution, 16 million colors with a
16 million color palette, built-in SCSI-2 interface, 2 serial and 2
parallel ports, a Digital signal processor-based audio subsystem,
enhanced graphics and a hardwired unit ID that can be queried by ID
encoded software (This should eliminated the majority of the piracy
issues). It has worked elsewhere.
Dorthy, oh Dorthy bring Toto and come along. Aaaaaah such a nice dream
A true fantasy.
4. Operating system - Amiga DOS with every thing fixed and the FFS faster
than ever. This is for upward compatibility.
UNIX System V release (whatever) with an emphasis
toward POSIX compliance. This is needed to expand
into the federal market.
MINIX, simply because it has been done. If you
don't want it - don't get it. The MINIX development
hasn't taken anything away from the Amiga, but has
added another nice piece of software to the Amiga
library.
5. General Software - Development tools: Why does Lattice and Manx offer
cross-development tools for the PC and not the Amiga.
It is about time they provided the same engineering
tools to us that they provide to others. We need
cross-assemblers, C and Modula-2 cross-compilers,
along with simulators. Don't they understand how
much easier it is to develop on the Amiga's multi-
tasking, multi-window system { edit in one window,
download and run in another }. I know because I
do this now with AVOCET's Quelo 68k cross-assembler.
How about Structured Design software? Am I the
only poor soul that produces design documents?
Why doesn't SAS Institute offer their statistical
analysis system on the Amiga. It is available on
the PC. Talk about legitimizing the Amiga in the
business world - this would help. Maybe we're only
good enough for their compilers?
How about Adobe illustrator? There is one DTP
package that approaches the OTHER systems, but
nothing to legitimize the Amiga as a world-class
DTP system. Also, how about supporting a page-size
monitor?
How about a world class 2D/3D drafting package like
Microstation, AutoCAD, or GenericCAD. Again this
would legitimize the Amiga as a CAD system.
SOAP BOX: WordProcessor: Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for
Wordperfect, but they brought it on themselves. They
brought out the Amiga version, then shortly announced
the graphics-based 5.0 for the PC. When they were
asked about availability of 5.0 for the Amiga; WE
(WordPerfect owners) were told NOT NOW! NOT EVER! We
understood the economics of the PC and Mac versions
first, but a total rejection was a slap in the face.
I own WordPerfect and Library, so I don't want to
hear their whining about poor sales. A bit more
introspection about their screwups and less finger
pointing at the Amiga is called for. I do not under-
stand why everyone is apologizing to WP. They owe US
the apology AND an Amiga version of 5.0. Try to find
much in the WP books or in WP's own newsletter for
4.1 and 4.2 version. Their big user meeting had
nothing but 5.0 lectures. GIVE ME 5.0 then I will
feel legitimate.
As the subject line reads this was a fantasy (for now). I hope Gould allows
the new management a free hand to take the Amiga forward. The base machine
has provided one heck of a machine, but rather than progressing at pace Gould
and management has allowed a machine that was 5 years ahead of it's competition
to fall behind. The new management seems ready, willing, and more than able
to drive the Amiga back to the head of the class. LET THEM DO IT!
If every Amiga owner bought one or two shares of Commodore stock what a voting
block we would make. Think of the impression it would make at a stock holders
meeting.
As the song goes: I want it all, I want it all and I want It NOW.
I'm a little more reasonable than that; next month will be fine.
--
Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil
MY words, VOICE: (205) 772-2497
MY opinion!swarren@eugene.uucp (Steve Warren) (08/22/89)
In article <6203@ingr.com> phil@ingr.UUCP (Phil Johnson) writes: > 3. A 32-bit, 68040-based Amiga with 8 megabytes of CHIP ram, 32 megbytes > of main memory, 1280 x 1024 screen resolution, 16 million colors with a > 16 million color palette, built-in SCSI-2 interface, 2 serial and 2 > parallel ports, a Digital signal processor-based audio subsystem, > enhanced graphics and a hardwired unit ID that can be queried by ID > encoded software (This should eliminated the majority of the piracy > issues). It has worked elsewhere. As long as we are fantasizing (considering that 68040s won't even be sampling for some time - for all we know they are a gleam in a Motorola designer's eye), why stop at 32 Mbytes? I mean 020s and ^ can address 2 Gigabytes, so why put a limit at 32? Make it 1 Gig so Amy can have that one address line free. (Now remember this is total fantasy :-). Multiport and interleave all chip memory. Give the blitter a dedicated port into chip ram, so it can munge screens at warp speed with no contention. Now all the realists in Amiga-land may want to stomp all over this fantasy. But I say that fantasies like this are what brought the Amiga to life in the first place. Why not dream a little? The reality may not match the dream, but so what? The higher your expectations are the more likely it is that at least some of your hopes will see the light of day. --Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------- {uunet,sun}!convex!swarren; swarren@convex.COM
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/23/89)
in article <6203@ingr.com>, phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) says: > Keywords: Ami future fantasy (long) > 3. A 32-bit, 68040-based Amiga with 8 megabytes of CHIP ram, 32 megbytes > of main memory, 1280 x 1024 screen resolution, 16 million colors with a > 16 million color palette, built-in SCSI-2 interface, 2 serial and 2 > parallel ports, a Digital signal processor-based audio subsystem, > enhanced graphics and a hardwired unit ID that can be queried by ID > encoded software (This should eliminated the majority of the piracy > issues). It has worked elsewhere. At least this one is only around $25,000 -- that $200,000 "Alpha" really had me wondering. Since the monitor would go for another $3000 or so, plus other goodies, you'd have a $30,000 workstation. The only place hardwired IDs have worked is in similar places like Apollo machines in the same price range, so I guess this fantasy is at least self-consistent. Of course, the OS will be UNIX, all workstations are moving there if they aren't there already, and they're not looking back. > > How about Adobe illustrator? There is one DTP > package that approaches the OTHER systems, but > nothing to legitimize the Amiga as a world-class > DTP system. You have to start thinking Workstation. Most if not all PC tools aren't out for workstations. Something like Interleaf is what I'd expect here, maybe. > How about a world class 2D/3D drafting package like > Microstation, AutoCAD, or GenericCAD. Again this > would legitimize the Amiga as a CAD system. Again, you're not on a PC. None of these PC folks are likely to port their software to an Amiga workstation any more than they'll port it to a Sun or Apollo. There just aren't enough Sun/Apollos compared to the number of '286 or '386 boxes for these guys to worry about it. I'd like to see the Mentor Graphics folks get interested in such a box. Not that I could afford $1000 a year or whatever for it, but I couldn't afford this machine, either. You'll see AutoCAD on one of the 1/2 million or more Amiga PCs sold each year long before you'll see it on one of the 10,000 Amiga Workstations you'd sell each year (if it WAS accepted as an alternative to Sun, Apollo, Hp, Sony, etc. See the NeXT experiment for details). I certainly hope the Amiga moves forward; probably more than most of you -- if they don't want new technology, I'm out of a job. But try to keep a grip on just what kind of machines we're building here. I don't really want to build anything that's not affordable, at least in base-model form, by the same folks buying high-end PClones. Though it's certainly NICE to be compared with expensive workstation machines. > Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy We have no choice. We are, after all, professionals.
hummel@m.cs.uiuc.edu (08/23/89)
Written 7:02 pm Aug 21, 1989 by phil@ingr.com in comp.sys.amiga: > I have been reading the wishlist for ADOS 1.4, Amiga 3000- through 10,000 etc > 8-), and the UNIX, MINIX, and ADOS discussions and decided to add my three > cents worth. 8-) 8-) 8-) > > 1. Operating system - VM look-alike with close adherence to JCL standard. > 2. Editor - What else - TSO ( why give up now). > 3. Communication - RJE and Bisync ( full steam ahead). Oh yeah, a 300 > bps asynchronous line for connecting to OTHERs. > 4. Graphics - PLOT10, an established standard. > 5. User Interface - In this environment, We're tough, We don't need no > stinking user interface. > THIS IS NO FANTASY! where's FREDDY? He must be around in this dream somewhere. Don't forget: 6. Scripting Language- ReXX. Whoops; "It's in there!". Am I bordering on sacrilege here, or what? Alright, now here is what I REALLY would like to see in an A3000. This is going to be Commodore's keynote '030 machine, so it needs to set a standard that will keep up with further improvements in technology. - 68030 at 25Mhz, on an asynchronous "fast" bus, with a socketed crystal. Designed for operation with '030's up to 50MHz. 68882, clocked independently of the CPU. Some external caching hardware would be a nice addition, and might fall out of the work that will have to be done for compatibility with existing Amiga architectures. An interleaved memory scheme would be nice, though expansion granularity might be too high, even for 2-way interleaved. The control of advanced memory architectures may be best left up to future microprocessor designs, but I think the best computers will go far beyond the capabilities already possesed by the MPU. This is, in fact, one of the things that attracted me to the A1000 from the start. I doubt anyone ever has or ever will push a lone 68000 further than the crew from Los Gatos did. I have high hopes that the crew from West Chester will set the same high standard for the 68030 (you listening, hazy ?-). - Give those custom chips more bandwidth !-) What could you do, besides drive expensive, high resolution, very-large-palette video displays? Oh, well, perhaps target high-bandwidth access to chip RAM as part of the expansion architecture so that future video adapters could pull (and insert!) displays right out of (and into!) memory. That would sure blow away all of those folks trying to do real-time video on workstations! - SCSI on board. There are no excuses, and I don't expect to hear any. - RS-422 on board. This can always be cut down to RS-423 (~RS-232), so there's no reason not to provide top o' the (differentially-driven) line service! Who knows? Get someone to write the software and you could even co-exist with MacDrivel on Apple/LocalTalk. - Ethernet on board. This is 100% necessary for a machine in the A3000 class. At the outset, anyone who will want (and can afford) this machine will want Ethernet (less the few deadbeats :-) who want to use Novell's proprietary networking technology). Let THEM buy a board, but let this machine talk Ethernet out of the box. If you're worried about the effect on price, take it out in some "cost-reduced" '030 design, but it's a must in a machine that's going to break new ground. - On the system software end, start working something along the lines of Mach into the picture. The Amiga is too good for SysV and even SVr4 - it is a dinosaur. Do what you must for business/government, but you can bet that the world is headed towards UNIX, networks and distributed processing, and the ability for computers to work in any medium. Exec/AmigaDOS were ahead of their time AT ONE TIME, but Commodore had better be seriously plotting another major step forward. For the interim, they might be able to do some neat things with their Janus technology, though this will eventually prove a dead-end unless they effectively generalize it into a system for heterogenous processing, with hardware support a cut above the existing BridgeCards and radical developments in the design philosophy of Amiga application software. - If this is another two-layer motherboard, I will barf. :-) :-) :-) I'm looking forward to being impressed by Commodore next year. If nothing else, I want good reasons not to upgrade to a NeXT (or how 'bout one of those great new HP workstations?) when the time comes. The technology is still expensive, but prices fall as fast as newer machines are designed. < Lionel ---------- Lionel Hummel 409 Kenwood, Champaign, IL 61821 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign [H] (217)356-6379 [W] (217)333-7408 hummel@cs.uiuc.edu {pur-ee,uunet}!uiucdcs!hummel BIX: lhummel
phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) (08/23/89)
In article <7728@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes: -------- FANTASY deleted ------------ >goodies, you'd have a $30,000 workstation. This platform shouldn't cost more than $29,995.00 8-) Really maybe in the range of $10k - $20k depending on the amount of installed memory. >The only place hardwired IDs have >worked is in similar places like Apollo machines in the same price range, so I >guess this fantasy is at least self-consistent. Of course, the OS will be UNIX, Hardwired IDs have been used for a while. The first one I worked with was on a PDP-11/05 system in 1976. The second was an MC6809-based energy management system I designed in 1980. The ID circuit added about a $1.20 to the design cost. The circuit consisted of a jumper header (of wiring the ID) and a register. The ID could be displayed by typing ?ID?. Software polled a memory location to verify the hardware and software IDs matched. It is a rather inexpensive scheme to provide software developers an non-intrusive means of copy protection and peace of mind. >You have to start thinking Workstation. Most if not all PC tools aren't out >for workstations. Something like Interleaf is what I'd expect here, maybe. Interleaf is as (IF not more) expensive than Illustrator and I would call the high-end ATs, and MACs workstations (low-end, but workstations just the same). >> How about a world class 2D/3D drafting package like >> Microstation, AutoCAD, or GenericCAD. Again this >> would legitimize the Amiga as a CAD system. > >Again, you're not on a PC. None of these PC folks are likely to port their >software to an Amiga workstation any more than they'll port it to a Sun or >Apollo. There just aren't enough Sun/Apollos compared to the number of '286 >or '386 boxes for these guys to worry about it. Microstation and AutoCAD are available on little blue boxes and MACs (Microstation is on large, excellent workstations -- HINT, HINT guess who I work for!) 8-)). AutoCAD is available on DEC and Sun workstations. Also, there is a company in Austin, TX that generates 3D AutoCAD files on the AT side of their Amigas, then translates them to the Ami side for rendering. I don't remember the company name. They had an article in MicroCAD magazine several months ago that described the advantages of being able to render a 3D object and work on a new design at the same time. If there was the incentive lead by Commodore we might see this type of product on the Amiga. If these companies aren't catered to and shown that the Amiga is a vaiable platform they will not go looking on their own. >I'd like to see Mentor >Graphics folks get interested in such a box. Not that I could afford $1000 >a year or whatever for it, but I couldn't afford this machine, either. You'll >see AutoCAD on one of the 1/2 million or more Amiga PCs sold each year long >before you'll see it on one of the 10,000 Amiga Workstations you'd sell each >year (if it WAS accepted as an alternative to Sun, Apollo, Hp, Sony, etc. See >the NeXT experiment for details). I agree completely, but the only because the has been no Commodore (read management, not Tech) support for cultivating the main stream companies. > >I certainly hope the Amiga moves forward; probably more than most of you -- >if they don't want new technology, I'm out of a job. But try to keep a grip >on just what kind of machines we're building here. I don't really want to >build anything that's not affordable, at least in base-model form, by the >same folks buying high-end PClones. Though it's certainly NICE to be compared >with expensive workstation machines. > I think with the new management you are pretty secure. Apple started small, but is considered as one of the comers in low-end workstations. I don't mean to suggest that reasonable price Amigas should go away, but rather cover the spectrum of capabilities. Hey! I own an Amiga and not a Clipper workstation. ( funny how economics works!) 8-) Anyway- If you can't REALLY go wild in a fantasy, then ????? 8-) 8-) 8-) -- Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil MY words, VOICE: (205) 772-2497 MY opinion!
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/25/89)
in article <6223@ingr.com>, phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) says: >>The only place hardwired IDs have >>worked is in similar places like Apollo machines in the same price range, so I >>guess this fantasy is at least self-consistent. Of course, the OS will be UNIX, > Hardwired IDs have been used for a while. The first one I worked with was on > a PDP-11/05 system in 1976. The second was an MC6809-based energy management > system I designed in 1980. Both of these systems are similar to Apollos where it counts. Neither is owned personally by folks who'll hack the system around the protection ID. In fact, most likely, you'd have to directly hack the OS on an Apollo or similar machine to spoof the ID, while any user program could conceivable do this on an Amiga, at least on AmigaOS. Read on... > The ID circuit added about a $1.20 to the design cost. Probably less... > The circuit consisted of a jumper header (of wiring the ID) and a > register. Can't make it easily changed by the user, or the pirates simply adopt a standard Pirate ID and ship all their stolen code with that ID installed. Don't think it won't happen. > It is a rather inexpensive scheme to provide software developers an > non-intrusive means of copy protection and peace of mind. If you're not running a protected OS, there are some reasonably simple things you can do in software to spoof such a system (eg, install the ID of your choice). There ARE things we as system designers can do to make some of the spoofing methods impractical, and it's something we've thought about. I'm not about to say it'll never happen, and I think in general it's a good idea. But it's not the clear-cut foolproof solution many make it out to be. >>You have to start thinking Workstation. Most if not all PC tools aren't out >>for workstations. Something like Interleaf is what I'd expect here, maybe. > Interleaf is as (IF not more) expensive than Illustrator and I would call > the high-end ATs, and MACs workstations (low-end, but workstations just the > same). You're missing the point. Interleaf is expensive simply because it's mainly on Workstations (started out there, I know it's out for Macs now too). It has a target market of O(100,000) machines, not O(1,000,000) Amigas or O(10,000,000) PCs. So it's naturally more expensive. Illustrator is in the O(10,000,000) PC market; it can naturally sell for less, and as well, it make little sense for Adobe to port it to a workstation market of O(100,000) machines. > Also, there is a company in Austin, TX that generates 3D AutoCAD files on the > AT side of their Amigas, then translates them to the Ami side for rendering. AutoCAD is certainly very popular, and the idea of porting to workstations is becoming more lucrative for companies like this as the workstations change from Apollo, DEC, Sun, Intergraph, MIPS, etc. to _UNIX_. Which is the whole point of standardizing things -- volume. But ports of PC software to other systems has been very slow in coming from all but basically one product companies. The main reason is that, compared to the PC market, there's no $$$ in workstations. On the other side, there's lots of excellent workstation software that won't run on most PCs, and it's too expensive anyway for most PC users. As more PC type machines have UNIX with 4-8 megs of memory this should slowly change too (of course, that stuff would work on Amigas, but there aren't enough of them out there). > Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy We have no choice. We are, after all, professionals.