papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (10/10/88)
These are just a few quick notes about the past 3 days at AmiEXPO, LA. There were a lot of things going on and these are my personal preferences. 1. GFXBASE's X-11.R2-3 is coming along very nicely. Dale's port is very clean. It was running between an A2000 with Viking screen and a SUN 3/50. Release 1.0 should be available first quarter 1989. It will use either TCP/IP or DECnet over ethernet or the local Amiga message based system. Price was not announced. Dale was using a 3-button mouse (the boing! mouse) completely compatible with the current Amiga system [X-11 needs a 3-button mouse for optimum operation. This mouse is made by Mouse System, widely available on the PC-DOS market. It fits the usual mouse connector on the Amiga]. 2. ASDG had a large booth showing off their twin-X based products. The one that impressed the most was the SHARP JX-450 scanner and its support software. I saw its output taken to the CBM booth, and Dave Berezowsky printed it on a Howtek's Pixelmaster. Very nice [Dave wrote the Pixelmaster driver for 1.3]. The SHARP is about $7000. I didn't ask about the PixelMaster [If you ask, you can't afford it :-)]. Perry Kivolowitz was awarded a prize with plaque for "his contributions to the Amiga community". Good choice. 3. Both ASDG and Bill Seymour of CMI have multiple serial ports boards almost ready to go. The decision has to be make by CBM people (Randell and Bryce) as to what the multiple serial port stuff should be. Until then, we application programmers have to sit and wait. 4. Moniterm of Minnetonka, MI had their own booth showing the Hedley-compatible Viking monitor. It is good to see them joining the Amiga family. 3. GVP showed an impressive array of SCSI based boards with on-board caches (from 4K to 16K). Connected to drives like the Quantum prodrive (40S or 80S), which also have on-drive cache, are said to completely avoid the problems of "severe" overscan and DMA access. 4. CMI showed a very nice and polished MIDI interface: Three-jumper selectable midi OUT/Through (+ 1 OUT & 1 IN). Midi IN and SYNCh out for 24, 48 and 96ppqn. Price $79.95. 5. MS interactive video systems showed the "trupcard", currently the cheapest SCSI controller around ($139 show special valid for another month or so). It is available at Century Computer Systems in the LA area. 6. The compiler war heated up. Lattice shipped Lattice C++ (list $500, show special 1/2 off, at $250 all copies were sold). Lattice was also showing their forthcoming synbolic debugger which willl be shipped with version 5.0 of the compiler on November 1st. The upgrade to 5.0 will be $75 for current 4.0 users. The symbolic debugger is part of the system and not sold separately. On thing that I like A LOT are breakpoints on data. On the other side, MANX announced that MANX C version 4.0 will be shipped December 1st. It should fix the bugs that were recently discussed on the net. 7. Lots of new support for ARexx: Microfiche Filer Plus and A-Talk III were shipped with full ARexx support. Magellan (expert system from Emerald Intelligence) will have ARexx support, too. 8. A lot of usenet-ters showed up at the telecom seminar: besides Richard Sexton and myself, Eric Lavitsky and Randy Spencer were at hand. Unlike last year, most people reaised thir hands when asked if they had access to Usenet. Unlike what people might think from his behavior on this net, Richard is a very nice person and a perfect speaker. Harv Laser interrupted him a couple of times, but no punches were taken :-) 9. Carolyn Scheppner gave out "real" 1.3 disks to some developers who were able to ask the right question at the right time. The "1.3 enhancer package" was said to be available (I didn't see it, though). 10. Lots of CBM-Amiga luminaries were at hand: Dale Luck, Jim Mackraz, Dave Berezowsky, Carolyn, Andy Finkel among others. Bill Hawes (ARexx), Tom Rokicki (AmigaTeX) and John Foust showed up too. 11. The Live!-based multimedia flower-power-1966 "thing" on Saturday afternoon was so boring some left right away. The subsequent party organized by MSS was much better. 12. The "real" fireworks went on in an almost unannounced, very informal meeting Saturday night, but this is all I'll say about it. Of course, these are totally biased impressions and opinions from somebody that spent three days standing up and talking (too much) and therefore take them with a grain of salt. No warranties are made or implied. Don't ask me the details. I don't have them :-) -- Marco Papa 'Doc' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= uucp:...!pollux!papa BIX:papa ARPAnet:pollux!papa@oberon.usc.edu "There's Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Diga!" -- Leo Schwab [quoting Rick Unland] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (10/11/88)
In article <12698@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes: > >8. A lot of usenet-ters showed up at the telecom seminar: besides Richard >Sexton and myself, Eric Lavitsky and Randy Spencer were at hand. Unlike >last year, most people reaised thir hands when asked if they had access to >Usenet. *I* was there ? Really ? Why don't I remember ? >Unlike what people might think from his behavior on this net, >Richard is a very nice person and a perfect speaker. Complete lies. -- You, Richard Sexton, have sent the most vile piece of mail to me of anyone, by far. -- Stuart A. Werbner richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone...err, well connected site}!gryphon!richard