richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (06/10/88)
In article <5701@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich) writes: cthulul@athena meet klortho@inco...oh never mind. >Oh come on-- Commodore is improving, but own the small computer market? Be >serious. Quality of the product is not, and never will be the determining >factor in sales. It is unfortunate, but truer words were never spoken. A wise man recently said "Quality and success in the marketplace have very little to do with each other. The best selling American car was the Ford Pinto. The best built American car was the Studebaker Avanti." I am in fear for the Amiga. After making quite a splash 3 years ago with things like multi-tasking and video in/genlock at unprecedented prices - affordable to the average joe, we are now at a point where apple and ibm are making inroads with new OS's - lets not kid ourselves, they'll get them to work; new graphics adapters; apple is allegedly working on a blitter for the MAC TOO. If that puppy gets cheap, has a blitter and its 16 milion color mode can be had for < $3, whats an amiga good for ? And then there is the point that anything yu can slap a targa/truevision board in is serious competition. As I see it, the Amiga, to remain competative, has to be cheaper or have higher performence than any of these. As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make to the amiga, what would it be ? To tie these together: more colors. Truecolor (8 bits per...) and still at Commodore's rock bottom prices can beat any of that other slime. Almost any peripheral can be had, UNIX doesn't buy you anything, but 24 bits per pixel in a CONSUMER PRODUCT at a reasonable price would be a first. Quick. Before somebody else does it. -- "Live by the lawn dart, die by the lawn dart." richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {decwrl!mejac, rutgers!marque}!gryphon!richard
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (06/11/88)
In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> (Richard Sexton) writes: > As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make > to the amiga, what would it be ? Well I contend that it is a *lot* more capital intensive to develop hardware than it is to develop software. So I the improvement I would make would be a "dumb" bridge card that connected the 16 bit Amiga bus to the 16 bit AT bus in the 2000, and I would make it *STANDARD*. Then when you bought a 2000 you automatically had access to the AT slots. Then small companies and individuals could write software that supported a particular PC/AT card and sell it with the card as value added. Some examples of things that would be much more common today if we had this thing : o Networks - Ethernet, StarLan, Arcnet, LocalTalk, and MAP. Sure Ameristar has done ethernet and done it well, but they could have done it faster and cheaper if they had an off the shelf ethernet card they could OEM and just concentrate on the software. o Frame Buffers - Targa or Truevision cards could be running *today* on the Amiga, generating *fantastic* ray traced images after doing the 'check' on the Amiga side. o HardDisks - needs no explanation. o Serial/Parallel ports - more and more. Easy to find a parallel or serial adapter, at a recent swap meet the little half cards that had one or the other on them were selling for $5 each. Nothing but benefits from this scheme, not to much work on C/A's part. Of course if you bought a bridge card you would yank this thing and plug in the bridge card instead. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) (06/11/88)
In article <56089@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: > In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> (Richard Sexton) writes: > > As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make > > to the amiga, what would it be ? > > Well I contend that it is a *lot* more capital intensive to develop > hardware than it is to develop software. So I the improvement I would The first time around hardware is indeed very expensive to develop. To do a reasonable job of things, one needs a prom/PAL programmer (~$0.5K-$10K), 'scope (~$2K-$6K), Logic analyzer ($10K-$20K), decent software system to do driver development on (~$4K -> $20K), misc lab stuff (~$10K or so). After that it costs just around $5K per board layout + parts. So it is not a lot. *Any* software development will burn up far more people dollars than hardware capital equipment investment. Looking at the whole picture, the only difference between hardware or software development costs is just how the money is paid out; for hardware you drop ~$50K at first, for software you pay it out in $50K/year/programmer chunks. > Some examples of things that would be much more common today if we had > this thing : > > o Networks - Ethernet, StarLan, Arcnet, LocalTalk, and MAP. > Sure Ameristar has done ethernet and done it well, but they > could have done it faster and cheaper if they had an off the Cheaper perhaps if we could leverage off of the volume present in the 'PC market & use a 3Com or WD PC bus Ethernet card. Of course, it is arguable who has a better Ethernet board design, eg 3Com/WD or ours :-). Faster is a function of the number of programmers you can afford. Afford is driven by whether you're starting with venture capital or whether you can bootstrap yourself off sales of simpler devices that require a lot less software, eg memory boards, disk controllers, etc. Looking at the history of Sun, you folks had mongo venture capital $$ in the early days plus the original OS was purchased canned from Unisoft I believe. I suspect that if dollars were a bit smaller or Sun had to hire enough programmers to field a Unix product themselves the growth curve would have been a lot less spectacular that it was. By the way, we've done both Arcnet & Ethernet. Localtalk needs to be built into the machine, ala Mac to be cost effective. That said, who needs Starlan :-) And, while we're comparing costs of PC Ethernet vs Amiga Ethernet, remember the salient point is *system* cost. Sun PC-NFS + a 3Com card from Sun lists at $999. Our package (functional equivalent of Suns) costs $899. So even though PC-NFS ships probably 4-5X our volume, we cost $100 less. > shelf ethernet card they could OEM and just concentrate on > the software. > > o Frame Buffers - Targa or Truevision cards could be running *today* > on the Amiga, generating *fantastic* ray traced images after doing > the 'check' on the Amiga side. The tough part in building Targalikes for the Amiga is that the framebuffer standard on the machine pretty much dictates custom VLSI/gate arrays to make it really compatible, or you declare yourself wholly incompatible. This contrasts with the IBM/PC for example, where it is fairly easy to build in at least CGA compatibility. > --Chuck McManis > uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com > These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. Rick Spanbauer Ameristar
elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) (06/11/88)
In message <56089@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) says: >In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> (Richard Sexton) writes: >> As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make >> to the amiga, what would it be ? More colors. Definitely. Some of the extended VGA cards put the Amiga to shame graphics-wise, for very little more than ordinary EGA cards (although the speed of display isn't up to Amiga standards, of course). In particular, there's no reason to not have an 8-bit-plane lo-res mode, considering that 8-bit-plane lo-res would use the same bus bandwidth as 4-bit-plane hi-res uses today. The main overhead would be that CBM would have to add 256 registers somewhere to hold the color tables (perhaps as SRAM seperate from the video chips). VGA specifically has 256 colors in its lo-res mode, without the limitations of HAM mode. If we're getting into the wild-and-wooly pie-in-the-sky area, 8-bit-planes in HIRES. Some VGA cards are already supporting this resolution. Unfortunately, this is also double the bandwidth of the Amiga bus, which means goodbye low-cost DRAMs and cycle-multiplexed bus interface, hello lots of trickery and kludges and expensive fast RAMs. However, this resolution would allow the Amiga to move into areas such as low-cost image processing that the current display simply is too limited to adequately support (at least in a manner acceptable to the current state-of-the-art in image processing, which is either RGB 24-bit or 8-bit grey-scale). -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,att,decwrl,ihnp4,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"
root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) (06/12/88)
In article <4429@killer.UUCP>, elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes: > In message <56089@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) says: > Amiga bus, which means goodbye low-cost DRAMs and cycle-multiplexed > bus interface, hello lots of trickery and kludges and expensive fast > RAMs. However, this resolution would allow the Amiga to move into > areas such as low-cost image processing that the current display If we change the model of low level graphics accesses from allowing direct CPU access to screen bits to just primitives, eg lines, polygons, etc the issue of how the frame buffer is implemented goes away nicely. Getting people to write programs that don't expect to access screen bits directly also has a side benefit that the programs are more easily moved into network window systems, eg X, NeWS, etc. The hardware issues in high resolutions displays boil down to the simple fact that you cannot supply the display controller with 10-100+ mBytes/sec at the same time that you are supplying 4-5 mBytes/sec (or 50 mBytes+ to a 68030) to the CPU + whatever disk DMA, network DMA, etc are consuming. High res ==> clock rates ==> video rams. Or you build your entire memory system from 15 nS SRAM :-) > simply is too limited to adequately support (at least in a manner > acceptable to the current state-of-the-art in image processing, which > is either RGB 24-bit or 8-bit grey-scale). Agreed. But are we building home/low end machines or SGI killers? > > -- > Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,att,decwrl,ihnp4,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg > Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 > "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" Rick Spanbauer SUNY/Stony Brook
elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) (06/13/88)
In message <1327@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) says: > If we change the model of low level graphics accesses from > allowing direct CPU access to screen bits to just > primitives, eg lines, polygons, etc the issue of how the > frame buffer is implemented goes away nicely. Getting > people to write programs that don't expect to access > screen bits directly also has a side benefit that the > programs are more easily moved into network window systems, > eg X, NeWS, etc. The problem with that is SPEED. Going through the graphics routines just to set and unset a pixel is pretty ridiculous, especially since many graphics operations can be done on a full word-at-a-time basis (thus speeding things considerably over having a dot-at-a-time interface). Which is why I continue to think that a higher video rate will require a lot of trickery incompatible with the desire to keep costs reasonable, or, the long-awaited 68020-based Amiga running at twice thbandwidth of the current Amiga. Actually, the problem is that the Amiga is a victim of its own best feature -- the built-in graphics. IBM software is generally built on the "graphics-driver" concept, so that the same software works with several different screen resolutions etc. As Rick Spanbauer pointed out, doubling the graphics bandwidth basically means that video RAM will have to be segregated from system RAM, a totally different graphics interface from the current one, and a graphics interface which would break most current software. -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,att,decwrl,ihnp4,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (06/13/88)
In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.UUCP writes: [regarding OS/2, Mac-2, etc...] > As I see it, the Amiga, to remain competative, has to be cheaper or > have higher performence than any of these. Well, it's cheaper and higher performance and will certainly remain so as long as memory prices remain the same. How many people will be able to afford the 4 megs of memory you need to equal the performance of a $545 Amiga 500 with 512K (OK, it's only 2 megs for the apple product: but the price difference between clones and the Maxicost-2 about covers it). > As a related question, given you had ONE improvement you would make > to the amiga, what would it be ? A device-independent graphics.library. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- "Have you hugged your U wolf today?" ...!bellcore!tness1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These may be the official opinions of Hackercorp.
keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (06/14/88)
In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >Almost any peripheral can be had, UNIX doesn't buy you anything, but >24 bits per pixel in a CONSUMER PRODUCT at a reasonable price would be a >first. I'll second this motion. Don't waste too much time on heading towards 1K by 1K, I can't afford the monitor and 640x400 is too much for my VCR as it is. MORE COLORS MORE COLORS MORE COLORS More Colors more colors more colors more colors .... ..... .... ..... .... ..... more CHIP RAM, and a blitter per bit-plane would be nice too. I think the smartest thing Amiga ever did was NTSC compatibility. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170
keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (06/14/88)
In article <2111@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes: >I think the smartest thing Amiga ever did was NTSC compatibility. BTW, I think the dumbest thing they ever did was take the composite color output out of it, even if the broadcast people didn't like the quality. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170
papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) (06/15/88)
In article <2111@cadovax.UUCP| keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes: |In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM| richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: ||24 bits per pixel in a CONSUMER PRODUCT at a reasonable price would be a ||first. | |I'll second this motion. Don't waste too much time on heading towards |1K by 1K, I can't afford the monitor and 640x400 is too much for my |VCR as it is. MORE COLORS MORE COLORS MORE COLORS More Colors more colors |more colors more colors .... ..... .... ..... .... ..... I third the motion. Give me 256 out of 16M colors in 768x480 and I can duplicate the $60,000 Laserline 5, the one that does the most expensive weather graphics. More cheaply, give me just 32 out of 4096 hi-res overscan 768x480 and I can get you FULL WSI graphics as good as on the Laserline 5. |I think the smartest thing Amiga ever did was NTSC compatibility. Yep, the "Desktop Video" market would not exist today if it weren't for that. -- 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] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (06/16/88)
Ok, Rick Spanbauer gave some well reasoned responses to my "dumb" bridge
card posting which I agree with, however, I think I can be a bit clearer
about this and maybe we can see the product opportunities. First let me
describe the "dumb" bridge board which I would like to interest some
hardware manufacturer in making, it looks like this :
This card sits in a 'bridge' slot connecting the Amiga and PC/AT
buses. On board it contains autoconfig logic for four (4) "PICs" and
one memory "PIC". The manufacturer ID of those PICs are controlled by
dipswitches on the board. (You'll see why in a minute). There is also
some bus logic to convert x86 type waitstates to 68000 type waitstates
and to optionally swap bytes on a 16 bit read.
The dedicated memory PIC area has a dipswitch that indicates in
sizes of 512K bytes, how much memory is on the AT bus. This memory is
assumed to start at address 100000H on the AT side (1 Meg) and extend
contiguously upward. Any PC/AT extended memory card could be plugged into
the AT side and used at 16 bit Amiga memory. When suggesting to AT owners
that they should upgrade to an Amiga 2000 this would let them hang on to
their now priceless memory boards.
The four 'private' PIC area would allow for the specification of
a unique manufacturer ID. This would be given out by Commodore as they are
today. When installing an AT peripheral into the 2000, one would install
the board, set the Manufacturer ID on one of the custom PIC switches and
then put the driver in the Amiga 2000 expansion drawer. On reboot, the new
device would be available. The PIC circuit on this bridge board would map
the 64K PC I/O space into one of the Amiga's 64K I/O slots.
It would still be impossible to make an autobooting hard disk that
sat on the PC side (unless there were autoboot roms on the dumb bridge board
for just that purpose).
The advantages to this scheme are
a) It's cheap, this is easily a two layer board with at most 30
components.
b) It opens up the AT bus to Amiga programs in their native
environment, no steep learning curve, no special coding.
c) It makes it possible to take advantage of AT frame buffers
*now* with equivalent performance. There is no reason that
a 7.5Mhz 68000 couldn't update a Targa board as fast as a
6 Mhz AT, or at nearly the same spead as an 8Mhz AT.
d) It allows vendors of PC compatible boards (who are a looking
at the MicroChannel and wondering how to milk a few more $$
out of their AT Bus designs) to offer their boards into an
entirely new market to them.
e) It allows programmers like those on this net, to get their
hands on specialized hardware like IEEE-488 bus adapters
without having to invest in building the hardware. I'm not
talking about pro developers, I'm talking about someone who
wants both a MIDI interface and a serial port and has enough
brains to write a driver for the Voyetra PC-Bus MIDI interface.
We're talking free or at least shareware stuff here. They may
even be able to sell it back to the manufacturer for a few
bucks.
So since Commodore hasn't done this, there appears to be a window of
opportunity here. The nice thing for hardware manufacturers is that this
board could be shipped with *NO SOFTWARE* that's right, once your hardware
is done you can ship this puppy, unlike most other products for the Amiga.
Of course you will want to test it to make sure it works and thus will
probably end up writing a driver or two for it. Make sure it can autoconfig
some memory into the system, and maybe write a really simple driver for
a parallel port or something.
Anyway, I am astonished that no one has done this yet. (I would but can't
seem to find the time, I've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks
now.)
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (06/18/88)
I spent a little time thinking about the "dumb" bridgeboard idea quite
a while ago, but came to the conclusion that at least 90% of the most
interesting AT boards out there had 8086 firmware in PROM. While this
could possibly be replaced by host resident 68000 drivers, I wouldn't hold
my breath waiting for enough of them to get done in order to make the entire
product concept viable. The board manufacturers themselves would either
have to do it, or be convinced into making the information available. If
you can't come up with a solution that allows you to buy boards off the
shelf and make them work without special help from the manufacturer, you're
in for a lot of hassle.
What you really want is a 8088 bridgeboard who's cost is a bit more like
a gray market PC clone sans monitor, cabinet and power supply.
JDR Microdevices (Los Gatos) offers this at:
motherboard $97.95
256K $26.55
floppy controller $29.95
360k drive $69.95
-------------------------
$224.40
Now if we could just get them to re lay it out into an AT/Zorro-II format
board.
Keith Doyle
# {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/20/88)
In article <2111@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes: >In article <4400@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >>Almost any peripheral can be had, UNIX doesn't buy you anything, but >>24 bits per pixel in a CONSUMER PRODUCT at a reasonable price would be a >>first. > >I'll second this motion. Don't waste too much time on heading towards >1K by 1K, I can't afford the monitor and 640x400 is too much for my >VCR as it is. MORE COLORS MORE COLORS MORE COLORS More Colors more colors >more colors more colors .... ..... .... ..... .... ..... > >more CHIP RAM, and a blitter per bit-plane would be nice too. > >I think the smartest thing Amiga ever did was NTSC compatibility. > >Keith Doyle Amen. Several times. No sense at all trying for higher resolution until the "not invented here" squabble among Japan, Europe, the U.S., (and other parties (?)) over what will be the (one hopes, this time) international standard for high definition television broadcasting is settled. When a standard is adopted, that would be an excellent upgrade target for the then current Amiga. Until then, keep NTSC compatibility, hope for a cheap single frame recording VCR (or video disk recorder) to come along, and watch an explosion of folks doing titling, overlaying, and so forth with their Amiga's on their home video tapes. Man is that a huge yuppie market; I hope some VCR maker notices the handwriting on the wall soon. (I can also imagine just _tons_ of perverted things to do to commercial TV recordings with an Amiga, a genlock, a single frame double drive (read a frame, modify it on the Amiga, write it on the other drive, step one frame...) VCR and some software, for the fun and amusement of friends and family.... Heh heh.) Kent, the man from xanth. (No TV equipment _here_ officer, you must want someone else; all I have is that old computer over there in the corner....)