kim@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) (03/14/88)
[ Everything in this line may be wrong! (with apologies to Richard Bach) ] I happened across this in my BBS travels over the weekend. It is from January of this year, and may thus be a little "dated". These folks are from CBM, so this should be accurate information. A few points seems a little contradictory to various postings on the net, and a few comments are a bit confusing. Bear in mind, these fellows *are* in marketing, so a little confusion is to be expected :-) :-) ... Comments (especially from CBM)? /kim vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Questions and Answer Session with John Beem District Sales Representative for Commodore Northwest Region and Allen Burke Western Regional Education and Technical Coordinator at the January meeting of the NORTHWEST AMIGA GROUP Question: Are we going to have access to the Fat Agnes chips for the Amiga 1000? Answer: I don't think so. I don't believe there are plans to support that, just because of the size plus the configuration for it to go in there. There is talk about other types of modification to other board to implement such, but at present no. Question: Can you tell us anything about the availability of the 2080 monitor? Answer: Its safe to say it is very close. Within the next few weeks. As far as pricing is concerned, I have no idea until it shows up, until they announce they have it in inventory. Question: When will the 1.3 updates be out? Answer: They will be out at the end of this quarter, probably in March. 1.3 is going to be two part upgrade. One will be pretty much the same way we handled the 1/2 upgrade with an Enhancement kit. For the Amiga 1000 owners we will release 1.3 Kickstart on a disk and 1.3 Workbench on a disk. You will not need the Kickstart to use the Workbench. The only people that will need the 1.3 Kickstart are the people having auto-booting devices such as hard disk drives which will auto-boot right from Kickstart. There will also be a (1.3) Workbench for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000. Currently we do not have plans for releasing 1.3 in ROM as an upgrade. We do have plans for releasing that along with our controller card and/or with, for example, the way Creative Microsystems did things with Kickstart Eliminator. Perhaps they'll also license the kickstart 1.3 and do the same kind of upgrade. To cover more specifics of 1.3 Workbench, some things I can tell you, some things I can't. One of the biggest changes you will notice will be printer drivers. I would say the changes that are going to be done are more than just changes, they are really revamps. Basically the results we are seeing are from 10 to 12 times the speed. We will also have in those, specialized, customized algorithms for things like color corrections. So, when you print your beautiful blue sky, it won't be purple. Or if you print your beautiful purple sky, it won't come out blue. There will also be algorithms to handle things like dithering and smoothing. So when you print things, for example, when you are printing an arc your printer may have far greater resolution than your screen, I certainly hope so. I don't know any printer that doesn't, and it will help handle those and you will have much smoother lines, arcs, and curves. Additional support will have the paint set in it, a new printer driver for the Xerox 4020 color ink jet printer and a few others as well. Question: Will there be a cost? Answer: Yes, there will be a minimal cost Something like we did with the 1.2 Enhancement kit. Those went for $14.95. this is not a profit making venture for us. The price has not been set but may be between 15 and 20 dollars. Question: Let me see if I understand then, does this mean my printer drivers will be no good with Workbench 1.3? Answer: There will be a new Preferences. Your printer drivers will work the same. Your wordprocessors will print faster. The computer will constantly be waiting for the printer no matter how fast a printer you have. You will also have full 24 pin support as well. Question: Will the 1.3 Kickstart and Workbench have anything to do with speeding up disk drive access or actual file formatting as rumored? Answer: No. Question: Can you talk about the Amiga 1000? Whether they are still making them. And how about sales figures of various models? Answer: The Amiga 1000 has been discontinued for some time. We are not manufacturing any more of them. As for the sales figures, I can't give you exact numbers for the various models, but we have passed the half-million mark on the Amiga. Question: Shipped or sold? Answer: I believe sold. Question: Since the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 have been introduced into the marketplace, have the been able to track any difference or comparison with how the Amiga is selling as compared to several of its rivals? Answer: There really isn't any competition. The Amiga is being picked up by major professional accounts like Hughes Aircraft, Boeing, Rockwell, NASA, and Teledyne, as well as others for graphics use. It is definitely being taken seriously and definitely selling well. Question: On the 1.3 updates is there any further hard disk drive support? Backups, maybe? Answer: Currently on the 1.3 Workbench we do not have any plans for any hard disk drive backups. There are several commercial packages available right now . Question: What about being able to partition a hard drive? Answer: There is no trouble doing that now. On thing that differs on the Amiga from the MS-DOS environment, MS-DOS generally (with a couple of exceptions) will not allow you to format above 32 meg. Amiga can, and we have, successfully formatted an 800 megabyte WORM drive, a 108 meg hard disk drive, 40 meg hard cards, etc. We do not have size limitations. We can address the full capacity of a hard drive. Question: How soon can we expect to see the 68020 board with 32 bit ram available for the Amiga 2000? Answer: Currently there is a company called CSA of of San Diego that has this available and is shipping immediately. I have had one of those boards for over a year now. We have installed it in Comdex, we have no trouble with it. I have no release date or prices for you. Question: Is there a release date for the Fat Agnes chip? Answer: I don't have an official date to give you. Question: How about an unofficial date? Answer: How about January some year coming up? If you are taking notes, my name is Joe Smith. Question: what is Commodore's opinion of more than 1 meg of internal memory on the Amiga 500? Answer: We don't recommend it. Our power supply, as many of you may know is not designed to run a city. Question: Has Commodore been marketing their machines? Answer: Yes, in the press. We have had extensive ad campaigns during the last quarter of 1987 throughout the Christmas period and the beginning of January 1988. Currently we do not have any magazine ads going. The big push now is with the retailers. Question: Are you going to have a more powerful CLI (Command Line Interface)? Answer: The CLI is magnificent. It supports multi-tasking and a lot of other things. I don't know what else you would like to get into it. If you would like to see it more like a Unix or XENIX type shell. There are more commands that will be added but basically no, it is not going to be a revamp where you see a CLI 2. Question: Are there any Accelerator boards that work with the bridgecard in the Amiga 2000? Answer: Yes. Question: What are they? Answer: Let me backup and explain. Some do and some don't. Most of the acccelerator boards are meant to run on a 16 bit bus. the bus or the bridge side of our PC slots are 8 bits. There are two products that I know of that work . A 286 board called HOT SHOT from AST Technology. Also there is a 386 which is only about three grand. I don't recommend the turbo processors. Question: When is the 286 bridgecard from Commodore coming out? What is the price? Answer: Extremely soon. I don't have a price but it will be very competitive in the market based on the 286 products. We will be running at 10 megahertz and I've worked with it and its great. Question: Will the bridgecard ever be sold separately without a 5.25 inch disk drive? Answer: The current bridgecard will not be sold without the 5.25 inch disk drive as it stands today. As for marketing strategy on the AT bridgecard, it has not been decided yet. Question: Being that Commodore has developed bridgecards condensed on an IBM form factor card, when are they going to introduce the worlds cheapest clone using those cards as the clone? Answer: Commodore already IBM-PC compatible systems currently on the market. We have the PC 10-1 which became the PC 10-2. They thought the would sell about 30,000 of them, sold 60,000 of them, ran out far faster than they ever expected and are about to release, in the next few weeks a new PC 10-3. Question: What can you tell us about the 286 bridgecard price wise? Answer: GOOD PRICE! Question: Will the 286 bridgecard support EGA? Answer: The problem with EGA is it requires 70 hertz plus 60 hertz monitor cycle and the 1084, 2002, 1080 don't support that, so right now , no. Question: Will Commodore come out with their own hard drives in 1988? Answer: No. I don't know of any company that does. We use other peoples drives. We have our own hard disk controllers and it's probably one of the finest. It will work with any disk drive out there, so why re-invent the wheel? Question: What is the price of the hard drive controller? Answer: The A2090 sells for $395 or $495. It goes in one slot and supports 7 SCII devices and 2 ST506 devices simultaneously. Question: Will the 1.3 release document the changes made to AmigaBasic in 1.2 and who supports it? Answer: Beats me! I have no idea who supports it. I appreciate you concerns but I don't have the answer to that one. Question: Is it at all likely that the 286 bridgecard will have a trade-up program for it? Answer: It is being discussed but currently I don't know. Question: Is there anything to the rumor that an Amiga 3000 will be released? Answer: Basically, someone had a really nice 6-pack one night, got up and wrote an article that is totally false. They were fascinated, they were hallucinating, they were really dreaming. There is no other system! Question: Are we doing anything to change our resolution which is currently 640 X 400 interlace? Answer: What we have going, which you will see real soon, is 640 X 400 non-interlace. We are aware of at least the general publics' desire to go beyond that. There were many things shown at Comdex. There were other types of monitors and technologies shown by third parties. We are definitely working on it, but I have nothing to tell you specification wise. Question: Does Commodore have any plans on support in a peripheral way of reproduction things, such as printers or image processing? Answer: I can't discuss that. I can't confirm or deny it. Question: Is Commodore doing anything with Unix? Answer: I can't confirm or deny it, I can only tell you that we like it. Question: Is Commodore going to similar tactics that Apple did with the MacIntosh market wise? Answer: We have serious market campaigns we are currently working on with our dealers. My job as Education Specialist is to get into schools, Universities, and places like Boeing. Question: Is Commodore working with third parties on networking standards? Answer: There are currently networking products available manufactured back east. Their products are magnificent. I can't say we are. Question: On the various points that you can neither confirm or deny, what is the earliest date that you could confirm them? Answer: That depends on which one it is. Really you want me to tell you earliest date we could confirm them? No. You can reach the Northwest Amiga Group at: PO Box 1140 Oregon City, OR 97045 (503) 656-7393 BBS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ -- UUCP: kim@amdahl.amdahl.com or: {sun,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,ihnp4,uunet,oliveb,cbosgd,ames}!amdahl!kim DDD: 408-746-8462 USPS: Amdahl Corp. M/S 249, 1250 E. Arques Av, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 CIS: 76535,25
jim@coplex.UUCP (Jim Sewell) (03/15/88)
In article <24561@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> kim@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) writes: >vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv > > Questions and Answer Session > with John Beem > District Sales Representative for Commodore Northwest Region > and Allen Burke > Western Regional Education and Technical Coordinator > at the January meeting of the > NORTHWEST AMIGA GROUP > >Question: > Is there anything to the rumor that an Amiga 3000 will be released? > >Answer: > Basically, someone had a really nice 6-pack one night, got up and >wrote an article that is totally false. They were fascinated, they were >hallucinating, they were really dreaming. There is no other system! Gee, that sure is interesting. Especially since a friend of mine's company got a press release about the 3000 from C-A just last week. I apologize for not having it with me so I can tell you all the neat stuff about it, but he has it at work and I have a terrible memory. I do remember what I consider the most important thing and that's that it has a 68030 cpu! Well, as my friend said, "This release is from the company making it, I'll believe it when I hear official 3rd party news about it." Keeping my fingers crossed! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "May we all break free of our inhibitions _____ ____ ___ mit-eddie! and enjoy mutual respect, peace, and love / / <___ bloom-beacon! in the world!" / <____ ____> coplex!jim \__/ J.C. Sewell