[comp.sys.amiga] Amiga 2000, NCS, No-flicker Monitors etc.

craig@unicus.UUCP (Craig D. Hubley) (07/03/87)

Rich miner writes:
> We just got the Beta version of NCS from apollo, with sources, and we 
> have Apollo's, Amiga's, Vax's, a Sun 3/280, and an Alliant all on the same 
> ethernet.  Now if Ameristar could just get me the programmers interface to 
> their sockets and rpc library we could have the Amiga's tied in beautifully
> to these other systems.   It would have looked great at SIGGRAPH to have
> an Amiga in Apollo's booth.  Would anyone else be interested in NCS for the
> Amiga?

I read the NCS specs some time ago, and having worked extensively with XNS,
the next best thing according to Apollo, I was impressed.  The NIDL compiler
seemed to do whatever the Courier language could do, and then some:  it was
supposed to be a true object-oriented network system.  Is it?

What exactly is going on with NCS on the Amiga?  What has and hasn't been
ported?  I had heard that the Amiga port was far from certain - when did
it get done?  One unanswered NCS question - is it capable of performing
at all over 2400 baud standard phone lines?  That is, can one connect to
the network and use the rpc facilities this way?  Securely?  One obnoxious
thing about XNS was that it wanted either high-speed dedicated lines or
4800 baud dedicated lines.  It wouldn't even talk to you otherwise, I
believe.  And there were some serious advantages to interpreted Courier.
I would very much appreciate fully-detailed NCS specs etc, and would be
very interested in knowing when it will be out as a full-blown product.

Someone was talking about no-flicker NTSC monitors from Sony.  I didn't
save the posting, but it sounded like 30 Hz refreshed twice.  No model
numbers or prices were given.  Any information on this or other similar
monitors would be appreciated, including monochrome or grey-scale.  I
would consider this sort of monitor essential for working with a 2000.
If I'm going to have several slots with memory, co-processors, emulators,
etc, then I'm going to want more working screen space to show it off.

Finally, what's the status of the Magic Sac, the Mac emulator?  And are
there any 80286 AT emulator cards in progress or completed for the 2000?
I refuse to use a 4.77 MHz 8088 when I could buy a 10 MHz AT for the same
price.  The damn silly things are slow enough already.