hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (02/23/87)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Commodore show
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Reply-To: hatcher@ingres.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
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I went to the Commodore Show in San Francisco Saturday, thought I'd
mention some highlights. First off, the new Amiga's are not announced
yet. I heard speculation that they won't arrive until June at the very
earliest, and that the early announcement was designed to combat the
recent Atari Mega ST announcement, as well as Apple's upcoming (two weeks?)
announcement of a super?/low-end?/workstation?/MacIntosh?/Color?/Unix option
machine. Actually, I guess Commodore hasn't formally announced yet, but
with all the magazine coverage they might as well have.
Hardware manufacturers were quite displeased with the AMiga 2000. "It
screws everybody indiscriminately, not just a few peripheral makers.
You can't plug *any* old products into it, not even the Mimetics digitizer.
Even the video cables are incompatible!" Oh, well. Not that I doubt it,
but keep in mind that this quote is a rumor. In fact, it is a hybrid of
two different people's remarks, one of them not a h/w manufacturer.
Aegis previewd Alan Hasting's (of Infinite Loop film fame) videoscape 3d
solid object modeling system. It will be released "within 60 days max,
perhaps sooner" depending wholly on how long documentation takes. Since
Alan had working software before he even joined Aegis in December, I am
inclined to believe this. It looks pretty nice. They showed the sports
car from the film: give a command to rotate the image, and the screen
was updated in about 1 second. Not bad for solid images. You can do nifty
things like specify the direction of the light source. Initial applications
are apparently intended to be used for simple 3d CAD, since few people
will have the frame-by-frame video recorder or film camera necessary to
produce animation like Alan did. But if you have such equipment, that'd
work fine. Also mentioned was a discussion on BIX of "splat" files, an
addition to the IFF format which is currently being designed. They contain
a sequence of compressed images, suitable for short animation sequences.
The compression format is a simple XOR delta from one frame to the next.
If anybody out there uses BIX, it'd be nice to see some of the current
work on the subject posted to the net. If any of you are participating
in the discussion, I suggest that you look into adding a second format
as well, the CCC compression technique (Tom DeFanti, et al, 1986 SIGGRAPH
proceedings) which has some unique benefits.
Genlocks were in abundance at the show. Yes, they've finally arrived,
as of just a few days ago. Presumably some distributors will have lots
of them while others have none, as usual. I saw many being *sold*,
not just demoed, by the way. Still no sidecar, still no AmigaLIVE!
The new DigiView as demoed (availability: "in a few weeks"; sigh). It
is really beatiful. You know the little rainbow fringes you see in HAM
pictures? The new software eliminates them completely. The images are
*fantastic*; better than a lot of broadcast TV. Whether DigiPaint is as
far along as DigiView 2 is unclear; I didn't see it demoed. The new
DigiView does allow you to pick any arbitrary number of colors for the
palette, in addition to regular HAM mode display, so you can convert to
a form suitable for, say, Dpaint. The result of converting to 640 x 400
with 16 colors is unbelievable; it is so much better than I would've thought.
Easily the best non-HAM pictures you've ever seen (I thought it *was* HAM
when I first saw it). Hope the above isn't confusing, the basic idea is
that DigiView supports *all* screen formats, not just HAM, and the results
are superb. You can either have it calculate a palette in non-HAM modes,
or adjust the palette and it'll fit the picture to it. A lot of fun!
There was, of course, Commodore 64/128 stuff displayed, but less than I'd
expected. Dropping my elitist attitude for the briefest moment, the current
products are really quite impressive, considering the hardware. Better than
I've ever seen in the past. One company was offering a speech recognizer,
and overheard them chatting with Augment user group folks about whether
they might offer an Amiga version. It'd be nice to have speech recognition,
eh?
Unusual product preview: "Analytic Art" by Crystal Rose Software. This
is a mandelbrot/julia set generator. Why buy one when there are public
domain versions? Answer: it generates full screen mandelbrots in 45 sec.
(forty five seconds!!!!). This is an astounding feat of programming.
I chatted with the author, and this is for real, not done with mirrors.
(I've done mandelbrot programs, so I knew what to ask about to double-
check). There is an upper limit to zooms, but I saw some very nice images
with a zoom factor of 128,000 or thereabouts. It supports all screen formats,
including HAM mode. For anyone with a serious interest in mandelbrot sets,
this is a must (if and when it changes from vaporware to real, and if he
lowers the price he quoted me). Vital stats: Crystal Rose Software,
Pasedena CA 91101; (818) 795-6664. Call 'em and tell them what you'd be
willing to pay for it; they'll respond to demand, but there won't be any
if they are idiotic enough to charge too high for it. This vaporware, as
usual, is claimed to be available "shortly; probably April 1".
Byte by Byte had a very interesting demo: a forthcoming ("few weeks", sigh)
version of Infominder that handled a laser disk. The subject was a disk
full of Impressionist art. When I walked up it was flipping up a new
image a few times per second (the fast way to get cultured). Looks like
fun; hold your breath and wait for it :-) The laser disk, by the way,
was an off-the-shelf product from another company. I'd like to get a
catalogue of what laser disk products are available so I could see how
*generally* useful a laser disk would be. As an aside, the cheapest
Write Once Read Many laser disk I've heard of is still at $7500.
(just in case anyone wondered). I don't know prices for regular laser disks
of the sort that Infominder will support, but keep in mind that they are
NOT writable at all by the end user.
Tidbits: Maxiplan, the spreadsheet developed by MaxiSoft, and now being
supported by Intuitive Technologies, is being marketed by Oxxi Inc
1835-A/Dawns Way, Fullerton CA 92631; (714) 996-6710. They say that
the primary difference between their "Wow" product and the "addbuffers"
command is that "wow" does not allocate memory, it just borrows it,
and gives it up when there is other demand. Addbuffers, of course, allocates
it so that it is unavailable. It runs under 1.1 and 1.2.
I didn't check it out, but FYI there was a digital circuit design tool
called Circuit Maker; made by Elias Engineering at 4614 Morris Court East,
Santa Rosa CA 95405; (707) 539-4111.
Neither did I look at DynamiCad, but a disgruntled friend of mine did,
and he said that the new release appears to clear up the problems that
he had with the previous version (he hated the previous version). He was
also impressed with Aegis Draw Plus.
Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatchergrr@cbmvax.UUCP (02/23/87)
In article <8702230649.AA29610@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: >I went to the Commodore Show in San Francisco Saturday, thought I'd >mention some highlights. First off, the new Amiga's are not announced >yet. I heard speculation that they won't arrive until June at the very >earliest, and that the early announcement was designed to combat the >recent Atari Mega ST announcement... Ha-Ha...just about everybody except IBM, DEC and sometimes Apple shows their stuff well before you can go out and buy it. In any case, it's the Atari PC and/or AT machines that are interesting, while the Mega-ST's are just more of the "same but different". Lead times in the computer business are long enough that each company's new products end up being designed to compete with the last generation of the competition, rather than head-to-head. >Hardware manufacturers were quite displeased with the Amiga 2000. "It >screws everybody indiscriminately, not just a few peripheral makers. ...how about the software and retail people? >You can't plug *any* old products into it, not even the Mimetics digitizer. >Even the video cables are incompatible!" Oh, well. Not that I doubt it, >but keep in mind that this quote is a rumor. In fact, it is a hybrid of >two different people's remarks, one of them not a h/w manufacturer. Actually, the video cable and the external floppy are the same, while the mouse ports have the same pinout, but are set up for a straight-in type connector. Serial and Parallel ports have been "fixed" so that they now accept off-the-shelf PC style cables. >Genlocks were in abundance at the show. Yes, they've finally arrived, >as of just a few days ago. Presumably some distributors will have lots >of them while others have none, as usual. I saw many being *sold*, >not just demoed, by the way. Still no sidecar, still no AmigaLIVE! Amiga-Live a.k.a. Frame Grabber is where the Genlock was at month or two ago. The Sidecar and the A2000 have a lot in common so you may finally see some action in the that area soon. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (02/24/87)
George Robbins provided some valuable followup information about the 2000, and also made me realize that my comments, based on rumours from the show, were pretty negative. For the record, I've heard good things too. The fact that it comes with 1 meg of memory, and with expansion slots, will make a tremendous difference. The add on cards are pretty cool, too...I think that an Amiga 2000 with a 68020 running Unix will be pretty hot in the workstation market; should really put a cramp in the sales of $10,000 machines...especially if you can add on an extra video board supporting 1024 x 1024 screens. Even at $5000 system cost (my own personal guess for this configuration), that's a pretty cost effective machine. Look out Sun and Apollo? (and whither Apple? [pun not intended]) Doug
eric@osiris.UUCP (02/25/87)
In article <8702240621.AA08747@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>, hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: > I think that an Amiga 2000 with a 68020 running Unix will be pretty hot in > the workstation market; should really put a cramp in the sales of $10,000 > machines...especially if you can add on an extra video board supporting > 1024 x 1024 screens. Even at $5000 system cost (my own personal guess for > this configuration), that's a pretty cost effective machine. Look out Sun > and Apollo? (and whither Apple? [pun not intended]) Sorry, I think they are going to have to do better than that to go after the workstation market. The latest fliers I got from Sun indicate that they are now selling the 3/50 in 6-packs for about $3900 apiece. That's a 68020 with 4 Mbytes of memory, 1024x1024 screen, ethernet connection, and Unix. And given Sun's share of the market already, I would guess that a similar Amiga configuration would have to be about 20% less to start stealing sales from Sun. Also, who knows what Sun will be charging 6 months from now, when the Amiga 2000 finally starts shipping in quantity. I would imagine that Apollo, Apple, and Next (?) will be pricing their machines appropriately, as well. -- eric ...!seismo!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!eric
ed@plx.UUCP (02/27/87)
In article <994@osiris.UUCP>, eric@osiris.UUCP (Eric Bergan) writes: > In article <8702240621.AA08747@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>, hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: > > I think that an Amiga 2000 with a 68020 running Unix will be pretty hot in > > the workstation market; should really put a cramp in the sales of $10,000 > > Sorry, I think they are going to have to do better than that to > go after the workstation market. The latest fliers I got from Sun > indicate that they are now selling the 3/50 in 6-packs for about $3900 Gee, someone who knows a little about marketing has finally started reading comp.sys.amiga. Sorry Doug, a toy company will not become the next SUN. NeXT and Apple have that market sewed up. My question for CBM is when are you gonna junk AMIGADOS? Hot Product: a 80386-based UNIX box with a MS-DOS virtual machine capability. This baby could be built for a HELL of a lot less than a 680X0 based system with a 80286 coprocessor. Hey Amiga, ever think of attaching your graphics chips to a '386? X-Windows is a MUST. Looks as though INTUITION (like TRIPOS) is bound for obscurity. The next step in the computer revolution will be death of the dumb-Ascii terminal. Someone who can integrate Dos and UNIX on a single INEXPENSIVE workstation will establish a "Standard" as the VT100 is a standard in the terminal marketplace. Personally, I think a 386 based PC-Clone is the best candidate. It WILL run UNIX of course and keep Corporate America happy by also running DOS. I don't hate AMIGA, I just feel sorry for them... -ed-
farren@hoptoad.UUCP (02/28/87)
In article <544@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: > >I don't hate AMIGA, I just feel sorry for them... And I don't hate Ed Chaban, I just feel sorry for him. Jeez, I have *FUN* with *MY* computers, MS-DOS and Amiga alike. Look, Ed, we all know from your previous postings how you feel about the Amiga. We don't agree. Why don't you dry up and go away quietly? -- ---------------- "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness Mike Farren that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..." hoptoad!farren Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
bacon@alberta.UUCP (03/01/87)
In article <1454@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) writes: > In article <8702230649.AA29610@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: > >not just demoed, by the way. Still no sidecar, still no AmigaLIVE! > > Amiga-Live a.k.a. Frame Grabber is where the Genlock was at month or two > ago. The Sidecar and the A2000 have a lot in common so you may finally > see some action in the that area soon. A while ago I was in Calgary for the weekend and I dropped in at a software dealer's to see what he had. Well, sitting next to his demo amiga was this huge THING. "What the h*ll's that?" I asked. "Oh, that's the side car..". Not owning an amiga, I didn't ask much more, but I did learn that he's had the thing for a few weeks. If you guys don't have it down south (in the US) yet, it's NOT because it's vapour ware. Stephen Samuel {ihnp4,watmath,seismo,allegra,ubc-visi}!alberta!edm!steve
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (03/02/87)
in article <544@plx.UUCP>, ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) says: >> Sorry, I think they are going to have to do better than that to >> go after the workstation market. The latest fliers I got from Sun >> indicate that they are now selling the 3/50 in 6-packs for about $3900 > > Gee, someone who knows a little about marketing has finally started reading > comp.sys.amiga. Sorry Doug, a toy company will not become the next SUN. > NeXT and Apple have that market sewed up. My question for CBM is when > are you gonna junk AMIGADOS? NeXT? A company that has yet to produce any product? Already has a market sewn up? Must be some amazing company. And except for Desktop Publishing (which Apple does indeed have a big lead in, over everyone, including Sun), the vast majority of the machines replacing workstations like Suns and Apollos at the low end are currently PC[lones]. People are actually doing various type of electrical and mechanical CAD on these lowly PCs. The main reason that they put up with this is that (1) they've never used a real workstation, so they don't miss the speed of a real workstation, and (2) you need color for anything but the lowest forms of CAD (you can get away with monochrome for schematic capture, where you can use shading as a substitute for color. But stay away from PC layout on anything that doesn't have color). > X-Windows is a MUST. Looks as though INTUITION (like TRIPOS) is bound > for obscurity. I guess NeWS must, then, be similarly targeted. And the Mac's Window/Icon/ Menu interface too. And of course GEM, the weakest of these systems. Are you gonna tell them, or should I? Of course, I'm sure they'll point out that any one of these systems is doing more, on more machines today, than X is. X is certainly more powerful, and big. And so a good thing to use on UNIX workstations that can handle the size. Which is why you get folks like Apollo with their fast 68020 stations in favor of it. But don't force me to use it on the older Apollos; the bit-slice Apollos have speed problems with the minimal Mentor supplied graphic interface. Especially once there's a standard set of thing that run under X, like a standard menuing package, etc. For a long, long time to come there are going to be machines that can't run this great new stuff, and there are going to be a hell of alot more of these machines, in terms of units, than there are machines capable of running X. And most users don't need X. Look at all the folks that are happy with the MacIntosh system of Menus and Icons. I don't think the mere fact that Intuition's menus are much more flexible is going to get alot of Mac users running an Intuition port on the Mac. Though maybe Amiga and Mac users will move to X when then add UNIX capabilities, but the vast majority of Amiga users will be happy with Intuition, and Mac users with their system. > -ed- -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __ ____ ____ _____ _____ _____ Dave Haynie /// / _ | / __ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \ Commodore Technology /// / / | | /_/ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |\ /// / /__| | ____/ | | | | | | | | | | | | | |\\/// / ____ | / ____/ | | | | | | | | | | | | \\// / / | | | |____ | |_| | | |_| | | |_| | {ihnp4,etc.}!cbmvax!daveh \/ /_/ |_| \______| \_____/ \_____/ \_____/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
alex@xios.UUCP (Alex B Laney) (03/04/87)
This is obviously someone (a Mush-Dos lover) wanting to start another FLAMING/war session: In article <544@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP writes: > a 80386-based UNIX box with a MS-DOS virtual machine > capability. This baby could be built for a HELL of > a lot less than a 680X0 based system with a 80286 > coprocessor. Hey Amiga, ever think of attaching your > graphics chips to a '386? Seems to me that an A1000 or A2000 already has the capability to run Unix and MS-DOS. Why hasn't the MS-DOS market got this yet? Maybe it's not such a hot product ... Or maybe the intel series isn't up to it yet! Where is there an MS-DOS product that could handle a 14MHZ 32-bit processor, and 14MHz DMA and graphics coprocessing? Also, as the 386-based machines are already over $6000 U.S., I don't see how that is cheaper than an A1000 with Sidecar! Anyway, UNIX in the business marketplace is very small. There probably has been more Amigas sold than Unix systems. In the government marketplace Unix may have a market. A majority of Data Processing Managers in the business marketplace haven't even HEARD of Unix, much less want/need it for their computers. Sad, but true! Maybe Commodore should port VM onto the coprocessor. :-) A micro 370 ... Alex
jtr485@umich.UUCP (Johnathan Tainter) (03/07/87)
In article <1478@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, daveh@cbmvax.UUCP writes: > > comp.sys.amiga. Sorry Doug, a toy company will not become the next SUN. If it wasn't still pushing the C128 it would be nearly shy of the TOY rep now. Remember, Amiga was developed by a wholly different toy company and few people remember it. Don't worry! It won't be long and Commodore will be nothing but Amiga and will change the name to some cough syrup or sports clothing name (Compupro -> Viasyn, Sage -> Stride Micro, etc.). > > NeXT and Apple have that market sewed up. My question for CBM is when > > are you gonna junk AMIGADOS? > > NeXT? A company that has yet to produce any product? Already has a market > sewn up? Must be some amazing company. >-Dave Haynie It is. NeXT has backing from H. Ross Perot. That means it will succeed even if HRP has to buy federal legislation or call in favours from Ronny and the CIA to make it. --j.a.tainter