From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Zorro III Stuff (Was: Guesses, et al.)
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: Amiga GRn V1.28 2/25/92 (Beta) by Mike Schwartz
Date: 7 Apr 92 08:54:04 PST
Organization: Amiga makes it possible

Note:  Someone else's attribute was removed from this thread (>>>)

In article <30097@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
>In article <mykes.1839@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG> mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>
>>>That'll change.  The specs for Zorro III make it one of the best buses
>>>available out of the competition.  It certainly walks all over NuBus,
>>>to say the least.
>
>>Believe it or not, Zorro III might quicly be even too slow.  It clearly
>>is better than Mac or PC buses, though.  But imagine it at 100MHz.  
>

[ Stuff about Zorro III vs. other PC-type buses deleted ]

>Now, one thing about Zorro III is that it can always improve with clock
>speed, at least within the limits of what we can build in CMOS.  Zorro III
>doesn't use a bus clock, it uses asynchronous strobes to govern the 
>relationships between master and slave signals.  This has the advantage of
>making it clock speed independent.  The actual theoretical maximum speeds
>on Zorro III are probably faster than you can likely get out of real TTL
>levels; some 150MB/s using burst.  But the faster the clock you have to work
>with, the closer to theoretical the bus can get, both in the relationship
>between strobes and the synchronization delay you'll generally get at the
>end of a bus cycle.  The A3000 implementation, at a reachable 20MB/s without
>burst, represents the low end in Zorro III -- it's very realistic to expect
>better in future machines.  Not that Zorro III will solve all problems; you
>don't expect one bus to necessarily solve both I/O and multiprocessor 
>interconnect questions, for example.  Consider also that we are talking about
>personal systems here; bus speed tends to be one of the first things to go
>in a PClone when you're taking about price wars, and Apple's never given all
>that much consideration to it either.  Based on the success of the A2000's
>expansion features, the reality that C='s not going to crank out a new
>motherboard with one slightly new feature every three months, and my personal
>philosophy which balks at such throw-away systems anyway, we found it important
>to give the expansion bus such consideration.
>

I'm not saying that Zorro III IS obsolete or anything - just that even it
might be obsoleted faster than it would seem.  You mention the A3000 has
a reachable 20MB/s without burst - that's 13 fps at 24 bits 768x480 for
full-frame animation.  Not that I really care NOW, but soon this may be
the norm.

>>>The DMI and Rambrandt can run programs on their TI340x0 processor, so
>>>there's a lot more possibility.  
>
>The bus is always a bottleneck in some situations, but far less for intelligent
>boards.  The "Draw a Circle" command for a dumb frame buffer results in all 
>kinds of bus transactions between the host processor and display memory, as the
>host processor draws a circle.  The same command ideally results in the 
>"Draw a Circle" command being sent to the graphics processor on an intelligent
>board.  At best, the bus starts acting more like a high speed network than a
>memory interface.  This is firmly coupled multiprocessing, exactly what you
>would like to have in an Amiga.
>

The draw circle scenario is the least-case one...  I see ZERO circles on my 
workbehcn screen right now.  I see lines (to build windows), flood fills,
and mostly Text.  These boards sure do text fast enough, but not Amiga
fonts: fonts.

>>I certainly wouldn't want to trade speed of the GUI for more colors in
>>the GUI.  But if the colors were free, then the GUI can certainly benefit.
>
>I don't think requiring the GUI to use more colors makes any sense at all.
>Allowing it more colors per se is still going to pay a pretty high price for
>something that's not useful.  Even if you had a fast 24-bit display, do you
>really want to pay any additional processing or memory penalty so can, say,
>have 24-bit icons?  Sure, it would look cool, but most folks have better
>things to do than design 24-bit icons anyway.  256 color icons are overkill.
>On the other hand, a GUI that can effectively manage a deep display without
>incuring the overhead itself would be a wonder -- if you need 24-bit color,
>supporting it optionally without necessarily having to switch mode all the
>time would be fantastic.
>

I used to consider the Amiga to be near-workstation quality.  Now it is
cheap/low-end workstation quality.  To bring it back up to where it used
to be, it needs a 68040 (or three or four :) and enough memory to make
24-bit icons trivial.  And looking COOL does mean a ton - consider what
the look of 2.0 is compared to 1.3...

>>But ask Dan Barret about GUIs sometime :)  He'll advocate BLAZEMONGER as the
>>GUI instead of some windowing/menu paradigm :):)  
>
>Well, I'll take BLAZEMONGER over Emacs as my GUI any day of the week.
>

If we took a vote on it, so would every other Amiga user.  Actually, I prefer
direct mind-meld rather than a keyboard, anyhow.

>>Maybe a 3-D shaded video-game-like GUI might be even more productive (as in 
>>Xerox Parc ROOMs).
>
>Hey, that's what we all need to get these kids off their video games and onto
>real fun.  Rather than clicking on the icon, you have to shoot it.  Rather than
>pulling down a menu, you have to wrestle with it.  You can't move a window 
>around until you beat it in a sword fight.  I love the idea!
>

What we NEED is to build machines that make what PARC dreams up possible.

My point (and Dan B's) is that the window paradigm isn't the only one,
and what isn't possible today might make windows and menus look like a
waste of humanity.  Maybe there's something out there that you nor I
can even fathom yet :)

The WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) is fine for controlling
the peripherals of today (disks, keyboards, mice, displays, printers) but
likely not devices of the future.  Commander Data on Star Trek isn't reality
(YET), but he does represent one vision of what future computers will be like.
He has NO windows, icons, etc.  (BTW, in one episode, Data claimed he was
capable of 30 Teraflops - since the A4000 will only do 15 Teraflops, we have
a ways to go, eh? :).

>>BTW, I use a SuperHires Interlaced workbench.  This uses 100% of the CHIP 
>>bandwidth.  I have zero speed complaints.  None.  Nada.  
>
>I think you'd complain loudly if you didn't have any Fast RAM...

I think I wouldn't complain if I had a TRUE 14MHz 020 :):)

>
>>I've talked to the DMI people and their developers claim the DMI resolver
>>can do 2K x 2K on a 1950 mintor.  Seems like 35ns pixels are indeed possible.
>
>That I've got to see.  You can send any size pixel you like horizontally; 
>monitors are, after all, analog.  But you can't necessarily read them.  The
>1950 does a decent job with 35ns pixels, but I wouldn't place any bets on
>being able to actually read 17.5ns pixels.  Vertically, on the other hand,
>you're necessarily digital -- the monitor can only handle a range of horizontal
>and vertical scan rates, and, well, you all can work out the mathematics: I 
>think the 1950 maxxes out at maybe 35-something-kHz horizontal, 75-something-Hz
>vertical, interlace of course optional.  I can't think of any obvious magic 
>that would do a real 2K x 2K (as I said, REAL, not one of these VGA-with-anti-
>aliasing-CLUT "effective resolution" deals).

The technical guy (programmer) I talked to said that he just programmed the
34010 to do it and it worked.  I don't know the magic behind it, either.  It
may not have displayed every pixel, but from the software perspective, the
pixels were there.

--
Author of Amiga GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle,
and Genesis Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
Mike Schwartz  (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or mykes@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
1124 Fremont Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024