From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: Amiga sightings and other things positive.
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 04:14:04 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.230758.7438@ra.msstate.edu> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
>In article <1992Nov9.073026.6604@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au> davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn) writes:
>
>I must say that I honestly expected the A4000 to have SCSI-II and maybe a DSP,
>but then again I also expected it to cost nearly $5000.  Needless to say, the
>price is low enough that I'm willing to forgive them for not including those
>features, but I do hope that they will release both within short time.  If
>the SCSI-II Zorro III board is indeed faster than the A3000's SCSI, it will
>make for a kick-ass system.

I think, since it's taking so long, Commodore will do the SCSI-2 properly.  If
it's not faster than the A3000's SCSI, something would be wrong in the state of
Denmark (or PA, even! :-)  Even so, who would notice if it was capable of
higher speeds anyway?  How many have a SCSI drive that's pushing the A3000
right now?

>As for the DSP, I'll want one when there is an
>application that demands it and the software is available.

Yes, it strikes me as the sort of "neat thing" that people think they have to
have but don't really have a use for.  It seems to be that NeXT has one, and
so does the lowly Falcon, even, so we need one two.  Just exactly what it's
going to be used for, I can't say (and yeah, I do know what they do - I can
even explain the FFT algorithm and it's application in digital filtering, if
you like...).  Of course, if lots of Amigas had them, and AmigaOS included
decent support, I'm sure lots of interesting uses would appear.

>I'm still waiting to hear the official price for the A1200, but the rumors
>seem to suggest that it will be very reasonable.  The company I work for is
>looking at putting together a MultiMedia (I hate that stupid word!) delivery
>system and the A1200 looks to be the perfect candidate.

Well, what do you mean by "MultiMedia" in that context?  I'm just curious
about what it is about the A1200 that makes it good for whatever it is you
want to do.

>As cool as some of the EuroDemos are, I really hope that Commodore sticks by
>its decision not to release the specs.  Perhaps they could work on providing
>the budding young programmers with the compilers, documentation, etc. to
>produce legal code instead of hacking the machine to death.

Hey, that'd be alright - do you think, if I wrote some code that hit the
hardware, I could get a free compiler and a full set of RKMs?  :-)

>Although many of the hard-core folks are still around, I'm afraid that we
>did lose quite a few during the lean period.  We know that Ethan S. left a
>while back and that Mike Schwartz bought a PC, but what about a few of the
>others?  

Well, someone was talking about Ethan a while back, and he popped up to say
he still existed, so maybe a few others are still lurking here and there...

>Hmmm, if what I've read about the A4000 is true, it can no longer speak for
>itself.  :-)

I hope they reverse that decision - speech is something that's been
considered standard.  One rumour is that a new narrator is being developed
for the DSP.  Who knows?  (Probably lots, but they can't say... ;-)

>Seriously, we have been downloading as many demos, anims, pics, mods, etc.
>that we can for the show.  There is not that much in the way of AGA pics
>and anims, but I have access to ADPro, a color scanner, and a Toaster at
>work, so maybe I can come up with something.

There are some pretty good jpegs around - you'd probably get better results
from them than doing your own scans (not that I doubt your skill with a
scanner, or anything!)


-- 
David Meiklejohn (also known as davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - Regional support guy for PC's, Unix, and networks thereof.
 - But I'd rather be using an AMIGA!  Wouldn't you?
Find me in Mareeba, Australia (on the pointy bit in the northeast)