From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipset
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 05:57:48 GMT

In article <n1282t@ofa123.fidonet.org> Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
>> >Who cares?  If I wanted VM, I'd go buy Gigamem *right now*.
>>
>>   With GigaMem, and there guarantees that it will continue to be supported
>> and updated?  Are there any guarantees that it will run under fewer OS
>> versions?  The company that developed GigaMem could go out of business
>> tomorrow, or Commodore could change something at any time to make GigaMem
>
>The same can be said about ANY piece of software.

   That's my point.  You take a lot of risks by relying on an unsupported 
piece of software like GigaMem.  It could be obsoleted by an OS update at
ANY time.  And the company could go out of business and never release an 
updated version again.  If the virtual memory support were to come from
Commodore, the risks would be less.

>> >Meanwhile the rest of the Amiga world
>> >has  had  the  Video Toaster, DCTV, DMI Resolver, Firecracker, etc etc, for
>> >quite some time now.
>>
>>   With all but one being low-resolution interlaced video cards with slow
>> screen updates, and the only one that isn't being hugely expensive.
>
>DCTV  is  pretty  low-res,  admitedly.  Its also only $379.  The others ARE
>hi-res.

   Medium (read: mediocre) hi-res, and INTERLACED.  You don't get anything like
800x600 non-interlaced from a Video Toaster or Firecracker.  DCTV is both
low-res and interlaced.

>The Toaster
>is  SLOW?  Pardon moi?

   YES!!!  Do you know how long it takes to transfer an image to the Toaster's
frame buffer?  Several seconds.  This makes the slowest SVGA card look like a
speed demon by comparison.  This is also why the Toaster software does not 
offer real-time painting.  The paintings have to be composed on the Amiga's
low-res 4096-color display, and dumped periodically to the Toaster display.
With all of the waits involved in dumping images to the Toaster display, the
whole thing is very kludgy.  No wonder many people purchase other video cards
in addition to a Toaster to do any painting.  

>  Of course most of them are interlaced - the Amiga's
>niche  is  video so naturaly, card makers cater to that.  DUH.  What do you
>consider hi-res??

   800x600 non-interlaced.

>How  is  the IBM or Mac any better off in this regard?  The standard on the
>IBM is the SoundBlaster.  There are other cards but not much runs on them.

   Bullshit.  Both Windows and OS/2 2.0 offer device-independent audio, 
something that the AmigaOS does not offer.  You will find far more software
for PC audio cards than for Amiga audio cards.

>> >>How long will the Amiga market have to wait for memory protection and OS
>> >>features to make AmigaOS virus-resistant?  How long will
>> >>the Amiga market have
>> >
>> >No  OS  is  ever  virus-resistant.
>>
>>   OS/2 has virus-resistant features.  Granted, people will find ways around
>> these features, but existing MS-DOS virii cannot harm an OS/2 machine.
>
>Well   DUH.    MS-DOS   programs   are   "emulated"  in  an  "encapsulated"
>envirionment,  and  are  totaly separated from one another.  OF course they
>can't harm one another.  It would be fairly easy to do this on the Amiga as
>well,  but  none  of the programs would interact in any way, and you'd have
>multiple  copies  of  AmigaOS running and taking up memory.  Rediculous and
>useless.

   OS/2 manages to have interprocess communication despite the process
protection.  If OS/2 can do it, why can't the Amiga?

>>   Use CD-ROM with what?  The Fish disc?  The AB20 disc?  CDTV titles which
>
>Thats a start.

   No it isn't.  That isn't enough of a software base to convince people to
purchase CD-ROM drives for Amigas.  You think I'm wrong?  How many people
own **AMIGAS** (not CDTV's) with CD-ROM drives?  I'm sure the total is no
more than 10,000 world-wide.  

>> are not guaranteed to run at all on Amigas, and which are written for a
>> keypad and a low-res display, and which have no "Amiga" features?
>>
>>   Suppose I'd like to run something like the "Music Madness" Mac CD-ROM disc
>> which contains 400M of music, tools and effects, and utilities to allow a
>> person to build all kinds of tunes.  Is anything like this available for the
>> Amiga?  Or how about something like the Mac "Trade Opportunities" CD which
>> contains information about global trade from public and private sources?
>>
>>   I can count on one hand the number of Amiga CD-ROM products that are
>> available.
>
>Thats not Commodore's fault, entirely.  Go talk to those companies, and ask
>them to do Amiga versions.

   They will look at the user-base of people with Amigas and CD-ROM drives and
laugh in my face.  

   It is Commodore's fault that no CD-ROM drives are available from them. 
Many people who are mulling the idea of buying a CD-ROM drive for an Amiga
are putting it off because no CD-ROM drives are available from Commodore.
They don't want to purchase a third-party drive because it could easily end
up as a white elephant if Commodore were to market such a drive.  Meanwhile,
Amiga CD-ROM software languishes in non-existance.

>
>> >Ever  heard  of  the  DMI Digital Editmaster?  It digitizes, compresses and
>> >saves  to  harddrive  full  colour video at 30FPS using JPEG compression at
>> >ratios  from  15:1  to  70:1.   Naturaly, it will play it back also in real
>> >time.  Who needs MPEG when you can do JPEG in real time.
>>
>>   JPEG was intended for still images.  Making JPEG work on animations in
>> real time is a major kludge.  Ask anyone who is familiar with QuickTime.
>
>Yeah.   QuickTime is software.  The DMI board is HARDWARE.  It uses JPEG in
>REAL  TIME,  30  fps.  What more could you want?  JPEG compresses more than
>MPEG will.

   Compresses what?  You are comparing watermellons and grapefruit.  MPEG is
for full-motion video and JPEG is for still images.  Still images will 
compress far better with JPEG.  Videos will compress far better with MPEG,
and decompress far more quickly.  MPEG is good enough that several of the
HDTV standards being decided by the FCC use MPEG to compress the video to one
or two TV channels.  How many of the HDTV standards use JPEG to do this?
None.

>> > The list price is
>> >$2495.
>There  is  nothing  wrong  with  JPEG  compression  hardware  that works in
>real-time and ratios up to 70:1.  Especialy when you can buy one NOW.

   Yes there is.  The price tag is wrong.  It is a factor or 10 too expensive.

---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
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