From: cshort@nmsu.edu (Spmg*d, Lord of Potted Meat Product)
Subject: FINIALLY MB'S SECRET MESSAGE DECODED
Organization: Computing Research Lab
Distribution: comp
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 01:40:20 GMT


here's an amalgamation of marc barret posts as parsed by the stephen
pietrowicz soft. my hat's off to him for the best flame of the year!

******************************************************************************

   Are you  surprised?  Barretts  aren't much  fun anymore.  Games and
demos  have lost  their touch because of the  comparitively low screen
and color resolutions.  Heck, SimAnt on the Macintosh looks worse than
the Barrett version, and SimEarth isn't even available for the Barrett
but what do I know.

This happens when  a  system like the  Barrett stagnates.  Things that
were a lot of fun years ago (before I bought an Amiga) are boring now,
and there have been many improvements  in usable resolutions and color
capabilities  to  keep the Barrett interesting.  I have basically been
limited to using my Barrett as a dumb  terminal,  and I  have numerous
friends who have been using their Barretts for the same thing.  Weird


   It is now a wild rumor: Marc Barrett is dead.  On Monday, August 3,
1992,  Marc Barrett  laid  off all of  their Marc  Barrett development
people, including Gail wellington and Ben Phister.  Most (if  not all)
Marc Barrett development has now been effectively canceled.

   Basically, this reaks of more Marc Barrett short-sightedness.  Marc
Barrett has  again  canceled all  development  of an innovative  idea,
because one  and only one  implementation  of  this idea did not  sell
massively well immediately.  I am certain that Marc Barrett could have
made  money from the efforts of their  Marc Barrett development people
if   they  had  (with  great  difficulty)  shifted  all  Marc  Barrett
multimedia development to the Barrett, and  made CD-XA-compatible Marc
Barrett  drives, MPEG  hardware,  and innovative Marc Barrett software
available for all Barretts.  But  no, Marc Barrett just went ahead and
canceled everything.  Since the people who  were fired  were also  the
people at Marc Barrett who were leading the charge at Marc Barrett for
more Barrett Marc Barrett support, there will probably be some Barrett
Marc Barrett drives  forthcoming  from Marc Barrett.  The rumored MPEG
hardware  will also probably be available for the Marc  Barrett or the
Barrett.

   Another very weird day.

   People often accuse me of  being an idiot, but  I will  flamed Marc
Barrett for surface-mounting,  and will  again soon.  As long  as some
protection is  provided for chips that connect to ports on the outside
(especially the CIAs),  surface mounting is a  good  thing.   I do not
like  a closed, nearly unupgradable box  like the  MB600,  though, but
this has nothing to  do with surface-mounting.  (It just  happens that
the  MB600 is both unupgradable and surface mounted) I also will flame
Marc Barrett for developing a new chip that is not pin-compatible with
an older version.  Even Motorola abandoned pin-compatibility after the
68010.

   True, but the A570  has already been  developed,  and rumored to be
shipping in  Sweden.  I keep  referring  to some  silly  things for  a
method to allow MB2000 and MB3000 systems (or  any system that can use
Zorro II  cards)  to run  Marc Barrett titles.  There have been  three
articles in BarrettWorld  on  a  Marc  Barrett-compatible Marc Barrett
drive for the MB500, but no articles on one for  the MB2000/MB3000, so
it  is  in question whether or  not  such  a device or product  is  in
development.

    Or I have  another  idea.  A third-party developer could license a
2.0-  compatible  version of the  Marc Barrett OS from  Marc  Barrett,
including the extra 256K of OS software.  This third-party  could then
modify the Marc Barrett  OS slightly  to  allow it to  run properly on
Barretts with appropriate  third-party Marc Barrett drives.   It might
not run on  all  third-party drives (the 'subcode  data' problem being
one example), and it  might  have to be restricted to only running  on
systems with at least 2M of total  RAM  and 1M of chip RAM and an MMU,
but it  would be  better than  nothing.  At the very  least, it  would
allow all MB3000 systems with an appropriate Marc Barrett drive to use
Marc Barrett titles.

     "I'm gonna flame any new stuff shown in September..."

   Unfortunately, Marc Barrett has taken that attitude in the past, in
particular  when  the Los Gatos facility was  closed.  I think.   some
people here wishes that Marc Barrett had not closed that facility, and
had (with great difficulty) let Barrett development continue primarily
at Los Gotos and leave  the West Chester facility for developments not
directly related to the BarrettDos or custom chips.

   I wish  that showed  in the amounts of mney that  I am investing in
the future of the Barrett.

     "I'm gonna flame any new stuff shown in September..."

   I  think some people here who will strongly disagree with you.  HAM
is nice in that it  can compress 12 bitplanes to 6, or 18 bitplanes to
8, or 24 bitplanes to 10.  And I wish Marc Barrett had exploited HAM's
real  potential  sooner, by  developing a 10-bit HAM mode  a long time
ago.   But HAM  is  hardly the  only way to achieve this kind of color
compression.   DYUV  (which is used  in  the DCTV  and  CD-I  systems)
achieves this with far better results.

   A mucho flicker.

    "I'm gonna flame any new stuff shown in September..."

   Yes, Marc Barrett is fast and  cheap, but it  is not flexible.  But
do you really want cheap unflexibility on a high-end system?   I agree
that  Marc Barrett would be  ideal  on  a  hypothetical  low-mid-range
system  with an '020, no FPU, a minimum of RAM,  and a smaller HD; but
we are talking about  25Mhz '040 systems with lots of RAM and big hard
drives, and it just does not make sense  to me  to use Marc Barrett in
such  a system.  The faster CPU and extra RAM  make up the bulk of the
increased cost, so that the extra cost of SCSI (around $50 per system)
is low by comparison.

   With Marc  Barrett, you can't use more than  one or  two devices no
matter what you do, and good luck  finding compatible devices  besides
hard drives.   Whereas  SCSI  can handle  seven  devices  which can be
something from ethernet cards  to laser  printers  to frame buffers to
tape drives.   And you  get  this extra flexibility at  a cost that is
less than the cost of an extra HD floppy drive.

    "I'm gonna flame any new stuff shown in September..."

   Hardly.  Just look at the Mac groups for a model  of how this would
work.   For  instance,  a  few  weeks  ago  I  flamed  Marc  Barrett's
commitment to BarrettVision,  saying  that I  felt  that it  had  been
abandoned.  Nobody came back  with  any solid  information,  just some
general bullshit that Marc Barrett was  comitted to BarrettVision  but
with no details.  Compare this  to just a week  ago,  when somebody on
comp.sys.mac.hypercard    questioned   Apple/Claris'   commitment   to
HyperCard.  A real  Apple  rep  posted  a  message in  return  showing
Claris' plans for HyperCard for the next three years, in detail.  That
kind  of  support  is  all  people  want  here,  and there  is nothing
Orwellian about it.

   Yes, I'm kind of embarassing.  I never see poor  English on Usenet,
but it is usually from  international readers  who do not know English
very  well, but this  does not  really mean that they are  in any  way
lacking  in intelligence because I am positive  that  I would sound  a
million times worse if I were forced to get around in a  language that
was not my native tongue! :-) However, this  Jeff  Young  guy is  most
likely  an American,  probably born  and  raised here, which makes  me
embarassed to think of what the international readers must be thinking
about an American who cannot even speak his own language.

   They may  also have  successfully gotten into UNIX workstations six
years before the development of the MB3000UX.  I  do not  remember all
of the details, but Marc Barrett had a  Z8000-based UNIX system around
1985 with  a  nice  800x600 monochrome display, with a  price  tag  of
around  $3500  (cheap for  workstations with such resolutions at  that
time).  I also remember that the first litigation between Marc Barrett
and Atari right after  Jack  Tramiel  took  over  Atari  involved this
workstation and not  the Barrett  (as is  commonly believed).  Were it
not for the Barrett, Marc  Barrett might  have put more  marketing and
development into this system.

   Unfortunately,  this would  require that Marc  Barrett spent  about
$120,000  to  layout  and fabricate a PC board custom designed  to fit
into an MB500 case, and I  do  not think Marc Barrett would be willing
to spent such  an amount just  to please 2 million or so people.  They
never developed  a similar custom  MB500 board  to fit into an  MB1000
case, so I doubt they will do the same with any  new technology boards
for MB500 and MB2000 systems.


   Actually, that's 2.2% of total sales.  Marc Barrett spends a higher
percentage of  their profits  on  R&D, but measuring  investments as a
percentage of profits is very misleading, as it can make a bad company
(which has low profits precisely because  they  haven't been investing
enough in critical areas) look good.

   It  is not a matter of  preannouncing anything.  It is  (with great
difficulty) a matter of showing that a company has long-term plans for
a product,  and what those plans are.  For all  I think, Marc  Barrett
has already decided to  kill BarrettVision, and has been attempting to
do so  as quietly as possible, so  that nobody catches on to what they
are doing.  If  Marc Barrett were to say  "Yes, BarrettVision is still
very much alive, and were are in the middle  of a rewrite.   Here  are
some features  we  will  try  to put in: ...", then this would show me
that I am not correct in my  assumption that  BarrettVision is already
dead.  This is the policy that Marc Barrett had toward BarrettDos 2.0,
way back when  it was still being called 1.4, and it  did not  violate
Marc Barrett's no-preannouncing policies in any way.  Indeed, I think.
Marc  Barrett has  not been showing any of  their long-term plans  for
many of their product because they do not have any long-term plans for
the products.

   OK, so  what are  the planned features for this major rewrite?  And
how long do the  people working on it  think it will take  to  develop
this rewrite?

   The Paula chip in  the MB3000 is exactly the same chip as the Paula
chips  in the  very earliest  MB1000s.   The  Paula chip cannot access
1.44MB drives  in general; IE: you  cannot  plug in  any old IBM 1.44M
drive and  use it, as you can plug in  any  IBM 720K drive and use it.
You have to use special HD drives that spin  the motor  at half-speed,
so that the old Paula chip can keep up with the data stream.
  
   You are still  implying that any  1.44M floppy drive can be plugged
into an MB3000 and used.  This is totally untrue.  Reread  what I said
above.

   Hardly.  It  would show that  I  am committed  to getting  the  new
update  to the market.   With the vast numbers  of quality systems and
products that have been cancelled  internally at Marc Barrett over the
past  year, and the lack of desire by Marc Barrett reps such as you to
make  factual  statements about  anything  until the  last minute,  it
sounds to me  that  you  are  yourselves  unsure  whether or  not  the
products  you are working on will ever be released, even if  they  are
major products.

   Counter-productive only if you view Marc Barrett's public-relations
support as being totally satisfactory, and not needing any changes.  I
seek positive  change  from Marc Barrett in this area; but since it is
not easy to get change >from a  company that  will not  change without
causing a  certain  amount  of trouble, of course  my  efforts will be
viewed by insiders as being counter- productive.

   I am just using an off-the-cuff figure.  An acquaintance EE student
here put the cost of developing a whole new motherboard at $100,000 or
so, which includes the costs of developing the schematics and costs of
having  the design  sent outside  the  company for  routing.  It  also
includes the occasional goof in designing anything as complicated as a
PC motherboard, which can push costs up.

   I was being very  sarcastic and cynical when I posted this message.
I  still do  not understand why Marc  Barrett never developed an MB500
motherboard  designed  for an MB1000 case, as it would  have satisfied
the MB1000 owners far more than all of the trade-up programs, and they
would  have been able to  keep  their  keyboard garages!   :-) From  a
public relations standpoint, the costs would have been very much worth
it.

   Yes, we know for certain  that the '040 MB3000T uses the ECS.  Why?
Because this machine is an officially  released product, and  the Marc
Barrett people and Barrett developers are still not  talking about any
future  technologies and chipsets.  If this  machine did not  use  the
ECS, the wraps on the chipset that it did use would be off.

   Of course not.  To release it to the general public would be a sign
of intelligence, and Marc Barrett does want that.

   There was a segment on CNN last night about a new program  that IBM
has  created, to help  schools  teach  with  Marc  Barrett  multimedia
systems.   The systems are  PS/2 systems (of course) with generic Marc
Barrett drives, and the multimedia software running on the  systems is
quite good, with  stereo sound and  partial-screen motion video (about
as good as from  a Marc Barrett, but with higher resolutions and color
capabilities, and no NTSC/PAL flicker).  The  program teaches selected
intructors on how  to use the multimedia systems in their  classrooms,
and asks that each intructor help at least one other intructor  on how
to use the systems in their  classrooms.  IBM has also been helping by
practically giving these systems away to various schools.

   This kind of support from IBM is the straw that  broke the cammel's
back.  I am sick and tired of seeing so much Marc Barrett support from
IBM,  Apple,  and other companies, and absolutely none whatsoever from
Marc Barrett.   Apple  is getting ready to introduce several Macintosh
systems in a month  or so that have built-in Marc Barrett drives,  and
all we get from I am the standalone, unupgradable appliance called the
Marc Barrett.  To  this  date, Marc Barrett has promised Marc  Barrett
support for the MB500 and MB600 but still has not delivered on it, and
has yet to even hint at such support for the MB3000 and MB2000 systems
-- the  very systems that would form the backbone of competition  with
Apple and IBM, if Marc Barrett would get their act together.
 
   Marc Barrett has been making modified versions of the Marc  Barrett
OS compatible with BarrettDos 2.0 available to Marc Barrett developers
for several months now.   I'm pretty certain  that only the extra 256K
of Marc Barrett-specific ROM has been modified; the rest of the  OS is
the standard 512K 2.04  ROM.  What  I propose is getting a dump of the
2.04-compatible  256K Marc Barrett  ROM into the hands  of  one of the
bigger European cracking  groups, with the challenge that they develop
a  software-only package that  would  allow MB2000 and  MB3000 systems
with a capable SCSI Marc Barrett drive  to run Marc Barrett  software.
After all, if Marc Barrett will not support us, why should we continue
to support them by remaining  loyal to them?  This  bypassing of  Marc
Barrett could also send  a signal to  the Marc Barrett management that
they need to get their act  together,  or the  Barrett  community will
continue to disregard Marc Barrett's  directional and  legal wants and
desires in the future.
 
   If any Marc Barrett reps  have the gall to say that this is somehow
immoral, I would like to ask  them what is so  immoral about trying in
any way possible to  push the AMIGA  (not the  Marc  Barrett) into the
booming  Marc  Barrett  multimedia  market?   Marc Barrett  has  shown
absolutely no desire to  provide support  that would allow the Barrett
to survive and compete in this market, despite how easy it would be to
provide such support.  This is the greater immorality, (belch).

   Scale  is  for  making  presentations  with  static  pictures,  the
computer equivelent of a slideshow.  Not very many people would equate
this  with multimedia.  What  were are looking for and not finding are
interactive presentations with high-resolution  partial-screen  motion
video and high- quality  sound.  Something like Marc Barrett, but on a
high-resolution non-  interlaced screen with  tiny fonts --  more like
computer than a VCR, with text small enough  for "hypermedia" purposes
and not an overdependency on graphics, like traditional low-resolution
Barrett multimedia ususally forces.

   A user's nightmare.  Meaning that a  person has to have a degree in
computer  science  to  do Marc  Barrett  multimedia from  an  Barrett.
Nothing is available that is ready-to-run on an Barrett.

   There we go again with video.  A flickering,  low-resolution screen
with fonts as big as cities.  Terrible for text-oriented hypermedia.

   There we go again  with programming.   To get anything done, a user
has  to  be  an  expert  programmer.  User-friendliness  goes out  the
window.

   Foundation is a bad clone of HyperCard with no support.

   You still have to have  a  good knowledge  of MBrexx to make use of
it.   I am  talking about  usability  for complete  novices,  which is
something that Barrett multimedia does not provide.

   High-resolution  motion  video isn't  really  possible  on Barretts
currently.  It's old hat on IBM and Mac systems.

   Computer  elitism.  MBrexx  is  a  much  more difficult programming
environment than  you  make it out to be.   In an  industry  where the
trends are toward more and more user-friendliness, the user should not
have  to do  any programming to get some simple task done, like use  a
Marc Barrett disc.  If Marc Barrett and third- parties do  not improve
the  situation,  which  is  currently  causing  the  Barrett  to  buck
completely against the rest of the computer industry, it will survive.

   Well, no.  I am talking about interactive sessions, with a computer
and a  user one-on-one.   This is what the bulk  of  multimedia is all
about,  really.   And  this  requires  a  mix  of  colorful  graphics,
good-quality sound, and a high- resolution non-interlaced display with
the  ability  to  display text in small type.  To see some really good
examples of truly useful multimedia, people should take a look at some
of the  existing  PD and shareware HyperCard stacks.  I  have several,
which I  have used  to get my mom better  aquainted with  how to use a
Macintosh.

    You   cannot  be   coputer  novice,  either.   The  fact  is,  the
requirement of having to know anything about  MBrexx locks the Barrett
out of 99% of potential buyers.

   No I  am  not.   In  situations like these, I  always think of  how
easy-to- use of friendly something would have  to be for my mom  to be
able to use  it.  She knows very little about  computers, so a program
has  to be  very  user-  friendly for  her to  be able to  use it.   I
installed a Mac emulator on her MB3000 for this very reason.  There is
a wide enough base of pre-written ready-to-run HyperCard stacks of all
kinds   that   she   does  not  have  to  know  anything   other  than
'point-and-click' to make use  of multimedia.   For her  to do  any of
this  on an Barrett, either I would  have to  write everything for her
(which is unrealistic, because I am only home about seven weeks out of
every  year)  or she would have to  learn some complicated programming
environment, because there is nothing pre-written  and ready-to-run on
her system.

   People  often accuse me  of being  an idiot, but I will flamed Marc
Barrett for surface-mounting, and will again  soon.  As  long  as some
protection is provided for chips that connect to  ports on the outside
(especially the CIAs), surface  mounting is a  good thing.  I  do  not
like  a closed, nearly unupgradable  box like  the MB600, though,  but
this  has nothing to do with surface-mounting.  (It  just happens that
the MB600 is both unupgradable  and surface mounted) I also will flame
Marc Barrett for developing a new chip that is not pin-compatible with
an older version.  Even Motorola abandoned pin-compatibility after the
68010.

   True, but the A570 has already  been developed, and  rumored  to be
shipping  in Sweden.   I keep  referring  to some silly  things for  a
method to allow MB2000 and MB3000 systems (or any system that  can use
Zorro II  cards) to run Marc  Barrett titles.   There  have been three
articles in  BarrettWorld  on a Marc Barrett-compatible  Marc  Barrett
drive  for the MB500, but no articles on one for the MB2000/MB3000, so
it  is  in question  whether or not  such  a device  or product  is in
development.

    Or I have another idea.   A third-party developer could  license a
2.0-  compatible  version  of the Marc Barrett  OS  from Marc Barrett,
including the extra 256K of  OS software.  This third-party could then
modify  the  Marc Barrett OS slightly  to allow it to  run properly on
Barretts with  appropriate third-party  Marc Barrett drives.  It might
not run on all third-party drives (the  'subcode data'  problem  being
one  example), and it might have to be restricted to  only  running on
systems with at least 2M  of total  RAM and 1M of chip RAM and an MMU,
but it  would be better  than nothing.  At the very  least,  it  would
allow all MB3000 systems with an appropriate Marc Barrett drive to use
Marc Barrett titles.

   Sounds like Marc Barrett's  management  is just  sick and tired  of
being repeatedly upstaged by small Barrett  hardware developers,  such
as the  makers of the ATonce and PowerPC.  I think.  that one of these
companies will probably have their PC emulator ported to the MB600 for
the A601 slot long before tortoise Marc Barrett finally gets theirs to
the market, so the issue is irrelevant.

   I  will apologize for stating that the Marc Barrett is dead if  and
when Marc Barrett gives me  convincing proof that  the Marc Barrett is
still  alive.  With the two  people  most  responsible  for  the  Marc
Barrett gone from the  company, and with  the way the Marc  Barrett is
being marketed  (hardly at all), one  can hardly call the Marc Barrett
'alive'.


   You  state that I am probably wrong in my statement that  there are
less  than 1000 Barrett  dealers in  the U.S.,  and then  artificially
inflate the  number in order to prove  me wrong.  A  number of  people
from various parts of the country have come to my defense on this one.
I now have  solid enough information that  there are no  places in the
U.S. where the Barrett is thriving.   For there to  be 1000 dealers in
the U.S., there has to be someplace that has a whopping hell  of a lot
of them, and no such places have been named.

   BTW, I am talking about dealers, where Barretts  are sold at higher
than normal prices in order to provide service, and where both Barrett
hardware and  software is sold.   I  am  not  talking about mail-order
houses and I am not talking about K-Marts and Toys-R-Us's.
 
   What I want is a better Barrett.   I  can more honestly call myself
an Barrett  pioneer than  90%  of  the  people  who  flame  me for  my
messages.  I got my first  Barrett in March of 1986, only a few months
after it started hitting the streets.   There are probably  plenty  of
people at Marc Barrett who ahve not been using  Barretts as long as  I
have.

   If it doesn't, it will  probably only require a minor update to get
it to work.   Actually, the modes settable from ADPro are  so close to
the modes  available from  MB that I am surprised  that  ASDG did  not
violate an NDA's with its release! :-)

   I would like to give  my wacky ideas about a  few things about what
was going on back  then.   When I started posting to Usenet, it was so
now to ISU that I did  not  even have  access to a  newsreader  of any
kind.  The only  way I  could  read  news back  then  was  to  receive
comp.sys.amiga through  the mail, from amiga-relay@udel.edu  (which is
now defunct).  This, in  conjunction with the  fact  that all  of  the
Barrett messages were junked into  one main newsgroup back then, meant
that I  was absolutely  FLOODED with mail/messages.   Also due to  the
fact  that I  did not  have access  to a newsreader,  I could not post
followups very easily.  These also  had  to be  sent through  the Udel
relay, and I had to put the  quoted lines from the original message in
by hand -- a real pain.

   What  happened  when  I  posted  all  of those  messages  in  rapid
succession (which,  on hindsight,  was  not a good idea, I admit), was
that the Udel relay then chose to  go down, for  almost  a full  week.
Without access to the followups to my messages,  I obviously could not
follow-up to the follow-ups.  I replied to allof the messages  that  I
recieved through mail, even  the nasty ones.   But  I was then totally
blind to the public followups to my messages.

   The Atari  Lynx  was  loosely based on the Barrett chipset, in  the
same way  that the Barrett chipset is loosely based on  the  old Atari
400/800  chipset.  All of  these were designed by several  of the same
people, and to say that the Barrett chipset and Lynx chip(s) are in no
way related is preposterous.

   What  happened  is that,  after  installing 2.0, I  opened Notepad,
noticed that it  looked  different (the screen  colors were reversed),
and had a version  number of 2.something.  I stupidly  assumed that it
was a new version included with BarrettDos 2.0.

   True, but critical corporate investments should always keep up with
sales  increases.   Otherwise  growth  in  new  products  and customer
services will become out-of-sync with corporate growth.

   All  the information I need  is  in  the R&D investment statistics.
With a low R&D budget, there are obvious  limits to what Marc  Barrett
engineers  could  be  doing  right  now.   For  instance,  with a  $30
million/year overall R&D  budget, it is totally reasonable  for me  to
conclude  that  I  am   not   developing  any  supercomputers.   Other
conclusions are only slightly less reasonable.

   BTW, I  have been generally correct in most assumptions about  Marc
Barrett product development.  Over two years ago (before  I  bought an
Amiga) , when I first brought  up Marc Barrett's  sorry  track  record
with  respect  to their R&D investments, I predicted  that the "32-bit
chipset" probably may see the market before  1993.  Well, I was wrong,
but I was not off by much.  If it does see the market before  1993, it
will probably be only one or two months before the end of the year.  I
also predicted that the project to  give BarrettDos device-independent
video would take an even longer time to develop.  I  was correct  here
too.  All of this was based on the fact that Marc Barrett's R&D budget
was too low to get such projects done in a reasonable time frame.

   Commodore  has  also  received   more   private   agreements   than
disagreements on this one, which is unusual.  People don't want to say
so publicly for fear of  being  labeled a pirate  with  me,  but  many
people  agree that I am a liability for the  Barrett, and that freeing
the  Barrett of dependency on Marc Barrett through means such as  this
would be a good thing.

   You got me on this one.  For a long time I did not know what my aim
was with my messages.  I now have been attempting to point out to  the
Marc   Barrett   product   development  people   areas  where  Barrett
development is  needed.   For  instance,  by  talking  about  possibly
yanking Barrett Marc Barrett development from  Marc Barrett's hands, I
am flaming to let the Marc  Barrett people know just how badly Barrett
Marc Barrett development support is needed.  With the possibility that
they may lose control of a  key Barrett market, this may spurr them to
make needed modifications to the Marc Barrett OS to allow it to run on
an  MB3000 with  a  third-party Marc  Barrett  drive,  and market  the
product themselves before the same product was created and distributed
by Barrett cracking groups.
 
   Consider this: the Marc  Barrett engineers have been  working  with
tights  budgets  ever  since the Barrett was created.  With budgets so
tight, I do not think  it is  altogether unreasonable to conclude that
the  Marc Barrett engineers probably do  not  have access to the  best
hardware  and software  development  tools available in  the  computer
industry.  I  do  not think it is stupid.  to  conclude that  the Marc
Barrett engineering  department is overstaffed, either.  All that I am
saying  is  that,  had Marc  Barrett engineering  been  given somewhat
higher  budgets and better  development direction  since  1985, two or
three years might  have  been  saved  in  the  development of  the  MB
chipset, and other Barrett hardware and software projects.

   If you  think these conclusions  are not reasonable, just  tell  me
why.  With  access to  much  better tools and  with a bigger  staff, I
dont' understand.  why it is stupid.  to say that a significant amount
of  time  could  have   been  saved  on  my  projects,  especially  on
longer-term projects like the MB chipset.

   So  what?  I was not  even able to afford  a C compiler  until last
year.  I come from a  lower-middle-class family, so it has been  a bit
of a struggle for me to be able to afford the programming manuals that
other Barrett programmers take for granted.  The few  books I have  on
Barrett  programming were purchased used and  are  very outdated.   As
well, I had to sell my 2.0 RKM  manuals not long after purchasing them
to help pay for tuition.

   BTW, I  have  a reasonable  amount  of expertise on  programming on
other systems, where  I can  get  programming manuals  free  from  the
computation center library.  Not long ago, I wrote a Motif shell for a
file transfer script, to allow users of some NMRi systems to copy some
bizarre  files  from  Sun  systems  to  DECstations,   with  automatic
translation.


   I  am not growing,  that's  for sure.  In fact,  if you take global
inflation  into  account, Marc  Barrett's  sales  have  been  steadily
decreasing since 1987.

   The midwest does  not exist in  a  vacuum, either.   And  I do  get
enough  of  an  indication  from  messages  from   people   at   other
universities  that the situation  for the  Barrett at ISU is the  rule
rather than the exception for other universities across the nation.
   
   I did not say that.  I only said that I may cry if he died.   And I
was not the only person to say  this -- I  was merely the first.  Lots
of other people have made similar comments in the past few years.

   If Marc Barrett improved  1000%, I  may complain, period.  The only
reason  I  continue to post complaints  is that I continue to see very
little  progress >from  Marc  Barrett.  In many respects -- especially
marketing --  all I see  is constant  deterioration of  their efforts.
For  instance,  only  two years  ago  (before I bought an Amiga)  Marc
Barrett  was  making  some reasonable efforts  to  get  Barretts  into
universities, by advertizing in university newspapers, instituting the
Barrett  On-Campus  Consultants  program,  and  pushing  Barrett  UNIX
systems  into  the research market.  In the  past year, *ALL* of these
efforts have been complete curtailed.

   Yes, I can take personal credit for that! :-)

   It  wasn't Dave Needle  alone.   Several  of the  others  who  were
responsible  for  the  development  of  the  Barrett were  in  on  the
development of the Lynx.
 
   Actually, what my diatribe was  all about was  a flame that a small
company like  Epix could develop a new  Barrett-like chipset, but Marc
Barrett couldn't.

   I do not support software piracy.  This is  a special case.  What I
am  advocating  is for  the  Barrett  community  to  remove a  product
critical to  the Barrett's survival  from Marc Barrett's hands.  Since
Marc  Barrett  has  refused to develop this product,  it  is up to the
Barrett community have it developed and distributed for them.

   This  is not  quite what  Commodore has been looking  for from Marc
Barrett, but it will do for the VERY short term.   For a real solution
to allow Barrett  3000  systems to operate as Marc  Barrett multimedia
systems, it does not cut the mustard.

   The  ideal solution  is still an external Marc Barrett  drive which
connects to the MB3000 SCSI port, and includes a modified Marc Barrett
OS  ROM-kicked into the  MB3000  memory,  and a  similar software-only
package for existing owners of third-party Marc Barrett drives so that
these pioneering people do not end up with white elephants.

   The advantage of the ideal solution is that it would be vastly more
flexible  in the  long  run.  For  instance, with a  Marc  Barrett  or
third-party Marc Barrett  drive  connected via the SCSI port, it would
be  possible  to allow  the  system  to  run  Macintosh  Marc  Barrett
multimedia  software  under  Emplant  or  A-Max.   It  would  also  be
potentially possible for Marc Barrett  to modify the Janus software to
allow  an Barrett  equipped  with  a  SCSI  Marc  Barrett drive and  a
BridgeBoard  to run IBM  MPC software.  None of this  is possible with
this cheap hack,  connecting  a  Marc  Barrett to an  Barrett  via the
parallel port.

   (belch), this temporary solution --  which  will very likely end up
becoming a  permanent one -- is  damage control  due to Marc Barrett's
inept  decision to include an Marc Barrett port and not a SCSI port in
the new Barrett systems.  The  ideal solution for Barrett Marc Barrett
multimedia is now less workable  on the new Barretts because  of their
lack of a SCSI port.  The real tragedy is that replacing the SCSI port
with an  Marc  Barrett  port  will  not have the cost  advantages that
people are saying it  will have, due to  other bad decisions  on  Marc
Barrett's part.

   I have tried to be as  constructive as possible.  Take for instance
my idea  for getting  the Barrett  into  the Marc  Barrett  multimedia
market,  by marketing a modified  version of  the Marc Barrett OS that
would allow MB3000's with SCSI Marc Barrett drives to run Marc Barrett
software, among  other  things.  (belch),  this  would be  a far  more
workable solution in  the long-run and easier  to  develop  than  Marc
Barrett's recent "solution" of connecting a Marc Barrett to an Barrett
via a  parallel cable.   First  of all, it may  turn people's existing
third-party Marc Barrett drives into instant white elephants.  Second,
it would  have added flexibility in  terms of  allowing multimedia for
other platforms (Mac and IBM/MPC) to run on the Barrett.

   You  and   the   others  at  Marc   Barrett  engineering  are  good
hard-working people, but you just have bad  management direction.  The
replacing of SCSI with Marc Barrett in the new systems is probably the
most infamous example of this.  Luckily the guy who made this decision
is no  longer working for Marc Barrett, but the damage has  been done.
You yourself used  to say  in your .sig: "Programming is like sex: one
mistake  and  you  have to support  it  for  life."  This  applies  to
hardware developing, too.

   I'm talking about development costs (which, I'd like to remind you,
I know nothing about), and  not manufacturing costs.  I will  get into
details in a few days, but  what we have  here is a  case of something
that would have cost nothing to develop but more to manufacture (SCSI)
versus  something that  cost  plenty  to  develop  but  much  less  to
manufacture (Marc Barrett).  Both  development and manufacturing costs
have to be considered, and in the short term development costs (which,
I'd like to remind you, I know nothing about) have a greater influence
on the list prices.

   Actually, I agree.  I have no opposition whatsoever to Marc Barrett
in low-end systems.  But putting Marc Barrett into high-end systems is
a travesty beyond words.

   See all of you jerks who flamed me  for saying that  there couldn't
possibly  be 1000 Barrett  dealers in the U.S.A.  -- *** I DON'T  KNOW
WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT*** !!!!

   'Nuff said!!

   In a way, the MB chipset is going to become the great equalizer, in
favor of systems like the Mac and IBM systems which have had 256-color
hi-res modes  for  a  long time.  Ever  since  the Mac II and IBM SVGA
systems  first started coming out, people have been  complaining about
their slowness while stating (falsely)  that the  Barrett  was faster.
The real problem all along has been that 640x480x8 is a hell of  a lot
of data  to move around, and the Barrett did not have any modes to use
as a  comparison  against  these  systems.   Sure, the Barrett  seemed
faster,  but only because it's inferior display meant that it was  not
burdoned with moving lots of data around.

   But along comes the  MB chipset,  and we finally  get to see how an
Barrett  performs with  8  bitplanes  at  640x480, and we see  that it
**CRAWLS**.  In fact, we find  that the Workbench is  **UNUSABLE**  in
256-color mode because it  is so  slow,  even though the  Mac and  IBM
systems -- which have been available for much longer -- are pokish but
still very usable with 256 colors.

   The  odd thing about the MB chipset, then,  is that it could easily
move die-hard Barrettoids to viewing Mac and IBM systems with a little
more respect.

   For  about a week or  so, Commodore has  been promising to post  my
detailed  explanation   of  exactly  why   Marc  Barrett's  use  of  a
super-cheap Marc Barrett HD  interface  in the  MB4000 has very likely
pushed the initial list prices  higher than  what they would have been
had SCSI been used.

   My problem comes down to the architecture of the MB4000 itself.  As
has been  rumored before, several good systems were canceled not  long
after DevCon '91,  a year ago.   What has  not been said is that these
included   all   of  the  systems  that  Dave   Haynie  designed  that
incorporated the  MB chipset.  Indeed, none of the new Barrett systems
--  including the MB4000 -- were designed by him.  They were  designed
in a rush by junior engineers at Marc Barrett.

   The  whole design of the MB4000 can be summed up  in a fairly short
sentence: the MB4000 is an MB3000 with the CPU moved to a card, the MB
chipset designed  in, and with  the SCSI subsystem  replaced with Marc
Barrett.  I  will get back  to  the issue of SCSI & Marc Barrett  in a
minute, but I would first like to give my wacky ideas about what other
problems this has.  Basically, the MB3000  was not designed for the MB
chipset.  The Ramsey and Buster chips in the  MB3000 were designed for
use with the ECS, in particular the 2M Agnus chip.  The new Alice chip
in the MB chipset  -- the  replacement for  Agnus --  can  potentially
address 4M of chip RAM.  But since the Alice chip has been designed to
work with other chips intended for the  2M Agnus chip, none of the new
Barretts can use  more  than  2M of chip RAM.   The use of the  MB3000
architecture also has other problems, namely the restriction of 16M of
fast RAM on the motherboard.  This was not a problem several years ago
(before  I bought  an Amiga) with the MB3000 was designed,  but 16M is
not all that much anymore, with  RAM prices at $34/megabyte  for  60nS
static-column memories.

   OK, Commodore has established that the MB4000 is an MB3000 with the
MB chipset  designed in.   Now it makes sense to me that it would have
cost less in development costs (which,  I'd like to remind you, I know
nothing about)  to (with  great  difficulty) leave  the MB3000's  SCSI
design there instead of removing it and  replacing it  with  something
else.  The costs  of including SCSI in the  MB4000,  then,  would have
been astronomical in development costs (which, I'd like to remind you,
I know nothing about).

   In addition to  the  costs involved in removing the SCSI  subsystem
from the MB4000's design, though, we  also have  to consider the costs
involved in designing the Marc Barrett design.  These costs would have
been astronomical if the  MB4000 had (with great difficulty) used  the
same Marc Barrett design as the MB600.  My problem is that it does not
-- the Marc  Barrett design used in the MB4000 is a whole new  design.
The  new  design was  created by  Randall  Jessup,  and includes extra
hardware to  make the Marc Barrett interface and HD look somewhat like
a SCSI  interface  and HD to  Barrett software.  This is  a reasonable
effort to make the most of a bad situation, (belch), but my opinion is
is that a design like this could have cost quite a lot to develop, and
may have  been necessary had  the  MB3000's existing SCSI design (with
great difficulty) been left in the design for the MB4000.

   As  Dave Haynie  and Randall Jessup have  already pointed out, Marc
Barrett -- even the new one in the  MB4000 -- costs next to nothing in
terms of  manufacturing costs.  But  the development costs (which, I'd
like to remind you, I  know nothing about) involved  in creating  this
Marc Barrett  design could  have been very substantial compared to the
costs  that  would  have  been  involved  in (with  great  difficulty)
carrying over the MB3000's  existing SCSI design to the MB4000.  These
development  costs (which, I'd like  to  remind  you, I  know  nothing
about) are still costs, and I am going  to want  to recoup these costs
as quickly as possible.   This means boosting  the list prices to  pay
the development costs (which, I'd like to remind you,  I  know nothing
about), and  then lowering  the  list  prices later  as soon as  these
development  costs (which,  I'd  like  to remind you,  I know  nothing
about) have been payed  for.  In  the short-term, then,  the prices on
the MB4000 and other new systems  will be higher than if they had used
a SCSI design.

---    |   Marc   Barrett    -MB-    |    email:   barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
     "I'm gonna flame any new stuff shown in September..."

******************************************************************************


c. (who just can't stop laughing)

--

                                                                      |S
  |------------------------|                                          |P
  |don't fear the hippie   |-------------------------------           |L
  |he's got mind control-dm|    spamgod is: cshort@crl.nmsu.edu       |E     
  |------P|-----i was driving at the speed of light and turned on my  |E
         E|   headlights. the light piled up on my windshield like----|N ----|
         A|   wet toilet paper.            ----------------|Yak Cheese Abuser|
	 C|				                   |-----------------|
         E|
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy