From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Subject: Re: Amiga sightings and other things positive.
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:07:58 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.073026.6604@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au> davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn) writes:
>In article <1992Nov8.192504.6710@ra.msstate.edu> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
< request for advocacy deleted >
>
>Yes, please!  I haven't been posting much recently, because there just hasn't
>been anything worth talking about.  That's a bit hard to understand, because
>surely the things we've been waiting for and arguing over for so long are
>finally happening.

A bit hard to believe, isn't it?  :-)  It was only a few months ago that the
future of the Amiga was the darkest ever, but Commodore seems to have finally
pulled its collective head out of its ass and is doing something for a change.

>Consider - we were disillusioned because nothing seemed to be happening, and
>it seemed that Commodore might give up on the Amiga altogether.  Things were
>so bad that I almost bought a 486!  Our much vaunted graphics were being
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Me too, but thankfully I'll only have to suffer with one at work.

>passed by SVGA, but now we're back up there.  Price/performance was looking
>bad compared to PCs, but Commodore suprised us by making the A4000 the least
>expensive (as opposed to PC-style "cheap") '040 machine on the market.  But,

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

>people complained, we still needed a cheap (but not nasty) low-end 32-bit AGA
>machine to compete with $1000 386's.  Commodore delivered, with a well 
>designed system that's more expandable that I'd expected.  Then, there's been

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.

>lots of clamouring for DIG/RTG.  What do we see?  No hardware registers being
>detailed on AGA and definite moves in the right direction in the way the 
>graphics library was extended in 3.0, in addition to the display database 

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.

>introduced in 2.0.  And, it used to appear that Commodore didn't have a plan.
>That's a bit hard to say after the WOC Pasedena talk.  What's more, with their
>current releases, it looks like they're not just spewing vapour - it look like
>they can deliver.  Heck, C= are even advertising in non-C= mags!

I've seen a few of their ads, but it would be nice if they could advertise
in some of the magazines with wider distribution.  Heck, I'd even like to 
see them advertise the A600 and A1200 in the various console mags.  Perhaps
an advertisement telling kids that they could buy an Amiga and learn to
program cool stuff instead of just vegging out watching it like the bozos
who buy SNES and Sega systems.  Kids today would probably react better to
an ad like that than to one that simply told them what neat software was
available.

>I think things are looking better for the Amiga than they have since it was
>introduced, so why isn't there any advocacy happening?  Beats me...

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?  

>>In other matters, I will be the proud owner of an A4000 in a day or so and
>>will be showing it along with an A3000 and Toaster equipped A2000 at the
>>campus computer fair.  Apple, IBM, SGI, and hordes of Clones will be on hand 
>>with their latest wares and we want the Amiga to look good next to them.  We
>>contacted Commodore last year and asked them to send us brochures and any
>>other sort of promotional material, but they sent next to nothing.  :-(
>
>Well, I guess, despite what I said above, Commodore is still Commodore.
>Hopefully the machines you're showing can speak for themselves.  Amigas used
>to sell that way...

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

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.  Last year the boys from SGI
were showing an Indigo that was impressive, but we managed to draw a larger
crowd.  An SGI rep was certain that we had a Toaster in the A2000 and was
quite surprised that it only had a genlock.  :-)

>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)

Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu



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