HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: root@rkamiga.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re:   Educational Software/CDTV
Distribution: world
Date: 11 Dec 92 18:43:36 EST
Organization: Rick's Amiga

In article <Paula_Lieberman.07gs@amicol.UUCP> Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman) writes:
>re article by Rick Kelly: Lincoln Lab has Macs because some admin type
>wanted them to do pretty graphics stuff, and the admin types rule. 
>However, one friend told me about the waste of ten hours of engineering
>time when a bunch of engineers stood around getting Error Number 6 or
>some such, which there was -no- documentation for, and which phonecalls to
>Tech Support did not provide fast response and explanation of, when trying
>to print.  My friend fumed as he related the story -- "If it was an MS-DOS
>machine I could have DONE something and at least looked at the file, or had
>some tools to deal with the situation!"   By the way, the programs he uses
>he had to port over from a mainframe to IBM PC compatibles -- the
>engineering work there apparently uses PC clones where some degree of oomph
>is required, and then if more ooomph is required, either in go the DSP
>boards, or in come Suns and Hewlett-Packard workstations, and in go the
>array processor boards in -them-. 

Lincoln Lab has a deal with Apple to get Macs at a reduced price.  Also,
Appletalk is very cheap for sending email, etc.  I know some engineers
there who have to use them, and complain bitterly about how they crash
all the time when they are writing reports.  Many of the engineers would
like to have multiprocessor mini-supercomputers for doing BIONET research
and other cruncher type problems.  Desktop systems, RISC or otherwise,
aren't up to the job.

>THe other thing is that Lincoln Lab's part of MIT, and the MIT
>administrative offices are loaded with Macs.  However, what I saw people at
>night in offices doing engineering work over in Building 1, in the Civil
>Engineering Department, going to a BCA Amiga meeting held over in that
>building, were PC clones, a roomfull of them in use.  What you hear from
>media hype usually isn't the whole story.   

MIT has an endowment, Lincoln Labs buy their equipment from the proceeds
from the now dwindling supply of government contracts.

>There are rumors that some number of Amigas are in use over at MIT, by the
>way, despite rumors that they're their despite, not because of Commodore. 
>Th Macs got there becasue Apple GAVE MIT a bunch of them.  IBM and Digital
>gave MIT a fortune in workstations.  Commodore, goes the rumor, wouldn't
>even provide part of a support person if MIT BOUGHT machines.

The Media Lab and GNU both have Amigas.

--
Rick Kelly		Rick's Amiga		Framingham, Mass.

		think!unixland!rmkhome!rkamiga!root
From: cg18ffl@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (Spumoni...)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dans uploaded OS/2 Screens SUCK!
Date: 15 Dec 92 21:09:01 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <1992Dec15.135043.26904@usl.edu> das9674@usl.edu (Stephenson Daniel A) writes:
>Okay, does anyone else have any enlightened opinions?  All this shouting
>about desktops, I uploaded some to usl.edu in /pub, and I have yet to
>hear of any WB2 *****.gifs***** being uploaded anywhere. Well?  Well?
>
>Mr. Greene, perhaps you could make some WPS captures and enlighten these
>ignorant masses? :-)
>--
>Dan Stephenson                                                das9674@usl.edu  
>"There once was a Lady from Hyde/who ate some bad apples and died/but while
>we lamented/the apples fermented/making cider inside her inside!" 
>                        -Member of the Court, Texas Renaissance Festival  

I took a look at your screenshots, and I thought they looked alright, with the
exception of that last one there with the fractal. That one was butt-ugly. I
viewed the other ones and pulled the screen down to view my WB setup behind
that. I'll say that the shading and junk on your windows was a bit more nicely
done than an mine (I am running WB 2.1), but your screen size was really
lousy. I say this because I run by WB in overscanned 700X498, and as a
consequence standard 600X480 looks kind of skinny.
	I know. You could grab them in 1024X768X8 (you know, the resolution
that Amiga can't display <snort>) and then complain that you were getting
short-changed because you couldn't show your kick-butt setup to Amigans
because they were running obsolete machines with an ugly non-standard UI
blahblahblah. :)
	Can't you find a utility to convert IFF>GIF? Or- find a pic viewer
that supports directly showing IFF. The view program that I scraped up
directly supports showing GIFs (w/out conversion), so seeing that OS/2 is the
functional equivalent of AmigaDOS, finding a prog like this should be easy.
(I'm not trying to raise anyone's ire, "Bullshit. OS/2 is obviously better
than Workbench..." but I am just asking an innocent question. Calm yer 
hormones) Otherwise your asking people to do work on your behalf, and you know
how people are about that.


--------------------------------
...2000/2.04
...nverenin@sdcc13.ucsd.edu

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun)
Subject: Re: Breathtaking *New* Machine/NTG
Organization: City University, London
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 18:35:59 GMT

tmc@spartan.ac.BrockU.CA (Tim Ciceran) writes:
>In article <tonyc.0l40@cryo.rain.com> tonyc@cryo.rain.com (Tony Campbell)
>writes:
> 
>>He would not be happen to referring to Electronics Arts spin off '3DO',
>>would he?
> 
>>This machine is supposed to be a 32bit RISC based machine using CD-ROM
>>software featuring 3D anims and full motion video.  Also predicted to be
>>available next year for under $700.

Make it a CISC instead of RISC and don't you get an AGA CDTV?

--
  ________  Lionel Tun, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk  ________
 / /_  __/\       Computer Vision Group      /\ \__  _\
/___/_/_/\/ City University, London EC1V 0HB \ \___\_\_\
\___\_\_\/        071-477 8000 ext 3889       \/___/_/_/
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.advocacy:31716 comp.sys.amiga.misc:18789
From: TomK@cup.portal.com (Tom R Krotchko)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Don't let the Amiga Die (Part II)!!!
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 19:22:23 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <1992Dec11.214131.8365@usl.edu> <Bz7n5o.Hz@NeoSoft.com>
  <BzFHqD.45B@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>

>#2.At least a DOS program under OS/2 cannot grab hold of the whole
>machine, an Amiga program can.

Here's a way to "grab hold" of an OS/2 machine from a DOS session
(there are many ways, but I'll spare you all the horror stories):

Install America On-Online Software. Run it from a DOS session.
Let me know what happens.

>#3.If I decide to cancel my terminal communication and run the DOS
>game alone, it will probably end up being a better game then an Amiga
>user's wet dream!

Meaning that you're excited by terminal software? Hey, different
strokes...


TomK@cup.portal.com
Tom Krotchko
From: Ty_Sarna@fcircus.sat.tx.us (Ty Sarna)
Subject: Re: 300 MIP Amiga
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
X-NewsSoftware: BBX-UMB 0.27a beta (Nov 30 1992)
Date: 12 Dec 92 18:16:57 CST
Organization: The Flying Circus Amiga BBX, San Antonio, Texas


In <1992Dec12.013640.20899@grebyn.com>, richk@grebyn.com (Richard Krehbiel) writes:
> Of course, Dhrystone is too simple to be a good benchmark; modern
> compilers' optimizers can almost make the whole program go away.  The
> correct benchmarks to use these days is Specmarks, which tries to
> measure the performance of doing something really significant...

I know one comiler vendor who tunes their optimizer for Dhrystone.
In fact, it looks specificly for Dhrystone-like parse trees and knocks
out huge whacks of code that it otherwise wouldn't be smart enough to
optimize that well.

The best benchmark is always the applications you need to run.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::    Ty Sarna, Postmaster       The Flying Circus BBX, San Antonio, TX ::
:: Ty_Sarna@fcircus.sat.tx.us      512/697-9134 (USRobotics Dual Std)   ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The glorious merits of MS-DOS:
From: jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz (John Bickers)
Date: 17 Dec 92 08:34:36 PST
Organization: TAP

Quoted from <1992Dec7.222746.29122@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> by jerry@occam (Jerry Shekhel):

> No, it's the arcade game freaks who have migrated to the consoles.

    And it's not all of them either, witness Llamatron and hopefully
    Uridium II.

> | JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | Molecular Simulations Inc. | Time just fades the pages |
--
*** John Bickers, TAP.                   jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz ***
***    "Radioactivity - It's in the air, for you and me" - Kraftwerk    ***
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 04:21:29 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.220919.23721@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Skip Sauls (skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu) wrote:
>: >
>: >Yeah, you're right, Skip.  I've got OS/2 and UNIX here, X-Windows, GNU
>: >compilers, editors, and utilities, sound, applications that you can only
>: >dream about, multitasking, virtual memory, memory protection, device
>: >independence, etc.  I *really* feel crippled :-)
>
>Nice try to change the subject, Skip.  Read my comments above, and tell me,
>how is my machine crippled?  How come I don't notice it, and I'm not exactly
>a beginner myself?

You'd notice that an ISA machine running Unix is crippled if you had a
486 machine designed to run Unix (i.e. _not_ IBM compatible) to compare it
to.  We used to have a Prime 386-based Unix box.  It was not a clone, and
DOS was not available for it.  It just didn't have the right architecture,
in terms of interrupts and DMA channels to allow DOS software to run.  It
ran rings around 386 boxes we had running SCO Xenix/386 at the time, even
though Xenix should have been leaner and meaner than the SVR3 on the Prime.

I don't know of any non-IBM compatible 486 boxes these days.  If someone
wanted to build a dedicated Unix system, and not worry about DOS compatibility,
they wouldn't use a 486 these days.  However, when you compare a 486 PC
running SVR4 to, say, a SPARCstation running SunOS, the SPARC feels faster.
It seems more comfortable - more within its self.  That's despite the fact
that, in terms of raw CPU (integer) speed, a fast 486 is as fast as a 
SPARCstation 2.  The difference is system architecture.  There's more to
system speed than CPU alone, and ISA PCs suffer by comparison.

That's one of the reasons I stick with Amigas - they're a more complete
system design.

>Did I say anything about your computer-awareness?  I merely disputed your
>claim about 32-bit ISA-bus machines being somehow "crippled".

If you have both video and disk sitting on that ISA-bus in a 32-bit system,
they are crippled.  Definitely.

>I didn't assume anything about you; I read your comments and it was obvious.
>You talk as if ISA is all that's available.  Wake up.  LocalBus is available
>for a premium of about $30, and EISA for another $100.  Even so, my next
>machine is going to be 486 ISA.  Why?  I just don't feel the need for faster
>video or disk performance, and this way I don't have to get a new video card
>or disk controller -- just a new motherboard.

No one ever said that a crippled ISA machine is inadequate for you.  They
do most people just fine, sure.  I could get by with one myself, but I'd
prefer something better.  Like an A4000.

>| JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | Molecular Simulations Inc. | Time just fades the pages |

-- 
David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...
Currently residing in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Date: 15 Dec 92 05:14:34 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <ByuyJ7.G5H@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>In article <bn.00w5@mndcrme.uoknor.edu> bn@mndcrme.uoknor.edu (Bo Najdrovsky) writes:
>>    Well, holding breath might be a bit too  much,  but  in  Pasadena,	Lew
>>Eggerbrecht made it quite clear that the chip design has been significantly
>>expedited.

>   I would like to know what has changed all of a sudden to make this at all
>possible.  

Nothing really.  It's always been possible.

>Even when Commodore's R&D investments were higher, it took Commodore **SEVEN 
>YEARS** to develop the AGA chipset, 

It took about 2.5 years from concept to shipping for AGA.  Something 
significantly more sophisticated might take longer, though part of AGA's problem
was being based on the ECS chipset, at least in part.
-- 
Dave Haynie / Commodore Technology, High-End Amiga Systems Design (cool stuff)
 "The Crew That Never Rests"  {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh   BIX: hazy
		SCIENCE:	"I'll believe it when I see it"  
		RELIGION:	"I'll see it when I believe it"
From: andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipset
Date: 19 Dec 92 00:39:20 GMT
Reply-To: andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel)
Organization: Flying Cat, Inc.

In article <BzFyvK.127@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) 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
>no longer work.  A real Amiga virtual memory solution has to be supported
>by Commodore.

Well, you continue to surpass my expectations in whining and complaining,
making things up, and adopting stupid points of view just to have something
to flame about.

Prediction:  if Commodore came out with a VM system tommorow you'd
	1) complain it wasn't memory protection
	2) complain it was different that Gigamem.
	3) complain it was way late.

Naturally, since you probably still use 1.2/1.3 on a single floppy drive
A500, and your mom won't let you touch her A3000 any more, the VM
question doesn't actually affect you.  But you'd still flame about it.

Second:  In this flame, you've apparently decided that only software
by the computer manufacturer is acceptable to purchase.  After all, it
only works today....tommorow Apple could release system 8...
all the graphics accelerator cards could stop working.  Microsoft could
release MSDOS 6.5 and Stacker could break.  So you're saying
only buy Apple software for Macs, Microsoft software for MSDOS machines,
AT&T software for Unix, and so on.


I just gain more respect for the ISU computer science department every 
time you post :-)

			andy
-- 
andy finkel		andy@cbmvax.commodore.com

"Unix is the Operating System of the future, and always will be."

Any expressed opinions are mine; but feel free to share.
I disclaim all responsibilities, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.
From: Ty_Sarna@fcircus.sat.tx.us (Ty Sarna)
Subject: Re: RISC Amiga
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
X-NewsSoftware: BBX-UMB 0.27a beta (Nov 30 1992)
Date: 19 Dec 92 19:57:59 CST
Organization: The Flying Circus Amiga BBX, San Antonio, Texas


In <BzH6CL.44H@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>, papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
> Why are you so excited about moving to an overpriced RISC workstation
> with an Amiga logo on it 2 or 3 years in the future?  Amiga hardware
>[...]
> starts making high end incompatible workstations, they are just another
> workstation vendor.
> 
> And 95% of us can't afford high end workstations *ANYWAYS*.

You're missing a basic point here.  The high end becomes the low end. 
Sitting beside me is a Sun 3/60, a 20MHz '020 based machine.  A few
years ago it was a "high end workstation", and sold for over $25,000 in
the same configuration that I bought recently for less than $2000.  It's
now average by Amiga standards. 

C= needs to start working towards the performance of today's high end
workstations, because a few years from now that's where the low end will
be. C= needs to move ahead to compete.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::    Ty Sarna, Postmaster       The Flying Circus BBX, San Antonio, TX ::
:: Ty_Sarna@fcircus.sat.tx.us      512/697-9134 (USRobotics Dual Std)   ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: tmc@spartan.ac.BrockU.CA (Tim Ciceran)
Subject: Re: Why WordPerfect is no great loss 
Organization: Brock University, St. Catharines Ontario
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 04:52:32 GMT

In article <torrie.724116368@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu
(Evan Torrie) writes:

>>Unfortunately, the perception of the platform is often based entirely on
>>the availability of software from large developers...

>  If you really want availability of software from large developers, I
>would give WordPerfect a miss and implore Microsoft or Lotus to do an
>Amiga port.  Judging from the complete failure of WordPerfect in any
>GUI-based OS, it won't be long before WordPerfect is as much a
>laughing stock of the industry as WordStar is now.

While I'm sure some will vehemently deny it, Amiga development from 
Microsoft, Lotus or Borland for that matter would change things
significantly. The probability of WP returning to the platform is virtually
nill and given the insincerity of the original port, it would have a tough
time penetrating the market. If you thought the Mac implementation was
bad, you should see the Amiga release.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 23:45:50 GMT

>up for the fact that the PC is such a dog.  The sad thing is that Intel
>finally introduced a decent CPU with the 386 and 486 only to have the Clone
>makers cripple it with such a horrible bus.

That's why the PC has no less then 3 advanced 32 bit busses, and two 64
bit busses are being designed as we speak.

>Please explain to me why I want VM.  On every system that I have used, be
>it Windows, UNIX, or what have you, the performance has not been acceptable
>and the only remedy is to add more real memory.  If an Amiga is ever as 
>slow as a Clone running Windows with VM, I guarantee you will finally get
>the mass exodus that you have been hoping for.

There is no law that says that a computer with VM HAS to swap.  It
swaps when it needs to.  I would sure as hell rather have superflorous
crap paged to my hard drive, then have the OS tell me "sorry, I can't
do that, your memory is full."

For instance, I have programs that only get used once a day in memory.
Until time to "wake up" they are on the hard disk.  Sometimes I don't
want to close something I'm working on, so I just minimize it, and the
OS pages it to disk when I load something else.  I can have 20
different programs in memory, each taking a MB, even though I only have
8MB of RAM.  The other ones save my place perfectly.

If I need even better performance, I can close them, or even disallow
swapping.  But it's there when I need and want it.


>Viruses?  What viruses are you talking about?  I have used Amigas since
>early 1986 and have never encountered a single virus.  Yet they are a real 
>threat to Clones and to your precious Macs.  You must have a huge asshole
>to keep pulling all of this bullshit out of it.

They are not a threat to OS/2/Unix clones.  Not yet, at least, and
perhaps not for a long, long time.

>Don't be such a moron Marc.  When he said R&D, you know good and well
>that he meant hardware and not software.  If you think that the hordes
>of Clone makers are doing any R&D beyond playing catchup and cost-reduce,
>you are really stupid.  Even the Big Boys like IBM, Compaq, HP, DEC, and
>others are spending money redesigning their Clones to compete with the
>low-end crap that is killing the industry.

Compaq, IBM, HP and DEC are adding FEATURES to their PCS to compete
with the low-price, high performance niche vendors.  There is a big
difference.  Only a very small percentage of it is crap.



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: Dale_Adams@gateway.qm.apple.com (Dale Adams)
Subject: Re: Comdex/Quicktime released for the PC
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 14:05:13 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc.

In article <92347.032705MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> Mark 'Mark' Sachs 
<MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
> Yes, I've seen it. It scales the moving images to the size of the window,
> and dithers it if there aren't enough bitplanes for all the colors. This
> might be impressive if not for the fact that it ends up running so slow 
> (on a Mac Quadra!!) as to be essentially useless. The Amiga 500 I used to
> own animated full-screen up to sixty times faster than QuickTime on a 
> Quadra.
> I reiterate, sophisticated bells and whistles mean little when the 
> program does not accomplish its main function!

No, no, no.  QuickTime does much more than what you describe.  Please 
re-read Evan Torrie's remarks:

"  Oh no, not again.  Please, please, please, read some QuickTime 
developer's documentation.  QuickTime does far more than just bitblt
moving images to the screen."  

To which I'd add: Or resize them.  Or dither to a different pixel depth.

If you really want a reasonable technical description of everything 
QuickTime entails, please follow his advice and reference the developers' 
docs.

Also, I believe your numbers are a bit off.  Using QT 1.5 I run 320 x 240 
animations at 30 fps on my Quadra 950 on a 16 bit/pixel screen.  I doubt 
your A500 runs 60 times faster than that.  Running anims on your A500 
isn't doing what QT is doing.  If I just want a simple animation player, 
I'll use something like MacroMind Director/Accelerator.  Using this 
off-the-shelf software with no special tricks, my Q950 will animate at 
over 90 fps on a 640 x 480 8 bit/pixel display.

I do believe that you've seen QT running dog-slow on a Quadra.  Heck, I 
can make any machine run slow if is set things up right (wrong?).  I've 
seen many Mac dealers demoing Quadras with the 040 cache off and running 
all software from a CD-ROM.  Talk about crippling the machine!  It's easy 
to make things run slow.  The trick is to do things right.

- Dale Adams

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie)
Subject: Re: Educational Software/CDTV
Originator: torrie@Xenon.Stanford.EDU
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 11 Dec 92 23:00:56 GMT

Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman) writes:

>to print.  My friend fumed as he related the story -- "If it was an MS-DOS
>machine I could have DONE something and at least looked at the file, or had
>some tools to deal with the situation!"

  There are appropriate tools on the Mac side too.  ResEdit, MacsBug, 
TMON, MPW etc.  You've just got to know where to look.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu 
Embrace rationalism, reject superstition.           Break away from the past.
"...there is only one thing worse than having marketing people on a project,
 and that is having no marketing people on a project."  - Larry Tesler.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy