From: danaf@bray1a.its.rpi.edu (Frank R. Dana Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A4000 case design (was Re: Top 10 reasons why ...)
Date: 10 Nov 92 06:13:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: rpi.7qn1n-_
Reply-To: danaf@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

In article <1992Nov10.014313.16351@ra.msstate.edu>, skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
|> 
|> Any requests for particular pictures?  I'll try to get clear enough pics to
|> show the numbers/names on the chips and that sort of thing, but I can't
|> promise anything.  Also, if anyone is interested, I'll be happy to post the
|> part numbers and that sort of thing.

Well, I'm personally interested in seeing the internal architecture. Aesthetics
are secondary - exteriors (backplane excluded) are boring.

A nice shot of the (real) backplane, as up-close-and-personal as possible, 
would be really nice. But mostly, a LOT of shots of the interior, in every
possible level of expansion. Some ideas:

        1. An A4000 as empty as possible, with ALL daughterboards removed.
           Maybe, if you need to take it off anyway, you could even get a 
           shot with the power supply removed.... (maybe?)

	2. Close-ups of interesting sections of the motherboard, showing all
           of the neat custom chips and their relations to annoying, blocking
           things like the power supply. 
             (translation: if you have to remove the drive bays to get to
              all of the custom chips AGAIN, I'm going to be royally pissed.)

        3. A shot with JUST the bare factory configuration - power supply,
           CPU daughterboard, and slots daughterboard installed, and that's
           it.

        4. A shot with a few cards in the slots, if you plan to install any, 
           so that we can see how well things fit together into the system.

        5. A head-on shot with the cover OFF, to get a good look at the drive
           bays and their orientation.

These are just suggestions (you asked!), I don't mean to be pushy....

|> What format would be best?  The scanner is 24bit and I can use ADPro to
|> convert it to 16 color HiRes, 256 color GIF, JPG, or whatever.

GIFs would be nice, most of us can view them on UNIX systems, or with Amiga
viewers. (I just got a new one from amiga.physik... FastGIF10 or something...

I guess, if people bitch-and-moan, lacedHAM IFFs would be my second choice.
But nice, high-res GIFs would be preferable.

Please, if you're going to be scanning them in 24-bit color at those beautiful
high resolutions, don't throw away all of that detail and put up 16-color HiRes
NoLace IFFs! We can always convert down... but you can't convert up.

|> >AC surprised me, tho. Too bad we still don't have Amiga Sentry around to do
|> >a good in-depth look, or .info to give a good enduser perspective. 
|> 
|> Now that brings back some memories!  I loved not only their articles, but
|> also felt that their mag was the most stylish of the Amiga mags.  Anyone
|> remember the A3000 article?  It had a touched up PS/2 Model 80 on the cover
|> and described a machine with a few features still not found on the A4000.
|> If anyone was upset over the bogus A4000 articles, imagine how folks must
|> have felt about that one!

Really? I hadn't realized they went down that far!!! Jeez... I stopped getting
Amiga Sentry long before that... my reference is from the first issue (yes,
that's right, the black-and-white one...) to number thirtysomething. I never
saw the A3000 review. They were great before that... I got all of my info on
GVP products from the first few issues of AS, and they never steered me wrong.

(PS: Stylish? No. But AmigaWorld is stylish... and regularly 3 months behind.)

|> >|> Skip Sauls
|> >|> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
|> >
|> >-- 
|> >/////////////////////////[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
|> >(718)             (212)                        (516)             (518)
|> >=======Amiuser============Frank R. Dana, Jr.============Doc Ami=======     
|> >--------My opinions rarely reflect those of any sane person,----------
|> >	   living, dead, or undead... that's gonna CHANGE.
|> 
|> Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
|> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
|> 
|> 
|> 

-- 
/////////////////////////[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
(718)             (212)                        (516)             (518)
=======Amiuser============Frank R. Dana, Jr.============Doc Ami=======     
--------My opinions rarely reflect those of any sane person,----------
	   living, dead, or undead... that's gonna CHANGE.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy