From: jcjust01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu (J. Crazyrat Justen)
Subject: Pournelle (and Byte) strikes again!
Organization: University of Louisville
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 22:25:36 GMT


For those of you who won't see September BYTE until October...

The Amiga 3000T by Jerry Pournelle
(*most* spelling and grammatical mistakes are my own.)

This is a report, not a review.  I don't have the time or space to go into 
all the features of the Amiga 3000T and the new Amiga 2.0 operating system.
What I can do is give you some impressions and tell you why you might want 
to buy one.

The Amiga was the first personal computer with a practical multi-tasking
operating system.  It also had stunning visuals integrated with a good sound
system, so it was the first practical low-cost multimedia machine as well.  As
a result, it attracted quite a few users.  Most were hobbyists.  Some dropped
along the wayside, but a few, like my colorful friend Leo Schwab, became real
fanatics who thought themselves Keepers of the Sacred Flame.  They went around
denouncing IBM, which may or may not have helped get others to take the Amiga
seriously.

Others, like David Joiner and Joanne Dow - you can find them online in the
Amiga conference on BIX - were willing to overlook the machine's many and very
real defects: weird documentation - many of its best features weren't
documented at all, and they were passed along as folklore; a slow and insanely
dumb disk drive system; hokey error messages; a start-up system that was just
plain odd, involving a "Kickstart" and an icon-operated "Workbench," except
that power users could use a command system called a CLI (command-line
interface); mysterious terminology; and so forth.  Of course, some of these
were strengths rather than defects, but the early Amiga was so poorly
documented that many features were as confusing as bugs.  

There were a number of revisions, and promises of more, but over the years the
Amiga lost several chances to move up to real rivalry with the Mac.  On the
other hand, it's still here, with about a million units in the U.S. and perhaps
3 million worldwide;  and while sales aren't exactly leaping along, they're not
all that slow either.  The Amiga has found a definite niche and those who like
it, like it a lot.

Moreover, the new version of the operating system that is incorporated into the
3000T fixes most of the problems described above.  The floppy drive system is
still a bit weird, but it's no longer intolerably slow.  The hokey "Guru
Meditation" messages you got if there was a system crash are gone, and, even
better, so are the system crashes.  The new operating system boots up from ROM
and comes up when you turn on the machine:  no more two-stage
Kickstart-Workbench bootup.  The operating system has many features you won't
find in DOS systems, too.

For instance, quite good sound rendering is built in:  no sound board is needed
to get multimedia.  The ProWrite word processor (it's much like MacWrite in
use) will have the Amiga read the screen to you.  It does a surprisingly good
job, too.

Arexx, the Amiga version of the Rexx command programming language, is built
into the Amiga operating system.  Rexx is a very powerful language that lets
you build highly complex and useful software robots to handle such things as
communications and backup unattended; experienced Amiga users can do
astonishing things with it.

About the time you read this, there will be a new addition to the Amiga 3000T
operating system:  the ability to read DOS files directly.  That is already
installed on my system.  It makes text and source code transfers very easy. 
The 3000T I have has a high-density 3 1/2-inch drive; that's at present an
undocumented feature, but I presume Commodore will document and support it
soon.

The Amiga 3000T has full SCSI capability.  Attach any true SCSI device,
including a hard drive, and it ought to work just fine; no controller card is
needed.  We tested the Amiga's SCSI capability by connecting up the Palindrome
DAT (digital audiotape) drive that normally runs off a Future Domain controller
card.  There was nothing to it; just connect it up, put in a blank tape, and
bring up the backup program.

The current version of the backup program isn't very sophisticated:  it will do
only incremental backups to a new tape, otherwise only full backups on a
previously used tape.  On the other hand, it works just fine, and it's fast (at
least with DAT), so I can't complain.  It will restore single files or
/drawers/ (which is what directories are called on the Amiga).  We erased some
games and restored them from tape, and they ran as well as they ever did.  I am
told that any SCSI tape drive, such as those from Colorado Memory Systems, will
work with the Amiga.

The next test was CD-ROM drives.  First we tried a Denon drive (manufactured by
Sony), which is supposed to be true Mac-compatible SCSI.  It didn't work.  Then
we tried the Toshiba CD-ROM drive that came with the Corel Blockbuster package. 
That worked first crack.  The Denon drive is older, but it works with most SCSI
devices; I don't know why the Amiga 3000T didn't like it.  The Toshiba is
easily the fastest CD-ROM drive I have; it works just fine.  So does the
Pioneer read/write optical drive.  An Amiga doesn't know about WORM files, so
you can't run a WORM drive.  All SCSI devices are not equal.  I don't have any
advice on how to tell which will work with the Amiga and which won't.

SCSI devices appear to the Amiga operating system as just another drive.  The
CD-ROM retrieval software I know about is all written for DOS or Make operating
system; I'm not aware of any for the Amiga.  We were able to read DOS director
and filenames all right, and text files; but we couldn't run any of the
retrieval software.  We were able to view some CD-ROM screen images.

Art Department Professional is a wonderful program that converts just about any
screen image format to something the Amiga can display, and we were able to
look at, for instance, NASA GIF files just fine.  The VGA quality is excellent,
but then you expect that from the Amiga.

Indeed, desktop video is the Amiga's strongest point.  It's easier to make a
good desktop presentation integrating visuals, animations, and sound with the
Amiga than with any other system I know; certainly with any PC-type system. 
Moreover, Amiga stuff can be output to tape and then played on any VCR:  I
recall a spectacular presentation by Klaus Heiss at Doug Trumball's studio in
the Berkshires.  It was a series of solar-sail spacecraft, drawn and animated
by Georgetown University students using an Amiga 2000.

I'm supposed to do another space presentation at the White House, and I think
I'll work up something on the Amiga.  I've got some scanned images of my ships,
there are plenty of space images for background, and Disney makes an excellent
animation program; and there are several programs that will build
presentations.  Stay tuned.

I wouldn't recommend the Amiga as the only computer for a small business.  You
can manage:  There are reasonable word processors, databases, and spreadsheet
programs for the Amiga; but you will be out of step with everyone else.  I'd
hate to do my income taxes without Taxview or MacInTax, and there are many
small businesses using Quicken or Access to Platinum for accounting; neither of
these has an Amiga version.  My artist friend Kelly Freas likes the Amiga
because of the graphics, but his wife finds the business software is driving
her nuts.  Of course, they haven't bought any new software in years.  Still, in
my judgment they'd do better to get a PClone for the business and leave the
Amiga for graphics and games.

The Amiga is used as a solo business machine in Europe, and knowing the Amiga
and it's European software base may be an edge for those wanting to do business
over there.  There's also a simple program that will change the Amiga video
output from U.S. NTSC to the European PAL standard (which has more scan lines).

The Amiga fares better as a solo machine for students, provided that the
student is curious about the machine's potential.  Amiga users will get a very
good grounding in both basics and slick tricks of computer use; Windows or the
Make should be a snap for an experienced Amiga user.  College students may need
software, such as dynamic simulation programs, that just aren't available on an
Amiga; on the other hand, while I haven't seen it, Dr. Marvin Weinstein, and
Amiga enthusiast at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, says that Amiga DOS
Maple is as good as Mathcad or Mathematica.  Most of the big CD-ROM databases
don't have any Amiga access software.  It might be possible to write an Arexx
script that would do much of that, but I'd hate to try it.

Actually, it might be fun to try that, provided that you didn't have a fortune
riding on the results.  I don't recommend the Amiga as your only business
machine, but I can recommend it as a second machine for people who just like to
play with computers; I'd guess that about half the BYTE readership would find
the machine worth having just for fun, and many of those would see some business
potential in the desktop video capabilities of the machine.  I could have made
the same statement about the Amiga 2000, but that machine was much harder to
use, so many would have given up before they got started.  The 3000T, with its
new operating system and better documentation, is much less dependent on
folklore workarounds.

On that score:  the folklore is available for those who want it.  The Amiga
users groups on GEnie and BIX are about the largest machine-specific
conferences going, and the Amiga community enthusiastically tries to help
anyone with a problem.  If this column makes you curious about the Amiga and
you want to know more, my advice is to get on BIX and talk to Joanne Dow (BIX
name "jdow").

The Amiga is also said to be the best games machine around.  Alas, so far I
have been unable to get many of my older Amiga games to work with it.  Pirates,
from Microprose, for example.  The game begins spectacularly, much better color
and animation than the Make version; but within 5 minutes it locks up and has to
be reset.  (I'm told there is a hacked version that does run with the 3000T,
but I haven't seen it.)  Firepower, a wonderful two-player tank-simulation
game, won't run at all, and MicroIllusions, the company that produced it, is
out of business.  Many other older games defeat themselves:  the 3000T can't
handle the copy-protection schemes.  Some game designers wrote directly to the
2000's hardware and ROMs, and while Commodore tried to make the 3000T ROMs
compatible with the more common programmer tricks, they weren't always
successful.

On the other hand, some programs will degrade the 3000T to slow games down -
Populus I is spectacular on the Amiga, but it runs far too fast on a 3000T -
and other programs will hack out the old copy-protection schemes and let you
install the games on your hard disk.

It used to be that, because of the Amiga's spectacular graphics and sound
integration, there were more games for the Amiga than for any other machine. 
Now that the Make has color and VGA is fairly standard on the PC, developers
tend to write for the larger market and then port back to the Amiga.  This
often fails to take advantage of many Amiga features, so the Amiga versions of
games are no longer necessarily much better than the PC versions; and some
major games never are ported to the Amiga.

For all that, the Amiga has a real niche and while sales aren't spectacular,
it's here to stay.  If you need desktop video, you may be able to justify
getting one for that, but you may find yourself using it because it's just
plain fun.


[Property of Byte Magazine.  Reproduced without permission.  BYTE me!]
-- 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel C. Justen                     BIT : JCJUST01@ulkyvx.bitnet -or-
Computing and Telecommunications         JCJUST01@ulkyvm.bitnet
University of Louisville           UUCP: ..!psuvax1!ulkyvx.bitnet!jcjust01
Louisville, KY  40292                 -or- joel@crpi.UUCP <- my amiga!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If Jerry Pournell were meant to write magazine articles about computers,
 they would've given him a *real* magazine to write for..."
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.advocacy:21256 comp.sys.amiga.misc:12581