From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipset
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:18:54 GMT

In article <n11f4t@ofa123.fidonet.org> Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
>In article <Bz84Aw.CGt@news.iastate.edu>
>barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>Where  did  you  pull  out  this  12  year  figure? 

   From the article to which my article was a reply.  The original poster 
claimed that it took the IBM clone industry 12 years to get a decent system
bus.

>  Lets  see,  when  did
>MicroChannel  come  out..  1988? 

   1987.

> or so?  And EISA was a after that.  Thats
>what..  a 7 year wait? 

   The first 386s came out in 1986.  That's a one-year wait.  As I said, the
original ISA bus was fine for 8088 and 80286 systems.  It wasn't until the
first 386 systems came out that the ISA bus broke down.

> The Amiga came out in 1985, and we got Zorro III in
>1990,  only a 5 year wait, for a bus standard that is supperior to anything
>else.

   Hardly.  The Zorro III bus is simple and sweet.  It works with the Moto
68000 series, and only with the Moto 68000 series.  It has few facilities to
take advantage of advanced 64-bit RISC processors, for example, as 
MicroChannel does.  It gets the job done on '030 and '040 Amigas, and does
this job very well.  But it cannot compete with MicroChannel as an advanced
generalized system bus.

>How  many  IBM's have EISA or Microchannel?  Not very many.  And 99% of all
>cards are for 16 bit ISA and will remain so for quite a while.

   Lots of 486 systems have EISA.  With LocalBus having recently been
standardized by VEGA, lots more will be getting it soon.


>>   BTW, is the Amiga market totally free of long waits for updates to basic
>>technologies?  How long will we have to wait for virtual memory from
>>Commodore?
>
>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.

>>(I noted in the transcripts of Lou Eggebrecht's (sp) talks that Commodore has
>>no plans for virtual memory)  How long did the Amiga market have to wait for
>>decent color capability?
>
>It  depends  on  what  your  definition  of  decent  colour  capability is.
>Apparently, you're still waiting, since you've said repeatedly that AGA and
>the  A4000  were big disapointments.  

   Disappointments in non-interlaced resolution, chip RAM addressing, and
audio capabilities.  The color capabilities are adequate, for now.

>Meanwhile the rest of the Amiga world
>has  had  the  Video Toaster, DCTV, DMI Resolver, Firecracker, etc etc, for
>quite some time now.

   With all but one being low-resolution interlaced video cards with slow
screen updates, and the only one that isn't being hugely expensive.  

>>How long will the Amiga market have to wait for
>>updates to the sound capabilities in the lowest-common-denominator Amigas?
>
>Sunrize  DSP  card(S!)  are available now, there is a 32 voice 16 bit sound
>card  based  on the E-mu proteous chips, and last but not least Commodore's
>own  DSP  is  on the way. 

   Nice hardware.  What can I do with it?  Can DMCS use one of these DSP 
cards?  Can anything use one of these DSP cards?

> And what about the lowest-common-denominator IBM
>clones?   Those  things have NO SOUNDS TO BE HEARD (quote from Red Dwarf :)
>asside from a simple beeper.

   The IBM systems also have NO VIDEO TO BE SEEN.  I guess Commodore should
remove the Amiga video capabilities from the custom chips and replace it with a
monochrome text chip.

>>How long will the Amiga market have to wait for memory protection and OS
>>features to make AmigaOS virus-resistant?  How long will
>>the Amiga market have
>
>No  OS  is  ever  virus-resistant. 

   OS/2 has virus-resistant features.  Granted, people will find ways around
these features, but existing MS-DOS virii cannot harm an OS/2 machine.

> Memory protection is much harder to add
>than  you  think. 

   It's also hard to add multitasking to an OS that was originally written 
without it.  but that never, ever stopped Amigoids from jumping on MS-DOS and 
Mac systems for not having good multitasking capabilities.

>>to wait for device-independent graphics?  How long will the Amiga market
>
>Not  long. 

   Only seven years and counting.  Not very long -- in geologic time.

>  They're  working on it.  In the mean time, several third party
>companies have created their own solutions to the problem.

   That barely work.

>>have to wait for CD-ROM support from Copmmodore for the higher-end Amigas?
>
>Step  one:   Buy  SCSI  CD-ROM and  attach. 

   OK.

>  Step two:  Buy simple CD-ROM
>software from one of many sources.

   OK, so far so good.

>  Step three:  Use CD-ROM.

   Use CD-ROM with what?  The Fish disc?  The AB20 disc?  CDTV titles which
are not guaranteed to run at all on Amigas, and which are written for a
keypad and a low-res display, and which have no "Amiga" features?  

   Suppose I'd like to run something like the "Music Madness" Mac CD-ROM disc
which contains 400M of music, tools and effects, and utilities to allow a
person to build all kinds of tunes.  Is anything like this available for the
Amiga?  Or how about something like the Mac "Trade Opportunities" CD which 
contains information about global trade from public and private sources?

   I can count on one hand the number of Amiga CD-ROM products that are
available.

>>How long will the Amiga market have to wait for MPEG decompression hardware
>>products for the high-end Amigas?
>
>Ever  heard  of  the  DMI Digital Editmaster?  It digitizes, compresses and
>saves  to  harddrive  full  colour video at 30FPS using JPEG compression at
>ratios  from  15:1  to  70:1.   Naturaly, it will play it back also in real
>time.  Who needs MPEG when you can do JPEG in real time.

   JPEG was intended for still images.  Making JPEG work on animations in
real time is a major kludge.  Ask anyone who is familiar with QuickTime.

> The list price is
>$2495.

    The MPEG decompression hardware for CD-I from Philips will list for $300,
and offer the same performance.  MPEG was developed for full-motion video,
which is why it will be cheap.  Motorola is reportedly working on an MPEG
decompression chip which will be available for $50 in big quanties.  

>>   Hardly.  In the PC industry, most of R&D is spent on software-oriented
>>research and development.  The Amiga market seems must more infatuated with
>
>BULL.   Most  of  the  R&D  is spent on developing incredibly cheap crapola
>hardware to sell to brainless consumers like you.

   
>>hot hardware and less oriented toward real computing applications.  This is
>
>Yeah.   We  have  all  kinds  of  hot hardware and no way at all to use it.
>Sure.   Thousands  of  people bought Toasters and just dont know what to do
>with them since there's no real software for it.

   Have you ever contemplated that name "Video Toaster"?  The Video Toaster
was developed as a standalone video appliance.  It needs no software other
than what comes with it.

---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy