From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Zorro III Stuff (Was: Guesses, et al.)
Date: 9 Apr 92 17:40:41 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <mykes.2395@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG> mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>Note:  Someone else's attribute was removed from this thread (>>>)

>I'm not saying that Zorro III IS obsolete or anything - just that even it
>might be obsoleted faster than it would seem.  You mention the A3000 has
>a reachable 20MB/s without burst - that's 13 fps at 24 bits 768x480 for
>full-frame animation.  Not that I really care NOW, but soon this may be
>the norm.

Thing is, no one wants to deal with that volume of data for most animations,
not over the bus, not on the hard disk.  So what things are going to is of
the "decompress on display" kind of thing.  Most of the JPEG and MPEG dedicated
chipsets are set up this way; you can usually shuttle decompressed data across
your CPU bus if you want, but that's not the main intent.

>These boards sure do text fast enough, but not Amiga fonts: fonts.

They would do standard (eg, PostScript) or outline fonts much faster.  You
don't have to do the rendering on the Amiga.  In fact, there's no reason
a smart board couldn't have weirdo bitmapped fonts downloaded to it, so you
only pay the speed penalty when the display is out of cache.

>I used to consider the Amiga to be near-workstation quality.  Now it is
>cheap/low-end workstation quality.  

I dunno about that.  Back when the A1000 came out, we had 1024x1024 color
Apollo workstations, something outrageous (1600x1200 maybe) for PCB CAD
workstations (SciCards).  The A1000 did 640x400 or thereabouts with flicker.
Nowadays, we have 1024x768 color Apollo workstations (but much cheaper 
and faster than the older ones), and of course the Sun standard is some
1100x900.  I get 1024x800 on my Amiga, in 4-bitplane monochrome.  Seems to
me the A1000 wasn't near workstation performance, my A2500/30 and A3000 setups
are.  Of course, I guess that depends on what you used for a workstation now
and then...

>To bring it back up to where it used to be, it needs a 68040 (or three or 
>four :) and enough memory to make 24-bit icons trivial.  

Well, I dunno.  Sure, a small number of workstations around now are heavy
duty graphics workstations, like SGIs.  Most of the color systems we have
around here waste the color in the first place; you don't need color at all
for most EE CAD (PCB design of course does need it).

>Commander Data on Star Trek isn't reality (YET), but he does represent one 
>vision of what future computers will be like.  He has NO windows, icons, etc.  (

This is true.  Then again, not everyone has a Commander Data serving them,
even in the 24th century.  Even on Star Trek, folks still have their personal
computers, you still type on them, even though you can talk to the big 
computers.  This seems to show a bit of good thinking was done in creating
the props for this show.

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      BIX: hazy
   "We can't be silent, because they might be giants" - The Might Be Giants