This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (93 messages)
# 040 & Toaster For Sale
Message #130840
For Sale — due to a new 4000: ** Toaster 2000 Board with 2.0 software and the blank registration card. Used for about 200 hours (mainly rendering). $700 or best offer. ** PP&S 68040/2000 CPU board clocked at 28MHz with 0MB of RAM. Used for about 400 hours. $400 or…
The patent isn't for "multimedia", it's for the search and indexing methods that are used in Compton's CD-ROM software. That *hardly* spells the end of multimedia development. There's lots and lots of discs out there that have nothing *at all* to do with Compton's patents.
If that's true (the problems of VHS tape wear and tear), then how come laserdisc rental places are almost impossible to find? LDs are higher quality than VHS, and you can get a LD player for the price of a decent Hi-Fi VHS deck. So why hasn't the LD rental…
040/500 for sale
Message #123305
For Sale: A PP&S 040/500 33MHz CPU board with 4MB of memory (expands to 8). Includes all documentation and the utility disk, an extra riser if you want to use it with a MegaChip, and power cables. Make your 500 faster than a stock 4000/040 in CPU/FPU benchmarks. Used for…
You've touched upon the cardinal point with your "alphabet" example: since you cannot copyright languages, there must be some other form of protection. And there is: the patent. Patents have been granted for a number of file formats, computer programming languages, and transmission protocols. All of these are used to…
There's been a Usenet go-around about those modems. The general consensus is that they're a good deal. The modems are supposedly manufactured locally, which is why they sell so cheap.
A lot of local phone companies offer "hot dial" services for phone lines. This is a service where a certain number is dialed when the phone is taken off-hook. You can't ever get a dial tone with this type of service on a line, just ring, busy, or a connection.
I remember Ben's postings about his hyper-text system. I was just pointing out that AmigaGuide is not as bad as Ben paints it to be. AmigaGuide has one big thing in it's favor though: it's free. I certainly wouldn't classify my posting as a "rave". You must have more patience…
Amiga products that come without printed documentation are almost worthless to me. I like to read the whole manual when I have some quiet time (like on the train to and from work or at 2am when that 3 hour render job is finally under way) and since there is…
Writing drivers for the older QIC drives is quite hard. Luckily, the new standard is a lot easier to deal with, and most of the tape drives sold now in the 250MB size use the new standard.
I did that very thing with my MegaChip. That spring clip is not very reliable if you move your machine around. There's not a lot of room under the power supply tray though, so you have to be careful not to use an IC socket that's too high.
I haven't looked at the files here, but you should be able to search on "handler" or "device" and find a couple of matches. I know that there are a number of handler examples on BIX. If you want to play with the SCSI device, you should get a copy…
Writing a SCSI device driver requires a lot of information about the SCSI controller (the chip's instruction set, memory and DMA use, etc.). A lot of that info is hard to get from board mfgs. If you're making your own SCSI controller, then you also have to deal with Zorro…
>Sinclair QL Now THAT is a blast from the past! 160k floppy tape drives, networking, and windowing BASIC built in. I remember when Lattice was working on the C compiler for that little beastie. It was a fun machine.
I was "ashamed" for 2 reasons: first, the PC based system was cheap and used off-the-shelf parts for the most part…second, after mentioning C= my boss pondered a moment and said, "didn't their stock just take a big dive?". He follows the stocks the way other people follow STTNG. I've…
320×200 doesn't cut it in the presentation graphics world. People want NTSC resolution and better than NTSC color. Believe me, I'd use Amigas in a second if I could satisfy the specs for the system we're planning on using. At this point, it looks like all the solutions are expensive…
I doubt that the 1200 can do 30 frames/sec for 20 secs in HAM8 mode without some serious performance problems (degraded audio?). Our visual database runs on the order of 500MB of data and something like 20 minutes of audio. Kiosks are still in the realm of custom hardware. In…
I don't have the final say in these matters. Part of the problem is that POS kiosks have to be rock-solid and not drop a single bit of information. The slightest instability can mean a loss of a sale (*not* good). Since we plan on having 500+ of these things,…
I just saw a demo of a kiosk system that was put together for Sears for their automotive battery dept. — very slick, 24 bit graphics with about 1/3 screen animations and English/Espanol versions on the same CD-ROM (both voice-overs and text). Can you guess the platform it's based on?…
Yeah, that's Borland's hook — suck 'em into your database for a small profit and then sell, sell, sell to them. Borland makes quite a bit of money by selling their list of names to other companies.
I'm suprised at your response. I've just quit a job where I helped grow a software (PC-based, admittedly) concern from $0 to $2 million/yr in 3 years. We've done several software upgrades and the have had to deal with similar problems. Even so, you know the old axiom of sales:…
The multitasking kernel is FPU aware and saves the state of the FPU when it task switches. So…you don't have to worry about a thing. Just use the FPU like you own it.
There are also a number of processor cards that don't AutoConfig memory if you don't want them to. As an example, I have a PPI 040 board with 8MB and a GVP SCSI card with 4MB. Currently the PPI autoconfigs 2MB in Fast RAM space and the GVP autoconfigs 4MB…
A500 items for sale
Message #104018
For Sale: An A590 with 2MB (the legal limit) of Fast RAM. No hard drive, but you get the cables for a SCSI drive. $50+shipping. A Supra 500RX with 2MB in 1MB ZIPs. Add more chips for up to 8MB of Fast RAM. $50+shipping. Both have all manuals and utility…
You should be able to use ADOS's directory scanning calls to get the file types for all the entries in a specified directory. From there, you'll be able to find the file link entries. I don't have my DOS book with me, so I can't be more specific right now.
With the parallel port network adapaters I've seen, you'll also need the MAC layer code for the processor on the adapter. You'll need to get that from the interface vendor (who are wonderfully unresponsive to "Joe Developer"). I don't think that's a problem with the PCMCIA interfaces because they use…
Regardless what rumors you may hear about PPS, distributors are still getting product from them so they can't be having too many problems ("down to 2 employees"?!?). Their 3000 040 board plugs into the CPU port and uses the 3000's 32-bit wide memory system. Since you can really load up…
The article that I have was about the Karaoke-CD format. The CDTV nugget was very brief, and pointed more towards a show of support for the new CD format than to exactly what C= was doing.
#CDTV Part Deux?
Message #102741
In the latest EE Times is an article about the new "Karaoke-CD" format. This format fits about 70 minutes of motion video and audio on a 5" CD. The interesting part was that the head of product development at C= was quoted as having a version of CDTV that will…
If you run the 040 in non-copyback mode, I think that a 50MHz 030/882 combo *could* win a floating point footrace. In copyback mode with Motorola designed math routines though, the 040 will win. The 040 was designed to handle optimized 030/882 code better (in most cases) than the 030/882…
I dug up the spec sheets I have on the 040 line. This should help clear up and confusion about the various 040 parts. Part 68030 68040 68EC040 68LC040 ======= ===========+============+===========+=========== CLOCK 16-50MHz | 25-40MHz | 20-33MHz | 20-33MHz MIPS 4.5-13.5 | 26.1-41.8 | 20.8-34.8 | 20.8-34.8 MMU 22-entry |…
According to an article about PGP 2.0 in _Mondo 2000_ it has been ported to the Amiga. It's available at a site on Internet (I don't have the FTP address).
As I understand it, the parallelism of the 030/882 is pretty much negated by the current state of compiler technology. It's very, very difficult to schedule the code so that the 030 does something useful while the 881 processes 1 instruction. I wish I'd kept that "Five Star" paper here.…
The 040 FPU supports most of the 68881/82 instructions, and even if you're using a library to emulate the rest via a trap, the net result is still better than an 030/882 combo (assuming a good mix of FPU calls). I'll have to get my 040 books out and look…
Are you sure that you have a full 040 and not an EC040 installed on your board? The slower floating point execution vs. integer execution would indicate that there is no FPU and so the math libraries are being used instead (for a loss in speed).
The LAWBREAKER program is used to test to see if Enforcer properly traps illegal memory accesses. It's and example program and does not test for an MMU. Enforcer does that. But like I said, if the chip says "EC" than it doesn't have a fully functional MMU. It may work…
68EC030 chips have the MMU logic, it's just that it's been "decertified" by the factory. In other words, it's a busted 030. Depending on how badly busted the MMU logic is, you may get hints from software that the CPU has a working MMU. DON'T BELIEVE IT! If you run…
Hardware for sale
Message #97715
For Sale: 1 Quantum LPS 120MB SCSI HD (3.5" low profile). Almost new. $250 obo 1 MMR 25MHz with full 030 and 881. Works in 500s and 2000s with 1.3 or 2.04. Includes manual and utilities disk. $150 obo Both have been used in a professional development environment and work…
The -m8 option causes the compiler to add in-line FPU instructions into your code instead of calling library routines to do the math operations. This type of code will only work if you have an FPU, but it is the fastest way of using said FPU. The IEEE math libraries…
SAS/C can generate 68881/2 instructions in-line with your code. Or it can use the IEEE libraries. It just the simple matter of throwing a compiler switch or two. Your compiler manual should have all the info you need.
"Supposed to be" is the operative phrase there. I'm keeping ears open for CIA chip failures. And waiting for the release of the 4000T.
Surface mounted chips? I've never had problems replacing them. I use just use the analytical person's tool, the crow bar. Given enough time you can divide anything into it's basic parts. I'm holding off buying a 4000 until they socket those 8520s. Or until they revamp the chip and make…
MMR Accel. For Sale
Message #94351
For Sale: One MMR with a 25MHz 68030/68881 pair onboard. (The real 030 with MMU) Used for about a year without any problems in an A500 for software development. Asking $225 or best offer. Leave E-Mail.
I just set up someone with a PPI 040 33MHz. It's a Toaster 2.0 system and also has a GVP Series II SCSI board. The 040 board dropped right in and fired up without a whimper. The system's being used constantly now and I haven't gotten any calls from the…
The A590 is bootable under 1.3 and later so you'll have no problems with it at all. It's a very easy drive to set up and use. (If only you could put more than 2MB of RAM in it though…)
Some of the SR series drives have firmware bugs that make them "not quite SCSI". I had a 7080SR attached to a 2091 that gave constant R/W error. I later found out that there's a ROM revision that fixes these problems. I never got though…I swapped drives with my PC…
I just had a 40MB partition give out on me when the system lost power during a long compile (don't play basketball near your powerstrip!). I went into the rootblock with a disk editor and reset the "bitmap valid" flag, copied all the files I could to another partition and…
Stwange looking wabbits there! Hareware?
Yes, that's assuming you register yourself with C= and pay he fees, etc. Your point is that there's nothing like being on the bleeding edge. I agree.
I think you left out a valid niche for the 3000 — software development. For $1500 you can get a base 3000 that's a solid 680×0 development system. Unless you're developing high-end graphics stuff, the 3000 fits the bill nicely.
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