This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (176 messages)
Ron, I won't be around to see the rest of this thread, but let me assure you, these new Macs ARE a big deal. First of all, no Amiga has a 40MHz 040. Second, the speech, telecommunications, and video processing are made possible by the inclusion of an AT&T DSP3210…
Thanks Steven. Good luck to you too.
Stephen, my fingers are getting shorter from all the typing I've done online lately, so maybe you should just wait until the ads hit AmigaWorld. It's a very fast graphics card. Blocks of graphics can be moved about very quickly (much in the same way the Amiga works only it's…
Paul, I'm sorry, I don't have actual horizontal refresh specs for the new card. I was guessing at a 43KHz top end. It will have both EGS (retargetable UI) and Workbench emulation drivers included as well as paint software, etc.
Hi Steven. 'Fraid my departure from this forum is permanent. See msg in Ramblings to save me repeating myself. Enjoyed chatting, Paul. P.S. – "DS" (Dallas Semiconductor) appears to be on the rise right now (good job I have some 🙂 ).
Not real sure Leslie, but I expect close to $1000. Now that you've pulled yourself off the floor, I can only say go look at one before you say "no way". It might just be perfect, and remember, we tend to keep monitors a LONG time, so they amortize well…
Er, I'm not "Don". I did work with a 7300 years ago. Interesting, if fairly useless, machine. A UNIX system with a 10MB hard drive and only 4% space free when received from AT&T? Paul.
Hi Jonathan. Thanks for the info. Where is this dealer? Do you have their phone #? Paul.
Hi Redmond. I anticipated the flame and put on my asbestos suit before checking back. Sometimes I like to "spark" a little discussion. 🙂 Out of curiosity, where can I call TODAY (please give me the phone #) and order a 128MB SIMM, and how much do they cost? Paul.
32 bit for under $600? NOT. As far as 3D rendering in hardware, no. It's a graphics card with a fast graphics controller with built-in blitter, etc. It won't be for everyone, but it will be what a lot of people can afford and want! Paul.
Thanks Brian, and for it's worth, I think you're right! 🙂 Paul.
I'll bear disk drive makers in mind since I've been "speculating" in various companies for a couple of years now. I'm probably 30 years from retirement, but hopefully only 20! All this talk of SGI in here makes me grin since I bought that stock a year ago, in which…
Hi Mark. Sorry I haven't responded to you sooner – I don't get into this forum very often. Regarding the DSS8+ I have no hesitation in saying it's the quietest and most capable 8 bit sampler for the Amiga. Sure, 16 bits is nice, but DSS8+ just goes to show…
PowerPC definitely looks interesting (I read the same Byte issue). As for your $2300 system – you will see that in a Pentium system within a year. I personally don't think PowerPC will do much until NT is on it. The giant hack they're doing to make Mac stuff run…
Re: hard disk drive makers – right now, there's a HUGE oversupply of product due to them all having ramped up lots of new capacity during the period of major shortages last year. The disk drive business is a rat race. Definitely fast improvements though! We just got in a…
Re: "I just tend to be more pragmatic about the way large corporations make decisions I disagree with." After all, you've had so much firsthand exposure to it. Decisions that anyone with any real knowledge of this industry disagrees with.
What I found amusing about WP for Amiga is that it was all written in assembler, yet had one of the worst levels of performance I've ever seen in a "productivity" (?) package. In "big" companies like WP, their quest for standardization often stifles any creativity. They ported an old…
The Sony 1311Q I mentioned in my message to Dale is awesome (all RGB modes plus composite and S in and out and speakers) but it's certainly more than $500 (not sure how high though). There's no free lunch, but the new 1942 from Commodore might be the closest thing.…
#Monitors
Message #108941
Regarding one nice monitor for all Amiga needs – they do exist. At GVP, we have a couple of Sony 1311Q monitors. They're FANTASTIC for us because not only do they handle 15.75KHz, and everything up to 1024×768 noninterlaced (and maybe more, haven't tried, though), they have built in speakers,…
Re: stocks — Hard drive makers I wouldn't bank on since it's a commodity market. Intel is gigantic now, and will probably stay that way (and grow) if they keep the R&D up. The key for them is what they will do for an encore following Pentium. Microsoft is probably…
Although many new monitors can't do 15.75KHz, the switching feature isn't useless since A4000's can output 31KHz and many older Amigas have either Commodore display enhancers, FlickerFixer cards, or IV24's, all of which output the Amiga modes at 31KHz.
Only pass-thru, not overlay.
Sorry, I've lost track of the threads. What product are you talking about? (The new one [not out yet] probably goes up to 43 KHz, I expect.) Paul.
Oh, THAT's all you don't like about them? Well, we struggle along using them at either 1280×1024 or 1600×1280 so as far as bandwidth, they're not THAT bad! Anyway, not here to defend Idek, but we've been basically happy with them. Paul.
First they have to give free copies to all the people who bought the $69 beta CD. That's more than 50,000 copies from what I've heard!
Well, you might not need the market drop, since Microsoft stock just dropped a chunk by itself due to lower than expected earnings projections, I believe. Re: IBM – everyone said it couldn't go below 50, and now it's at 42 or so. It's probably a good long term bet,…
Time will tell. I can see why IBM is so messed up though, trying to sell OS/2, AIX, Windows, and PowerOpen (for PowerPC). Microsoft has one strategy: scalable Windows. I know which I'll put my money on.
HDDRIVE yes or no!
Message #108745
[Tough to keep track of threads, but I assume we're talking about GVP's soon to be released new EGS card.] I really don't have any benchmark information on graphics horsepower, sorry, and as far as animations go, I believe (but I'm not sure) that there is an anim player that…
Good question James, glad to answer to the extent that I can. As for A3000 specific products, if you mean are we doing any more accelerators, the answer is no. Our goal (with the obvious exception of acceleration) is to make as many of our products work with as many…
No question, high quality Amiga programs tend to take very little disk space. I don't want to get into a big discussion about it, but I don't think there's much of a comparison between Word and ProWrite. For light wordprocessing, maybe not, but for POWER users, ProWrite just isn't powerful…
ASDG's software for the SGI platform looked VERY VERY nice. The morphing package is called Elastic Reality, I believe. I wish them much success. Paul.
EGS stands for Enhanced Graphics System. It is actually a display device independent software system far superior to Amiga's native Intuition, Graphics, and Layers libraries. All applications written to it can assume they have a 24 bit color space, and even if they physically don't, EGS will do the dithering…
Yes, things like OS/2 are huge, but it is important to take a hard look at what takes so much space. First, the Amiga too would use a swap file if it could do paging. Second, OS/2 has basically all of Windows in it, so there's a huge amount of…
New Amiga from SGI!
Message #108725
Hi Bob. I agree that the fundamental parts of an "OS" including I/O, task scheduling and resource management all have to be efficient and tight. These subjects are all so well understood, that I take this as a given. Paul.
[Wheels turning] Thanks for the feedback, Jim. One thing you should be aware of is that our current EGS110/24 can do 1600×1280 (or more) in 256 colors or even 24 bit I believe, and can also drop down to just about any resolution you want. 24 bit anims can defiinitely…
#New Amiga from SGI!
Message #108377
Hi Richard. I don't think Dr. Rose meant that Indy will affect the Amiga, because they really don't compete. Commodore's most "powerful" machine has a "loaded" price of around $3000 with monitor, I believe, and a stripped Indy is at $5K. Moreover, SGI is regarded as a company that makes…
I think you'll find that Superbase is now having MAJOR problems against Microsoft's Access for Windows, Microsoft's FoxPro for Windows, and Borland's Paradox for Windows. Lotus is about to jump in the pool too, having recently purchased the company that makes the award winning Approach database for Windows. PC software…
Hi Steve. I learned today that our new card can pass through just about any signal, including a de-interlaced signal such as the one coming out of our IV24 (in 31KHz mode), and I have no doubt, the flickerfixer, as well. Regarding how it competes with other cards, I guess…
Please understand Jonathan that I'm not intimately involved with every scheduling detail or product specification at GVP. I can't really answer your questions. If you need to purchase something now – we can offer our high end EGS card (which can't be touched in terms of performance). Regards, Paul.
You are absolutely correct. Economies of scale have made the PC industry what it is. This is most evident in the case of hardware development (which of course, GVP is keenly involved in). Hardware development is EXPENSIVE. Contributing factors are board prototype runs, testing equipment, regulatory issues (FCC, UL, etc.),…
Your experience with typesetting equipment prices and the "business case" for return on investment is exactly the same as that for computer equipment. Hobbyists will look at that "loaded" Indy price you quoted of $30K and say "in my dreams only", but those who need to get real work done,…
I certainly don't think Indy will set the world on fire, so I basically agree with you. I find Indy to remind me a lot of the first NeXT machine. Cool stuff, but not that many people need it or can afford it in a usable configuration. I believe that…
I think SGI know's EXACTLY what they've done. At NAB, they had a very big booth in the multimedia hall, right near all those Toaster-related vendors, among others, and they were giving out gobs of developer application forms as far as I could tell.
Maybe that's why companies like ASDG have (wisely) ported their MorphPlus to SGI, and are charging significantly more for it than they do on the Amiga. Looks like a good business opportunity.
How can it be used without a disk, though? If a user adds their own hard disk, how do they get SGI's UNIX onto it? Inquiring minds want to know! Paul.
No, our new board does not de-interlace the incoming Amiga's signal. It can pass it thru, untouched. I think I should try and make myself very clear – our new board does NOT give the Amiga AGA capabilities. I think people should try to realize what that would require, it's…
Sorry, but the circuitry is too tied together to allow 15.75KHz S & Composite output PLUS 31.5KHz RGB. That would require quite a bit more circuitry (and dollars).
Haven't tried it Mike, but it should work! As I think I mentioned, our new board has video pass-thru when desired. We've done it the other way too, which was cool – fed the EGS INTO the IV24 and looked at in a PIP! Also, we used the IV24 as…
I'm not going to give away the whole store here, but… Re: Deinterlacing – not quite sure I understand your question, but we've done a graphics card that plugs in a Zorro II or Zorro III slot, not the video slot. I.e., It's a graphics card and not something that's…
Re: $600 price – I'm now pretty sure the street price will be lower than that. No promises though! My comments on here are just "tidbits" really, not GVP's official policies. I just like to keep people as informed as I am allowed to. Paul.
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