CompuServe Messages

*** Report from AmiExpo Chicago *** AmiExpo Chicago is under way as of today. The show seems to be smaller than normal, and the crowd was rather sparse today. The size is understandable with DevCon going on at the same time in Atlanta. There is still plenty of interesting hardware and software being demoed. Two different hardware vendors have made claims at this show that each is the only one with a hard disk controller which is fast enough to display full video at real time (30 frames / second). The companies are ICD and IVS. ICD had a very impressive demo showing 4.5 minutes of the Star Wars movie where the Millenium Falcon escapes from the death star. IVS showed an animated Gulliver's Travels and also had Digital Creations showing a sail-surfing video using the IVS TrumpCard with DCTV. Another popular hardware add-on seems to be an internal memory board for expanding the Amiga 500, which a number of vendors announced today. These boards will allow anywhere from 8 to 11 megabytes of memory to be added to an A500. This is going to make for a hard choice for A500 owners, but certainly shows that the machine is expandable. It should also mean lower prices for the user. [continued]