Goodies I want!
35 messages in this thread
There are a couple of products that I would dearly love to see for my 4000
but none of the hardware developers have come out with anything and was
wondering why?
First, a hardware deinterlacer. Although DBLNTSC is OK, in DBLNTSC HIRES
LACE it takes up a lot of the Amiga's chip ram bandwidth and is slow. I
think a hardware deinterlacer would be a nice addition to the 4000 and
would speed up animations and other graphics operations.
Second, why no DSP boards yet? I think a lot of people would like to have
a DSP, especially if it could handle sound, image processing operations,
emulated 9600 baud modems, fast JPEG decompression, etc. Maybe one company
wouldn't be able to handle all the applications, but I'm sure other
developer's would write software for the board if the necessary
information was available.
My ideal board would have both the deinterlacer and DSP on one board
because Zorro slots are at a premium in a 4000. So what do the rest of you
think? Would you be willing to buy such a board, and if so, how much would
you be willing to pay? I think something like this could be retailed
around the $600 mark, maybe even less. But since I'm not a hardware
designer, I might be way off base.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
I guess I'm the only one who is interested in a DSP board and Deinterlacer for
the 4000. No wonder nobody has developed one yet! I was hoping for a little
more response. Maybe if I change the subject heading?
I wouldn't mind a deinterlacer for my 1200… 🙂
As to DSP, it'd have to be a special DSP (programmable, not just another
sound board…) for me to want it.
Bob Comer — AmigaDOS and OS/2, the only way to compute!
Cheyenne, Wyoming U.S.A.
"As to DSP, it'd have to be a special DSP (programmable, not just another
sound board…) for me to want it."
No, I wouldn't want just a sound board either. The software would have to
be available for Modem emulation, Image Processing, etc.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
>No, I wouldn't want just a sound board either. The software would have to
>be available for Modem emulation, Image Processing, etc.
Yep! And speech synthesis/recognition too…
Bob Comer — AmigaDOS and OS/2, the only way to compute!
Cheyenne, Wyoming U.S.A.
John,
The Deinterlacer/DSP board sounds excellent to me but felt out of
place, as I still own a 2000. I will not upgrade until the future of C=
is known (don't laugh!). From what I have seen the DoubleNTSC and
DoublePAL modes seem unsatisfactory to me and a deinterlacer would be a
must, even more so than the DSP. For a All-In-One board, another serial
and parellel port would be nice and not take up that much circuitry. One
serial port just does not cut it anymore.
As soon the CBM `predecument' becomes more clear, I will join you, loud
and clear, clamoring for more, more, more!
…Steve
Cruising on Autopilot
from beautiful Coastal South Carolina
"From what I have seen the DoubleNTSC and DoublePAL modes seem
unsatisfactory to me and a deinterlacer would be a must, even more so than
the DSP. For a All-In-One board, another serial and parellel port would
be nice and not take up that much circuitry. One serial port just does
not cut it anymore."
At one time, CBM was promising a deinterlacer and DSP board for the
4000's, but in the later months they just dropped those projects or were
going to release the technology to other 3rd party developers. But I
haven't seen anything yet, and I was kinda expecting GVP or DKB Software
to be the first ones. Maybe they don't feel there is any market anymore.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
I understand the licensing fees are enourmous for the AT&T piece that
Commodore was going to use for a DSP. A small company like DKB or even
GVP would probably not be able to support these fees.
I wanted a DSP for my A4000 too.
-mark=
Otto Pilot Engaged..
"I understand the licensing fees are enourmous for the AT&T piece that
Commodore was going to use for a DSP. A small company like DKB or even
GVP would probably not be able to support these fees."
Well, who say's it has to be an AT&T chip, not me <g>. There are new DSP
chips from Motorola, TI, and quite a few others that would probably suit
the Amiga just fine.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
The AT&T chip is the nicest bang for the buck (at least, it was two or
three years ago), and has an OS interface for the Amiga all ready to go.
(See the 1991 DevCon notes).
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
John,
Wouldn't that pretty invalidate the work that Commodore already has done
to support the DSP? It was my understanding that the DSP chip Commodore
was working with contained it's own operating system, etc.
I have always been fascinated by the possibilities of adding this to the
Amiga. Sigh, never saw a demo of it. 🙁
-mark=
Otto Pilot Engaged..
"Wouldn't that pretty invalidate the work that Commodore already has done
to support the DSP? It was my understanding that the DSP chip Commodore
was working with contained it's own operating system, etc."
OK, what Commodore are you referring to. Certainly the one in West Chester
is not going to do much with DSP in the near future. If a 3rd party
developer can get his hands on the work that CBM put into DSP already,
then great, I hope to see a product soon.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
C= was giving out (well, selling) licenses to all peripheral-type stuff a
year ago. DSP was included.
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
Dale,
I talked to a few people but didn't find out who licensed the DSP stuff.
However, I was told that it is being produced for a vertical market and
probably would not be available for the general public.
-sja
Can we cut out all this usenet type quoting? Interactively I can type RP
to read the parent message or in AP hit the PARENT gadget … I don't need
to be re-reading the same text from message to message to message to
message, etc.
-sja
Not everyone uses AP.
Joe
Why not?
Robb
Not everyone has AmigaDOS 2.04 or better <weg>.
The Four Seasons of Southern California:
Fire, Flood, Earthquake, and Riot.
Brian,
What?
Sorry, but somehow I don't have the parent to that 2.04 remark.
Clueless,
Robb
Agreed.
Robb
John,
You're not alone in wanting a DSP board for their Amiga, but I can't
see how all four of us "power users" (that are actually willing to spend
the money!) can convince the few remaining Amiga hardware vendors that
it's a good business decision! What's really strange about this is I had
heard many rumors of C= actually licensing whatever DSP technology they
already developed to some third party, but alas we still wait in the
dark…
EdV
It'd be real easy to sell a DSP board which included 28.8 modem, fax,
voice, ISDN, etc. software for the right price. Everyone is going to be
buying new modems soon anyway. I think the problem is getting down to the
right price.
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
No doubt a bundled application like FAX/Modem would make selling a DSP
board much easier. Other applications could naturally follow – humm,
seems like a DSP board would be a great dongle for a software oriented
company! Your pricing observation is probably correct. Do you have any
thoughts on what a DSP board could potentially cost?
EdV
The problem, as with all other Amiga software and hardware, is volume. It
all comes down to how many units you can amortize your R&D and other costs
over and how large of quanity you can buy parts in. The difference
between 1,000 vs. 10,000 vs. 100,000 units is huge. It why Amiga Ethernet
cards cost $300 and PC Ethernet cards cost $50. The Amiga developers
selling a few hundred cards at a time have to pay a premium for their
parts, and every single purchaser is paying a significant part of the R&D
and other costs. The PC people are buying parts in lots of 10,000+ (at
which point they are cheap) and are using designs provided by their parts
vendors (i.e., if you buy a FooBar Ethernet chipset, FooBar provides the
design for a complete board), eliminating many R&D and other costs.
As far as a dongle for a software company, this would be tough. Most of
the interesting applications are huge projects. Much easier to just
license code from AT&T or somebody. Guess what that costs?
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
How about somebody building "bridgeboard" which would allow amigados
to communicate directly with IBM cards. We could then buy cheap boards
for IBM PC's and just plug them in.
-ash
It's called the Golden Gate 2. It comes with drivers for Ethernet,
serial, parallel and I don't know what (if anything) else. $119. They
are not quite ready to ship yet (went out of production, but about to come
in from a new company), or I'd cough up ordering info. I'm sure there
will be an announcment making it's way to CIS as soon as there are boards
to order again…
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
Dale, what I suggested was semi-factitious. Somebody, say CBM should have
done it years ago, and I thought that there was a good or atleast an
expensive reason why it could not be done.
-ash
Lots of reasons. The standard 8/16 PC bus sucks. Its slow and it uses
jumpers. Also, you've got to write Amiga drivers for all of those PC
cards, and those drivers have to swap things from Intel byte-order to the
divinely-correct byte-order (Big-endian is as God intended it to be), etc.
A PC Ethernet card only goes about 2/3 as fast as the slowest Zorro-II
Ethernet card and eats up more CPU in the process.
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
I knew that there was a reason.
-ash
>>It'd be real easy to sell a DSP board which included 28.8 modem, fax,
voice, ISDN, etc. software for the right price. Everyone is going to be
buying new modems soon anyway. I think the problem is getting down to the
right price.
<<
The Dolphin modem does include a DSP isn't? Should it be possible to use it in
the way you want it? Or is this a foolish thinking Dutchman we have here?
Hans Keesom Amsterdam.
The DSPs in modems are cheap fixed-point things which aren't nearly as
useful as their more powerful counterparts. They work fine in particular
applications, most notably audio in a narrow spectrum (i.e., 4000-8000khz
or whatever it is a telephone is capable of).
ISDN is right out. Did I forget to mention JPEG and MPeg? Speech
synthesis? Speach recognition? 3d graphics?
A good general-purpose floating-point DSP can do lots of wonderful neat
things.
—
Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
"You're not alone in wanting a DSP board for their Amiga, but I can't see
how all four of us "power users" (that are actually willing to spend the
money!) can convince the few remaining Amiga hardware vendors that it's a
good business decision! What's really strange about this is I had heard
many rumors of C= actually licensing whatever DSP technology they already
developed to some third party, but alas we still wait in the dark…"
Well I don't think just the four of us "power users" would be the only
ones purchasing a DSP board. If it had the application software, I think
quite a few people would buy it. Video professionals for the image
manipulation capabilities, sound and music people for the audio
capabilities, etc.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
> …If it had the application software, I think…
Hummm, I'm probably going to regret this but isn't that the compelling
argument most PC and MAC users use? I agree that if a DSP board had lots
of ready-to-run application software right out of the barrel,
significantly more would sell! I believe Dale Larson's comments about
price sensitivity in the Amiga market has a lot to bear on the discussion.
Just out of curiousity, would you purchase a DSP board if it came with NO
application software?
EdV
Yes, price sensitivity would have a lot to bear on how well DSP would do
in the Amiga market. As far as purchasing a DSP board if it didn't come
with application software, that would be like buying a computer without an
operating system. And writing DSP software is not like whipping out a 10
line BASIC program.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
I'm not sure who we would address our DSP/Deinterlacer wish list to John?
I would rather have driver software for controlling one of the many ASP16
boards falling off the shelves of PC dealers. That would let me use it
through a goldengate bus adapter on my A2000 right now, and sounds like
the level of service our likely providers will be able to conjure up in
the future. Unless someone like Samsung makes a multimillion dollar push
to make the Amiga a new force in the world, noone will be designing
expensive new products like this for it. But I'm sure we would all love to
see it.
alternate: jonest@hfsi.com
I don't make jokes, I just report what the government does…Will Rogers