#Jim Drew sells out?
20 messages in this thread
According to the new issue of MacWeek, Utilities Unlimited International's
CEO (Jim Drew, I believe) is "privately explaining that beta testing was closed
for security reasons and that a sale of the technology is pending".
According to MacWeek, there is speculation that the purported purchaser may
be Apple, Microsoft or Insignia.
Says MacWeek: " Apple, however, has a demonstrated propensity to purchase
upstart companies that engineer their way onto Apple's turf."
The punchline to the story – to anyone who has worked with PowerMacs – is
that the promised 486 emulator would outrun Insignia's SoftWindows. The joke,
of course, is that anything could outrun SoftWindows which has never lived up
to its pre-release hype. The Orange Micro PC cards do a nice job of it – if you
want to spend the money. Just last week, incidentally, Apple was rumored to be
releasing one or more PC cards of its own.
Be interesting to see if this is real or just more hype.
Jerry
Interesting, thanks for the info!
That could explain a few things…
Bob Comer — Hakuna Matata!
Cheyenne, Wyoming U.S.A.
"That could explain a few things…"
Like the sudden silence MacWeek referred to?
Considering Apple's litigiousness, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a
totally different story actually emerges. That's not intended to be prophecy –
but I've seen what they've done to people who they felt infringed on their
intellectual property and it's not a pretty picture.
Jerry
>> Considering Apple's litigiousness, I wouldn't be at all surprised
>> if a totally different story actually emerges. That's not intended
>> to be prophecy – but I've seen what they've done to people who
>> they felt infringed on their intellectual property and it's not
>> a pretty picture.
Apple has only caused legal trouble when someone tries to clone a Mac on
_other_ machines. They don't make the current '86 emulator and therefore have
no basis to sue. Apple would be overjoyed if someone made a faster 486
emulator for the Mac. That would only make them lots of money.
But I doubt we will such a thing out of Jim.
From his press comments I saw posted on the Internet (and in Mac Week), he
expressed shock that most of the PowerMac code is written in C, and that his
emulator will be faster due to it's being written in assembly language. He
went on to explain that there is no assembler for the PowerPC, so that he would
have to write one first.
He was promising shipment of product in September, and he was looking for good
programs so he could start real-soon-now.
I have no idea if all of these comments were not really from him, but…
1) There has been a PowerPC assembler running since before the PowerMac
existed, and I personally saw it run before the offical introduction of the
machines. Motorola has this assembler running for chip simulation testing.
2) The existing emulator is hand coded assembly in the critical code paths.
The rest of the paths are in C, but are less often called and have minimal
impact on overall speed. The speed of coding more than pays off for that.
3) If he's planning on shipping by September, he had better start coding real
quick like.
4) The current '86 emulator has the advantage that they have the legal source
code to Windows so that it can be re-compiled into PowerPC native code. Unless
Drew goes to MicroSoft and gets a license, he will have to emulate Windows
also. Having the BIOS and Windows native RISC makes the overall emulation
_much_ faster.
Jim, if you're out there, I would love to be corrected with offical
information.
—— Andrew
"Apple would be overjoyed if someone made a faster 486 emulator for the Mac."
Actually, they showed one at PC Expo a couple of weeks ago that they developed
themselves. It's a PDS card for the PowerMac, 486DX50, soundblaster support,
network support, windows included this time. No announced shipping date. PCI
version in the works.
Michael
Jerry,
Was this the 486 emulation that the article spoke of? It sounds like it. To add
to all of the speculation that is going around absent any hard news, perhaps a
potential buyer of the Amiga technology is discussing the purchase of the
entire Emplant system. As I recall there were rumors that Jim had been called
to West Chester early on to discuss something with someone.
I sure hope that Jim doesn't sell the technology (especially the Mac emulation)
to someone who just wants to bury it. His customers have a lot invested in it
as does he. Perhaps the money is such that he might consider it, but he has a
lot of himself invested in it's development that would be hard to walk away
from if I were making the decision.
I wonder what will happen to this forum IF we ever have any real information
about Amiga's fate.
Bill
"I wonder what will happen to this forum IF we ever have any real information
about Amiga's fate."
I think the Osborne Forum is still pretty active. <G>
Seriously, considering the number of Amigas in the US and the increased
problems those owners would face in the event the Amiga totally dies, this
forum and others like it would probably become far more significant than they
are today – for a few years at least.
Personally I'm not putting much stock in the Apple purchase rumor. It just
has too much of the "hype" smell to it. I'm not saying it can't happen. Apple
has purhased or invested in several companies in the past, including a
manufacturer of Mac clones, Outbound Systems, which is now defunct.
In any event, we'll all know soon enough.
Jerry
BTW, how does one get MacWeek? I guess it's not on newstands.
Thanks in advance for info.
Bill
MacWeek is a controlled circulation weekly published by Ziff. That it is
generally called "MacLeak" probably gives you a good idea of its orientation.
🙂
It's actually a very good source.
It's free if you qualify, $99 a year otherwise. Highlights are available free
from Ziffnet.
Jerry
Bill,
Jim himself posted news, right after the liquidation announcment, that
he had an appointment at CBM West Chester, so I would not call that a
rumor but a fact. What I don't know is if the meeting ever came off or
not.
._ _ _ INTERNET: mshea@math.arizona.edu
| | |ichael _>hea COMPUSERVE: 76665,3360
Michael,
Thanks for the clarification. There has been so much conjecture that it is best
to make note of what few facts we have available.
Bill
You don't know Jim Drew's love of the Amiga hardware…I think you'll find
the wheels are turning…
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
>> You don't know Jim Drew's love of the Amiga hardware…I think
>> you'll find the wheels are turning…
I understand his love of the Amiga, and I think the world of his Mac emulation
system.
But, has he shipped the "other" emulation systems he has been promising in his
ads? Is he shipping a '486 emulator for the Amiga today? Not an accusation, I
honestly don't know.
He's also the guy who swore to me that the 68060 would blow the PowerPC chip
away when it came out. When it finally did ship, and turned out to be the dud
it is, he amended his comments to his _quad_ CPU '060 board would be faster
than a single PowerPC chip. Well no, duh!
I hope he does ship this super '486 system in September, but he's got 75 days
until the end of September to do this. I've not even heard a rumor of it in
Beta. His press comments implied that he hand't even started yet!
This will all clear up one way or the other, in a little bit…
—- Andrew
>He's also the guy who swore to me that the 68060 would blow the PowerPC
>chip away when it came out. When it finally did ship, and turned out to
>be the dud it is, he amended his comments to his _quad_ CPU '060 board
>would be faster than a single PowerPC chip. Well no, duh!
The 060 has not shipper yet, but the preliminary beta chips are indeed
very fast and their specs as published by motorola are as impressive as
the powerpc, especially at a fraction of the price.
>I hope he does ship this super '486 system in September, but he's got 75
>days until the end of September to do this. I've not even heard a rumor
>of it in Beta. His press comments implied that he hand't even started
>yet!
There are people on Compuserve here who openly say they are beta-testing
it. That hardly qualifies are rumor. It is obviously almost done.
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
> The 060 has not shipper yet, but the preliminary beta chips are
> indeed very fast and their specs as published by motorola are
> as impressive as the powerpc, especially at a fraction of the price.
These are the offical IBM prices for PowerPC chips as of two weeks
ago.
Chip Price
66Mhz 601 $198 ( 25% faster than 68060)
80Mhz 601 $275 (> 40% faster than 68060)
66Mhz 603 $165 ( 15% faster than 68060)
80Mhz 603 $195 (> 25% faster than 68060)
Last I checked the 50Mhz '060 cost _more_ than the 66Mhz 601 and yet is a fair
bit slower. I've also been told to expect even more agressive price drops in
the next few months from IBM and Moto for the PowerPC.
Also, while the '060 is near as fast as PowerPC at the same clock, PowerPC is
available at _much_ higher clocks. PowerPC is available at 80Mhz, sampling at
100Mhz, and I saw a 120Mhz 601 in May. Also '060 is very poor for floating
point compared to PowerPC. (compare SPECfloat numbers!)
The '060's 32 bit bus is also a crippler. The small cache (16K) tends to make
it starve for memory. The PowerPC has a 32K internal cache _and_ a path to
memory which had twice the bandwidth (64 bits). This allows the PowerPC to
burst more often and for longer durations.
The 604 which is in sample (ships Q4), is _TRIPLE_ the speed of the fastest
sampling '060.
Moto has been silent about a future '070, and '080, yet they will talk about
601, 604, 620, and beyond.
Moto knows it's future is PowerPC. Apple, and others, will buy _millions_ of
them. I bet there are less than 10,000 '060's in desktop machines by years
end.
BTW, IBM has already shipped over 1 million PowerPC chips. Apple has shipped
near 300,000 machines with them, and is projecting one million shipped by
March.
How many desktop machines do you think will be equiped with '060's? And at
what cost per chip? No matter how you cut it, the '060 costs _more_ and is
slower.
I really do like the '060, it's just a year late, overpriced, and not available
in high enough clocks.
—– Andrew
It's true that the PowerPC CPU is cheaper, but the supporting hardware
isn't yet… So, probably an '060 Amiga would be cheaper than a PowerPC
one.
Even though, I can't wait till I buy my PowerPC!
Bob Comer — Hakuna Matata!
Cheyenne, Wyoming U.S.A.
> It's true that the PowerPC CPU is cheaper, but the supporting
> hardware isn't yet… So, probably an '060 Amiga would be cheaper
> than a PowerPC one.
Yup! I think the Amiga is the perfect place for the '060 because you can reuse
existing hardware and software with minimal expense. For a few hundred bucks
you can double the speed of your machine.
PowerPC would be faster, and for new hardware, cheaper, _BUT_ the overhead of
developing new software would be expensive and that's just not going to happen
in the Amiga world now.
I just don't see the '060 making even ripples in the "new" machine market.
CISC days are _over_, even Intel is making slow moves that way, and by P7 time
will be heavy RISC for mainstream CPU's.
——- Andrew
>for a few hundred bucks you can double the speed of your machine
Not with the $1000 CPU boards out there.
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
Motorola makes a lot of money selling chips that go into cars and
whatever. Those embedded applications move a lot of chips. The 68000
family powers a lot of stuff you'd never guess. And much of it could use
060 power. Since a lot of it runs hand-tuned assembler, software-wise,
migrating to a different chip family is not an option. So the fact that
only 10,000 will go into desktop systems isn't very relevant to supporting
"Moto knows it's [sic] future is PowerPC."
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
> >I hope he does ship this super '486 system in September, but
> >he's got 75 days until the end of September to do this. I've
> >not even heard a rumor of it in Beta. His press comments
> >implied that he hand't even started yet!
> There are people on Compuserve here who openly say they are
> beta-testing it. That hardly qualifies are rumor. It is
> obviously almost done.
Beta testing his PowerPC based 486 emulator? I've been reading
this forum for months, and most of the Mac/PowerPC ones, where did
you read about this? I saw his magazine article where he claimed he would ship
a PowerMac 486 software system in September.
He also claimed that his emulator would run as fast as a 60Mhz Pentium running
native. If true, he is a god. If false… well you know.
His Emplant is _way_ cool, but because Mac and Amiga both use 68K he only had
to emulate Mac specific things, the CPU was okay. If he is to emulate a 486 in
software (in 1 Meg he claims!) at full Pentium speeds, he knows something that
the rest of the world don't.
If he pulls this off, I will publicly say "Way Cool!" here, if he don't…
Either way, we will know in two months. I wish him luck!
—- Andrew