#Screamer is NT machine?
43 messages in this thread
Could my dealer be right? Is the screamer a Microsoft Windows NT
based machine? NT would be a great OS for a truely premptive,
multithreaded, multiCPU system. Anyone else heard this rumor? If it
is true, might a version that would run on Intel processors
(386/486/Pentium) using NT be far behind?
Mark Randall has said the same thing on the Amiga Video and Toaster
Video Fidonet echo's tho I believe he said NT is being used for
DEVELOPMENT only for the Screamer. I may have misunderstood him.
Either way I'm not too concerned wether the Screamer uses Windows NT
or not.
>I believe he said NT is being used for DEVELOPMENT only for the
>Screamer.
Yeah, he said that but I have a hard time believing this. If you use
a OS for development only, what is going to be used when it ships?
Are they going to Beta test it and then when they are ready change
the OS? I don't think so. He might have said that to calm down the
Amiga Fanatics. Your right, it doesn't matter what OS it runs in its
little box anyway.
Exactly. Glad we agree on the irrelevance of what OS the Screamer
uses. BTW is it just me or are there ALOT of Loony's on the 2 Fido
Echo's Ron Kramer Moderates??? Got alot of Folks in LALA land
Dreaming, Like Folks who say sch Witty Thing s Like "If Newtek
doesn't release a Standalone Version of Lightwave EVERYONE will be
forced to Pirate it" Thats currently my Personal FAVE line of Rubbish
from some Yokel on Fidonet. Sometimes I just FREAK and Go Bonkers
when I see some of these msgs.
BTW WHO is this Bill Evans Guy? Sometimes he seems to know what
he's talking about then other times it seems like he is making things
up to suit his arguments.
>BTW is it just me or are there ALOT of Loony's on the 2 Fido Echo's Ron
>Kramer Moderates???
I have got just about enough of the LightRave/Pirate messages and am
even thinking of taking a Fido vacation.
>BTW WHO is this Bill Evans Guy? Sometimes he seems to know what he's
>talking about then other times
I don't know who he is but I take everything I read from FIDONET with
a grain of salt.
Yea, Thats one of the nice things about CI$, it seems that since we
have to PAY to use it we don't get too much Nonsense here. I blew up
at one yoyo yesterday on Fido. I was talking to Ron about Fog
Objects(I had thought LW had them silly me) and explained how I'd do
a Laser Blast in Imagine which probably could be done similarly in LW
and this Joker writes me a msg telling me that Ron was talking about
LW not Imagine. If the yoyo was in front of me I'd probably have
Strangled him to death. People SKIM too much on Fido and don't
actually REAd the msgs. I think a break from Fido is a good idea.
Ok-
How would you make a laser blast? I promise I won't yoyo out 🙂
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
You wanna know how I'd do the Hit or the Laser "Beam" itself???? The
Hit I simply use White EXPLODIN Sphere's, for the Beam itself I use 2
Nested Tubes one set to about 75% transparent the inner one about 40%
transparant and a Darker Shade of RED. I also on occasion use a FOG
object for the Laser BEAM. This is int Imagine, since LW doesn't seem
to have Fog Objects try the Transparency. Hope this gives the results
you wish.
>>it doesn't matter what OS it runs in its little box anyway.<<
Au contraire, mon frere!! If you are not planning on having the
Screamer using 80-90% of the CPU rendering 24 hours a day, and you
also have business related software you need to run, and the Screamer
has an OS with Network hooks in it already, it might seriously affect
some of your software decisions, and some of your office/programming
staff decisions, mais oui?? ;^}
>If you are not planning on having the Screamer using 80-90% of the CPU
>rendering 24 hours a day, and you also have business related software you
>need to run
It has yet to be seen if NewTek will provide a way to `use' the
Screamer for other things. They may implement a simple OS
(bare-bones) that would only take care of the multiple CPUs and
probably wouldn't run normal SW. We just don't know `what' NewTek is
going to do.
>Is the screamer a Microsoft Windows NT based machine?
Yes. This is only because the Screamer is a Multi-CPU machine and
AmigaDOS won't work like that so they had to find a OS that will be
able to control the 4 CPUs. This is something the user wouldn't have
to deal with since the Screamer is only an accesory for the VT you
wouldn't have to run Windows NT on your Amiga.
>might a version that would run on Intel processors (386/486/Pentium)
>using NT be far behind?
I think this may be why they chose NT, in case the Amiga market dies
tomorrow, they would have some development on a popular OS.
I have been working with NT since July '92. As a beta tester, I have
gotten to know NT pretty well. It is truly the finest operating
system I have ever had the good fortune to work with. (16 years
IBM/DEC Mainframe, IBM Mini's and many types of PCs (TRS-80, Apple
][, Xerox CPM, IBM PC, Amiga…)
It is about time the PC market generated a REAL operating system. I
have found that only those who do not understand the layered nature
of NT and it's use of sub-systems for operating system shells find
much bad to say about NT. NT is really a whole different animal than
any other PC operating system. The hardware abstraction layer alone
merits much applause and allows for muli-platform compatibility. If
you have a favorite OS, and it is a real market player, then you will
most likely see a version of it availible running under NT. You can
think of NT as the operating system that knows how to run operating
systems.
Ok, so it's clear I like NT and see a bright future for it. Hope I
have not just become the pilot light that starts the flame
burning….Flame off.
>It is truly the finest operating system I have ever had the good fortune
>to work with.
That is good to hear. IBMers have really needed a good OS for a long
time.
>Ok, so it's clear I like NT and see a bright future for it.
I don't have a problem with that. I have been looking into 3DStudio
to find out what is going around me, I don't want to have blinders
on.
Out of curiosity, have you had similar exposer to OS/2? If so, how
does it relate/not relate to NT?
Are there not possible some econimies to be made in NT. It is such a
resource Hog that many people are going to have to do some serious HD
and Mem U/Gs to run it. That begs the question of if they really
need it and aren't being chewed up by BG & Freinds just 'cause they
think they need NT to run a few spreadsheet/WP/DB programs.
If I read Inside Windows NT right, NT is architected in such a way
that you COULD create a device like the screamer with relatively low
overhead. Newtek would need to include the NT kernel and I/O
subsystems, etc., but could implement Lightwave and the Toaster
interface as a subsystem. What would this mean? It would mean they
could ship the screamer without the Win32, OS/2 or POSIX subsystems.
It would be NT + Newtek subsystem only. (Kind of like NewtekNT
instead of WindowsNT) This would keep costs down and simplicity up,
since the OS would not chew up as much HD or RAM, and the user would
really never see the screamer OS. However, I hope they don't do
this, since I'd be a lot more willing to fork over $10k for one if I
knew I could run my Windows apps on it when I wasn't rendering. It
would then be a fantastic deal on a honking fast Win/NT machine.
Get Inside Windows NT and read it if you really want to understand NT.
It is really shows what an amazing piece of work NT is.
Charlie, Thanks for the hint on the mag. I'll check it out. But
your answer re: the value of the OS on the screamer seems to be the
contrarian view around here (but one that I share) vis-a-vis the
importants of which OS is on the screamer. $12K for a dedicated
rendering box (assumming tons of memory and a disk/peripheral or two)
as opposed to $12K for a full-blown xxxxx general purpose computer
campatible workstation are two totally different buying decisions
(like the difference between, "well, I don't know…" and "I'll take
one".)
Of course for $12,000 your workstation isn't going to come anywhere
near the 600 mips Newtek is claiming for the Screamer. I think SGI
rates the Indigo at about 30 mips. You can get close to that with a
fast 040 board.
Which Indigo are you reffering to?
-GT
I think he means the Indy, not the Indigo.
Steve
The Indy would still have an over 100 mips system performance. No Amiga can
compete speedwise with an SGI.
-GT
A Warp based Amiga can compete with the 100+ MIPS performance.
My 040 A2000 runs at just under 25MIPS. I've got a ways to go.
-Jonathan
// Amiga online via Autopilot
\\// MAC Quadra 700 & 486 emulation via Amiga!
I wasn't really following the discussion. Sorry. 🙂 I only
remember someone saying something about an SGI box being around the
same price as the Amiga. The only SGI box I know of that's remotely
the same price as an Amiga is the Indy. That's why I threw in the
comment. Confused? I know I am… 🙂
If I'm not mistaken the R4000 based Indigo is rated at about 33 MIPS
and sells for about $15000. I think the Indy is based on the R4400
and is rated at about 85 MIPS but you'd have a $10000 machine by the
time you got a reasonable amount of memory and a large hard drive.
Note: these numbers COULD be wrong. I'm going by my memory. (I
sometimes get parity errors) ;^)
The R4000 based Indigo runs faster than a Pentium, which goes at
around 110 mips. The R3000, the forerunner of the R4000, gave a 96
mips system performance. The R4400 is a clock doubled R4000 with a
bigger cache. Four running in parallel deliver a 600 mips system
performance. A RISC chip will always outperform a CISC chip.
BTW, the Indy runs an R4000. Only if you buy an Indigo2 Extreme do
you get the R4400, or if you buy an Onyx, that is if you got an extra
$250,000 to spare.
My 486 has a rating of 54 mips, while I'd guess an 040 running at
40mhz would be somewhere around 45.
Greg,
I stand corrected. All of what I know of SGI performance comes frome a
friend of mine who works at Vertigo software. They write SGI software.
Funny HIS facts were so far off. :^)
There are different R4000's chips (RS and CS models) out. Also the
R4400 is available in any of the Indigo2 line (XL thru Extreme, just
different graphic boards), also the R4400 is available as an upgrade
to the Challege – M server from SGI.
>> Get Inside Windows NT and read it if you really want to understand NT.
>> It is really shows what an amazing piece of work NT is.
Dito!!!
>> I'd be a lot more willing to fork over $10k for one if I knew I could run my
>> Windows apps on it when I wasn't rendering.
Double-Dito!!!
Hi Wayne. OS/2 is technically inferior to NT because it was
Microsoft's first go at a multitasking OS. It is slower, does not
provide good Windows 3.1 compatibility (OS/2 2.1 is much better than
2.0 or 1.3), and does not have many native apps. Let's not forget
that Microsoft did both OS/2 and NT. It's amazing to me that they
cleverly sneaked out of their association with OS/2 and have now made
it seem like it's all IBM's fault. While IBM's claiming OS/2 will
have SMP support, NT has it now, and it works, INCREDIBLY WELL. I use
a box with 4 DX50 processors running NT, and it truly screams
(appropriate term in this forum!).
Regarding NT's resource requirements – there's no question that it's
not for the average PC user today, even those with 486 machines. NT
is for power Intel users, RISC workstations and server systems.
"Chicago" which will come out probably early next year, is
essentially "NT-Lite" and will probably be called Windows 4.0. It
will finally do away with the separate MS-DOS/Windows components, but
still provide backward compatibility with both while also providing
the 32 bit multitasking, network client support, etc. It will be THE
thing to have.
Wes,
Thanks for the summary – good stuff to tuck away into the little grey
cells.
I was going to OS/2 school at the OS/2 1.0-1.1 transition time at
MicroSoft university. It was interesting to watch the instructors
who were working on the as yet unreleased Windows do everything they
could to say how crappy OS/2 was and how great the "can't confirm the
rumored" windows was.
As best as I can tell, MS made OS/2 as crappy as they could while
meeting the letter of the contract with IBM while concurrently using
the same people, in some cases, to develope Windows. Byt the time IBM
found out about how Billy G had shafted them, it was too late to
counter. That, I think, was at least a big reason, if not the main
reason, for the IBM/MS falling out.
I can't comment about NT firsthand so I won't. I did look at what to
put on my desktop right now and I went with OS/2 instead of Win 3.1.
Three key reasons:
The os2 desktop is more elegant the the Win file manager. As far as I
know Windows lovers don't even like the file manager.
OS2 is a real multitasker.
OS2 has Rexx. Not an issue for most people but thanks to Bill
Hawes…
In short OS2 finally means my PC OS has all the things I like about
the Amiga OS. Anyway, Windows 3.1 apps do great under OS2. Only
Windows Fax software, which bangs the port hardware, strains the
emulation (but it does work). Otherwise I know of no serious
incompatibilities.
I'll make one comment about NT. Interestingly, NT has Win 3.1
incompatibilities. It was retrofitted to acommodate Windows after
Windows became a surprise success. — Art
Well, at thei point I'm stuck with Windows. My wife has a Thinkpad
750C at home (makes me do the 'system maintenance and software
installations, don't ya know) and maxed out it probably won't put up
with NT. It can only go to 20 meg ram and has a 340 meg HD. She got
Windows 'cause thats what is "required" where she works. I was
hoping to con her into OS/2.
Now, if I can figure out how to record the sound from the microphone
input and tie them to key events, I can have some real fun with
her….:^}
Microsofts OS stratagy is multi-layered. There will be an OS for
every level of machine and user. The idea is to standardize on the
GUI and API portions of the OS so that software can be written to
operate well on each level of system.
Microsoft even has a version of windows designed for consumer
electronics. This version will be the interface to your TV, FAX
machine, copy machine… One GUI and API for all equipment. While
this dream may never take hold 100%, it is a goal of Microsoft to get
the GUI out in as many places as possible. Then, if you know how to
use Windows, learnig to use a new piece of equipment will be a snap.
Whey have a diffferent interface on ever piece of equipment.
By the way, the OS I am talking about is called Modular Windows.
As far as the need for upgrading your computers to support NT, only a
few people will actually need the power that NT offers. In November,
Microsoft will release a new version of windows. version 3.11. After
that is Chicago and Ciaro. Once Ciaro is out, I think the picture
will begin to clear for the consumer.
NewTek has gone NT for a good reason…. Raw Power. OS2 is a VERY
NICE operating system. But it is not even close to NT. From the
surface, most people can not see the real advantages that NT has over
other operating systems, but when you learn how each one really
works, NT stands alone ontop of the hill.
**** Am I in the wrong forum???? ****
Assuming the Warp System parallel RISC processor cards appear as
promised, it would seem as though AmigaDOS indeed can be made to
control mulitiple CPUs, or at least interface with them. The Warp
System is a Zorro board, as I understand it.
The Warp design is not true Symmetrical Multi-Processing, as is
Windows NT (and now OS/2 and Mach Unix from what I've read). In SMP
systems, each CPU can grab instructions to be executed independantly,
all but insuring top performance. To depend on a single CPU to be
'traffic cop' for X-number of CPUs puts a bottleneck of sorts on
throughput. I suppose this is why Newtek didn't go with a less
expensive option like Warp.
The Warp system does look promising, hope it works and sells well.
Dunno. From what I've heard, it sounds like you'd NEED a screamer to
get much out of NT. 8{)
I dunno about that Nate, I heard the same nonsense about plain
ordinary Windows. When I installed Windows 3.1 in my cousin's LOWLY
286 it ran relatively fast and had no troubles with it. I believe
it's ALOT of Exxaggeration. So many folks told me to use Windows you
need AT LEAST a 486 and 4 megs of Ram. Then I installed it on a 1 meg
286 and it functioned quite nicely and pretty speedily.
Windows on a 286 with one meg is SPEEDY?!?!? When I installed Windows
3.1 on my 286 bridgeboard for a trade show (just to show it on the
screen), it took over 4 &1/2 MINUTES to load Word! I now have a 386DX
40Mhz machine with a HiSpeed SCSI hard drive, 8 megs of RAM, and a
Windex SuperVGA windows accelerator card. IMHO, this system performs
on a par with my *stock* 68000 based 2000HD Amiga with 1 meg ram as
far as 'feel' is concerned (mouse reaction, application load time
etc). I think you are the first person I have EVER heard use the
words 'Windows' and 'Speedy' in the same sentence..
I used a 286 not a bridgeboard. this could be the reason perhas. I
did NOt test it extensively but the few things I did try worked
fairly quickly. Mostly Games that my cousin has that I windowified
as well as a AWESOME prg for printing Cards,Biz Cards,Letterhead etc,
unfortunately I can't think of it's name at this time. aha the name
of the Program was "instant Artist" and was quite nice.
Yeah, I was just going on what I read in the magazines. I use
Windows on a huge network at work occasionally, and have never had
too much problem with speed on the 386's hooked to the net. Software
usability, now that's another matter. You read the article on NT in
the latest Shopper? Interesting points on how NT will be accepted.
BTW, did you get that dinosaur walking rate figured out?
Nope, I hardly ever read Shopper……. ACK which Dino are we talking
about here Nate? the Triceratops or the T-Rex that Alan Henry
Uploaded???
Uh, the dinosaur that looked like it perhaps was on rollerskates on
the demo reel. Triceratops, I think. You were having a little
trouble syncing the feet with the distance covered when over a
backdrop.
Ahhh Yes, the Trceratops from "Dino Walk 2000" nope I've done nothng
with it since then sorry Nate. Why doth thou ask? I've been playing
with Humanoids lately(not Tim Wilson's Humanoids tho) <is that an
Iguana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?>