Party Review for World Of Commodore 92
found in | Type | Author | Year |
Diskmagazine | LSD 8-Ball - AKI - Adam Egest - ... | a2/93 |
W O R L D O F C O M M O D O R E 1 9 9 2 R E P O R T By Shawn Lou Eggebrecht, VP of Commodore Engineering made two presentations, one to the public and another on Saturday night for dealers and developers. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him for the Saturday night seminar he is a fascinating man. He designed the first IBM-PC and was consulted by Intel on the design of the new Pentium processor. After the seminar he answered a pile of questions about the future of the Amiga. I asked him so many questions, i'm sure I talked more than he did. The presentation that he gave was much the same one he gave at WOC Pasadena. The most exciting part of this is the preview of the next generation Amiga's. Here are the features in point form: In the future there will be two versions of the chipset, the low and the high end. LOW END - Two 100k Transistor Chips - 32 bit DRAM 60ns Page Mode Chip Memory - 57 MHz Pixel Clock - 100% Backwards Compatibility - 4MB 4Mbps Floppy Controller with Hardware CRC - 8x Memory Bandwidth Increase - 2x Blitter Performance (gets twice as many clocks as on AGA) - 800x600x8bit Non-Interlace 72Hz Refresh Rate - Larger screens at lower Refresh Rates - 16 bit True Colour mode (although recent developments with the completion of the first cycle of chipset design indicate that this will actually be a 24 bit True Colour Mode) - FIFO serial ports - increased Chip Ram (8Mb) HIGH END - 4 Chips (750k transistors each) - 32/64 bit VRAM Chip Memory (could be DRAM for mid range machines) - 57/114 MHz pixel clock - Chunky Pixel Mode as well as Bit Planes Modes (Blitter works with both) - Special CD-ROM Port (4 Mbps Very High Speed Serial Port) - Built in Frame Grabber - 1280 x 1024 24 bit colour 72 Hz Refresh Rate - 16 bit 8 channel 100KHz sampling rate Audio ports - New "On-Demand" DMA Architecture for Balanced DMA Usage - All Clocks are Independent and Each Section is Asynchronous to Each Other - 12 to 20 x Memory Bandwidth Increase (mostly from VRAM) - 32 bit blitter (instead of word blitter) 8x Performance Increase - 24 bit True Colour Mode - Video Upgrade module (You can add more chips for parallel processing chip set i.e. multiple blitters and Higher Resolution Display Modes) - Hardware Graphics Decompression Modes - ECS and AGA compatibility - 32 bit Processor Independent Processor Bus (hinted at RISC by calling the bus "RISC ready") FUTURE RELEASES OF AMIGADOS - 3.1 Device Independent Network - Support File and Printer Sharing DSP Support - 4.0 Retargetable Graphics Full Support for Postscript Printers He also fielded many good questions, and he indicated: - The only reason that the A600 and A1200 do not have the dual speed floppies is that the current model is simply too big. There is lower profile versions on the way but there are not here now and will not be for a while. - There are no plans for virtual memory. - Commodore will release a series of Quad-Syncing monitors in February to replace their current series. - New Bridgeboards will be on the way, including new software VGA support and a new bridgeboard for the A1200. - AGA will be put into all models of the Amiga, including the CDTV. Also CDTV technology will be brought to the entire Amiga line. - Full motion video support is well on its way. The feature is here now, but the development systems for this technology is not. - Prime goal with the CDTV is to cost reduce it and then enhance it. - A new design philosophy is to design all hardware with modules to allow upgradability. - A main goal of his is to use the current state of the art development systems and design tools to enable Commodore to reduce their design times. Much of it is already in place and the AGA chipset is the first result of that process. Instead of being last to bring something out, Commodore is going to be first or second. - DSP technology will be available for the A4000 this summer. DSP will feature the AT&T 32000 series DSP and a 68040 processor module for the A4000. A Personality board will attach to this board and will allow the DSP to perform useful functions. Most of the DSP Personality boards will be produced by third parties. There will be extensive information on this product at the next DevCon. - The A3090 will be shipping at the end of January and will feature a 10MB/s transfer rate as well as WIDE and FAST SCSI. - A new, higher performance Ethernet card will be available soon, after the release of 3.1 and the new TCP/IP and Novell software. - The chipset is still too power hungry for a laptop. Maybe there will be one when there is a fully CMOS chipset. - No hardware memory protection plans for Motorola Architecture (the way he said it implied that it might be on other architectures.) - Retargetablity is a major goal and Audio will merge with DSP (this didn't make sense to me since audio is built into the chip set.) - Processor Upgrade cards for the A1200 will be left for 3rd Parties. - They are going to be replacing the 2000 very soon. The only reason they still make the 2000 is so that they don't abandon the only machine the Video Toaster runs on out of the box. The NewTek people are very difficult to work with and are resistant to change. - Some early 4000's shipped with the fan installed backwards and this caused many overheating problems. I believe he said that if you had one, you can have it fixed on your warrantee. - He could not give any release dates for machines with the low and high end chip sets. He did say it would be more than a year. The high end chipset development is father along than the low end. Both have completed a first design cycle. The results of this cycle are better than expected and they are ahead of their development plan. One thing that was heavily implied was that the Amiga will be migrated over to a RISC CPU in the future. While he did mention that the exact CPU has not been decided, the high-end models are being designed to accommodate a RISC CPU. I overheard him talking about being excited that a RISC Amiga will be able to run not only UNIX, but Windows NT. The timetables for the new stuff were not made clear. He did mention that the DSP CPU module for the 4000 would be out in the summer. This implies that 3.1 would be out at the same time. Further, since 3.1 includes device independent networking built into the operating system, the new Ethernet hardware and software should be out shortly after that. Other products, like the 3090 disk controller and the new monitors, will be released during the next few months. The crowd attending the two seminars that Lou gave seemed overwhelmed at the features of the future chipset. The loudest cheers came with the mention of the larger chip ram feature. I am very excited about the future of the Amiga. The new features are nice, but the best part is that, clearly, Commodore has a plan. This plan is not just a short term plan, but a visionary plan to create a series of Amiga's that will meet future market demands. This plan would not be reassuring if it was presented by anyone other that Mr. Eggesbrecht. He is very capable and has had much success in the industry. EXHIBITOR'S DISPLAYS First let me tell you that i've never been to a Amiga show of this size. My first reaction was "Wow!". There was about 48 separate exhibitors. When I wandered into the area I was struck by the demo at the ICD booth. It was a 4.5 minute full screen clip from Star Wars with stereo. It ran at 24 frames/second on a stock 2000 with an ICD SCSI controller. A ICD spokesperson said that it was captured with a PP&S frame grabber from a video disk. I talked with the a ICD person at the booth about this demo and he said that he could not distribute it and they had no plans to market the software that was used to create or play the animation. This animation was apparently at WOC Toronto last year as well. The animation makes MPEG and CDXL animations look awful. The second most impressive thing on the exhibition floor was the Virtuality Concepts display. This was the Dactyl Nightmare virtual reality game that has appeared on CNN and in magazines. The line ups were too long. On Sunday, I decided to endure the hour and a half lineup. When I finally tried it, I was disappointed. The big flaw with this game is its lack of resolution. There is a monitor that sits in front of your cage which shows the public what the player is seeing. This looks to be a 640 by 200 16 colour screen. What you see with the headset is what that screen would look like through a magnifying glass. You can see each distinct pixel and the black space around it. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, and once you got the hang of it, it was a playable game. But they have to work on the resolution. There were other interactive video displays in the Commodore booth. These were two Mandala systems. One a Star Trek Transporter sequence. The voice of the Enterprise's computer would prompt you to enter the transporter room. You would then stand in front of a camera and watch yourself on a large television screen. Your image is superimposed on top of a picture of a transported room. The computer would then say "Prepare to beam out" and you would watch yourself dissolve. The scene on the TV would then change and you would dissolve back in. Computer generated rocks would then fall and as soon as they touched you they would bounce off. There was also a Commodore history display, with some of their past machines. These included adding machines, calculators, watches, the KIM-1 and the PET, the Vic-20 and the various 64's, 128's, the original Amiga 1000 and just about everything else. Along the sides of the Commodore Booth, there was a CDTV with a video upgrade, with what seemed to be a high colour, 1/3 screen smooth animation. This CDTV had a hard drive and a DCTV style external graphics upgrade module. Another thing that amazed me was the great deals offered by the retailers. All the computers were going at cost. My dealer friends felt quite ripped off since people were walking away with 1200's and they had not even got firm prices for it yet. The deals on 3000's were especially good and for a while we watched a 3000 leave the building once every ten minutes. Gold Disk probably had the best software prices and they had a whole pile of upgrade options. ProCalc was going for $115 and the ProPage/ProDraw bundle was going for $250. Everything else that they make was going for similarly good prices. Keep in mind that these are Canadian prices. If you multiply them by .75 you get the equivalent US prices. My dealer friend bought a 20" Electrohome Multisync monitor for $1000. This monitor is regular $2300 here. It syncs down to 15KHz and has a separate horizontal and vertical centring for 6 different sync rates. If you've had a AGA machine for a while, you would find this feature to be a blessing. Video Toaster User Magazine had a booth there and was giving away free issues. The magazine answered many questions I had about video equipment, so if your looking for a magazine that concentrates on video, then is it. Another magazine caught my eye. Amiga News is a grassroots, newspaper style publication. It caries some very good articles and reviews. It is a bargain at 95 cents and issue. A magazine of a different sort is Toast and Coffee. This is a video magazine that focuses on Amiga video. This is a great way to see all those toys that you can't afford buy. Migraph was there with their new PS- 400 Wand full-page scanner. It is a monochrome, 400dpi sheet-fed scanner. There are two versions, one with their Touch-Up and OCR software and one with just the Touch-Up software. You need an accelerated Amiga with at lease 4.5 MB of memory. It retails at $899 US with OCR and $799 US without. But at these prices I thought that a person could easily get a colour Epson Scanner for a few hundred more. Comspec was there with some very capable vinyl sign cutting system by Parallel Motion Graphics and Roland. Electronic Arts was showing off Deluxe Paint IV Version 4.5. Its new features are AGA support of all graphics modes, including Productivity mode. It reads 24-bit IFF files. There is smoother gradients, translucency and tinting. But it paled in comparison to Digital Creations' Brilliance! Unless Electronic Arts can pull off a major upgrade soon, I figure Deluxe Paint has been dethroned as the King of Amiga Paint Programs. Both DPaint and Brilliance start shipping in late January. I think that my favourite booth in the whole show was the Toronto Commodore User's Group. I liked it because it was strange and unusual. They were demonstrating a pile of old computers like SuperPets and 128's. These people still loved their old computers and are still having a pile of fun with them. They also served to remind everyone that Commodore makes more than just Amiga's. Although Commodore does not sell their MS-DOS line in the States, they do just about everywhere else. They have a very nifty new 486 colour laptop & a new 486 Tower. They did seem a little out of place surrounded by Amiga's. SHOW SEMINARS COMMODORE NEW PRODUCT SEMINAR When I finally got to the show, it was 2:10 PM Friday and the new products demonstration seminar was just beginning. Luckily, the seminars were running a bit behind. This seminar was very disappointing. The presenter was very personable, but there was no demo of the AGA machines, only a slide show of the features that we have all heard. He did not have a A1200 to demonstrate. In fact, he was not prepared for the demonstration at all. None of the recently announced Commodore products were actually demonstrated. He did mention that there would be a hardcard available that works on both the CDTV and the A570. I guess the connector inside the A570 and the CDTV are compatible. Some light was shed on the new SCSI card from Commodore. The A3090 SCSI- II Zorro-III card has been in beta testing stage for about two weeks, and the expected shipping date was around the end of January. GOLD DISK'S PROPAGE 4.0 AND PRODRAW 3.0 The second seminar I went to was a Desktop publishing seminar by Gold disk featuring ProPage 4.0 and ProDraw 3.0. This demonstrator was fascinating, but again he was not prepared. He brought along a Syquest drive with the software on it. But the 4000 that was there for demonstrations doesn't have a SCSI port. He was forced to use the 3000. This hurt his demonstration of ProPage 4.0 since the major new feature is the new AGA support. There are some other improvements including user definable zoom and a font preview gadget when selecting fonts. A page sorting window which gives you a thumbnail sketch of your pages and allows you to reorder pages by just dragging them to a new position. A new Pair Kerning feature allows the kerning of a pair of letters to be defined throughout a document. A Post-It Note feature allows you to attach non-printing notes for yourself and others who see the document. The text editor has been improved and a bitmap graphics editor has been added. ProPage 4.0 can hotlink to ProDraw and ProCalc. If you buy ProPage 3.0 between the beginning of December 1992 and the end of February 1993 you get version 4.0 free. Also the new AGA version of ProDraw is coming, but a release date has not been set. SOFT-LOGIK'S SEMINAR The Art Expression seminar was next. This is a neat little structured drawing program. It has many of ProDraw's features. I think it handles EPS drawing better that ProDraw. It can output to any Preferences printer as long as you have a minimum 1 Meg of Chip Ram. It does not support Compugraphic Fonts, only Postscript Type 1. Softlogic is also bringing out a font editor called TypeSmith, which is an adaptation of a European program called Font Designer. It can load, edit and save Pagestream, Compugraphic and Postscript Type 1 fonts. GREAT VALLEY PRODUCT'S IV24 SEMINAR The IV24 seminar was impressive. Paul Higgenbottom demonstrated this GVP product, which makes it easy to capture and edit video images. Included with this hardware is a program called ImageFX. The effects that this program can perform are very fast, and include masking effects like those on the Quanta Paintbox. These masks can use edge blending to produce soft edges. Macropaint is a paint program included with the IV24. It is also very fast and is fully AREXX compatible. It also allows for the playback of ANIMs directly from the hard disk. You can work in fewer colours to conserve the Chip RAM that the program uses. MacroPaint can also edit bitmaps as large as 1280 by 1024 and you can autoscroll to all regions of the bitmap. MyLAD is a switcher for the IV24. It can perform about 50 transitions, but no dissolves. He also talked about the new G-Lock genlock from GVP. It is a small external box that is software controlled. It has dual composite inputs and there is some provision for some switching effects. It also has dual audio inputs for audio mixing. It is compatible with all Amiga's and the hardware takes advantage of the new AGA chipset for some additional chroma keying effects. GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS'S PHONEPAK SEMINAR GVP gave a presentation on the PhonePak. This is a new and revolutionary product for the Amiga market. It is a multiple line, Centrex compatible Voice Mail system. You can use as many PhonePak boards as you have Zorro-II slot, with each card handling one phone line. It is completely programmable. Also, the system can handle facsimile transmission and reception. There are multiple mailboxes for multiple users. You can also access your mailboxes from a remote phone by touch tones. There is no caller ID yet, but GVP is planning it for the future. Just to avoid any confusion, there is no data modem in the unit nor do you require one. There are two programs that come with the package. The first, Line Manager, watches the phone line for incoming calls, figure out if it is a FAX or voice and take the proper action. It is also AREXX compatible. The other program is PhonePAK. It defines the operation of the unit, mailboxes, the viewing of received FAX's. There is a preferences printer driver that you can print to from any program that will send out FAXes. COMMODORE'S AMIGAVISION PROFESSIONAL I also attended the AmigaVision Professional seminar. The whole package has been improved. There are more transitions, and there are now two groups of transitions: bitmap and screen. Screen transitions are independent of screen and palette so you don't have to worry about things changing colour or resizing when performing transitions. There is now 4 transition speed selections instead of 3. Even though the presentation of AVPro was on a 3000, there is AGA support. A new feature is streaming, a process where you can play sound and animations directly from the disk using a user defined memory buffer. You can now slow down animations if they go too fast by inserting a number of jiffies. There are many features that support a AmigaVision Flow running on a CDTV. CDXL is supported, although you can't create them with AVPro and you can only play them back on a CDTV. If you want to create them, CDTV Developers can buy a device called CTRACK. This is a special SCSI drive controller emulates the CDTV CD-ROM drive. However this device costs more than $5000. AVPro can now read back the CDTV preferences. A memory limitation preference allows you to run your flow in a simulated CDTV environment, so that you can test your flow to see if it has enough memory to run on a CDTV without running it on one. You can now choose small icons when viewing your AmigaVision flows. This allows you to see more of your flow at once. Printing of flows has been expanded, allowing more that just graphic dumps. It presents the flow in an all text form at which you can print to a printer or file. A memory reporter will tell you how much memory you are using when your flow is running. A freely distributable runtime version is now available and it is only about 260k in size. This runtime version can runs flows from all versions of AmigaVision. An upgrade policy from older versions of AmigaVision is not final, but it looks like it will come in about $90 US. DIGITAL CREATIONS'S BRILLIANCE SEMINAR Brilliance is better than DeluxePaint in every way. It will use every graphics mode, has multiple undo capability and is very fast. Menus and palettes are on separate screens and will not change colours when you change them. The menus are stackable and you can tailor what menus are displayed. It has better overscan control. It has multiple buffers (in DPaint it would be more than one swap screen). Also, it has Bezier curves. The air brush tool is much more flexible. You can alter the brush size and pattern, the statistical distribution of pixels, you can airbrush multi-colour brushes and also now you can airbrush gradients. There are all the drawing modes that are in DeluxePaint and new ones including two colour dithering, translucency, brighten and darken. Animation is enhanced by better frame control with a VCR style toolbox. Ease in and out can be defined for each axis. It supports Compugraphic fonts. No 3D brush mapping is supported, but you can simulate 3D light distributions with gradient fills. Morphing uses an enhanced algorithm which moves pixels with equal preference to all directions. Brilliance works on a virtual 24bit buffer, and then translates to whatever display mode you have chosen. It is also memory efficient and you can run it well in 512k of memory. WILL VINTON'S PLAYMATION SEMINAR Playmation allows you to create very realistic organic objects and manoeuvre them around in their scenes very easily. Each module of the package uses the same interface and sets of keyboard command equivalents. But it is crippled by a very slow and inflexible rendering module. An animation was shown displaying what the package can do and while lacking a good plot, it demonstrated a very good organic morphing technique called muscle deformations. This is excellent for doing moving mouth effects. The bad part of the animation was that it was rendered on a PC. There is also a Mac version.