MAIN LINE COMPUTER USERS - MARCH 1998 - ISSUE #190 ***** MARCH 1998 ****************** ISSUE #190 ***** VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - MAR 07 NOTE: Joint Demo again this month! -------------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL DEMO FOR THIS MEETING This month holds the second of two meetings planned around world wide web (www) pages - beginner's level! Our webmaster, Peter Whinnery, will pick up where Prof. Maloney left off last month. He'll show us how the MLCUG web page was set up and is being maintained and enhanced for graphical and text users. NOTE: demo planned to start at 10:30. -------------------------------------------------------- MAIN LINE 64/128/PC USERS - Room 110 Following the pattern from last month, we'll take roughly the first hour of the meeting for announcements, Q&A and problem solving (we hope). Then, at about 10:30 (when hopefully, all late arrivees and any Amiga folks who wish to mosey down are present), we'll turn the meeting over to Peter Whinnery. Pete is responsible for the setting up of the MLCUG web page (on the server facilities kindly provided by Prof. Maloney) and continues to maintain it. This demo will be right in the meeting room as we do not need to be on-line to see how Pete does what he does. Special NOTE: this is your opportunity to not only get a bit more familiar how the web works, but to provide SUGGESTIONS to Peter on our Page! So, ya'll come ..... MAIN LINE AMIGA USERS - Room 210 Since we've been having combined SIG meetings the last couple of months, I suggest you read Emil's write up on our February meeting. For March, we continue our joint SIG presentation on the Web and Web pages. Our presenter this month is Pete Whinnery. Like last month, see Emil's discussion on the planned presentation. -------------------------------------------------------- THIS MONTH'S CONTENTS History of Computing - Part X & XI 2 Announcements 3 Product Update - SUPERCPU 128! 3 Trading Post 3 64/128/PC meeting minutes 4 Intro to the HTML 4 Evolution of the Math Problem 5 AMIGA User Happenings 6 State of the AMIGA 7 CUPID: Graphic Perspectives - I 10 MAP/Masthead/Meeting schedule 11 Membership Form/Dues 12 **************************************** CHRONOLOGY OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTING MACHINES (PART X) BY JAY R. BAKER 1969 - CDC 7600 was introduced and was later renamed the Cyber 76. Nov 1971 - Intel Corporation publically announced the development of the first microprocessor, the 4004, designed by Marcian E. ("Ted") Hoff, Jr. The 4004 processed four bits of data at a rate of 60 kHz. Aug 1972 - Intel introduced the 8008 microchip, the first 8 bit microprocessor. 1972 - Seymour Cray (b. 1926) left CDC to form Cray Research, Inc. Oct 1973 - Judge Earl Larson of the District Court in Minneapolis decided a law suit in which Sperry Rand (the owner of Mauchly and Eckert's rights to the ENIAC patent issued in Feb 1964) charged that Minneapolis Honeywell had infringed on that patent. Judge Larson ruled that the patent was invalid on several grounds including (1) that the patent application had been unreasonably delayed, (2) that the patentable comcepts had been publicly disclosed for more than a year before the patent was first filed on 26 June 1947 and (3) that most of the concepts in the patent had been derived from the work of John Atanasoff who was therefore the true inventor of the electronic digital computer. Note however that Atanasoff's machine was limited in its application and was never fully operational. Furthermore Atanasoff left Iowa State in 1942 and went to work for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and did nothing further to pursue his ideas in the field of computer development. Therefore, although the law may have ruled against Mauchly and Eckert's right to the ENIAC patent, history will still show that it was their talent and industriousness that led to the creation of the first stored program computer and to the birth of the computer industry. (AT LAST, THE PERSONAL COMPUTER AGE!) Apr 1974 Intel introduced the 8080 microprocessor, a more efficient and more powerful version of the 8008, with a rate of 2 kHz. Jan 1975 - Popular Electronics magazine published the first of two articles on the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful full- fledged personal computer, which was built by Edward Roberts, William Yates and Jim Bybee of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), a small electronics hobby-kit company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Altair 8800 used the Intel 8080 microprocessor and cost $650 fully assembled and only $395 in kit form. Aside from the lack of memory (only 256 bytes of RAM) and peripherals (input was in binary via 16 toggle switches, output was also in binary via 36 light-emitting diodes), a major limitation of the Altair was that it had to be programmed in machine code. Paul Allen and William Gates offered to remedy this limitation by writing a BASIC interpreter for the computer. In six weeks they delivered the finished product to MITS which made Allen its software director. Gates and Allen later formed the Microsoft Corporation, now one of the country's largest software companies. 1975 - Stephen Wozniak, inspired by the Altair 8800, designed the Apple I computer using the 6502 microprocessor (produced by MOS Technology) which he combined with 4K bytes of RAM, a keyboard for input and a BASIC interpreter which he wrote. His friend, Steven Jobs, found a local outlet in the San Francisco Bay area for marketing the first 100 units at $500 a piece (with a retail price of [continued on p.9] **************************************** CHRONOLOGY OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTING MACHINES (PART XI & FINAL) BY JAY R. BAKER $666.66) and the two formed a partnership, the Apple Computer Company. 1976 - COMMODORE introduced the first PET microcomputer based on the 6502 microprocessor (Commodore had bought MOS Technology) with 8K bytes of RAM, a keyboard, built-in monitor and BASIC for only $795. Later PET models expanded the memory up to 96K bytes. 1977 - The Apple II computer is introduced with 16K bytes of memory for $1195. Tandy Corporation introduced the TRS-80 using the Z-80 microprocessor. Digital Equipment Corporation introduced the VAX- 11/780, a 32 bit minicomputer. Jun 1977 - First Cray-1 installed at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory with 32M bytes of RAM, a peak speed of 140 MFLOPS (millions of floating point operations per second) and a price of $14M. 1979 - VisiCalc software was introduced for the Apple II which significantly increased sales of the computer by providing it with a meaningful business application (spreadsheet) and launching the now substantial commercial software business for personal computers. 1980 - Commodore introduced the VIC-20 with 5K bytes of RAM and built- in BASIC 2.0 for under $300. Sep 1981 - IBM PC was introduced with an operating speed of a few KFLOPS. First CDC Cyber 205 delivered with computing speeds up to 800 MFLOPS and priced at $15M with 32M bytes of memory. 1982 - Commodore 64, with 64K bytes of RAM and using the 6510 microprocessor, was introduced at a price of $599. 1984 - Commodore 128, with 128K bytes of RAM, BASIC 7.0, CP/M mode and compatibility with the C-64, was introduced. Jun 1985 - First Cray-2 began operation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Cray-2 has 2G (2 billion) bytes of RAM memory, four parallel processors to attain a top speed of 1.2 GFLOPS (billions of floating point operations per second, twelve times faster than the Cray-1) and a price of $17.6M. 1985 - Amiga 1000, the first multi-tasking microcomputer with 256K bytes of RAM, was introduced at a price of $1295. 1987 - Amiga 500 (512K bytes of RAM and built-in 3.5-inch drive for $599) and Amiga 2000 (1M of RAM and expandable for IBM PC-XT compatibility for $1995) were introduced. Commodore 128D, with built-in 5.25-inch disk drive, was introduced. [This brings us to the end of this re-run of the series on the history of the modern computer. I have not seen a sequel that covers the last ten years - from the time of Commodore's heyday to its fall from glory and eventual demise, then on to the rise of the Macintosh and the IBM compatible PCs. If any reader is aware of a source for such an update, I'd like to know about and publish it. Thanks for your attention - and I hope you have enjoyed the re-run! - ejv]. [the end] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ "GRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE" Part 1: Aspect Ratios by: Jack Blewitt The name of the game is "Perspective"! Without the proper perspective, computer graphics will appear to be distorted on the screen, in print, or in both. The human eye will make some internal adjustments provided the view is somewhat close to normal, but in many cases the aspect ratio of scenes have been altered to the degree that they become visually offensive. "Aspect Ratio" is the relative size of the height of an item compared to its width. For example, you would expect a circle with a 72 unit diameter to appear round. Not so! The viewing area of the average Commodore monitor is approximately 7" high by 9" wide. This represents a resolution of 200 x 320 pixels, (or dots), that form an image. Thus, a circle 72 pixels in diameter would be portrayed on the screen by an oval 2.5" high by 2.0" wide, or aspect ratio of 1:0.8. A far cry from a perfect circle. To complicate the matter, should you attempt to print this screen, you are dealing with the mechanical vertical spacing of your printer which is considerably different than the pixel spacing of your computer screen. The majority of printers, with "Epson emulation" and 8-Pin printheads, will print graphics at a number of horizontal densities selectable by the software. Those so called "80 dot per inch (dpi) printers" usually will also print graphics at 60, 72, 90, 120, or 240 dpi per horizontal line. Vertical density, unless fixed otherwise, is usually set at a nominal 72 dpi. To print that 'perfect circle' you would have to print at 72 dpi horizontal setting to prevent that dreaded oval appearance. The main problem with this is that each screen will print 4.45" wide and if two screens are printed side by side, you will loose almost one inch of the right hand graphic on an 8-1/2 inch standard page. Most "Commodore Compatible" printers that do not require an interface have a maximum of three horizontal densities. 60, 120, or 240 dpi. At the normal setting of 60 dpi horizontal density and a vertical spacing of 72 dpi, the circle now becomes an egg shaped 1:1.2" oval. Some of the older software took this into consideration. Try drawing a circle with "OCP's Advanced Art Studio" and you will find each attempt appears to be a distorted oval on the screen. When printed at 72 dpi, this oval approximates a true circle. Other paint programs were designed to print at 90 dpi, (Rainbow Painter), and still others, (like Doodle!), allow you to set you own aspect ratio of a circle. With the later, you determine the final use of the picture. If it is to be viewed on screen you use one setting and a different ratio if it is destined to appear in print. The latest breed of Ink-Jet and 24-Pin printers use a vertical standard of 1/60" instead of the 1/72" we have grown used to. This actually give a much better perspective, and if 60 dpi horizontal resolution is selected, will present us with a near perfect circle on the screen. A square that is 60 x60 pixels on the screen will print 1"x1" and actually be square. It will take some customizing, but I anticipate that all graphics will someday be adapted to this format. The preferred setting is 80, 90, or 240 dpi x 3-wide horizontal resolution. This allows column printing and two full screens to be placed across the normal page. Unfortunately, when most Commodore graphics are printed on a 24-pin printer, faces become elongated and circles become elliptical. Commodore graphics were designed to meet the needs of 60 or 80 dpi printers that have the 72 dpi line spacing. Does this mean you will no longer be able to use these graphics? No! You have two choices. You can either adjust the vertical resolution of the printer or you can reduce the vertical size of any graphic screen you wish to salvage. How does one salvage the old graphics to print with the current 24-pin printer settings? Two of the easiest methods involve the use of the pay version of the "FunGraphics Machine" or in conjunction with the graphic sizing option of "PaperClip Publisher"! The way to do this will be discussed in Part II of this article. Now that 8-pin printers are getting scarce, you should have a method to save your favorite graphics instead of discarding them. ######################################## ANNOUNCEMENTS & SPECIALS ######################################## WELCOME! - we would like to welcome back to the club, former member, treasurer, etc. - Rich Tave. Rich went off to the Mac world for a bit, then to the PC system because of his work. We hope his return is a mutual benefit! GRAPHICS PERSPECTIVE - beginning on p.10 is the first of a several part series on considerations in doing graphics - especially related to printing problems. The author is Jack Blewitt (aka CUPID) who has appeared often in our issues. He has semi-retired from 8-bit authoring, but still has some ideas left to impart! CONGRATULATIONS! - to the Commodore Users Group of St. Louis. They are celebrating their 20th year of support for the 8-bit machines! They may be the oldest, exclusively, Commodore group in the world. (In our own area, the Commodore SIG in PACS may be a bit older, but it has not been a free standing club any of this time). ------------- COMPUTER BIG LIE #8 - "Windows makes it easier to learn". Kennedy doesn't swallow all of Microsoft Corp.'s hype about how easy it is to learn Windows 95. It's easier to use software once you've learned how Windows works, but that doesn't mean learning Windows is a snap. **************************************** PRODUCT UPDATE GoDot GRAPHICS - this new C-64 graphics utility program was noted in previous newsletter issues. This past month, Charles Curran used it to convert the graphic that forms the header for this newsletter into a PC compatible graphic file format (a .pcx file), then from that to a jpeg graphic. Peter Whinnery, our webmaster, touched it up and you all can take a look at it on our webpage, if you have access to a graphical web browser. Good show! SUPERCPU 128 - Hot off the CMD Web site! SuperCPU-128 Status 2/23/98 The SuperCPU-128 production has been a slow and tedious process. Even though the hardware itself has been ready for several weeks, the custom chip set has needed to be tested and re-tested to insure the unit's performance and reliability. As of Friday, February 20, 1998, the first dozen or so units were shipped. These units were full production units that were sent out to key individuals, who have been requested to report back on its operation in the field. Although there have been a few units in use for several months, we see the need for testing on a wider sampling of machines. We expect that the units being tested will perform as designed and any problems will be minor and can be corrected in production. We anticipate having the green light for final assembly and shipping of production units by the end of this week (week of 2/23/98). As for a time frame on deliveries, we have over 200 units for advanced depositors with deliveries ranging from 1 week to 6 weeks depending on when your original deposit was made. We wish to thank all of those individuals that remained confident in our ability to complete this new technology and hope that the unit will live up to your expectations. For anyone interested in placing new orders for a SuprCPU-128, we anticipate a 4-6 week leadtime. New orders are being accepted, to order call 800-638-3263 (9-5:30, M-F). $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $ TRADING POST $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ WANTED: a MAGIC DESK cartridge for the C-64. If you have one you do not need, let Emil (610-388-1581) know. (1) FOR SALE: selling off large inventory of 64 stuff: 12 C-64s, 10 1541s, 6 C= printers, power supplies, Datasettes, cables, manuals, joy sticks, etc., etc. Also has 10 non-working 64s ($10 each + shipping) - for spare parts useage. If interested, contact Edward Arrasmith, 1-919-753-4876. (1) FOR SALE: Complete C-64 outfit (it is a virtual "room full" of stuff). If you want to check on something of interest, call Don Sauerhoefer, 610-258-0218 (H) or 908-475-7597 (W). (3) FOR SALE: MLCUG has a lot of hardware and software that is available for you to purchase at very attractive prices! We'll have detailed lists at the next meeting - here is some of the hardware, the software list is to long to show! 6 computer - C-64 w/PS $25 18 disk drive 1541 - various $20 1 interface - Cardco $ 5 1 interface - MSD $ 5 6 joystick $ 2 1 modem - Panasonic 1200 bps $10 1 monitor - amber - Panasonic $10 1 monitor - screen filter $ 5 1 plotter - Commodore 1520 $10 2 printer - Commodore 1525 $10 2 printer - Commodore 803 $10 2 printer - color - Okimate 10 $10 1 printer - Okimate 120 $20 1 printer - Star Gemini II $25 2 computer - VIC-20 TBD 1 64K RAM/video for VIC-20 TBD 1 computer - Plus4 $25 You can contact Charles Curran to check on any items of interest (610-446-5239). ------------- " REMINISCING" At the last meeting, I showed an invoice - dated May 24 1980 - that covered my purchase (from the late lamented AB Computers) of a Commodore PET dual floppy disk drive, model 2040. The price tag? $1125 (+ tax)! In todays $$$, that would buy a full bore machine with all the trimmings! [Emil Volcheck] **************************************** 64/128/PC MEETING **************************************** The February meeting was again conducted in three segments. For the first hour, we had announcements and a short question and answer period (mix of PC and Commodore items). For the second segment, we all (Amigans, 8-bit and PC) walked over to Mendel Hall Room 351, one of the computer labs and home of the web server that holds, among other things, the MLCUG web page - see the following note. As the last segment, we returned to St. Augustine Center where we picked up the Q & A, and took a very quick look at using the C-64 graphics program, GoDot, to convert graphics to use them on a PC or on the World Wide Web. We also had a very, very brief look at the new music program, called QUICKSMITH, published by Loadstar in their issue #164 that had just arrived. A good time was had by all! **************************************** INTRO TO THE HTML The feature topic for February was a joint session of both SIGs to attend a demo by Prof. Frank Maloney on the fundamentals of the internet, the world wide web and the HTML that makes the latter possible. Because the St. Augustine Center meeting room does not have on-line access, we took this part of the meeting over to a Mendel Hall computer lab (containing some 18 PCs!) where the internet could be accessed thru the Villanova ethernet network. In Mendel 351, amongst the PCs used by the students in Astronomy and Physics, is the Pentium PC that is connected to the internet as the "astro4" web server in the Villanova system. Frank was able to connect ot the server to do real time demos of the points he wished to make - and it all worked smoothly!!! Frank began with a brief overview of the internet as a "pipeline" carrying a variety of information services, including email, telnet, ftp and the web. A key point conveyed is that the world wide web is one of the many serives carried on the internet backbone of computers and network connections. The latter two services, ftp and www, were the key services for this presentation. Frank used a laptop PC connected to the network and to an LCD VGA projector; so we could easily see what was happening as he did things in real time. With this setup, he turned to discussing and showing the web and what HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is and how it works. He wrote a very simple HTML document, using a text editor (most any will do, but he actually uses one called Vedit Plus - fancier and better featured than some others). Frank noted that one can use any of the many HTML editors that abound in the marketplace. He does not because they tend to make very complex code - more than the job usually needs - and exceed his needs. Once he had the demo document, he showed how the document could be sent to the web server using ftp (File Transfer Protocol). He actually did the file transfer with a utility called WSUFTP. As soon as the file had been transferred, it was immediately visible with a web "browser" (software that interprets the HTML code into an image on your computer screen). The program actually used was Netscape Navigator - tho many others do the job. As was evident from the demo, HTML works like a post-formatted word processor (like THE WRITE STUFF being used for this newsletter), in that the document you edit on your machine is plain text with the HTML codes (or tags) - that the browser interprets and renders for you to see in all its (presumed) glory! Each time Frank modified the original document, he ftped it to the server and we could immediately see how each change affected the image that the browser presented. And, as I said above - It All Worked!!! Our thanks, Frank, for another well-done, informative and appreciated demonstration. Maybe you ought to think about becoming a teacher! For more on the WWW, come to the March meeting - see this issue. **************************************** EVOLUTION OF THE MATH PROBLEM 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit? 1970 (Traditional): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price, or in other words, $80. What is his profit? 1970 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth a dollar. Make a square array of 100 dots to represent the elements of set M. The set C of the cost of production contains 20 fewer elements than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of set K and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of set P of profits? 1980: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment is to underline the number 20. 1990 (Outcomes-based destreamed integrated Math): By cutting down beautiful forest trees, an environmentally ignorant logger makes a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? In your group, use role play to determine how the forest birds and squirrels feel. **************************************** AMIGA USER HAPPENINGS A FLY IN THE OINTMENT By John Deker, AMIGA SIG Leader During the past few months to a year I have discovered something that disturbs me in the Amiga programming environment. I don't quite understand all the why's and wherefore's associated with the phenomenon I'm about to describe. Therein may be the crux of the problem as there may be a straight forward solution to the problems I've encountered with an on-the-fly automatic ASSIGN to "PROGDIR" by many relatively new Amiga programs. I don't know whether you've noticed this quirk, but almost all the browsers and many other programs are making this system assign during their startup. Further evidence of this assign can frequently be found in the path settings of many programs where you will encounter default path settings like "PROGDIR:docs/", etc. In the old way of running programs on the Amiga, one would make specific, distinct assigns for almost every program. As an example, one might make the assign: ASSIGN IBrowse: Work:IBrowse Each one of these assigns would be read from the User-Startup script during bootup and be made resident in memory, thus reducing your available working memory. This fact may be driving programmers to using the "PROGDIR:" assign, but this new assign concept seems flawed. Why am I harping on this? Well, if you run more than one program at a time that makes this type of assign, the last program started over rides all previous assigns. What happens in this case is that the programs started earlier & still running start reporting errors such as "file not found". If you're like me, you start scratching your head and cursing your Amiga until you realize that you should blame the programmer community. In some cases there are work-arounds short of running only one of these problem programs at a time. Take for example, programs like IBrowse and Termite. Both of these programs establish path settings using the "PROGDIR:" assign. The solution is to make specific full path assigns such as "Work:IBrowse/Cache/", or whatever your real path is, in place of "PROGDIR:Cache/". This doesn't remedy all the problems with running IBrowse with another program that also makes the "PROGDIR:" assign, but it does help somewhat. In the case of Termite, using full path descriptions in the "Settings, Paths" menu does seem to help quite a bit if not totally. There may, however, be an alternative work around, but based on the way most programs install themselves, this would require particular diligence on the part of the USER to over-ride default installation settings. What am I talking about? Well the solution would seem to be to install all your programs in the same directory so that an on-the- fly PROGDIR assign for one program would be the same for any other program. The down side to this would be how to later remove a program and its associated files from the system as there would now be many, many files in the same directory, but associated with different programs. The only solution in this case would be to make sure you keep a copy of the standard Amiga install log, and make sure the log has a distinctive name so that other logs don't overwrite it. The Amiga programming community needs to take a concerted review of what they are doing using PROGDIR assigns as the current crop of Amiga programs is currently causing grief in many quarters of the USER community. FUTURE MEETINGS If you have either software or hardware for your Amiga that has taken your fancy, please bring it to our attention. I'm sure your specific interests will be of interest to others. Let me know if this is the case at the next meeting, or leave me email on our BBS. Remember, a user group is only as rewarding as the sum of the efforts of its individual members. =====================================    <>   /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ /\\ | \ / || || ||  /\\ / \\| \/ || || \/// \\ ===================================== Select topics from the 1-30-98 and 2-6-98 issues of =========================== A M I G A U P D A T E -News and Rumors- (An Occasional Newsletter) =========================== NEXT PROCESSOR ANNOUNCED! January 28th, 1998 Processors in future AMIGA computers Q&A by Joe Torre, Senior Engineer of AMIGA, Inc. "Which CPU" will be the processor in future Amigas? 01-18-1998 by Joe Torre One man's answers to common questions about the choice of processors in future Amiga computers. Q. Which CPU is more in the Amiga's future, 68K or PPC? A. Both of them. Amiga has the 68k for legacy compatibility, the PPC for speed. The flexibility of the Amiga architecture has allowed it to gain a PPC chip(s) for computationally intensive tasks like rendering, (de) compression, (de) encryption, etc. The 68K provides 100% software compatibility, while the PPC provides the horsepower. As more of us upgrade to 68K+PPC we will have more and more software for our Amigas that harness the capabilities of PPC. Q. Will a PPC accelerator be required to run Workbench3.5? A. Definitely not. The OS upgrade is for existing machines as well as future ones. We wish to maximize the value and appeal of WB3.5, so all users will upgrade upon release. Q. Since a native PPC version of WB3.5 would be faster than a 68K version, why is it being written for 68k only? A. To support the existing Amiga Community. Whatever CPU AmigaDos was ported to it would run faster if the CPU was faster. The time it takes to market is an important consideration. The time it takes to add an Accelerator board is under 20 minutes, but Porting the OS to PPC would take a year plus. The WB3.5 upgrade is for the hundreds of thousands of 680x0 machines in use today, with or without PPC co-processors. More Amiga users benefit from a 68K upgrade sooner, than a PPC upgrade later, to hardware they don't own. Q. Will there be a PPC only version of AmigaDos? A. Third party AmigaDos Licenses are free to port to Alpha, PPC, MIPS etc. These CPUs may be ideal for embedded (non-Amiga) applications that AmigaDos excels at. While these ports will no-doubt be fast, especially compared to the bloated OSs that usually run on such hardware. Although they can't be considered to be Amiga compatible unless they provide some sort of Chipset and 68K emulation. Q. What about The Motorola ColdFire family as a CPU? A. The ColdFire is less than %30 code compatible with 68K, and low in price, high in performance. The ColdFire has a reduced set of instructions, which make it very fast, but it lacks many of the bitfield operations that are critical to AmigaDos.Using ColdFire would require a complete rewrite of AmigaDos, and would be un-compatible with the existing commercial programs, and all of the great Aminet archive. Q. Will Amiga Inc. be making new Amigas? A. No, Amiga, Inc. will not be making new machines. New machines will come from companies who have a license from Amiga International. Petro has been very successful licensing the Amiga Technology. Check the Amiga International web page at www.amiga.de for the long list of licensees. Look to those companies for the New Amiga models. These companies brought to the Amiga refinements like RTG, AHI, PPC, Wide SCSI, and even PCI! These companies need your feed back as to what kind of features you prefer in a new Amiga model. They will only produce the kinds of Amigas you want to buy. NEW CHIP DECISION NOT FINAL WORD 03 Feb 1998 {The following statement is from the ICOA, Industry Council for Open Amiga. Brad} I talked to Amiga Inc today and can clarify a few points, mainly from Joe Torre's Q&A. * Amiga Inc have not chosen the next processor yet. They are still talking to chip makers, both well known and not well known. They do not want to sell the Amiga short and wish to chose the best price/performance processor that can take the Amiga into the next decade and keep it there, ahead of the crowd. * Because of this, they recognize that there will be a deficiency in processing power compared to the other platforms, which will not be corrected until the next processor is chosen and HW and SW can be created for it. * Thus they are keen to promote an interim architecture, a HW machine still based on a 68K processor but utilizing an alternative co- processor, thus the announcement of the 68K+PPC or Alpha or whatever. This is NOT an announcement of support for Phase 5. It is a directive to any HW manufacturer out there that they can proceed to produce to this architecture. Thus there can be PowerUp, there can be a Boxer with PPC or Alpha, there could be Pios with a 68K + PPC processor card. * The ICOA is open to creating a HW working group to standardizing this architecture. * More importantly, SW developers will require a common API to write to for this architecture, one that makes maximum use of the architecture whilst providing a common interface, allowing Amiga SW to run on any 68K+ machine. The ICOA already has an SDE WG in the works and would be very amenable to the creation of a WG to create this industry wide standard. * As Joe mentioned, Alain Penders, Olaf Barthel and I have been working under contract for AInc since late November on putting together a technical spec for OS3.5, one that provides as much as possible within the time and resource limitations that exist. We have contacted many in the developer community to ask them for their advice, comment and co- operation. Jeff did not want to announce this since it is Gw2K policy not to announce anything until it is ready but since Joe spilt the beans, then now ppl can know the truth, that Amiga Inc have been doing as much as they can in the background, contrary to what certain other ppl may have been trying to imply. I hope that this clarifies a few points - if there are any other questions then I will try to answer them but this will have to be done on the understanding that the three of us are under strict NDA and that Amiga Inc do follow the GW2K policy of no announcements until the product is ready. =====================================    <>   /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ /\\ | \ / || || ||  /\\ / \\| \/ || || \/// \\ ===================================== DIRECTIONS FOR ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING ROOMS NOTE: more maps are on our webpage - http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/index.html --------------------------------------------------------- 64/128/PC/Amiga Meetings 1998 Steering Committee Meetings March 07 March 11 April 04 April 14 May 02 May 13 * = second Saturday ** = third Wednesday ******************************************************** EDITOR: Emil J. Volcheck, Jr. 1046 General Allen Lane West Chester, PA 19382-8030 (Produced with C-128, RAMlink, HD-40/85, 1571, FD-4000, THE WRITE STUFF 128, XETEC Super Grafix, Panasonic KX-P1123, Swiftlink RS-232 and Motorola 288 modem) MLCUG BBS: 610-828-1359 (300 --> 33600 bps), 24 hr/day WWW: http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/index.html