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- Path: dialup63.syd1.zeta.org.au!user
- From: ivans@zeta.org.au (Ivan Smith)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
- Subject: Amiga Walker (A1200Walker)
- Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 04:22:12 +1100
- Organization: Go5Media
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <ivans-1803960422130001@dialup63.syd1.zeta.org.au>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup63.syd1.zeta.org.au
-
- Well I must say after seeing the pix of the Walker forom CeBIT 96 I was a
- little taken aback by the look of the thing:
- Sure it does look like a Sanyo vacum cleaner and sure it doesn't look like
- a computer but after some deliberation over the pictures and witnessing
- the derogitory comments on #amiga made by mainly American Amiga users I
- have come to a personal conclusion that this is a good thing for several
- reasons.
-
- The design (albieit wierd) is very contemporary. Look at the the new Acer
- PC DT and T. They are similar and I beleieve an indicator to the "shape of
- things to come". There are also several lines of PC being sold now that
- are more shapely and I must admit enticing from an asthetic point of view.
- This Amiga is just very correct looking in anticipation of the departure
- from the "pizza box" style of things brought upon us by unimaginative
- American engineers and I beleive AT are setting a trend with this new
- machine for Amiga.(before we get behind the cutting edge this time)
-
- People were stating things like "where do you expand it?", what's the
- keyboard from? how the hell does a tower come from that ? etc....
-
- My theories are that you would remove the bottom square part from the top
- rounder part and insert the tower modules one by one until a fully
- heighted tower is in place. It's also a guess that this "Flex Bus" (aka
- Zorro4?) is vertically mounted in the middle of the mother board which is
- contained in the lower square part. Backplain cards for Z3 and other
- interfaces are in the modules above it and there would be a direct signal
- path (diasychain style) through each stacked module to the Flex Bus on the
- lower section MB.
-
- A fully built Walker(T)ower would then resemble a very sexy slender bullet
- shaped thing of varying height, depending on how many expander sections
- you had put in it. I think it will end the "oh I need more slots" problem
- and with it's standard EC030/40 processor being able to be swapped out for
- a PPC604 and others it seems a very sensible little machine.
-
- It's a shame it doesn't have any advances on the AGA system of things but
- hey it's a new look a new attitude and it's the first new and different
- product to come from AT.
-
- AT have infact stated that the Walker is the basic direction the
- PowerAmiga will take....So the Amigas we all know and love from C= are
- about to be joined by some newer french designed sisters and girlfriends.
-
- Lets hope that ESCOM doesn't go under from buy outs (Siemons etc) or PC
- clone wars (they expext a multi billion DM loss this year from being
- undercut and poor sales performace from the Commodore PC line and
- effectively little return from Amiga so far) and that Amiga Technologys
- has the recources available to them to actually pull the PowerAmiga off
- and sell it in great quantities, so our great machine gets the recognition
- it truly deserves.
-
- IMHO.
-
- Ivan.
-
- <>>>>>>>>>>IVAN SMITH<<<<<<<<<<<>
- http://www.zeta.org.au/~ivans
- Email: ivans@zeta.org.au
- >>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>
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