/// ONLINE WEEKLY Amiga Report Online The lines are buzzing!
---------------------------------
From Portal's AmigaZone
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.../General Q&A, Announcements, and Help!/Portal "party" at WOCA/Pasadena
16026.3.584.15 The Party
9/14/93 10:40 35/1706 Harv
We held a Portal party/eating fest at Burger Continental in Pasadena
last Saturday night for WOCA attendees. I handed out about 200
invitations at the show (and gave some to some friends to hand out)
and about 40 people showed up for the party. I had asked for a setup
in the burger joint's outdoor patio area but instead they stuck us
in a room next to the patio which had about the worst acoustics
imaginable - it was VERY loud and echoey in there, which turned
talking into shouting.
The beer was flowing freely, and everyone chowed down from the
ample menu and seemed to have a good time. I didn't keep a list
of all those who attended but they ran the gamut from Portal
"regulars" and wannabees, to a couple current and former CBM
employees, Usenet devotees and such.
Everyone in attendance received a free copy of the Nutshell UNIX
guidebook, which Portal will send to any Portal user free of charge
for the asking (so write to "cs" via email if you want one). It's
a fairly basic bonehead guide to getting started using a UNIX
shell account, giving the most basic commands for creating and
moving around files and directories, sending email and such.
It doesn't cover the more popular topics such as Internet (FTP, IRC,
Telnet, etc.) but there are excellent guides here online for those
things if you need them.
At any rate, everyone at the party appeared to enjoy themselves...
we hung out there for about two hours till people had their fill
and started to drift away.
I asked everyone there to shout out their name and affiliation
so we all know who each other was, and hopefully some folks who
had seen each other online but had never met got the chance to
make some new pals :)
Harv
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16026.3.598.1 ImageFX and the WOCA Pasedena
9/16/93 09:33 43/2164 Kermit
For everyone who missed WOCA at Pasedena (and you missed a really great
show!), here are a few of the highlights that related to our products
ImageFX and CineMorph.
On Saturday Rusty Mills, an Animation Director at Warner Bros, described
the use of the Amiga and ImageFX at Warner Bros. for use in the new
animated series "Animanics" to an overflow crowd in the auditorium. In
short, Warner Bros. uses ImageFX to create the titles that open every
segment of the shows. They also color correct and retouch backgrounds
on occasion. Rusty also ran, later at the GVP seminar stage, a
hysterically funny segment from the Animaniacs series called, "Hooked on
a Ceiling". Hooked on a Ceiling continued to run throughout Saturday
and Sunday to crowded aisles.
The, ah, rather controversial product Lightrave came out and included
support for ImageFX amongst support for many display cards.
MacrosystemUS, makers of the Retina display card, were showing an early
version of their exciting new product for video professionals. The
product, known as MultiLayer, is a multiple layer compositing tool
allowing WYSIWYG control through multiple Workbench windows over 100
layers of digital images over a visible timeline. There is absolutely
nothing like this on any platform, except the Amiga now, and it requires
ImageFX to perform it's amazing compositing work!
At least two major vendors of 24bit imaging products tentatively
committed to adding MAGIC (a system that allows applications to share
images - the archive for it is here online GEnie) image sharing support
to their product line. This will be a major boon for Amiga imaging
professionals!
On Sunday GVP and Nova Design gave a presentation on morphing that
packed the auditorium again. Many tips and tricks for achieving
production level morphs in short periods of time were demonstrated.
A few more vendors are also promising ImageFX supporting software
packages for some VERY interesting applications. I look forward to
being able to talk more about these soon!
We really enjoyed ourselves and look forward to the next WOCA show!
Kermit Woodall
Nova Design, Inc.
------------------------------
From FidoNet's Amiga International Echo
---------------------------------------
Area: AMIGA Date: 8 Sep 93 16:48:00
From: Jon Peterson (1:3640/10.0)
To : All And Sysops
Subj: FF1000th
******************* A Proposal ***********************
For years and years, the work of Fred Fish in the organization,
culling and distribution of non-commercial programs to the Amiga
community has been of great benefit to us all. Programmers have
been able to present their best efforts and we, of course, would
have had doubtful access to some of the most innovative programs
written - for any computer platform. As the vast majority of us
Amiga users are aware, Fred Fish is coming up on the 1000th disk
issue of this outstanding collection. This, in my humble
opinion, is a milestone that should not go unnoticed. His
contribution to the Amiga community certainly ranks alongside
those that created this outstanding machine. As such,
participants on FidoNet have proposed the Amiga community show
our appreciation at the issuance of the 1000th disk by sending
in donations to gather sufficient funds to purchase an A4000T
(if and when available) or comparable machine when the time
comes. Now is the time to get this thing going. If estimates
are correct, at the present rate of publication, the 1000th disk
should be out in approximately three to four months. Donations
are being sent to:
Concho Valley Computer Users Group
FFish 1000th Fund
c/o Jon Peterson
P.O. Box 2661
San Angelo, TX 76902
Your assistance in posting this message on the BBSs you use or
run would be greatly appreciated (sysops, how about a bulletin
on logon?). Also request everyone pass the word at any Users
Group meetings you attend. This is a group effort on behalf of
all the Amiga users throughout the world. Please donate whatever
you can afford - or even better - what you honestly think
------------------------------
Area: AMIGA Date: 13 Sep 93 6:57:02
From: Jon Peterson (1:383/300.0)
To : All
Subj: FFish 1000th Aniversary
Well, here is the list of donors for the second week. I suggest
simply posting names and fund total. If everyone wants the
names and donations it can be done.
Jon Peterson
Matthew L. Schultz
Chris Nelson
Asha DeVelder
Marshall Freedland
Jeremy Friesner
Michael Phipps
Total donations as of 9/12/93 are $100.00. Got a ways to go
folks. Please talk this up with all concerned (Amiga users).
Request everyone keep this thing going. Paying a shareware or
sending in a donation is too easily forgotten. Try to get an
envelope and a check out today and do your part for what we've
all appreciated and utilized.
------------------------------
Area: AMIGA Date: 15 Sep 93 13:53:00
From: Manny Casao (1:208/202.0)
To : All
Subj: A1200 Tower
Just got off the phone with Amibitious Technologies makers of the Toaster Oven
for the A3000/4000. This expansion unit transfroms your 3000/4000 into a Tower
Workstation that includes 2 video slots plus 5 Zorro 3 slots that are NOT
blocked when using a Toaster 4000.
The reason I called was to find out the status of their A1200 Tower version.
I was suprised to find out that development has been halted because they were
afraid that there would not me a market for this item.
( NOTE: This item would retail for about $650.00 )
The felt that if anyone wanted such expansion, they would simply purchase an
A4000, Not a 399.00 A1200 unit.
I then mentioned to him that there were many other A1200 users besides myself
that would like the features of the A4000, but could not initially aford to
shell out 2,000 for an A4000 unit.
I was then told that they would need to sell atleast 100 unit to make the
project worth while.
Lemme give you a few details on the unit.
Basically same specs as the A4000 Toaster Oven.
2 Video Slots * Opalvision compatible NOW! * Soon to be T4000 compatible.
5 Zorro 3 Slots
2 PC AT slots
10 Drive bays
300 watt Power supply
You can still use ANY A1200 expansion device that you have on you A1200
including trapdoor cpu devices.
The unit is pretty close to completion but has been put on the back burner.
If this expansion device interests you and you think that you would be wiling
to purchase it if it were released give them a call and let them know or
reply back to me with your name and # and I will foward all messages to them
myself. They just want to know that a reasonable userbase is there.
I am in no way connected with the company, I would just like to have one of
the units.
Toaster Oven
The Ultimate Expansion
A1200/A3000/A4000 AMIGA Workstation
9 SLOTS available at the same time
10 drive bays
Install ANY card in your system. Always upgradable.
Ambitious Technologies
1519 w. 134th Street
Gardena,CA 90249
310-532-0787
310-532-0785 FAX
Be sure to mention that you saw this on FidoNet.
------------------------------
From Delphi's Amiga SIG
-----------------------
18815 13-SEP 23:22 General Information
RE: woca (Re: Msg 18808)
From: 16BITTER To: PIPISTRELLO (NR)
Here's a little stuff from UseNet:
Xref: news.service.uci.edu comp.sys.amiga.graphics:18621
comp.sys.amiga.hardware:50533 Path: news.service.uci.edu!usc!
howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!nnt p.ucsb.edu!mcl!uhenric From:
uhenric@mcl.ucsb.edu (Henric Jungheim) Newsgroups:
comp.sys.amiga.graphics,comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Some WoCA info / Re:
Which Amiga to get? Date: 12 Sep 1993 18:41:08 GMT Organization: University of
California, Santa Barbara Lines: 79 Message-ID: <26vqg4$bij@hub.ucsb.edu>
References: <CD7yCq.Gpq@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1993Sep12.084528.21729@csus.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mcl.ucsb.edu
In <1993Sep12.084528.21729@csus.edu> jwalkup@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Jeff Walkup)
writes:
> That's why the A2000 is actually a better choice if you need to add 2
> TBC's, a DPS PAR and/or VScope, etc etc. Or wait for the mythical
> A4000T which may or may not ever see the light of day...
It has been _done_ for some time now. The hangup is production capacity. Lou
E. said it should be in production by the end of the year... perhaps by Nov.
> (I actually heard that the 4000T is supposed to have TWO video slots....) It
> does... I counted them myself.
Oh... I was at WoCA on Sat. Neat show, but I got a sore throat just from
walking from the show to the car. The smog was the worst I've ever
experienced.
Also... since I'm posting anyway. Some random thoughts about the show.
The CD32 looks neat. CBM demoed the MPEG module w/ a couple of music videos.
There were a few glitches if on really looked closely, but it seemed better
than my VHS VCR. Really... it was pretty amazing. The MPEG option should be
available in a couple of weeks. It will only be widely avail. in Europe at
first. Don't look for it in the US for a while yet. CBM is churning out
20,000 units per week in their new factory, but it is apparently selling quiet
well in Europe. The MPEG module will generate it's own video signal which will
be genlocked to the CD32's normal video. This means that the CD32's chip ram
won't be saturated w/ by the video stream (Lew E. said that the CD32 itself
would not be doing very much while just decoding MPEG. The only thing the
CD32 _would_ be doing is taking the 150k/sec data stream from the CD-ROM and
feeding the audio stuff to the MPEG audio chip and the video stuff to the
video chip [the MPEG chips are from C-Cubed]).
The DPS PAR is pretty amazing. I have no experience in high-end video stuff,
but the quality seemed as good as what I have seen on laser disc. They were
playing a video of a couple of bimbos dancing around (I must point out that
they were using a 12 or 13" monitor for that demo).
The EGS-28/24 was there and looked real nice. It should be avail. "soon". The
Piccolo (sp?) was there and would be shipping in the US as soon as the English
docs were finished. The Picasso II was there, but unlike the ZIII boards,
they were selling them at the show. Even the high resolution modes (I think
the one they were using was the same as the NeXT had used) in 256 color seemed
noticably faster than the 256 color AGA modes on my 4000/040.
The DSP hardware is on _hold_. CBM is looking to continue the project after
Jan 1 or so.
The AAA chips should be in a prototype AAA machine by the Q1 94. If
everything works out it may be avail. for sale Q3 94 (that's what Lew E.
said...) The are expecting a performance boost of about 10-20x (I assume they
meant over AGA. I didn't hear, but I think he said that...)
RTG is set to be released with AAA (which will probably require it); it has
been on hold with the DSP stuff.
CBM was offering some stuff they did not have the resources to produce
themselves to anybody who wanted to produce them (under a royalty free, but
non-exclusive license). He (Lew E. or Jim D., I don't remember) named the
Ethernet board and the multi- serial board as examples.
The 4091 should be back in production "soon". Apparently the problem was (as
w/ the 4000T) lack of resouces to produce the thing; especially when beginning
the production of the CD32.
RISC could be expected in the Amiga in '95. (Lew E. again)
The CD module for the a1200 _will_ take the cpu slot. There may be room for
extra FAST RAM on the card, tho.
Oh... Lou E. == Lou Eggebrecht (VP of Eng.) and Jim D == Jim Dionne (Pres. of
CBM USA)
Henric Jungheim uhenric@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu
Also I dunno if you heard there was a company showing LightRAVE.. it let's you
run lightwave withOUT the toaster. It is a device that attaches to ANY
Amiga.. they supposedly had it runnin on an A500. I don't know what NewTek
had to say about this i'm waiting for more info on this one. Thing is You
can't buy a stand along version of Lightwave but you can buy the UPgrade kit
for $795 retail or used for about $500 and apparently anyone can purchase the
upgrade kit. I guess the people who would be MOST intersted in this is people
who already own the Toaster and want to run just lightwave on another machine
perhaps. Interesting device nonetheless. It was going for $300 at the show.
16BiTTER
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