Miggybyte 6/Miggybyte 6.adf/DOCS/MB_27.TXT/MB_27.TXT

Text File | 1996-03-31 | 35KB | 584 lines

             Dave Haynie Online Conference March 6, 1996
             -------------------------------------------

This conference was held on 6-Mar-96 at 10PM EST until about 2 AM EST.

This version of the log has had some major editing to keep its size down.
All  questions  that  were  asked  are  answered  are here along with the
questioners name.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1-10,Asha)  I'd  like  to  welcome Dave Haynie to our conference.  Words
fail  to say how we all appreciate his continued devotion to our computer
of choice.  Perhaps Dave has something to say before we open the floor to
questions?

(1-18,Dave H) I guess I should thank everyone for coming out tonight, and
for sticking by the Amiga through some rought times.  It hasn't been easy
for  any  of us.  In fact, the stress of these past few years did in both
my  car  and  my  cat  Iggy  these past 6 months.  Maybe better times lie
ahead.  ga


(1-18,Dave H) Scala may actually turn a profit this year.  They certainly
have  had some lean times, but the AT bundle has certainly been a welcome
surprise.   They will have a PC product out in May, essentially the level
of MM400 on the Amiga.  There has been a port to one set-top box as well,
but  the  folks  behind that box have had technical problems unrelated to
the  Scala  pieces,  so  that's  delayed.   For  those  who  haven't been
following  Scala,  the group I'm with, in Exton PA, was formed out of the
ashes  of  Commodore  to  build  a portable, Multimedia-capable OS to run
Scala  apps  on  top.   This  is because, aside fro the Amiga, nothing we
looked  at could do real multimedia.  That was started over two years ago
and is now just nearing completion.  ga


(1-9,Joyce  D.)  First  of  all  I  want to say I'm honored to share your
ASCII!   :-)  (And  invite you to the Fidonet AMIGA echo where people who
love the Amiga like to hang out ::shameless plug::) I'd like to know what
projects you're currently working on and whether ESCOM has approached you
about consulting.

(1-18,Dave  H)  At  Scala,  I  developed  their  class compiler, which is
necessary  to  manage  the  Scala  object model.  It's a bit C++ program,
useful as hell at Scala but not exactly as cool as "hey, come seem my new
computer" type stuff I did at C=.  On my own, of course, there's has been
DiskSalv  3,  4, and the Deathbed Vigil.  I'm working on a music project,
and  possibly some audio software at some point ('040s aren't really fast
enough).   I have been in touch with Amiga Technologies, and I'm offering
my  input  into  the architecture of Power Amiga systems.  They do have a
group doing systems design under contract, so it' snot like I'm moving to
Germany  or  anything.   But  I suppose I do have a long-term big picture
view  they  can't get easily elsewhere.  One of the big problems with the
Amiga,  and  also the fun, is that "the mainstream" doesn't build systems
that  way.   So  if  you  want to make Amigas, you pretty much need Amiga
people.

(1-6,Jon  Guidry)  Dave:   has  there  ever  been any other plans for the
PCMCIA port other than memory?  I've been scrounging all over

(1-18,Dave  H)  The PCMCIA port is a general purpose 16-bit I/O port.  It
certainly  will handle modems.  I don't know of any effort at C= or AT to
write  drivers  for  any  specific modem card.  That seems like something
that's  a  good 3rd party project, since the cards are plentiful, getting
cheap  (they  weren't  back  when the A600 came out), and a driver is the
kind  of  thing a garage shop company could develop and sell along with a
modem card for far, far less than a C= or At ever could have.

(1-21,Joanne)  Hi,  The  rumors  about  Escom  and  AT  are  flying.  Any
concerns?

(1-18,Dave  H)  Rumors have been flying in the Amiga industry since 1985.
Sometimes bad ones proved to be true, and when that happens, it's bad for
the  Amiga.   Most  of  the rumors in the past were not true, and I don't
really  expect that to change either.  My best advice is to regard rumors
as noise -- you can't really learn anything from them, good or bad.  ga

(1-26,Mr  Challeron)  Dave:  How do you view AT's efforts to "mainstream"
the Amiga, i.e., with PPC chip, OS porting, etc?

(1-18,Dave H) AT is doing the right things.

(1-18,Dave  H)  Before  C= folded, I was looking into using more standard
parts,  going  to RISC for extra performance, PCI bus for standard cards,
etc.   These are all good and necessary moves.  At the high end at least,
a  Power  Amiga  can  be PPCP compliant, so you can run any PPC OS on it.
That's  extra  security for Amiga fans who are nervous about buying a new
system.   That  will let Escom sell systems to people who would never buy
AmigaOS systems, and perhaps turn a few on to the AmigaOS in the process.
That  will  make it easier for Amigaoids to get Amigas past the corporate
system-censors.   And it'll allow 3rd parties like Macrosystems, Phase 5,
etc.  to make real Amiga clones if they like.  Everyone wins.  ga

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  In  reference to the consultation with AT, what do you
think  they  should  do  with  the  next  generation  of Amigas as far as
graphics/video/sound  hardware (custom chipset vs.  graphics board, etc.)
are concerned?

(1-18,Dave   H)   Strangely   enough,  the  next  generation  "multimedia
subsystem"  is  one of the things they're asking me to look into.  I have
plenty of ideas; there are things being done now at both established chip
companies  and  startups  that are as far beyond the Amiga chipsets (even
AAA)  as  the  original  Amiga was above PClone stuff at the time.  These
things  will  show  up  from time to time on PClones, but no one's really
going to take advantage of anything on a PC that doesn't fall neatly into
a  Windows  API.   The Amiga has no such constraints -- it's whatever its
designers say it is, in HW and SW.  ga

(1-23,Jon  Eriquezzo)  I've  recently  joined TEAM AMIGA , and I fill out
every  question card that comes my way.  my question is can you recommend
a good way to let AT know what AMIGA users want and need?  ga

(1-18,Dave H) The AT folks are on the nets.  Dr.  Peter, Mick, and others
will see what you write, at least in the newsgroups on the Internet.  And
you could certainly write them, though having been in that position, I'll
tell  you that too much of that kind of thing results in most of it being
chucked.   There's  just  not  enough  time  in  the  day to look at what
everyone  has to say.  Also, users not experienced in the art of computer
design  have  a tendency to ask for a trip to the moon at trip-to-Hoboken
prices.   There  will  be  some  program, administered by AT, to actually
(hold  your  breathe)  do some research into this.  They are meeting with
users  and developers.  Most of this action is in Europe, going on during
CeBit, and I don't know all the details.  But it's progress, more than C=
generally did, and blessed all the way up to the top.  ga

(1-13,RoyP)  With  the  announcement  by  Orical  (sp?) of the NETBox (or
whatever  itis  call)...  How do you see AT Surfer Pac competing and have
you seen the Browser.  ga

(1-18,Dave  H)  Oracle,  for  those who don't know, has announced a thing
they call the Network Computer.  This puppy is based on a ARM CPU, 8MB of
RAM,  4MB  or so of Flash ROM, television display, and a V34 modem (cable
modems  to  follow).   It  runs  a browser and perhaps Java code.  Sun is
working  on  a similar thing, and Apple has been scrambling to reposition
their "Pippin" architecture (which they don't plan to release themselves)
as  a  similar thing.  The target price for these guys is $500.  That's a
bit  more  than  the Surfer Pac of today sure, and I suspect right out of
the  box  a  Network Computer might make a slightly better network system
than  the  Surfer.  And yet, is that really what you want?  Especially in
Europe  or  South  Jersey,  where you pay for connect time from the phone
company  to  get to your ISP, even if he's giving you a flat rate, you're
going  to find the crossover point quickly.  I had a $140 phone bill last
month;  I  pretty  much hit that crossover point monthly.  Not to mention
ISP storage.  Today, most ISPs don't charge for storage, since after all,
you  don't  put much more than a Web page and your pending mail up there,
except  for  a  few  dinosaurs still using shell-only accounts.  But just
wait  until  the  whole  schemmeggie is sold in terms of on-line storage.
You  can  bet  they  start  to  charge  for it.  I pretty much pegged the
mainframe  concept as a dead end 17 years ago when I started playing with
microcomputers.  I don't see it as realistic that it comes back.  Plus, I
think  a  low-end  PowerAmiga  will  be a whole lot more competitive with
these  Network  Computers.   And  they'll  also play kick-ass stand-alone
games,  they'll let you edit text, record MIDI, program, etc.  Maybe NC's
will  be  a  fad,  maybe they'll catch on in corporations.  But the Amiga
will kick their butts as long as AT hangs in there and gets the job done.

(1-13,RoyP)   Speaking  of  "low-end".   Have  you  ever  heard  talk  of
developing,  possibly...a  "Mid-Range"  PowerAmiga  like a new A2000 size
box.

(1-18,Dave  H)  I  don'  know  that  an  A2000-sized  box  is necessarily
"mid-range".   In the traditional C= terms, a low-end system is clearly a
highly integrated, A1200-type thing with some machine-specific expansion.
Any  box-with-slots-and-external-keyboard thing in the A2000 mold I would
peg  at  "mid-to-high",  but I really don't see multiple systems to start
with,  just  different  bundles.  You put a slower CPU in there, you have
your  midrange system.  Put in a 604 and some cache, you're high-end, but
still cheaper than today's high-end.

(1-5,Eric  Douglas) What is your idea on what the amiga will be like in 2
years, and what is the most promising news you have heard about anything.

(1-18,Dave  H)  I  would hope that in early 1998, AT has sold their first
million  Power  Amigas,  the  OS is now totally PowerPC code (at least as
much  as  that matters, legacy stuff might stay in 68K code as it does on
the  Mac),  etc.   Your low end machine goes for about $500on the street,
while  mid  and  high end systems start at $1200 or so.  Two companies so
far  have  entered the "Amiga Clone" market, shipping the PPCP version of
AmigaOS  as standard on their systems.  The basic Power Amiga of the time
does  at least 1280x1024 noninterlaced graphics, 24-bit if you spring for
the  graphics  memory.   It  can also do NTSC and PAL, and it can do MPEG
playback,  full  screen  at  30fps.   It  has some 3D support hardware as
standard  for  graphics,  as  well as the fast blitter.  General MIDI and
16-bit  digital audio I/O are also standard.  That's what I can hope, and
none of that is impossible.  I guess the most encouraging news so far has
been  that  AT  asked  me about this stuff, so I have some idea that this
might actually happen.  ga

(1-4,Holly)  Thanks.   Dave,  you  mentioned  you were working on music..
What  I  was  wondering, what is it, something Scala-related or ??  (nosy
me)

(1-18,Dave  H)  No,  the  music  stuff  is  just  one of my many personal
projects.   I've  been  into  music, listening and writing for years, but
never had the time or equipoment to get anything done.

(1-4,Holly) Ahh..  Hmmm, what's up with projects at Scala?  (looking at a
Scala box on my shelf.) :)

(1-18,Dave  H) Like I said before, the Scala MM100 for the PC is supposed
to  be out in May.  This was a total redesign, which gives you a somewhat
more  refined  MM400-class program on standard PC hardware.  The way this
works is that Scala wrote their own portable 32-bit, multimedia friendly,
object-oriented  OS  to host Scala stuff on, and they put as much of that
as  necessary  on  the target system.  The bottom line was that, once you
left  the  Amiga,  multimedia support pretty much went away, at least the
way  we  rekon "multimedia" on the Amiga.  There's another port currently
on  a  major  digital television set-top box, and more on the way in '96.
This is good in some ways, though the extra layers make the system slower
than  the  finely  tuned Amiga versions.  But it's very portable, so they
could  do  a Power Amiga version no problem, should The Management decide
that's  a  good target to support (eg, in becoming a "real company", this
isn't  a  decision  in  Engineering's hands, though virtually everyone in
Engineering is from the Amiga industry).  ga

(1-10,Asha)  Have  you  seen  the  Surfer  software?  And do you like it?
Also, do you know anything about an Amiga port/licence for Java?  ga

(1-18,Dave  H)  I  haven't  seen  it  all.  I played with the VooDoo mail
program,  and  it's  by  far  the  best  mail  program I have seen on any
platform,  IMHO.  I haven't used the browser yet; my Amiga to internet is
fairly  low  bandwidth right now, no one supports Telebit modems anymore.
I  have  a fast modem on the PC, and ethernet, so I may eventually have a
router set up so I can use this stuff.  Or I'll break down and buy a real
V34 modem -- thing having just bought a car that's a problem (free cash),
and  in the next year I may have a much better internet hookup...  As far
as  Java, I've heard from a few folks on the net who claim to be actively
involved  in  an  Amiga  port.  While I'm from Jersey, not Missouri, I'll
still fell better when they can show me, but it does sound like something
is happening.

(1-21,Joanne)  Anything  about  P'jami and 4.0 OS, are they due out soon?
ga

(1-18,Dave H) I don't know; I assume 4.0 is being kept for the PowerAmiga
OS.   Pieces  may  show  up  from Phase 5 before then (Phase 5 and AT are
trying  to  estabish some dialog, so efforts aren't duplicated).  They're
still   making   software  decisions,  some  of  which  pertains  to  the
distribution  model of the OS in its early days.  The official goalfar as
I  know  is  Power  Amiga  in  1Q97, which implies an offical OS release.
There could be developer stuff long before then (the BeBox model).

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  Is  there  any  chance  you  could tell us any general
information about the specifications of the AAA chipset?

(1-18,Dave  H)  Sure.   First of all, the AAA chipset was never finished.
We  had prototypes that were flawed, but did some real stuff, though they
weren't  functional  enough  to run the OS.  New revisions of each of the
four  chips  had  been  taped  out.   The  AAA  chipset  was  a 32/64-bit
implementation   of  the  Amiga  architecture.   It  maintained  as  much
register-level  compatibility  as  possible  with  the OCS chipset, while
adding zillions of 32-bit registers.  It consists of four chips:  Andrea,
Linda,  Monica,  and  Mary.   Andrea  is the Agnus analog, Monica the new
Denise,  and Mary replace Paula.  Linda is a double-buffered line buffer,
which  makes it possible to run pixels and the chip bus at differen clock
rates,  and  also  does  some neat compression tricks.  There are two AAA
system configurations.  A 32-bit systems consists of one of each chip.  A
64-bit system is made using two Linda and two Monica chips.  Chip RAM can
be  DRAM  or  VRAM; VRAM runs pixels twice as fast and eliminates display
DMA  from the chip bus proper.  A 64-bit VRAM system can run 1280x1024 at
around 11-12 bits/pixel at 60Hz, and many other resolutions are possible,
including  all your AA favorites.  The system supports planar displays to
16-bit,  as well as chunky displays, HAM8, HAM10, and HAM8-chunky.  The 8
sprites  still  exist,  and  can  go up to 128-bits wide.  There's also a
single  bit  overlay,  and  you  can  have  dual  8-bit  playfields  too.
24-bits/pixel  is  supported  as  "byte-planes", which we called "hybrid"
pixels  (a  little  chunky,  a little planar).  The blitter and copper do
32-bit  as  well  as  the  old  16-bit  stuff.   32-bit  blits  are pixel
addressed,  and  there  are  new  blitter  operations, like add, add with
saturation,  sort,  and  tally.   Blits  can  use long bursts, so you get
32-bits  moved  in 70ns, rather than today's 16-bits moved in 280ns.  The
copper  has  a  move  multiple  instruction, and a blitter interrupt (eg,
copper  lists  can  very cleanly feed the blitter new instructions).  The
audio  supports  8 channels, 16-bits/sample with rates up to some 100kHz.
Channels  don't  pan, but can be assigned left or right.  No synthesis is
available  on-chip.   Audio  output  can  be  divided  by 2 or 4 to avoid
clipping  in  the  mix,  and  an  18-bit digital ouput is also available.
Floppy  handles  standard  1MB,  2MB,  and 4MB discs with or without real
sectors.   It  also  handles  the  CD-ROM encoding, RLL, and some digital
radio  format.  It's technically fast enough for 1x CD-ROM or ST-506 hard
disks.  There are two buffered serial ports.

(1-13,RoyP)  This  is  a question for JimDoc, who couldn't be here...  He
asks  about  Development  on  a  DiskSalv for AFS...  Wants to go for the
AFS-Pro but is waiting for a DiskSalv to work with it.  ga

(1-18,Dave  H)  Well,  there's  a  provisional DiskSalv 4 release, in the
hands  of  Fourth  Level  Development  for about two months now.  It does
Salvage  only on AFS partitions, and that Salvage in all honesty could be
better  (much  of  the  problem  is  finding  good  stuff  under AFS, the
traditional  Amiga file systems' use of a distributed directory structure
may  annoy  you with the 99.99% of use for directory listings and all,but
it's  a  beautiful  thing  for  that  0.01% of the time you're recovering
failed  stuff).  I do intend to improve the Salvage and add fix-in-place.
Other  things,  like  a  trip or two to Germany for example, have made my
time  on  DS4  kind  of  scarce recently, so some of these things haven't
happened yet.  I do intent to get to them as time permits.  ga

(1-6,Jon  Guidry)  Two  semi-related  questinos:   1)  What kind of other
Amiga's  were  there  when CBM went bankrupt (in development) ...  and 2)
What are all the saying you know of on the Amigas' motherboards?  :)

(1-18,Dave  H)  1) By the time C= went under, development had really been
stymied for some time (it's a related issue, refer to "The Deathbed Vigil
and  other  tales  of digital angst" for one view on some these factors).
Things  had  been  humming  along on the A3000+ in the first half of 1991
(the A3000+ being the best of the A3000 and A4000 combined with a DSP3210
and  kick-ass  audio subsystem), then a new management came in and killed
all  the  projects  currently  in the works.  The A3000+ was reduced to a
"development  vehicle"  for AA, AA was intentionally delayed for 6 months
so  Mehdi  Ali  would  think  the previous engineeing management has been
screwing  it  up  (they  weren't),  etc.   During  the next year or so, I
launched  a  number  of  "future  projects", some asked for, some obvious
bandaids,  and  some  just  to  keep me from leaving C=.  There was a DSP
board,  a  spinoff of the A3000+, which did actually see life after a 3rd
party  licensed  the  design (the design itself was done by two engineers
assigned  the  project  after  Lew  Eggebrecht  took over Engineering, in
itself  at  the  least a local maximum).  I had a new architecture pretty
much  done, on paper, by the Summer of 1992.  For a short time I actually
had  a  guy  designing  some  of  it  (I  was too busy with A4091 and AAA
prototype),  but  he  was yanked to help out on CD32.  This architecture,
called "Acutiator", was the next generation mid-to-high end architecture,
designed to replace the A3000 architecture.  It was highly integrated (to
lower  cost),  highly  modular  (to let us make a number of well designed
motherboards  from the same chips, rather than a kludge like parts of the
A4000),  and  ready to support '040, '060, and RISC.  Very little of this
was ever even designed, unfortunately.

(1-18,Dave   H)  2)  Well,  there  weren't  that  many  "sayings"  on  my
motherboards,  we  generally stuck to code names.  The best saying was on
the  A2000  prototype, Rev 2 or 3.  This was something I did in 1986.  In
'85  and  '86,  we had a devistating round of layoffs at C=, based on the
fact  that  the  C64/C128 were aging and C= had paid buckets of money for
Amiga.   So  on  the  bottom of the A2000 PCB was inscribed "The Few, The
Proud,  The  Remaining", and below that, the initials of everyone left in
Engineering.   Henri  Rubin  made  us  take it off, so all you see is the
"HAYNIE/FISHER"  on  the  top  of  that  corner (Terry Fisher did the PCB
layout).   Every  motherboard has a code name.  Everything George Robbins
worked  on  was  some reference to the B-52's.  I had "The Boss" (A2000),
"The   Edge"  (A2630),  "B2"  (A3000,  Hedley  named  it),  "Gemini"  (an
experimental  multiprocessing Zorro III card), "Nyx" (the AAA prototype),
and others I can't think of at the moment.

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  I hope this isn't too vague; in the January 1995 issue
of Amiga World
 in  which  there  is a sort of a chronology about the Amiga, there are a
few  pictures  that show the Amiga design team doing strange things, like
wearing  white  bags  with green wigs, or you wielding a sword.  Is there
any explanation for that (just wondering, seemed kind of interesting) :-)
(end of question)

(1-18,Dave  H)  The  sword shot was from a Halloween party.  AW had asked
for  any weird Amiga-related photos they could use, and I guess that made
the  cut.   I  still  have that Claymore, but I use Japanese style swords
these  days.  The green wigs were from a DevCon, I think it was Colorado.
The  story:   C=  management  had  hired  Jeff  Scherb as VP of Developer
Support (before this, CATS was led by a Director I guess).  Scherb was an
ok  guy, but wanted to show a professional face at DevCons.  Clearly this
has  to  be  remedied,  and so a bunch of the CATS and Software folks got
together  and  decide  to  pull  a  prank.   What you see there is a live
re-enactment of "Lemmings"...  ga


(1-13,RoyP) Dave AT has had problems getting HD drives for the A4000...
 how  do you see that situation and do you know of a solution for them...
Also  - why did it take so long for C= to even think about CD Rom drives.
ga

(1-18,Dave  H)  The  real  problem  is  the custom nature of the Amiga HD
drive.   These  were  specified  by C=, made only by Chinon.  Now Chinon,
being a big old supplier of C= parts, was apprently owed buckets of money
by  C=.   You  would  think  that  AT  coming along, offering to take any
inventory  of  these drives off their hands would be a good thing for all
involved,  but apparently Chinon didn't want any part of it.  That's what
I  heard,  anyway.  So AT is left with no manufacturer of Amiga HD drives
(the  trick  being primarily the drive going 1/2 speed when you insert an
HD  disk,  and  transmitting  Amiga  disk code for the appropriate floppy
format).   The only viable solution for existing machines is to make this
kind  of  drive,  but  AT  doesn't  have enough volumes to interest drive
makers.  The best solution for new systems is to use off-the-shelf floppy
controllers;  even  if  that's  going to limit them to 1.44MB rather than
1.76MB,  it's  the  only cost-effective solution.  C= never worried about
CD-ROM  drives  because,  until the latter days, they had been considered
too  expensive  for  low-end machines.  Custom designs like those in CDTV
and  CD32  could  be  done  cheaply, but when off-the-shelf solutions for
A500s  wound  up  being  more  than  1/2 the cost of the A500, I guess C=
didn't  see  it  as a viable market.  Maybe that was wrong of them -- the
old C64 and C128 floppy drives were similarly priced.  It wasn't an issue
on  the  highend  machines, you just bought a SCSI CD-ROM.  That's what I
did.   An extra $10 in the A500 for cheap-ass Mac-style SCSI and it might
have been a different world, eh.  ga

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  Something you said earlier brought me to this thought:
how  and why did Commodore end up with the Amiga, anyway, and did all the
people who designed it end up working with Commodore later?

(1-18,Dave  H)  Amiga  was,  of  course,  a  CA  startup company.  It was
originally  funded  by  some private group (some doctors in Florida, I've
heard),  but  as  they needed more funds, they got a loan from Atari.  By
1985  Atari  was run by the ruthless Jack Tramiel.  Atari was negotiating
to  buy  the  Amiga  rights,  but  as anyone who's dealt with Jack knows,
you're better off making a deal with the devil.  He knew, given the loan,
he  could  get  Amiga  cheap  if they went into bankruptcy, and he didn't
think anyone else was watching.  C= was, and I really don't know how they
came  to  be  watching.  But C= came through with a very good (for Amiga;
they  could  have  probably paid half what they did) offer, and Atari was
paid  off on the last day of the loan.  Jack was very pissed.  What's not
so well known, if at all known, is that in the fall of '83 Jack started a
"secret  68000  project" at an undisclosed "offsite location".  C= at the
time  was  already  working on the C128 (you all know it) and the C900 (a
megapixel  UNIX  workstation, for cheap back in 1983 -- go figure).  It's
fairly  clear  this  became  the ST, after Atari didn't get the Amiga.  I
don't know the C900 or ST very well, but they're said to bear more than a
passing  resembalance.  Initally, C= maintained the whole Amiga group out
in  Los Gatos.  This lasted through the A1000, but around the A2000 time,
things  began to fall apart.  Management liked the proposal for the A2000
from Germany, including the BridgeBoard concept (at the time, C='s German
group  did  all  PClone designs, including the SideCar).  Los Gatos folks
felt  their  Ranger  design,  by  all  accounts superior, was politically
slighted.   Round  the  same time, Bob Welland and George Robbins (of the
C900  project)  were advancing their "fat" architecture, which eventually
became  the A500.  Management decided that they wanted all Engineering in
West  Chester,  PA.   People don't leave Los Gatos for West Chester, as a
rule.

(1-26,Mr  Challeron)  With  all  the  current  interest  in  Portable (if
expensive)  Multimedia,  what  are the odds we'll see a PowerAmiga Laptop
(Imagine!   Now your Amiga can also be your PAL!), along the order of the
PPC PowerBook, if nothing else?  ga

(1-18,Dave  H) I figure its inevitable.  Simply because, if nothing else,
the  Amiga OS will become PPCP compliant, and there will be PPCP laptops.
It's  also  a  reasonable  guess  that any new low end Power Amiga design
could  translate  fairly  well  to  the  laptop.   I  don't know if AT is
interested,  and  in  fact,  the  question  of  an AT branded laptop will
undoubtedly be dependent on more mass market success.\

(1-10,Asha) Dave, is PPCP the new acrynym (sp?) for CHRP?

(1-18,Dave H) Yup.  I bitched to Motorola about this.  After all, you can
pronounce  CHRP  (chirp), but PPCP is awkward.  They Motorolaeans tend to
peg  CHRP/PPCP  as "PReP with Apple stuff added", like for the most part,
you  don't  need to worry about the Apple stuff unless you're doing Macs.
We'll  need  the PowerShapeShifter to be happy with Mac stuff anyway; the
multiple boot schemes they have pretty much blow (I have it on my PC, but
there's no OS I really want fulltime there anyway).

(1-11,Bronwen  Pitchford)  do  you have any general advice or messages of
good cheer for us amiga faithful?

(1-18,Dave  H) I believe the Power Amiga is possible, even in this day of
Wintel  dominance.   If I didn't, I wouldn't waste my time, or AT's.  I'm
not  at  AT,  and  not in a position to say just what will happen, but if
they  do  what  I'm suggesting, I think they have a good shot at an Amiga
Renissance.

(1-13,RoyP)  Do  you  see  them  having any really great announcements at
CeBit or maybe Demos that we aren't already expecting.  ga

(1-18,Dave H) They have a concept I think they're showing at CeBit, which
I  really liked.  Since I don't know if it's showing public, I can't fill
in  the  details.   But I can say they have a different machine idea than
anything you've seen before from C=.

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  I  realize it's been almost two years since his death,
but  do  you  have  anything  to  say about Jay Miner?  (it's strange how
little  I  know  about  him,  considering  how instrumental he was in the
Amiga's  development) Has anyone truly written a fitting epilogue to that
story?

(1-18,Dave  H) I didn't know Jay all that either, unfortunately.  Perhaps
better than many in West Chester; we talked at DevCons, occasionally went
out for dinner when we

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  (bye  the way, could you indicate how to pronounce his
last name?  I'm not sure) pardon the interruption :-)

(1-18,Dave  H) were in the same town.  But I'm not the one to have a deep
and  meaningful comment.  Though I think it's a great thing to be able to
have  a  positive  effect on lots of people, and Jay's vision did this in
spades.

(1-18,Dave  H)  You  pronounces it like you would when referring to a guy
who digs mines.

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  I was wondering, with all the Spanish influence on the
Amiga and the nickname "Padre" if it had a Spanish pronunciation.

(1-18,Dave  H)  Well,  they  did  work  in Los Gatos.  But as I heard the
story,  their original name was something lexically similar to Amiga, but
already  copyrighted  (I  guess  the  name here would be a 10 point Amiga
Trivia answer).  So they changed a letter or so, Amiga sounded cool.  The
Spanish stuff came as a result.

(1-26,Mr  Challeron)  Dave:  I'm a little unclear on the AAA chipset, and
your  discussion  of  it earlier, because you started using "past tense",
and  ended  up  talking  about  what it "is".  Has the whole project been
dropped,  or  is AT working on "off-the-shelf-close-enough", and going to
tweak the rest in software?  ga

(1-18,Dave  H)  Well,  there's  what  AAA  does  today,  on  two existing
machines.   But  AAA  itself is no more.  That's the right decision, it's
just  too  late,  there's too much left undone on it, and it would cost a
fortune  to  complete  it.   I can buy $15 SVGA chip with better graphics
specs  and  faster  blitters.  That's a function of the way the compuyter
industry  has  gone.   Back  in the Amiga's early days, no one did systej
specific ASICs of any kind, except C= and a few other mass marketers.  C=
was a good match for the Amiga becuse of this, and the Amiga chips really
were  something  special.  You got roughly 68020 class performance on the
A1000  thanks  to  the blitter, at a time when the '020 was a workstation
CPU.   And having something like an '020 doing your graphics freed up the
68000,  so the system was just that much better than anything else.  Over
time,  the  PC  Clone industry spawned a new class of chip makers.  These
guys  made  glue  chips  for  PC  Clones, at first, basicallyt making the
"Gary" and "Buster" equivalents for PCs.  Gradually, they started cloning
IBM's  graphics  chips,  and  that  led  up to today.  The companies that
specialized  in  graphics  chips  were rewarded.  A good systems house of
today,  IBM, Compaq, Apple, etc.  might ship 5 million systems a year, if
it's a good year.  But these graphics chip companies are shipping 10's of
millions  of  chips.  They're getting expertise and volume unavailable to
systems  houses.   Add the growth of multimedia concerns (if not good OSs
to  drive  real MM), and you find that it's going to be very difficult to
make  a decent graphics chip today.  If you don't have 3 years, 3 million
buck,  and a practiced team of 10-20 chip designers handy, you don't even
step up to the plate.

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  I don't know if this means anything, but I was over on
AT's web page, reading one of their press releases, and I saw a line that
said  something  to ...  never mind, I probably am about to say something
stupid :-)

(1-14,Mike   Webb)   Please   clear   this   up   if  I  have  a  serious
misunderstanding,  but I've seen a number of fairly modern PC's in recent
years,  and  not  one  of them has been able to keep up with my 68030 ECS
machine  in animation -- would these cheap SVGA chips, for all their high
resolutions  and  more  colors,  really have a dream of keeping up with a
newer, more powerful Amiga chipset at animation?

(1-18,Dave  H)  Sure.   A  good SVGA chip of today has a CPU to "chipram"
bandwidth  of  50MB/s-100MB/s.   The  best  you get on an Amiga is 7MB/s.
Similarly  with  the  blitter.   What you don't have on the PC, plain and
simple,  is the AmigaOS.  SVGA chips can double buffer, they can give you
a  vertical  blanking  interrupt, and they're wicked fast in their modern
incarnations.  But what do you run, Windows or MS-DOS?  It's like letting
a  monkey drive that hot new Porsche you just bought (well, I didn't, but
you get the picture).

(1-14,Mike  Webb)  So  is  the  AmigaOS really the Amiga's only remaining
advantage?

(1-18,Dave  H)  Look at it this way:  the PC has graphics 10x-50x faster,
it  has  CPUs  5x-20x  faster,  and it costs less.  And yet, the Amiga is
doing  stuff  you  can't do on the PC.  Plain and simple.  How else would
you  explain  this?  Scala has spent the last 2.5 years writing their own
OS  to  allow  Amiga-like things to happen on the PC.  Software really is
the key factor these days.  Hardware evolution, if anything, was hastened
by  the  PClone busines.  Software evolution, on the other hand, has been
hampered.

(1-14,Mike  Webb) (comment) So I guess the AmigaOS is probably the basket
in which to put the eggs.

(1-6,Jon Guidry) It's still obvious that the UAE (Useless Amiga Emulator)
on  DOS  and  UNIX  stations  is pretty darn slow...  10% the speed of an
A500..  but disproves the theory that an Amiga can't be emulated ;)

(1-18,Dave  H)  The  conditions  under  which something can be accurately
emulated  in realtime are a different story.  No chip is released without
being simulated to death.  But running at 1/100th (or worse) the speed of
actual  hardware doesn't an emulator make.  If they're getting 1/10th the
speed of an A500 on some PC, wait awhile, eventually it'll be full speed.
And  I  hear  you're  supposed  to  call  the  latest release "Unix Amiga
Emulator";  I  guess  some authority has pronounced it usable.  But don't
expect  it  to  do  clean  animations  no  matter  how  "useful" it gets;
emulations are always at the mercy of their host environments.

(1-10,Asha)  I'd  like  to thank Dave for coming to visit with us tonight
and  for  all  of  his  wonderfully  detailed  and patient answers to our
questions.

END
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