====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors- / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional Newsletter) BACK FOR THE FUTURE || ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Gateway 2000, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 971017 A M I G A F O R E V E R E M U L A T O R G A T E W A Y M A Y B E T A K E O V E R B A I T M A E S H O W U P D A T E C D S F R O M S C H A T Z T R U H E H I S O F T C + + I N T W O V E R S I O N S A M I B E N C H S T O R E I N D E X A M I N E T 2 1 A V A I L A B L E Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: Fun things for you this time, and a LOT of information. Not much from Gateway or Amiga Incorporated, though. The staff at AInc. is being very quiet and it's not surprising. Mainstream computer publications have picked up on the Gateway purchase and have published stories about it, at a time when Gateway is still feeling their way forward. They're a very close mouthed company in any situation,and this is not what they wanted to happen. We do expect some news after the upcoming MAE computer show. We have a long story from Cloanto on their - are you ready for this - software Amiga emulator for PCs. Even more surprising, it's fully licensed by Amiga Incorporated. We figure this product will give some in the Amiga community the heebie jeebies. Read all the information below and decide for yourself what you think. Rumors in the press recently that Gateway is doing so well, some pundits think they may be takeover bait. We don't think you should be concerned about it, but we have some information for you anyway. We have some product information this time as well. We appreciate the chance to bring you announcements from companies with new or upgraded products, such as HiSoft's C++ products. We also are happy to provide information from vendors of products. We'd like to add a caution, however. While most of these vendors offer a valuable service to those who can't order Amiga products any way but through mailorder or Internet order, keep in mind that if you have an actual Amiga store nearby, you're doing yourself a long term favor by buying there whenever you can. Those of them still selling Amiga products have stood by us through some very rough times and deserve all reasonable support - and probably even some unreasonable support. Speaking of Amiga stores, check out the idea from AmiBench. We think it's a very good one. We've saved our biggest surprise for last. Starting with this issue, the relationship between "Amiga Update" and "The Amiga Informer" takes another step we expect to benefit readers of both publications. We've added "The Amiga Informer Annex Section" to AU. We'll be carrying items of special interest here from the TAI staff, items which for a variety of reasons are best presented here. Let us know what you think. Not Another Editorial? Yes, afraid so. It was never my intention to toss editorials at our readers, but sometimes I just have to. This time, I want to say a few words about the feud that's developed between companies Phase 5 and Haage and Partner. The battle of words seems to be over design philosophies surrounding the Power PC chip. We were going to carry some stories but as we looked, we realized this stuff isn't news. It's more closely related to childish flame wars on the Usenet, the sort of thing that wastes precious Internet bandwidth and does little else. We hope these two companies start behaving like real businesses soon, and stop doing things that can only hurt an already fragile Amiga community. If you want to know more, you'll have to check the news groups. There's so much static being generated that we just don't have the space for it in AU, even if we had the stomach to put it here. Oh, by the way - there's no certainty the Power PC chip figures in the Amiga's future at all. The folks at both companies might want to ponder that. Party Tomorrow A note from Petro Tyschtschenko, the Managing Director of Amiga International, to the Amiga Web Directory WWW site notes that Amigans will be involved with tomorrow's (October 18) ZKM Internet Media Party. Some of the Amiga involvement was arranged by the Amiga Atlanta User Group. Check out www.cucug.org. or www.zkm.de/ for details of this extraordinary event. Have fun with this issue. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A F O R E V E R E M U L A T O R Cloanto Cloanto Announces Amiga Forever, the First Officially Licensed Amiga Emulator 10 October, 1997 Preliminary Information Amiga Forever is scheduled for release on November 14, 1997, at the Computer '97 show in Kvln. By that date, we expect that both the Amiga Forever support pages at this address, and the entire Cloanto web site, will have a new and more complete look. This address (http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/forever/) will be the main access point to information, support and free upgrades to Amiga Forever. The following sections provide a preliminary description of Amiga Forever, and a discussion on some less technical issues. Your feedback(suggestions, questions, flames, etc.) is, as usual, very appreciated. For additional information on local distributors and resellers of Amiga Forever, please refer to our Distributors page. Introduction On October 7th, 1997, Amiga International, Inc. made the following announcement on its web site: Cloanto to Publish an Official Software Emulation of the AMIGA Cloanto, publisher of leading AMIGA graphics and productivity packages such as Personal Paint, The Kara Collection, and the Personal Suite, was granted by AMIGA International, Inc. certain rights to publish an official software emulation of the AMIGA Computer, including original AMIGA OS software, AMIGA/PC networking software, and various other programs. The package, code-named "AMIGA FOREVER" and scheduled for release this November, will carry the "powered by Amiga" logo. The product is to incorporate a number of exciting and surprising features which will be announced shortly before the release. Within hours from this announcement, activity on our web site and on our mail server reached sky-high levels. We knew there was such a strong interest for a product like Amiga Forever, but never would we have expected the amount of supportive feedback and requests for information that came in in the 24 hours which followed. Basically, the announcement by Amiga International was about the very first thing we obviously had to do: ask for the permission of Amiga International before even considering to include intellectual property by Amiga International in one of our products. The package which on November 14, 1997 will be presented to the public of the Computer '97 Show in Kvln will indeed consist of much more than an "Amiga emulator". Presentation of Cloanto's "Amiga Forever" Cloanto acquired from the group of owners of Amiga technology (Gateway 2000, Inc., Amiga International, Inc. and Amiga, Inc.) a license covering all Amiga operating systems from version 1.0 to version 3.0, to be published by Cloanto in a package named "Amiga Forever". (A few minor files will be missing or changed as agreed in this license, without affecting the emulation's Amiga compatibility. Certain Asian territories are excluded by the license.) The license also covers Amiga ROMs, Amiga patents, the use of the "Amiga"trademark in "Amiga Forever" and "Amiga Explorer", the official "Powered by Amiga" logo, and other intellectual property and every permission required to legally publish a fully working Amiga emulator. (It must be considered that, without a proper license, emulation as well as other Amiga compatibility solutions may infringe not only on Amiga copyrights, but also on Amiga patents and trademarks.) Amiga Forever includes "Amiga Explorer", a new Amiga-to-PC networking software developed by Cloanto. The Amiga Explorer user interface is an object-oriented extension to the Windows Desktop, where the Amiga appears as a networked computer. The Amiga and the PC can be connected via a serial (null modem) or parallel (Windows/LapLink/InterLink/Norton standard) cable. A future upgrade, expected to be available later this year (at no cost to Amiga Forever users on the Cloanto web site), will extend the networking capabilities to support TCP/IP. Amiga Forever also includes a variety of famous old Amiga games, demos and other material of historical interest (with an exclusive, never before released, interview with the late Jay Miner, "Father of the Amiga"), plus Personal Paint and other up-to-date productivity software by Cloanto and other companies. The Amiga operating systems, ROMs, and Amiga emulation software are preinstalled on Amiga Forever for easy use and installation. The user just needs to insert the CD-ROM in a PC, and with one mouse click a fully working Amiga will appear on the screen. The Amiga emulation software includes for the first time drivers for Picasso 96 screen modes (up to 256 colors, as well as 16/24-bit true color modes). The initial release of Amiga Forever is scheduled to include a CD-ROM with software for the Amiga and the other platforms, plus a floppy disk with a copy of the Amiga-side networking software (for Amiga systems with no CD-ROM drive). The exact platforms which will be supported by the emulation software, in addition to Windows NT, Windows 9x, DOS and Linux, will be defined and announced shortly. The official Amiga Forever web address http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/forever/will allow users to obtain information and support, and to easily upgrade their software directly from the Internet. Thoughts and Technology Behind Amiga Forever's Emulation Software The idea of an official and legal Amiga emulation package came natural for a variety of reasons. Freely distributable Amiga emulators, such as UAE and Fellow, have been available for a few years now. We believe that the UAE emulator, in particular, has reached a technical maturity where it deserves a broader acceptance and diffusion. Right now, if you visit any UAE web site, or search for "UAE" on an Internet search engine, within five minutes of following links you can find illegal Amiga ROMs and all other system files. Demand clearly exists, but, until now, no solution was found to work out something that satisfied the requirements of the owners of the Amiga intellectual property, and the needs of the user base. At Cloanto we wanted to provide a properly-licensed, well-organized and legal solution for this demand, and we worked hard, mediating between a lot of people and interests, and developing new technical solutions, to make it all possible and acceptable. As a leading publisher of Amiga productivity titles, we receive daily feedback about the reality and needs of our Amiga users, who are increasingly confronted with a world of PC technology, standards, and complexity. Every publisher, developer, distributor and dealer of Amiga software knows this all too well. Our web's log files, for example, show that even before the release of Amiga Forever, more than 50% of the Internet browsers used to access the Amiga section on the site were running on PC or Mac systems. For more and more Amiga users, the difficult choice is between Amiga Forever or... Forever Lost. With Amiga Forever, we would like to provide the best possible bridge between dreams and reality, free time and work, the Amiga and other platforms. With the Amiga Explorer networking software, for example, it is possible to connect an Amiga to a PC, and to work on business files which no Amiga software can even load. Multimedia which no PC would be able to produce as easily as an Amiga can be integrated into presentation or Web management software on the PC. Amiga Forever provides different ways to allow the Amiga and other systems to communicate. At last, Amiga Forever even makes the Amiga notebook a practical reality. Several companies and groups of programmers are currently working on independent solutions with the goal of achieving compatibility with the original Amiga without infringing on Amiga patents, copyrights and trademarks. Some of these efforts require the recompilation of Amiga code, which in turn requires the recompilation and maintenance of a critical mass of Amiga code for each platform in order for that platform to become successful. We believe that, in addition to the "real" Amiga, the simplest and most effective solution to all of the needs described here is a properly licensed software emulation of the Amiga, inclusive of all operating system files, which does not require additional maintenance to existing Amiga code. We hope that the fact that the Amiga companies granted us such a license will contribute to reduce the possible fragmentation of the Amiga software market, that it will help Amiga users who would otherwise have to entirely change platform, and that, by making sure that the proper licenses are payed, it will in turn sustain the "real" Amiga. During the past months, both internally at Cloanto, and in cooperation and contact with over 60 contributors of the UAE and Fellow Amiga emulators, we helped to improve these programs, and we developed a combination of technical and legal solutions which, for example, allow for officially licensed Amiga ROMs to be encrypted in a way that is supported by the emulation software. We just completed testing of a virtual Picasso 96-compatible graphics board for UAE, and we are bringing to new life pieces of Amiga history which deserve to be seen by everybody. Personal Paint will be included in a special version optimized for the emulation. No doubt, Amiga Forever will have some pleasant surprises for every Amiga enthusiast. We admire and support the immense and free-spirited work that is behind the UAE emulator. UAE will be an important part of Amiga Forever, and it will also continue to be available for free distribution. Within Amiga Forever, UAE will become easier to install, configure and use, and it will be able to exploit the power and compatibility of eight different Amiga operating systems. As the first, exciting but incomplete, news about Amiga Forever began to leak, a few Amiga enthusiasts expressed the concern that an Amiga emulator might "kill" the real Amiga. We take these worries most seriously, yet we also feel that at least two different aspects of this issue, namely some facts about the difficulties of the Amiga, and some facts about emulation, may require additional meditation. Most likely, too many words have already been spent on what could have been done better over the past ten years of Amiga history. The history of emulation, however, is even older than that of the Amiga.Macintosh and PC emulators, for example, currently exist on many platforms, but in practice people still prefer the "real" Macs and PCs when it comes to regular day-to-day work. Emulation satisfies, in our opinion, a need which is more one of integrating different platforms, rather than of replacing one or the other (except for systems which have been "dead" for years, like the Spectrum and the C64, but the cause of such condition has never been emulation, which is rather an effect of it). In the case of the Amiga, its CPU and custom chips have to be emulated by software running on a different type of computer. This does not leave much margin for the application of direct price-performance comparisons, nor for worries about "competition"between the real Amiga and one emulated on a similarly-priced non-Amiga computer. Also, the emulation part of Amiga Forever is sold under license of the Amiga companies, which receive royalties for each unit sold, so there is no competition between Amiga Forever and the Amiga companies, but mutual support. Amiga Forever, as one of the many "Powered by Amiga" solutions which are available to the public, is one product more, not one product less, to choose from. And, as we know from our personal experience, Amiga users know to appreciate the value of free and independent choice more than any other group of users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G A T E W A Y M A Y B E T A K E O V E R B A I T By Brad Webb As mentioned above in my introduction, some stock market analysts believe Gateway has become ripe for takeover bids because of its success. On October 10, a copyrighted story by Reuters noted Gateway's stock had jumped the previous Wednesday after Prudential Securities called the company a potential takeover candidate. The stock was traded heavily on the New York Stock Exchange despite a company spokesman declaring the company is not for sale. Prudential raised the rating of Gateway 2000's stock from buy to hold. They set a price target of $50 a share, and reported the gain potential for the stock at over 200 per cent. Despite weak near term operating results, they are reportedly bottoming and the market has them discounted. The same information was prominently noted in a CNBC broadcast in the same time frame. For anyone who used to follow Commodore stock, this turn of events takes quite a bit of getting used to. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- M A E S H O W U P D A T E 9 Oct 1997 To all attending the Midwest Amiga Exposition in Columbus Ohio: The Amiga community's response to our show is incredible and we're looking forward to a great show! Thanks for all the positive support you've shown us. For all those that have mailed in for presale tickets: I have been processing the requests as I get them and you should see your tickets, with a map and brochure in the mail in a few days. If I get your order after the 15th of October, I won't mail it out due to time constraints, but instead, I'll have your tickets reserved under your name at the show. We'll have a line especially for presold tickets at the ticket table outside of the Grand Ballroom. We now have T-Shirts for the event available for presales. Just visit our Midwest Amiga page on the World Wide Web (http://www.amicon.org/mae.html) and follow the link at the top. You can see what the T-Shirts look like (we have two different styles) and use our on-line processing form to specify size, quantity, and your preferred method of payment. Thanks for your time and we look forward to seeing all of you at our show! Sincerely, Dave Pearce ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C D S F R O M S C H A T Z T R U H E 06 Oct and 16 Oct 1997 The following Amiga CDs are available at bargain prices: Die folgenden Amiga CDs wurden drastisch im Preis gesenkt: Product/Produkt Old Price/Alter Preis New Price/Neuer Preis Aminet Set 3 DM 59,00/US$ 34.00 DM 39,00/US$ 19.00 Magic Publisher DM 79,00/US$ 45.00 DM 49,00/US$ 28.00 Tele-Info Vol. 2 DM 49,90/US$ 29.00 DM 29,90/US$ 17.00 Turbo Calc 4.0 DM 199,00/US$ 113.00 DM 99,00/US$ 56.00 Turbo Calc 4.0 Update DM 99,00/US$ 56.00 DM 49,00/US$ 28.00 Wordworth 6 DM 149,00/US$ 85.00 DM 79,00/US$ 45.00 Wordworth 6 Office DM 199,00/US$ 113.00 DM 119,00/US$ 68.00 ****************************************** We are delighted to inform you that we start to distribute a variety of quality CD-ROM based games for the Amiga from well known publishers. This means that you can now buy productivity titles, Shareware CDs andn Games CDs at the same time from your preferred online-vendor of Amiga Software. Here is an overview about the titles we do currently stock. New releases (like Myst) will be added to this range upon availability. Trapped 2 US$ 39.00 Flyin´ High US$ 40.00 Nemac IV US$ 34.00 Strangers US$ 39.00 Civilisation US$ 28.00 Wendetta 2175 US$ 17.00 For further information please have a look at: http://www.schatztruhe.de/contents.html ******************************************** Ordering information: The most convenient method of placing an order is to use our electronic order form located at http://www.schatztruhe.de/order.html. You can also send an E-Mail to stefano@schatztruhe.de including your address and the products you wish to order. Please do not forget to include your credit cards details. Stefan Ossowski -- Stefan Ossowskis Schatztruhe Gesellschaft für Software mbH Veronikastr. 33 - 45131 Essen - Germany Phone: ++49-201-788778 Fax ++49-201-798447 EMail: stefano@schatztruhe.de WWW: http://www.schatztruhe.de/ Visit our Web site and join our mailing-list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- H I S O F T C + + I N T W O V E R S I O N S HiSOFT C++ Professional Amiga Development System 14 October, 1997 SRP Student Price** HiSoftC++ Lite £79.95 £59.95 HiSoftC++ Developer £169.95 £129.95 Lite to Developer upgrade £99.95 £79.95 HiSOFT C++ brings ANSI C and AT&T 3.0 C++ programming to your Amiga. No need to battle with the CLI, HiSOFT C++ boasts a powerful, closely-integrated development environment with drag-and-drop features throughout, leaving you free to concentrate on writing your applications. No need to leaf through hundreds of printed pages, the HiSOFT C++ manual is conveniently read on line using the included HotHelp Reader. The ANSI C include files are also included as a HotHelp project. Editor * Syntax highlighting. * Multiple windows. * Multiple texts in editor. * Reconfigurable keyboard short-cuts. * ARexx interface. Project Manager * Hierarchical project summary. * Extensive settings for project as a whole and for individual entries. * Project-wide search. HotHelp * Online HiSOFT C++ manual. * Online ANSI C include files. Source-Level Debugger (Developer only) * Multiple windows. * Drag-and-drop interface. * Variable contents. * Breakpoints. * Conditional breakpoints. * Debugger can be called from the compiler. Compiler * AT&T 3.0 compliant. * ANSI C compliant. * Direct jump to next error. * ARexx interface. * Fast code generation. * OS 3.1 Include files. * Target your code for 68000-60 and FPU. Assembler * Devpac 3 assembler included. * Assembles 80,000 lines of code per minute. Easy-Objects Class Library (Developer only) * Resource-handling. * Error-handling with exceptions. * Data structures: lists, dynamic large arrays, data buffers. * BOOPSI support. And much, much more! Lite version includes: Editor, Project manager, HotHelp, Compiler, Devpac 3 assembler. Developer version includes: Editor, Project manager, HotHelp, Compiler, Devpac 3 assembler, Source-level debugger, Easy-Objects class library. HiSOFT C++ runs on all Amigas fitted with at least 4MB ram, OS2.x up, and a hard disk. -- Luke Stacy Technical Support - support@hisoft.co.uk HiSoft Systems Tel: +44 1525 718181 Fax: +44 1525 713716 The Old School, Greenfield, Bedford, MK45 5DE, UK www.hisoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I B E N C H S T O R E I N D E X 16 Oct 1997 AmiBench is keen to help Amiga Users as much as possible so with this in mind We have decided to setup an On-line Database of Amiga Stores. We need the Amiga Community to help Us by providing us with details of stores around the globe that we can add to the list we already have, What we need is as follows; A, Name of Company/Store B, Address of Company/Store C, Email Address (if possible) D, Web Address (if possible) F, Telephone Number (if possible) G, Fax Number (if possible) Please send all address's to Stores@tecnobab.stayfree.co.uk, with the subject line of; Stores. please send the address's in a format similar to that shown above. Mark Wilson : Team Member of the AmiBench Team. Http://thunderstorms.org/AmiBench/ AmiBench@tecnobab.stayfree.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I N E T 2 1 A V A I L A B L E 10 Oct 1997 Aminet 21 CD-ROM is available! Suggested Retail Price DM 25.00 Subscription price DM 19.80 ************************* Ordering information: The most convenient method of placing an order is to use our electronic order form located at http://www.schatztruhe.de/order.html. You can also send an E-Mail to stefano@schatztruhe.de including your address and the products you wish to order. Please do not forget to include your credit cards details. ************************** Aminet CD 21, dated October 1997, contains 1 gigabyte (uncompressed) of software in thousands of archives. Since the release of Aminet CD 20 more than 500 MB new software has appeared. The current edition includes a full version of Cloanto's Personal Paint 6.4, the famous paint program. An inexpensive upgrade path to the PPaint 7.1 is offered. Contents of Aminet 21 Directory Size Files Contents biz 32 MB 69 Business software comm 30 MB 196 Communications demo 95 MB 91 Graphics & sound demo dev 19 MB 92 Development software disk 5 MB 20 Disk & HD tools docs 32 MB 86 Documents game 124 MB 274 Games gfx 45 MB 107 Graphics software hard 1 MB 13 Hardware related misc 32 MB 47 Miscellaneous mods 275 MB 539 Music modules mus 19 MB 45 Music software pix 217 MB 223 Pictures text 5 MB 29 Text software util 34 MB 248 Utilities Stefan Ossowski -- Stefan Ossowskis Schatztruhe Gesellschaft für Software mbH Veronikastr. 33 - 45131 Essen - Germany Phone: ++49-201-788778 Fax ++49-201-798447 EMail: stefano@schatztruhe.de WWW: http://www.schatztruhe.de/ Visit our Web site and join our mailing-list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _ __ _ __ _ ____ _ _ The AMIGA /\\ |\ || |\ || || \\ / I N F O R M E R /__\\ | \ || | \ || ||-- \\ / \\__| \||_ | \||_ ||___ _/\\_ Section ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I n t e r v i e w w i t h D a v e H a y n i e Fri. 29 Aug 1997 > I'm no wizard on the hardware/software tech stuff > and I know many of the Informer readers aren't either. Therefore, > please try to keep that in mind when you answer some of these > questions. Sure; I treat an interview like a writing job or a speech -- always speak/write to the audience that's going to be there. > What was your position title when you worked for Commodore? I was a Senior Hardware Engineer in the High-End Systems Group. For most of the Amiga's history at Commodore, we had two groups in West Chester. One handled the low-end stuff (A500, A600, A1200, some CDTV/CD32 technlogy), the other the high-end stuff (A2000, A3000, A4000, CPU and add-in cards, etc). Toward the end, I was doing the "advanced" work, building prototype systems for AA and then AAA, working on the DSP project, the advanced system architecture project, and bunch of other things that rarely saw the light of day, thanks to Commodore's failing fortunes. > What is your position title with PIOS? Vice President of Technology. > What is the general business plan of PIOS? No fair, marketing questions for Engineering. But hey, I haven't blown off a marketing question in years, it feels good! > What market are they trying to enter? We're interested in entering, basically, the markets that the Amiga has success in. That's primarily, I suppose, because almost everyone in the company had experience with the Amiga, one way or another. Upper management was involved in the work at Amiga Technologies, including the PowerAmiga stuff that never got much beyond the planning stages. Of course, Andy Finkel and I worked on that too, and before that years at Commodore. So it's a niche we think we still understand, though granted the world is a vastly different place. Which is exactly why we're not building the A1200 of the latter 90's. Yet, anyway. > What PIOS computers will first be released (please give a basic > outline of what each system contains)? Currently we are shipping a PowerMac Clone, called the Keenya, and another one is soon to be released. The main point for shipping Mac Clones has been simple: computer companies are companies that sell computers. If you look at the PClone model, almost every company out there is buying someone or another's motherboard and adding their touches to it. That's exactly what PIOS does with these systems. It's also making some money for the company, and establishing our name and dealer network. Of course, we think in engineering terms, and think we can do better. That's where I come in, of course. The PIOS designed systems are all based around a modular system architecture I've been working on for nearly a year now (well, startup companies don't always move as fast as billion-dollar Commodore's, especially when investment money is delayed three months, or folks like me were, until recently, doing this in their "spare" time). The basic idea is to use CPU modules, something like the high-end approach I championed at Commodore. The CPU/memory combination is the fastest moving part of a system, so the ability to replace this offers much. For us, it's the notion that with two different CPU modules, we can offer what it takes other companies two whole motherboard designs to do. For the consumer, it means cheaper upgrades, without sacrificing performance (some CPU module architectures are a performance hit, because the whole CPU bus is not changed when you change the module). We can also offer, over time, a variety of motherboards, maybe driving into the very low cost systems, or up into high performance machines, while retaining a modular approach. > When will these computers be available to North Americans? I don't know exactly. Our primary markets right now are Germany and the UK, but the USA, at least, is probably the next one to go into. It would be nice to serve the whole world at the start, but that can't be spread the company too thin. One big mistake ESCOM did was exactly that. We're trying to learn from the past, both good and bad. On the other hand, PIOS has some agreements with distributers in countries we're not going into directly, and we think these will get our machines out very nicely. > What is the expected pricing of these machines? Right now, we're expecting systems in the $1000-$2000 range. As I said, we haven't built the A500 of the late 90s yet, but it could happen at some point. We're still trying to build machines that regular people can afford. The two main models are called "transAM" and "Maxtreme"; the former is sold with BeOS, Linux, and Pro-DAD's pOS, the latter with BeOS, Linux, and MacOS. There's not much hardware difference, some different options on the motherboard, that's about all. That's easier and harder than you might think. It's easy, to some extent, because of the commodity factors made possible by the big PClone market, and the fact that just about every non-PClone system has tapped the standard parts from that market. We're paying a fraction of the price we did in the C= days for memory, disc, etc. On the other hand, the PClone market has continuous price and performance wars, and they basically set the direction. Although you would get more mileage out of a 512MB drive under BeOS or a PPC AmigaOS than a 1GB drive under Windows, you simply can't get production quantities of older parts. Similarly, the PClone processor-of-choice tends to set a market point for CPU speed. So if everyone's shipping a 200MHz processor, we better too, even though we might offer a 133MHz system much cheaper. Part of the strategy of being modular, too, is the ability to be more flexible about the bundles, including CPU type and speed, than others. The main reason I haven't mentioned any particular configuration for the machines -- that's inherently a marketing decision, as it should be. Engineering takes a long time, and markets change. Unless you can see the future, you can't always guess what's going to be hot next year, or even in three months. > What does CHRP complience mean? CHRP stands for Common Hardware Reference Platform. It's basically the official open standard for the PowerPC. Jean-Louis Gassee terms it the "PC-AT for the PowerPC world", and in essence he's right. Only, think if the PC-AT had actually been designed with the goal of being an open standard, rather than just a kludge that other folks could easily copy. The architecture lets you use cheap PC components, which are also fairly high performance, due to the competition in the market. Meanwhile, it addresses the shortcomings of the PC-AT architecture that all PClones are based on -- we're not just talking about chopping off an x86 head and gluing on a PPC head. > PIOS has made an effort to court the Amiga communtiy with their > prodcuts. What is it about PIOS products that will appeal to Amiga > users? We actually started life with the goal of continuing the Power Amiga idea we had at Amiga Technologies. Most of the summer of '96 was spent with me looking at various technologies for making a $500 computer, and a few other very Amiga related things. Meanwhile, as a company, we were trying to work with VIScorp to revive the idea of a desktop Amiga, since they were the frontrunners for buying the ESCOM assets, and apparently only interested in set tops. As it turned out, they kind of went crazy in late July, started talking about doing their own Amiga desktop systems, and after repeatedly not buying the Amiga stuff, they lost credibility. They also refused to answer any of our inquiries, and we had really no choice to but start shipping Mac Clones by September of '96 -- part of our survival plan was having an income, being that we didn't live in California and didn't have the venture capitalists swarming. However, no one at PIOS was all that crazy about MacOS. We had intended to build a serious AmigaOS emulation on top of MacOS for '96, in anticipation of real AmigaOS stuff coming perhaps in late '97. Without a PPC AmigaOS possible along any path available to us, we abandoned this plan -- we didn't want to make any false promises. At MacWorld, our CEO, Stefan Domeyer, met with folks from Be, got the in-depth demo, and came away thinking this might be a good alternative to the AmigaOS for the immediate future, at least. Oddly enough, I had been an official Be developer (I signed up just before I got the call from AT, so unfortunately I didn't launch my BeOS project, but I did at least keep up with the emerging Be community). So when Stefan called one morning asking about the BeOS, I had good and well informed things to say about it. And the BeOS does do much of the what the AmigaOS does well. Not, it's not the same thing, it doesn't look similar, but architecturally, it's not far from what you might want in an AmigaOS 4.0, or AmigaOS NT, whatever. Their emphasis is on media processing, so you get realtime, multitasking, multiprocessing, etc. The OS isn't as tiny as the AmigaOS, but then again, the 2MB in the A1200 or 512K in the A500 cost way more in their day than 16MB costs today. Also, when you're processing modern datatypes -- 8, 16, and 24-bit images, 16 to 24-bit stereo or multichannel sound, images that look nice on a 1280x1024 screen, you find that data is what sucks up memory, even if the code isn't bloated. The BeOS also adds those most often-requested things like memory protection, resource tracking, virtual memory, RTG, built-in networking, etc. > Is PIOS interested in having the Amiga OS available on their > computers? Why? Yes we are. Well, first of all, we're Amiga people. We're not zealots, we don't think the AmigaOS is the only possible OS, or the best thing that will ever be. On the other hand, it's the only OS we know, for example, that would be at home on the desktop, on a $500 consumer computer, or on a pocket computer. It is the most efficient OS ever used on a large scale desktop/personal/home computer, and well, it has a following. On the other hand, we're not fools about the AmigaOS. We know it, inside and out, and we also know what launching or relaunching any OS these days is all about. First and foremost, the days of the proprietary OS are long behind us, whatever folks in the reality-distortion fields at Apple might say to the contrary. No one is going to write applications for a proprietary OS anymore. Sure, there are a few, maybe SGI's IRIX topping that list, but first off, it's UNIX, really, and secondly, they're a workstation -- companies can (and do) charge $1000+ for a wordprocessing/DTP package for UNIX. This is one main reason why PIOS didn't write an AmigaOS clone, even though we could (with our connections, it wouldn't have been difficult, just expensive). We're supporting good OSs that run on the PowerPC. We're strongly behind the BeOS, because it is forward thinking, and in the way we look. We're supporting pOS, because it's the most Amiga-like thing we've seen on the horizon, and it'll also be available for a variety of system. MacOS is the strongest OS on the PowerPC today, so we're offering that (assuming the licensing stuff is worked out) to those who want that option. And of course, we'd love to offer an updated "real" PPC AmigaOS from Gateway. > How are licencing talks proceeding with Gateway? I wasn't involved in the talks, but PIOS and Gateway have met, and I believe Gateway is behind the AmigaOS, and interested in building the industry. In fact, their talks at shows over the spring and summer very strongly echoed the ideas from the "Industry Council/Open Amiga" paper, a position paper I wrote last spring for the Jay Minor Society, to aid their efforts in approaching Gateway and establishing an Amiga Industry Council. This Council would help coordinate the efforts of any and all serious players in the Amiga industry. The idea being, we're all in some sense on the same team, even where we compete, and the real enemy is Windows. We're so much smaller than Microsoft it's not funny. We can't afford ten Amiga-industry companies all reinventing the same wheel. So I did my part to get this moving, and so far, Gateway is very receptive. In fact, a ground of folks representing the IC/OA initiative went out to South Dakota and met with Gateway. They game may well be afoot. > In general, does PIOS find Gateway truly cooperative with their > licencing? Gateway is very receptive to licensing. The problem, of course, is just what would we license at this point? I don't think there's much interesting I can do with a 68K these days -- the entry point for even a 68060 machine would have to be so low you couldn't afford the parts. Established customers still buy them: Amiga users buy a 100 or so A4000Ts a month, VME users buy 68K based SBCs, all in the interest of software compatibility. But a company can't be based on that, it's inherently a shrinking market. To grow, you need something new users will be interested in. > Given a resonalby sized development team, how long would you estimate > it would take to bring the Amiga OS to the PPC? You could do something interesting in about a year, with 20-30 programmers who really know what they're doing. This would have only the critical set of improvements, architectural things that would lead the AmigaOS into the next millenium (eg, the foundation things, what Apple didn't fix in their port, which led directly to the failure of Copland and their search for a replacement OS). There would be a 68K emulator, and some code in the new OS would still be 68K. This could be replaced as the OS grows. > How closely are you involved or do you follow the activities of > the Amiga community? I still read comp.sys.amiga.hardware and misc when I have the chance, I still get and answer Amiga-related questions, I still see a few sales every month of DiskSalv, though I haven't had the time personally to finish any new work on that (it's amazing how two jobs can suck up all your free time). > Do you still use your Amiga? :) It's on right now. I haven't used it as much in the last year as I used to. Much of that's just getting work done -- my second job/first hobby used to be programming the Amiga, I haven't had the time for that in the last year. My A3000's one of four machines I keep in my home office, all of which run though the same keyboard (PC-type), mouse (actually an optical trackball), and monitor (a 17" Hitachi SuperScan Elite). The A3000 with '040, with 18MB of memory and 1.2GB of hard disc space, and an oMniBus graphics card (slow, but it does a nice 1180x900). I can boot either 3.1 or 2.1 on the system, using Nic Wilson's Set040 to load the 3.1 ROM image. The system's on my Ethernet, the old C= A2065 with AS225 software, and I recently got a proxy server on the PC working right, so I can go directly to the Web from the Amiga. To hook into the switchbox, I had to get some extra bits. I have a keyboard adaptor from Eagle in Germany, which takes in a PC keyboard and spits out Amiga keyboard signals; works fine. I got a serial mouse driver from AmiNet, but unfortunately, the trackball uses a 7-bit serial protocol, which isn't supported by Paula's ACIA. So I use Greg Berlin's old A2232 board (he designed it, not his personal unit), which goes great mouse. > OK, That's it. I'm lost with the CHRP stuff and don't know > the slightest about how an OS might be compiled to work on another > platform. The main idea of CHRP is to define basically three things about a PowerPC system. FIrst is some basic hardware standards, like the way multiprocessing works, interrupts are managed, memory is set up. The second is to define some software interface layers, which are in essence motherboard firmware, to allow an OS to talk to a motherboard, even though most of the hardware details will vary greatly from motherboard to motherboard. There are two pieces to this; one is a system called RTAS (Run-Time Abstraction Services), which is a set of simple subroutines the OS calls to read the clock, manage power, etc. The other is a system called Open Firmware, which allows device drivers to be described in an OS and actually CPU independent way. Finally, CHRP defines what a system should minimally contain: for example, 8MB of memory, keyboard, CD-ROM, etc. It's a way of establishing a base-level that any programmer can assume, in the specs. Basically, when you move an OS, you have to get everything working on the new CPU, but also the hardware. The CHRP system defines this hardware in abstract, so there's little bit-banging necessary. The sections of the AmigaOS that depend on hardware (quite a few) would be removed, and replaced by calls to RTAS, Open Firmware, or customized drivers (eg, new DEVS: or LIBS: modules that do bang the hardware directly). Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, PIOS Computer | http://www.pios.de Be Dev #2024 | DMX2000 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One "Cheat Sheet for the 21rst Century: Closed, Bad. Open, Good." -Wired ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: some issues available at: http://www.sharbor.com/amiga/news/ (in html format) Australian Mirror Site: http://www.comcen.com.au/~paulm/index.html All back issues available (in ASCII text) at: http://www.globaldialog.com/AdventureCentral/AU/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1997 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || Brad Webb/AmigaUpdate /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || bandr@globaldialog.com / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ || ======================================================================