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Amiga Update (1997-10-17)
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_ __ _ <>_ __ _ ||
/\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E
/__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors-
/ \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional Newsletter)
BACK FOR THE FUTURE ||
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AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Gateway 2000, Inc.
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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
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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 $50 a share, and reported the gain
potential for the stock at over 200 per cent. Despite weak near term
operating results, they are reportedly bottoming and the market has
them discounted.
The same information was prominently noted in a CNBC broadcast in the
same time frame.
For anyone who used to follow Commodore stock, this turn of events
takes quite a bit of getting used to.
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M A E S H O W U P D A T E
9 Oct 1997
To all attending the Midwest Amiga Exposition in Columbus Ohio:
The Amiga community's response to our show is incredible and we're
looking forward to a great show! Thanks for all the positive support
you've shown us.
For all those that have mailed in for presale tickets:
I have been processing the requests as I get them and you should see
your tickets, with a map and brochure in the mail in a few days. If I
get your order after the 15th of October, I won't mail it out due to
time constraints, but instead, I'll have your tickets reserved under
your name at the show. We'll have a line especially for presold
tickets at the ticket table outside of the Grand Ballroom.
We now have T-Shirts for the event available for presales. Just visit
our Midwest Amiga page on the World Wide Web
(http://www.amicon.org/mae.html) and follow the link at the top. You
can see what the T-Shirts look like (we have two different styles) and
use our on-line processing form to specify size, quantity, and your
preferred method of payment.
Thanks for your time and we look forward to seeing all of you at our
show!
Sincerely,
Dave Pearce
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C D S F R O M S C H A T Z T R U H E
06 Oct and 16 Oct 1997
The following Amiga CDs are available at bargain prices:
Die folgenden Amiga CDs wurden drastisch im Preis gesenkt:
Product/Produkt Old Price/Alter Preis New Price/Neuer Preis
Aminet Set 3 DM 59,00/US$ 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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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The AMIGA /\\ |\ || |\ || || \\ /
I N F O R M E R /__\\ | \ || | \ || ||-- \\
/ \\__| \||_ | \||_ ||___ _/\\_ Section
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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
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Amiga Update on the net: some issues available at:
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Australian Mirror Site: http://www.comcen.com.au/~paulm/index.html
All back issues available (in ASCII text) at:
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Copyright 1997 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified.
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