Article-I.D.: topaz.3436
Posted: Tue Aug 27 16:22:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 23:23:03 EDT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 24
Xref: linus net.micro.amiga:2 net.micro.cbm:1523 net.micro:10455


Hi,

 net.micro.amiga is finally here. As a proud owner of a Commodore Amiga,
I would like to open this newsgroup with an offer. I have now had a few 
days to play with my machine and go through much of my documentation.
Please post questions (technical please, not 'where can I get one'), and
I will do my best to answer them on this group. I hope to be able to post
a few sources and code examples soon, but am unable to do so at this time.

 I am very excited about this machine, though most people won't be able
to get their hands on one till the end of September, I hope to spread
some of that enthusiasm around. I will try to answer questions with a
minimum of overhead, but please forgive me if I lose myself now and
then and ramble about how great the machine is etc.

Here we go!...
Eric
-- 

ARPA:	LAVITSKY@RUTGERS
UUCP:	...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric
SNAIL:	16 Oak St., Flr 2
	New Brunswick, NJ  08903

Article-I.D.: watarts.8535
Posted: Thu Aug 29 09:55:06 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 11:39:38 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 22
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:2 net.micro.cbm:1665 net.micro:11731

In response to the offer that was made, here are some questions:

1.  Could I easily interface a shugart compatible 5.25 inch diskette
    drive (80 tracks double sided) to the amiga.

2.  Will my MX80 printer work with the amiga and can I use it to print
    graphics or do I have to go out and purchase a special printer as
    with the Macintosh.

3.  How fast is the amiga (with a single process running).  I'm talking
    about computation speed, disk access speed and graphics speed.  
    Comparisons to other micros (ie IBM PC or APPLE MAC) would be
    helpful here.

4.  And now a question requiring a highly subjective response:
    How easy is it to write programs for the amiga that utilize the mouse
    icons and windows and other related user interface stuff.
    How easy is it to write programs which do not use fancy user interfaces?
    How good are the software development tools (ie assembler, C compiler,
    Pascal compiler) etc.

   Thanks.

Article-I.D.: petrus.511
Posted: Wed Aug 28 20:21:19 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 05:31:47 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
Lines: 36
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:3 net.micro.cbm:1666 net.micro:11744

 >  
 >  Hi,
 >  
 >   net.micro.amiga is finally here. As a proud owner of a Commodore Amiga,
 >  I would like to open this newsgroup with an offer. I have now had a few 
 >  days to play with my machine and go through much of my documentation.
 >  Please post questions (technical please, not 'where can I get one'), and
 >  I will do my best to answer them on this group. I hope to be able to post
 >  a few sources and code examples soon, but am unable to do so at this time.
 >  
 >   I am very excited about this machine, though most people won't be able
 >  to get their hands on one till the end of September, I hope to spread
 >  some of that enthusiasm around. I will try to answer questions with a
 >  minimum of overhead, but please forgive me if I lose myself now and
 >  then and ramble about how great the machine is etc.
 >  
 >  Here we go!...
 >  Eric
 >  -- 
 >  
 >  ARPA:	LAVITSKY@RUTGERS
 >  UUCP:	...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric
 >  SNAIL:	16 Oak St., Flr 2
 >  	New Brunswick, NJ  08903

Okay. Let's start asking questions!

1) How good are the sound capabilities of the Amiga? Is there any good
software that uses it? Will there be software like MusicWorks and
ConcertWare?
2) What's the resolution of the screen? How many colors can the Amiga
display at the same time? Tell us all about the graphics.

--
Danny Espinoza
...!bellcore!dje or dje@bellcore.ARPA

Article-I.D.: myriasb.471
Posted: Thu Aug 29 13:41:28 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 07:36:50 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: Myrias Research, Edmonton
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:4 net.micro.cbm:1669 net.micro:11756

..

You're gonna get flack about building this news group, but I'm on your
side - long live net.micro.amiga!!

Here's a couple of questions for you:

- how wide is the on-board data bus 8? 16? 32?

- how wide is the data bus that goes off board?
  does it require any extra wait states?

- Does your machine have the DOS in ROM or RAM?
  (I think most of us would prefer the RAM variant - maybe we can
  pursuade Amiga/Commodore to forget about ROMing it.)

- I gather the coprocessors can do line drawing. About how many lines
  per second can they draw? How much does bogging the coprocessors
  down really slow down the 68K?

- How's the documentation you get? How much, how complete?

- What software do you get with it? (BASIC and/or Logo I don't care about)

There, that should keep you busy for a while!

		Chris Gray        {...,ihnp4}!alberta!myrias!cg

Article-I.D.: druxo.974
Posted: Fri Aug 30 05:16:43 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 07:40:55 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 48
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:6 net.micro.cbm:1670 net.micro:11759

->Okay. Let's start asking questions!

->1) How good are the sound capabilities of the Amiga? Is there any good
->software that uses it? Will there be software like MusicWorks and
->ConcertWare?

It blows AWAY anything so far available!  You can digitize the output of your
stereo! And Electronic Arts is coming out with come great software for it!!
And commodore is coming out with a plug in digital keyboard for it!! And you
can use its memory as a sequencer!!! And I'm going really heavy on the exclams!!! !!!! !!!! !! !!!!! !!
(etc!)
Software for it will include:
   Harmony (Commodore) composition software, optional keyboard.
   Instant Music (Electronic Arts) 
   Deluxe Music Construction Set (Electronic Arts)
All available at release, with more due out in November.


2) What's the resolution of the screen? How many colors can the Amiga
display at the same time? Tell us all about the graphics.
Resolution: 
     640x200 16 colors, non-interlaced.
     320x200 32 colors, non-interlaced.
     640x400 16 colors, interlaced.
     320x400 32 colorsm interlaced.
Composite, digital RGB, and analog RGB outputs.  (need analog monitor to take
  full advantage of the 4096 possible colors.)
"Hold and modify" mode to display all 4096 colors at once.

Eight hardware sprites,  up to 16 pixels wide by any height, ap to 12 colors.
Graphics coprocessor ("copper").
Dedicated processor that moves around pieces of the screen ("Blitter").
Built in animation routines in ROM.
Custom peripheral/sound chip, creates complex waveform sound generation.

That's the basics.  If you want to get technical, Lavitsky will have to 
answer.
   '`'`'
    Ken
   '`'`'
Friends of Amiga
Boulder's First Amiga User Group (or shouldI say fan club)

--
Danny Espinoza
...!bellcore!dje or dje@bellcore.ARPA

Article-I.D.: mips.182
Posted: Fri Aug 30 05:14:46 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 04:53:46 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: mips ... where RISC is a way of life
Lines: 54
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:11 net.micro.cbm:1673

[ ... yum ... yum ... yum ... ]

 >  Hi,
 >  
 >   net.micro.amiga is finally here. As a proud owner of a Commodore Amiga,
 >  I would like to open this newsgroup with an offer. I have now had a few 

I'm very happy to see net.micro.amiga appear, and since you've offered,
there *are* a few (thousand! :-)) questions I have:

1 - Can you give us your impressions of the "robustness" of the OS; how
    solid is it thusfar?

2 - I'd like to get an early machine so as to have the writeable "control"
    store, but I would want to be able to keep the OS up-to-date.  Do you
    have any information on the upgrade policy for "kickstartable" Amigas?
    And what about a possible conversion over to ROMs at a later date; has
    Commodore made any commitments?

3 - Can you elaborate on the memory map?  There are alot of areas marked
    "reserved" in the August Byte article; any info on their various
    functions?

4 - What s/w is available; I would be primarily interested in development
    s/w, initially?

5 - How good is the technical documentation, and in what depth?  Does it
    include schematics?  Is the bus well-defined?  Could I (for example)
    find out if the access time to the "control-store" RAMs is shorter
    that to the (future) ROMs?

6 - How good is the hi-res color monitor?  Dot pitch?  Crispness?  Any
    flicker in the 600x400 pixel mode?  Interlaced?

That should do to get the ball rolling, I think (and I didn't even ask how
you managed to get one so early ... hmmmm).

 >   I am very excited about this machine, though most people won't be able
 >  to get their hands on one till the end of September, I hope to spread
 >  some of that enthusiasm around. I will try to answer questions with a

Shouldn't be too hard to spread around ... I think alot of us are just as
excited as you are (well, maybe not quite ... we don't have one yet :-))!

Thanx n advance,
/kim

UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!kim
DDD:   415-960-1200
USPS:  MIPS Computer Systems Inc,  1330 Charleston Rd,  Mt View, CA 94043
-- 
UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!kim
DDD:   415-960-1200
USPS:  MIPS Computer Systems Inc,  1330 Charleston Rd,  Mt View, CA 94043

Article-I.D.: wanginst.1014
Posted: Fri Aug 30 09:04:46 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 05:06:31 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: ss@wanginst.UUCP (Sid Shapiro)
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 25
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:13 net.micro.cbm:1674 net.micro:11770
Summary: 

Thanks for the offer.  A short question which you may not know the
answer to, just to keep things interesting.

I saw the presentation of the Amiga at the BCS the other day.  There
was IBM emulator software.  The demonstrator had 2 machines going.
One specifically to show off the emulator.  He loaded the emulator,
then booted a PCDOS disk, then fired up lotus.  But then he switched
to the other machine for the full blown amiga demos.  Can you not run
the emulator in one window and normal amiga stuff in other windows?
Do you have to do a machine reset to get back to native amiga world?
And finally does the emulation handle graphics (ibm graphics, not
amiga)

One comment:  I was blown away by the demo.  This looks like a very
exciting machine - particularly when the price is mentioned.  But I
wonder, will the price still be great when it finally hits the
stores?

Anyway, thanks for the group and the of information.  Looking
forward to lots of good stuff here.
-- 
Sid Shapiro -- Wang Institute of Graduate Studies
    [apollo, bbncca, ucadmus, decvax, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!ss
    ss%wang-inst@Csnet-Relay.ARPA
	  (617)649-9731

Article-I.D.: tekchips.167
Posted: Fri Aug 30 17:36:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 04:22:19 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <511@petrus.UUCP>
Reply-To: wm@tekchips.UUCP (Wm Leler)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 60
Keywords: wow
Summary: Brief subjective rundown of Amiga features

If you would like to learn more about the Amiga there is
a long article about it in Byte magazine this month.
I've also seen a videotape of the "launch" in NYC, which
features a long demo, and have some of the technical manuals.
I have played with one only briefly, not long enough to find
any weaknesses.

Summary of Amiga - 

You can read the specs anywhere, so I will give a (very) subjective
rundown.  I was most impressed by the sound generation facilities.
I heard a demo of a variety of sounds, including tom-toms, and
a heavy-metal distorted guitar that sounded like the real thing.
Sounds can be "recorded" digitally and reproduced, or you can
generate new sounds.  There are four channels, two of which
can be used for envelope control (attack, decay, etc.).
You have complete control over waveform and envelope.  Sound
generators are DMA driven, so they don't tie up the 68000.
There is also builtin speech generation that can generate
speech from unrestricted text.

The graphics resolutions are fairly standard, either 320 by 200
(non interlaced) with 32 colors, or 640 by 400 (interlaced) with
16 colors.  There is a 12 bit color lookup table.  There is also
a mode where the pixel value is taken to be a signed difference
from the last pixel, so all 4096 colors can be shown on the same
screen.  It takes 3 pixels to change color completely this way,
but that is not really a drawback since the eye's spatial frequency
response to color is rather limited (the NTSC standard does not
allow a full color change per pixel, for instance).  There are
also 8 hardware sprites.

The user can have multiple screens, each with a different resolution.
Each screen can have multiple windows.  The Amiga has true multitasking,
so more than one application can run simultaneously.

The impressive part about the Amiga graphics is the animation.
One of the custom chips is a co-processor that can perform actions
based upon the state of the display, so animation can be synchronized
with display refresh.  There is also support for collision detection,
fast polygon filling, line drawing, and bit-bliting.  This system
is fast.  I saw a demo of the flight simulator that everyone has
seen on the Apple and IBM, except that instead of line graphics,
it had full filled polygons running in real time.

Other cute features - an IBM PC emulator that lets you run MS-DOS
software unmodified (at around 70% processor speed, 100% I/O speed).
Genlock option so you can synch graphics with video.  Modem
that can answer the phone and talk to people.

My personal opinion is that this is the machine the Mac should
have been.

The only concern I've heard about this machine is that it might
be too late to grab any market, but who cares?  I'm going to
buy one.  It uses a 68000, and can run MS-DOS, so there is
going to be plenty of software for it.  Besides, what software
hacker could resist it?

Wm Leler

Article-I.D.: topaz.3503
Posted: Sun Sep  1 21:30:46 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Sep-85 00:43:47 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <182@mips.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 46
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:20 net.micro.cbm:1677

Hi,

	Well, here's my first attempt at answering some questions.
I will begin by telling everyone what I got in my developer's package:

	For $1900:

			1 256K Amiga PC
			1 256K Memory Add On
			1 External 3.5 inch floppy
			1 Analog RGB Monitor - 640x200 (Model 1070)
			Lattice C Native development system
			Lattice C MS-DOS Cross compiler
			Assembler and Linker
			AmigaDOS User's Manual
			AmigaDOS Developer's Manual
			AmigaDOS Technical Reference Manual
			AmigaDOS User Interface Guide
			Amiga Hardware Reference Manual
			Amiga ROM Kernel Manual
			Lattice Manual (Preliminary)
			Various Updates to certain manuals

I don't know too much about the marketing end of this machine. Commodore
has said that they are still deciding on what their policy regarding ROM
upgrades will be. The OS is very robust, though the documentation needs
a little more. I am having a little trouble figuring this whole mess out -
I am hoping that the next release of the documentation will be more complete
(some sections like sound are missong from my set now). There are no
schematics in my documentation, and I can`t make total sense of the expansion
bus pinouts (though I'm no EE).

I have a few different releases of the OS - V27, V28.9 and V28.11. The latest
version does crash now and then, but V29 is supposedly available now. I
managed to grab a beta-release of graphicraft and musicraft. The colors and
sound are both crisp and impressive. My stereo does a nice job - I can't
wait for the final versions of these programs (and Marble Madness too!).

More to follow.
Eric
-- 

ARPA:	LAVITSKY@RUTGERS
UUCP:	...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric
SNAIL:	16 Oak St., Flr 2
	New Brunswick, NJ  08903

Article-I.D.: topaz.3504
Posted: Sun Sep  1 21:33:44 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Sep-85 00:44:02 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 15
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:21 net.micro.cbm:1678 net.micro:11787

Hi,

 I did manage to grab a pre-release of the PC emulator as well. Once
going in PC mode, that`s all you can use the Amiga for. No nice windows
or multi-tasking. You must totally reset the machine to recover to the
Amiga OS. I don't know if the emulator handles graphics for things like
Flight Simulator as I don't have a 5-1/4 inch drive.

Eric
-- 

ARPA:	LAVITSKY@RUTGERS
UUCP:	...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4}!topaz!eric
SNAIL:	16 Oak St., Flr 2
	New Brunswick, NJ  08903

Article-I.D.: sftig.575
Posted: Mon Sep  2 21:20:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Sep-85 04:36:07 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ
Lines: 17
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:26 net.micro.cbm:1679


 >  anybody besides me interested in getting OS9/68K running on the Amiga?
 >  Somebody's bound to have thought of it by now.
 >  
 >  Doug Hall

Actually, I'm surprised that the same thought didn't occur to the
developers of either (both) of the amiga or the 520ST.  It would seem that
OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user
interface that they provide.  Does anybody know why they decided to "go
their own way" and develop custom OS's for their machines.  Are the OS9
developers so unreasonable about relicensing that this was impossible?
Or is there something about OS9 that makes this less sensible than I think
it is?

Rick Thomas
ihnp4!attunix!rbt

Article-I.D.: topaz.3522
Posted: Wed Sep  4 01:42:28 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 02:58:24 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP> <1123@ames.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 3
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:36 net.micro.cbm:1681 net.micro:11810

 >  Some of here are very interested in using Amigas (Amigi?) as laboratory

Amiga is Spanish ("friend", feminine).  Plural is amigas.

Article-I.D.: aero.407
Posted: Fri Aug 30 12:07:43 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 07:13:54 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: warack@aero.UUCP (Chris Warack)
Followup-To: net.micro.amiga
Organization: The Discordian Society
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:38 net.micro.cbm:1682 net.micro:11811
Summary: What about printers?

ro.UUCP
|@  ___ |       seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!
|_______|         sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!aero!warack
  || ||  \   Aerospace Corporation, M1-117, El Segundo, CA  90245
 ^^^ ^^^  `---------(|=

Article-I.D.: aero.409
Posted: Fri Aug 30 16:26:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 07:15:55 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: homeier@aero.UUCP (Peter Homeier)
Organization: The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA
Lines: 12
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:39 net.micro.cbm:1683 net.micro:11812
Summary: 

I am very interested in the how the new Amiga machine compares with
the Apple Macintosh.  Could you prepare a technical discussion showing
each machine's strengths and weaknesses relative to the other?  Both
machines are of the same general type, yet have some obvious and
interesting differences (i.e., available software, color).

                               Peter Homeier
                               ARPANET: homeier@aerospace
-- 
                                  Peter Homeier    ______
Arpanet:    homeier@aerospace                     / o    \_/
UUCP:       ..!ihnp4!trwrb!aero!homeier           \__/___/ \

Article-I.D.: ames.1123
Posted: Tue Sep  3 13:06:27 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 11:03:38 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 29
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:47 net.micro.cbm:1685 net.micro:11825


*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR DESPERATE PLEA FOR INFO ***


Some of here are very interested in using Amigas (Amigi?) as laboratory
computers.  I know this is an obscure application that most of y'all
couldn't care less about, but would those who can answer the following
questions please bear with us (and who knows, some of these issues might
be relevant to your applications):

1) Will the Amiga have (either on the motherboard or as a peripheral) a
   real-time *programmable* clock?

2) How good are the A/D, D/A capabilities of the Amiga, and how accessible
   are they?

3) Can the audio output be programmed such that the Amiga could be used
   for psychoacoustic studies?  That is, do you have precise control
   over wave shape, amplitude, and temporal onset for the two channels?

Thanks to all for any information.  I will post any received info of
general interest.

U.S. Mail:  Mary Kaiser            net.mail: ames!moose@RIACS.ARPA
            Mail Stop 239-3
            NASA-Ames Research Center
            Moffett Field, CA  94035

ATT(MCI,Sprint): (415) 694-6789

Article-I.D.: sftig.585
Posted: Thu Sep  5 10:34:15 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 05:38:17 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <407@aero.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ
Lines: 10

Your posting got truncated by the time it got to us.  Please repost it.
Thanks!

The following is all we got --

 >  ro.UUCP
 >  |@  ___ |       seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!
 >  |_______|         sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!aero!warack
 >    || ||  \   Aerospace Corporation, M1-117, El Segundo, CA  90245
 >   ^^^ ^^^  `---------(|=

Article-I.D.: sdcsla.963
Posted: Tue Sep  3 16:23:33 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 05:12:38 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP> <575@sftig.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Cognitive Science Lab
Lines: 24
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:72 net.micro.cbm:1693

 >>  anybody besides me interested in getting OS9/68K running on the Amiga?
 >>  Somebody's bound to have thought of it by now.
 >  
 >  Actually, I'm surprised that the same thought didn't occur to the
 >  developers of either (both) of the amiga or the 520ST.  It would seem that
 >  OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user
 >  interface that they provide.  
 >  Or is there something about OS9 that makes this less sensible than I think
 >  it is?
 >  
I have been reading about OS9 for awhile on this newsgroup, and I wonder, what
is OS9?  It seems to be a nice operating system for 68000 processors, handling
windows and things.  That is just a guess, however, and not really enough
information.  Could someone please POST a brief description of OS9 that might
illuminate some of us who are not aware of this wonder and explain why it
would be a good idea for Amiga/520ST?  If possible, a pointer to some sort of
way to find out more would be welcome also.  Thanks in advance, -- Clark

 Clark N. Quinn
 Institute for Cognitive Science C-015
 University of California, San Diego
 La Jolla, California 92093
 (619) 452-2541 (UCSD): (619) 481-0952 (Home)
 {ucbvax,decvax,akgua,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!clark  OR  clark@nprdc

Article-I.D.: calmasd.565
Posted: Thu Sep  5 11:35:57 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 16:46:21 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP> <1123@ames.UUCP> <3522@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: dmm@calmasd.UUCP (David M. MacMillan)
Organization: Calma Company, San Diego, CA
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:78 net.micro.cbm:1695 net.micro:11864

 >>  Some of here are very interested in using Amigas (Amigi?) as laboratory
 > 
 > Amiga is Spanish ("friend", feminine).  Plural is amigas.

     Even if "amiga" were Latin, it would be first declension, thus
its nominative plural would be "amigae" (other examples of first
declension nouns used in English might include "larva" (nom. plur.
"larvae").  Only second declension nouns such as "alumnus" form
the nom. plural with "i" (alumni).  
     However, since amiga is Spanish, and doubtless chosen by the
manufacturer's marketing dept. to mean "friend", the Spanish plural
must be taken to be correct.  As it corresponds to the English
plural, this shouldn't be so difficult.

     Don't you love it when people clutter up a perfectly useful
technical newsgroup with arcane philological details.

                           David M. MacMillan

PAX VOBISCUM, AMIGA.   (which, here, is in the Vocative case)

Article-I.D.: ames.1127
Posted: Fri Sep  6 13:05:53 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 02:25:53 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP> <1123@ames.UUCP> <3522@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 5
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:83 net.micro.cbm:1698 net.micro:11871

 >>  Some of here are very interested in using Amigas (Amigi?) as laboratory
 >  
 >  Amiga is Spanish ("friend", feminine).  Plural is amigas.

I know, but Amigi had such a nice ring to it...

Article-I.D.: watcgl.2477
Posted: Sun Sep  8 22:48:40 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 04:04:53 EDT
References: <3436@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1014@wanginst.UUCP> <1123@ames.UUCP> <3522@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <565@calmasd.UUCP> <3664@amdcad.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Graphics Laboratory, U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 2

It's probably time to use a new Subject line.
Welcome! has worn out its welcome.

Article-I.D.: graffiti.186
Posted: Wed Sep 11 06:46:51 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 06:05:05 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP> <575@sftig.UUCP>
Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX
Lines: 8
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:123 net.micro.cbm:1712

 >  It would seem that
 >  OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user
 >  interface that they provide.  Does anybody know why they decided to "go
 >  their own way" and develop custom OS's for their machines.  Are the OS9
 >  developers so unreasonable about relicensing that this was impossible?

I thought that the ATARI was using a variant of CP/M-68K. That was what my
fallible sources informed me (confirmation or denials, anyone?).

Article-I.D.: ucdavis.71
Posted: Sun Sep 15 03:39:21 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 23:48:22 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP> <575@sftig.UUCP> <186@graffiti.UUCP>
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:142 net.micro.cbm:1715

 >>  It would seem that
 >>  OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user
 >>  interface that they provide.  Does anybody know why they decided to "go
 >>  their own way" and develop custom OS's for their machines.  Are the OS9
 >>  developers so unreasonable about relicensing that this was impossible?
 >  
 >  I thought that the ATARI was using a variant of CP/M-68K. That was what my
 >  fallible sources informed me (confirmation or denials, anyone?).

I believe that the Atari will be using the GEM system or something very
similiar.

Dan Gold

...ucbvax!ucdavis!minnie!ccrdan
-- 

Dan Gold

...ucbvax!ucdavis!minnie!ccrdan

Article-I.D.: lsuc.798
Posted: Thu Sep 19 09:10:15 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 10:07:55 EDT
References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP> <575@sftig.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura)
Organization: Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
Lines: 53
Summary:      OS-9 fairly priced

In article <575@sftig.UUCP> rbt@sftig.UUCP (R.Thomas) writes:
 > 
[Re:  Amiga and 520ST]
 > OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user
 > interface that they provide.  Does anybody know why they decided to "go
 > their own way" and develop custom OS's for their machines.  Are the OS9
 > developers so unreasonable about relicensing that this was impossible?
 > Or is there something about OS9 that makes this less sensible than I think
 > it is?
 > 
 > Rick Thomas
 > ihnp4!attunix!rbt

     The cost of licensing OS-9 isn't unreasonably high.  If you check
around, you'll find that it's generally licenced for about $100.00 U.S.
The Shack is able to sell it for as little as $70.00 Canadian.  There's
no doubt that you could probably negotiate roughly the same cost as
Microsoft charges for 'Mess-DOS' (nice term coined by a Compuserve
OS-9'er).  The only downside is that BASIC09 might cost a bit.  On the
otherhand, the Helix QuadraTerm (4 port OS-9, 68008, 1/2 meg. RAM,
10 Meg. Hard, 1 80 track floppy, OS-9 68K, BASIC09, Stylograph word-
processor, DynaCalc Spreadsheet, mail merge, spelling checker all
*included*) sells for $2695.00 US.  You can add a cheap smart term
for as little as $500.00 Canadian (a very good term at that) and come
out way ahead of the Amiga, the ST520 or *any* legal or even illegal
PC-Clone.  Note that all this software is time-tested and proven!
 
     Why wasn't it done?  Frankly, I intend to find out in detail
and report in on BIX (I'm the moderator of the 'os.9' conference on
the Byte Information eXchange).  I expect that they just didn't want
to pay anybody *anything* for their main system software.  The GEM
system was a must for Atari, in order to beat the Amiga onto the
market.  If Tramiel had the time, I think he would have tried to do
that much in house as well.  The Amiga Software was not begun by
Commodore.  A certain amount was produced by the original designers
of the Amiga.  I don't have all the details in that regard either.
 
     Between the two, my impression is that the current Atari ST5200
would be the easier of the two to set up OS-9 on.  The Amiga's hardware
interface is too dependant on it's current system to interface to
OS-9 and still use it to it's maximum potential.  In short, you'd
end up keeping most of the original software and running OS-9 in the
space remaining, which wouldn't be much.  To create a whole new
optimized set of drivers would be, in this case substantially less
trivial.  Not impossible mind you, but you wouldn't be able to do a
lot of the neato graphics & sound stuff as a coherent production as
easily for quite a while.
 
                                     Cheers! -- Jim O.

-- 
James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura