We'd also like to welcome back returning member John Asumendi, Peter D. Jones, John Scotto, Brian W. Perez and Pete Jones.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article, review, comment? Send it in. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the best.
(14 Aug 98 19:52:01 -0600) Joe Torre has left Amiga Inc. not for any secret or sinister reasons, but simply because Amiga Inc is persuing more of a software revival than a hardware revival of the Amiga thru the developer box and the AmigaNG and Joe is a hardware man. (Remember open platform OS and all that).
Joe feels his hardware developmental talents will be wasted in this atmosphere and has decided to part on good stead with Amiga Inc. I am sure Joe's knowledge and friendship will remain with Amiga Inc and us.
We will miss his crazy projects!!! :)
(13 Aug 1998 17:48:55) It is with great regret that I have to inform you that the October 1998 issue of CU Amiga will be the last ever published. CU Amiga Magazine recently dipped into a state of unprofitability, from which it looked unlikely to emerge. The decision to close the magazine was taken by EMAP in light of the magazine's overall financial performance and the lack of prospects for any immediate or short term recovery.
It is ironic that CU Amiga should close as the world's best selling Amiga magazine, but recently its financial returns have started to outweigh its overheads. While it has been customary for costs to be cut in order to stave off the closure of magazines, it was decided that CU Amiga would be laid to rest without suffering the indignities of having half its pages removed and the remaineder printed on toilet paper in black and white. Neither will it be sold off to another company to be published on a shoe string and run into the ground.
The CU Amiga editorial team were obviously very sorry to hear the news and would like to pass on their sincere thanks to everyone who has helped make CU Amiga such a success and so much fun to work on over its many years of existence.
Further details can be found on the CU Amiga website:
[Information on Amiga Format: (14 Aug 1998 09:03:50 GMT) Okay, I'm sorry to reply to you all in this way, but I'm getting so many emails on this topic I just have to. AF is in a much better financial situation than CU is, was or has been for a long time. I'm sorry to see them go too, but the simple fact of the matter is that we are here and we intend to be here for a long time yet. However, now, more than ever, the Amiga market is in the hands of its users. Without people buying software (whether it be commercial or shareware) and hardware we will soon join CU in magazine heaven...
All the best,
Ben Vost T: (+44) 01225 732337 Deputy Editor F: (+44) 01225 732341 Amiga Format ben.vost@futurenet.co.uk ]
The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group (a not-for-profit corporation) is raffling off an Amiga 4000, Video Toaster 4000, and LightWave3D! Proceeds from the raffle directly benefit CUCUG and its fundraising efforts.
The Amiga is a pre-owned stock A4000/040 desktop unit with sixteen Megs of Fast RAM, two Megs of chip RAM, 340-Meg IDE hard drive, GVP 4008 SCSI controller, two additional cooling fans, and a 3X SCSI CD-ROM drive. The Video Toaster 4000 and LightWave3D are brand-new, still-in-the-shrinkwrap items.
The A4000 system has been fully inspected and is in great shape. Monitor not included. This high-performance Amiga computer could be yours for as little as US$10.00!
Raffle tickets are just US$10.00 each. Buy as many as you can to increase your chances of being the raffle winner! You need not be present to win.
CUCUG will be attending AmiCON's 3rd annual Midwest Amiga Exposition, held in Columbus, Ohio on October 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 1998. Tickets will be available for purchase via the CUCUG representatives on-hand at the show. We will be drawing for the winner on October 4th, approximately 1 hour prior to the show's close.
To reserve tickets via the World Wide Web, or via e-mail:
Fill out the form at the bottom of this page to reserve your tickets -OR- Download the CUCUG Amiga/Toaster Raffle order form, and either e-mail it to the CUCUG Raffle Liaison, Mike Latinovich, at: raffle@cucug.org or, print the order form out for a handy snail-mail ticket order sheet!
Confirmation of ticket orders will be made via e-mail. There will be information within the confirmation e-mail on where to mail the amount due on ticket purchases.
Funds for tickets MUST BE RECEIVED by no later than Wednesday, September 30, 1998 to be eligible for the raffle and must be in the form of US dollars. If sending a personal check, it must be drawn on a US bank (our bank charges us a fortune to process international checks) and made out to "CUCUG". For International entries, we recommend an International postal money order drawn in US funds only. You may send cash provided it is properly wrapped, but we are not responsible for lost mail or other disasters.
Funds received after September 30, 1998 for the raffle will be voided and/or returned to sender.
Please note that tickets WILL be on sale at the Midwest Amiga Exposition on October 2nd, 3rd and 4th for attendees of the show. Please contact a CUCUG representative at the show for more details.
Reserve your tickets NOW!
Number of tickets you wish to reserve ($10.00 each):
E-mail address: (Please double check for accuracy)
Name:
Mailing address:
City:
State:
ZIP/Postal Code:
Country:
Phone Number:
Enter any comments you might have here. Don't delay - reserve your tickets right now and then be sure to mail your check immediately after you receive our e-mail reply!
The fine print:
Amiga OS5 will consist of a brand new kernal with a brand new set of APIs, which will be written in C++, with a subset of mirrored Java classes. Whilst the new OS will follow many of the design philosophies and principals of the classic AmigaOS, the API set will include both new and industry standard APIs, such as OpenGL.
The kind of new features we want to add to the operating system, cannot be supported within the frame work of the existing APIs. For instance, resolution independent graphics and a unified printing model will require such major rework of the classic API's that we decided that a rewrite was a better approach. The same can be said for the kernel, user interface etc.
Therefore, the answer is no - the classic AmigaOS API set will not appear in OS5. That is not to say that a third party can't take the existing classic API set and implement them on top of the new API set, if they so desire.
As for the "structure" of the OS (devices, libs etc), that process is ongoing at the moment and more information will be revealed when it has been completed.
Apple Computer last week announced a profit of $101 million for the third fiscal quarter of 1998, although bolstered by $26 million in one-time investment gains. $101 million works out to $.65 per share, almost double analysts' estimates of $.33 per share. Revenues for the quarter equaled last quarter at $1.4 billion, gross margins were 25.7 percent (the highest in three years, thanks to the Power Macintosh G3s and PowerBook G3s), and Apple CFO Fred Anderson said that company has almost $2 billion in cash on hand. Anderson also noted that the introduction of the low-margin iMac in the next fiscal quarter will drive down gross margins but should increase revenues. [ACE]
As anticipated, Apple Computer cut prices on some Power Macintosh G3 systems as much as 33 percent over the weekend, as vendors await even faster Power Macs by mid-month.
Of the three Power Macintosh G3 models that are still in production, the entry-level G3 with 233-MHz PowerPC 750 processor as well as the 266-MHz desktop system received price cuts of up to $300, as previously reported.
In early July, Apple stopped production on several other high-performance models, including the 300-MHz systems introduced in March. Those systems remaining in dealer inventory will see dramatic price drops as Apple prepares to fill out the high end of its lineup with new computers using 333- and 366-MHz PowerPC chips from Motorola and IBM.
For example, a G3 with 300-MHz PowerPC 750, 128MB of memory, dual 4GB hard disk drives, and a CD-ROM was reduced to $3,299 from $4,599, a reduction of approximately $1,300. A 300-MHz system with one drive and 64MB of memory had its price cut by $1,110 to $2,249, a reduction of 33 percent.
Some resellers said in late July that they might run out of G3 inventory (not including G3 portables or the iMac) before Apple refreshes its product lineup, an event that was expected to occur in early September but is now expected to occur on August 12, industry sources say.
Running short of systems may be better for Apple's profitability than having too many systems. That's because Apple would have to offer dealers money back on old systems sitting in inventory, and lower prices on the old systems can put a dent in sales of newer systems.
Dealers who spoke to CNET News.com are also pleased that Apple doesn't have to slash prices all the time now, because that causes customers to return to ask for money back.
The tight rein on inventory is a far cry from what observers call "the old Apple." One industry source said the company's one profitable quarter under former CEO Gilbert Amelio was "smoke and mirrors" achieved by shipping lots of computers to resellers, who then shipped unsold systems back to Apple.
Running out of systems during a product transition is not all that unusual within the PC industry. In May, many retailers selling Compaq Computer's Presario systems ran out of inventory as the company ramped up production of new systems for June, temporarily knocking the PC giant out of the No. 1 spot in retail sales.
Power Mac G3 pricing
Previous Current
Model price price
233-MHz desktop $1,699 $1,399
266-MHz desktop $1,989 $1,699
266-MHz minitower $2,499 $1,999
Source: AppleGriffin Technology last week announced the iMate, a $29 USB-to-ADB adapter that enables iMac users to use standard ADB devices such as keyboards, mice, trackballs, and joysticks. Plans for a future version include support for less standard ADB devices such as copy-protection dongles. iMate users will be able to mix and match USB and ADB devices, and ADB devices attached to an iMate can be daisy chained. Reportedly, the iMate also enables USB-equipped PCs running Windows 98 to use ADB devices. Griffin plans to ship the iMate in mid-August, to correspond with the iMac release date.[ACE]
http://www.nashville.net/~griffin/usb_pr.html
Users of Connectix's RAM Doubler 2.x can now update to RAM Doubler 8 using a free updater (379K download) available from Connectix's Web site. Despite the large version number change, the update is fairly minor, offering primarily some additional reporting and configuration options in the RAM Doubler control panel, plus a fix for a conflict with Microsoft Office 98 (see "Minor Connectix Updates" in TidBITS-431_). [ACE]
Connectix Corporation [then] released [another] free upgrade to its memory optimization tool RAM Double, tweaking the utility's speed and offering greater stability. This release follows on the heels of the RAM Doubler 8 upgrade, free to registered users of RAM Doubler 2.x. Version 8.0.1 resolves problems using the RAM Doubler control panel with older versions of the Finder in low-memory situations, speeds up application launches on PowerPC-based Macs with large amounts of memory, and fixes a rare problem where a write-protection fault by other applications could freeze the computer. The updater is a 390K download. [JLC]
http://www.connectix.com/html/rd_ mac_ update.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04902
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04992
ftp://ftphqx.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_SW_Updates/US/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/Disk_Copy_6.3.smi.hqx
ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_SW_Updates/US/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/Disk_Copy_6.3.smi.bin
In 1999, Intel will boost the speed of its Xeon chips to 700 MHz, desktop Pentium IIs to 600 MHz, and mobile chips to 366 MHz. The company will also release its first Pentium II with high-speed "cache" memory integrated directly onto the processor.
A 333-MHz Pentium II that integrates a super-fast 256 kilobyte cache memory chip, code-named Dixon, is slated to appear in the first half of the year. Dixon represents the first instance of integration in the Pentium II line. Most Pentium IIs now come with 512K of cache located elsewhere in the processor cartridge. Cache memory is critical for boosting a chip's performance.
Intel has already said it will add and integrate cache memory into its Celeron chips later this year. Dixon was initially expected to be a part of the low-cost Celeron family of chips, but Intel is now saying it will not be a Celeron product. Celeron processors, found in a variety of low-cost consumer and business systems, are relatively slow because currently they don't contain the peformance-enhancing cache like Pentium II chips do.
With an integrated 256K of cache memory right on the chip, Dixon will be faster than the current Pentium II chip design which has twice the amount of cache - but located off-chip.In other words, selling Dixon as a Celeron-brand chip would mean selling a $100 to $200 low-end part that works better than Pentium II parts starting at $200. "Integration is not the basis of segmentation," said Michael Slater, founder of MicroDesign Resources. Price is.
Intel declined to discuss Dixon in detail, as the product is unannounced.
On other fronts, technology continues progressing at a breakneck pace. Despite a flurry of financial, legal, and product setbacks this year, Intel's plan for chip development and speed upgrades is surpassing earlier roadmaps.
Chips made on the more advanced 0.18-micron manufacturing process will come out in the second quarter of 1999, one quarter earlier than expected, according to Intel, while megahertz upgrades for mobile processors and Celeron chips have already been advanced.
"Katmai," a new technology that will boost the chips ability to handle multimedia and scientific applications, has also already been shifted up for a Q1 release.
Price cuts also continue. Another round of price cuts will occur later this month, dropping the price of the 400-MHz Pentium II to approximately $550. Price cuts are also slated for September and October of this year.
Some of 1999's highlights of the product roadmap, according to MicroDesign Resources, will unfold as follows:
Xeon
In Q1 1999, Intel will follow with a 500-MHz version code named "Tanner." Tanner will come in the Xeon "Slot 2" package, but will also likely fit into the "Slot M" package that will be used with Merced. Tanner thus will serve as a transition to the 64-bit Merced platform.
By the second quarter, Xeon manufacturing will shift from the current 0.25-micron manufacturing process to the .18-micron manufacturing process. This will make the chips smaller as well as more efficient.
In the second half, Xeons running at 700 MHz will likely be released, although it is uncertain as yet if Intel will hit this mark. Slater characterized a 700-MHz milestone as "reasonably aggressive."
Pentium II
Celeron
300-MHz and 333-MHz Celeron chips with integrated 128KB of cache memory, code-named Mendocino, will come out in the second half of this year. The Celeron line's next major shift will likely come in the first half of 1999 with the 100-MHz system bus. Celeron processors currently utilize an older 66-MHz system bus.
Celeron speeds will reach up to 400-MHz by the second half of the year, according to MicroDesign Resources.
Two to three years from now, Intel may even move to integrating the chipset and graphics functions into the processor itself, Slater said. "The trend is inexorable here," he said.
Mobile Chips
Meanwhile, despite declining prices, Intel will likely stabilize its price segments in 1999. Xeon chips will sell from roughly $1,000 to $4,000 and beyond; Pentium II processors will sell for between $200 to $800; and Celeron chips will sell for between $100 and $200.
Intel in 1999: What to expect
IBM's chance for chip greatness will come later this summer with the release of its first copper-based PowerPC microprocessors, intended for Apple Computer's Macintosh systems.
IBM's microprocessor operations often go unnoticed due to the large shadow cast by chip behemoth Intel, but the release of the copper processor will highlight Big Blue's long-established manufacturing prowess as well as its efforts to take the lead in one of the most critical new chip technologies for the next decade.
IBM's first copper processors, which are code-named Lone Star and use copper wire rather than aluminum to connect transistors, will run at speeds of 400 MHz and lower, according to sources close to IBM. Versions running at 333 MHz and 366 MHz are expected to be available at the same time, which is probably not later than September.
The initial products will be targeted at the Macintosh market and found in Apple computers and Mac upgrade cards. Samples have already been shipped to IBM partners.
While the first versions of the chip will only slightly boost performance over current aluminum microprocessors, future copper processors are expected to reach speeds up to 1 GHz (1,000 MHz).
Sources at IBM have said that copper chips will be commercially available in the summer, but various analysts have said that the debut may be more like a trial release. That is, chips will be available, but perhaps not too many of them.
Beyond the shift in metals, IBM will use a 0.18-micron manufacturing process to produce these chips, a more advanced technique than Intel currently uses on its production lines.
"That's not surprising," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. "They [IBM] tend to have the technology leadership."
1998 has been a busy one for IBM Microelectronics. Since the beginning of the year, IBM has signed manufacturing deals with several Intel clone chip vendors, in what many have called an effort to stake out a stronger presence in that market. (Its deal with AMD, however, was recently postponed.)
IBM has also led the charge toward using copper, which conducts better than aluminum and is expected to lead to faster, more efficient microprocessors. The PowerPC chips will be followed by copper-based, custom-made ASICs (applications specific intergrated circuit) chips. IBM is working with approximately ten other companies to develop ASICs, according to an IBM spokesman.
In all likelihood, copper chips based around the Intel architecture will follow. To IBM, the 0.18-micron process and copper technology are synonymous, said the spokesman. IBM has no current plans to make aluminum chips on the 0.18-micron process technology; however, since most chip vendors plan to move their x86 chips from the 0.25 to the 0.18 micron processes next year, copper chips based around the Intel architecture will surely come.
Yesterday, AMD and Motorola announced they would collaborate on making copper chips. But IBM maintains that it holds a substantial lead in this field.
"We believe we have a six-month to year lead on everyone," said the IBM spokesman.
The shift to copper will only result in an incremental improvement in the 0.18-micron generation of chips, according to Nathan Brookwood, semiconductor analyst for Dataquest. Most of the improvements the physical properties of copper can bring will come with the subsequent 0.13-micron manufacturing process, as still smaller transistors will better synchronize with the higher speed interconnections.
"You really need 0.13.," he said. "It's like city traffic with traffic lights on every corner. With 0.18, you get to the traffic light a lot faster, but you spend a lot more time waiting at the light. When you get to 0.13, the traffic lights start getting shorter."
McCarron, among others, agreed that the first generation of copper chips at 0.18 microns functions more as a starting place than a point for comparing performance. He added that copper will add performance as processors approach and exceed 600 MHz.
Intel for the moment is not scrambling toward copper, according to Linley Gwennap, editor in chief of The Microprocessor Report. While Intel is undoubtedly performing research on copper interconnect circuitry, the company appears to be concentrating more on low capacitance "di-electric" technology, which improves the performance of the materials surrounding the circuits, rather than the circuits themselves. Essentially, capacitance is reduced between the layers in a chip.
Motorola introduced the industry's fastest PowerPC microprocessors, "G3" chips that run at 366 MHz while using less power than competing processors from Intel.
The chips, which should soon find their way into desktop and notebook systems, are chiefly intended for use in Apple's Macintosh computer and for smaller devices requiring high performance.
Formally known as the PowerPC 750, the new chips run at speeds of 366, 333, and 300 MHz. The first two are new performance landmarks for the PowerPC architecture, according to Motorola.
All three processors reduce power consumption by more than half when compared to existing PowerPC 750 microprocessors at the same speed, the company said. Low power consumption means that the fastest PowerPC chips can be used in portable computers and small devices - unlike the fastest Intel chips, which cannot be used in portables because they run too hot and use too much power.
Intel's speediest chip for notebooks runs at 266-MHz and consumes 7.8 watts of power, about twice that of the new PowerPC chip. The older 233-MHz Pentium MMX processor for notebooks consumes a more modest 3.4 watts but isn't as fast as the Pentium II.
"For a specific market, like notebooks, the PowerPC has a pretty big edge. Intel's fastest chip is only 266 MHz, whereas the new [366-MHz] PowerPC 750 would easily fit into a notebook environment. You could see a very dramatic advantage for the PowerPC," said Linley Gwennap, senior analyst with MicroDesign Resources, though he added that "in terms of the desktop, it looks like pretty much an even race."
The newest members of the PowerPC family use the smaller and faster transistors incorporated in the 350-MHz 604e PowerPC chip that debuted in 1997, according to Will Swearingen, marketing manager with Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector.
"This gets us to 366-MHz much faster with a quicker time to market than if you do a major [transition to the 0.25 micron manufacturing process]," Swearingen said. The new parts are built using Motorola's existing 0.29 micron manufacturing process.
The smaller transistors also reduce the internal voltage consumed by the processor from 2.6 volts to 1.9 volts, and the power consumption to 3.5 watts, which is half of the previous chips. Motorola said that this makes the chip suitable for use in embedded applications ranging from networking and telecommunications to desktop and mobile computing.
Chip industry analysts say that the new PowerPC 750s are, for the most part, faster than a Pentium II at the same speed, though performance varies widely depending on the application. Thus, Gwennap said, a 366-MHz PowerPC 750 is generally equivalent to a 400-MHz Pentium II based on the widely used Spec benchmark performance ratings.
Apple claims that the chips perform up to twice as fast as the Pentium II chips in integer operations based on results from different benchmark tests. Integer performance typically factors into the performance of office productivity applications and many 3D graphics applications, while floating point performance is needed for applications such as scientific calculations.
In terms of sheer clock speed, Intel has plans for desktop computers to reach 500 MHz by the first half of 1999 and 600 MHz by the end of next year.
Motorola and IBM are expected to hit 400 MHz before the end of this year and are expected to reach 500 MHz in the first half of 1999, meaning that the PowerPC and Intel architecture will be running roughly neck and neck in the speed category. However, Intel's notebook processors won't hit 366-MHz until the second half of 1999.
Motorola's Swearingen reported that the company has made pre-production versions of its "G4" processor and will begin sampling this year. The G4 will be Motorola's first 32-bit processor built using copper technology and will include AltiVec technology (also known as VMX) for improving a computer's data crunching abilities.
Apple's Power Macintosh computers currently use the PowerPC 750, but new systems in development are expected to use Motorola's G4 processor.
Meanwhile, IBM is expected to unveil its first copper-process chips by September, as previously reported.
The new G3 chip's suggested unit price at 366 MHz is $595 in quantities of 1,000. The three new microprocessors have a total of 64 kilobytes of cache memory on chip and 6.35 million transistors.
Apple has not given any definite indication when it will incorporate Motorola and IBM's upcoming chips in the Power Mac line, but sources have told CNET News.com that the G3s announced today will be part of a desktop refresh that could come as soon as next month and no later than September.
With the announcement of the iMac we started hearing a totally new abbreviation in the Macintosh world - USB. Gone were our familiar ADB ports and modem ports and printer ports, not to mention SCSI. Why is Apple moving to USB? What was wrong with serial ports and what's good about USB ports?
What Is USB?
USB stands for "Universal Serial Bus" and is a special kind of serial port that's growing in popularity in the Windows world. Most late-model PCs have at least one USB port, and Windows 98 introduces plug-and-play support for devices attached to the USB port. (Bill Gates's widely reported COMDEX crash occurred as he was connecting a USB scanner to a PC running Windows 98. But that's no worse than how Windows plug-and-play often works.)
USB is intended to replace all the various types of low-to-medium- speed data ports hanging off the back of a PC (although most current PCs with USB also have at least some of the old-style ports). This includes not only the serial ports but also keyboard ports, mouse ports (which, on a PC, are basically another serial port), and parallel ports. Keep in mind that on a PC, the parallel port is used not just for printers but also for other devices such as Zip drives, tape drives, scanners, and even some modems.
Given that USB is intended to replace the parallel port as well as lower-speed serial ports, and to do it all at once, it's pretty speedy. USB devices can talk to the computer at two speeds: 1.5 Mbps or 12 Mbps (that's millions of bits per second, and remember, there are 8 bits per byte if you want to translate to bytes per second). In comparison, the Mac's serial ports max out at 230.4 Kbps, and ADB at just over 1 Kbps. Devices like keyboards and mice will use the slower speed; devices like Zip drives, printers, and scanners will use the faster speed. Both speeds can be connected to a single USB bus.
Ah, the bus. The term conjures images of the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), Apple's standard way of connecting input devices to the computer, with its easy daisy-chaining. USB doesn't support daisy- chaining in the same way. Each USB port can host one and only one peripheral. However, that peripheral can be a device called a _hub_, which provides additional USB ports for more devices. Up to 127 devices can be connected to a single USB port using a collection of hubs. (Theoretically, a device could incorporate a "single-port hub" for daisy-chaining, but this isn't likely in the price-conscious PC market.)
Like ADB devices, USB devices can draw power directly from the bus, within limits. If you have many power-hungry USB devices, you'll want a powered hub to provide current for them. (The serious power hogs - things with moving parts and motors, like printers and scanners - will have their own power supplies and won't rely on the USB for power.)
USB Devices
What kinds of devices will be available? Input devices, obviously: keyboards, mice, graphic tablets, joysticks, and so on. Anything that typically hangs off a PC parallel port is also fair game, which means we'll probably see USB Zip drives and other relatively slow mass storage devices (in fact, Imation and Panasonic have already announced a USB version of their LS-120 SuperDisk drive, which reads both 120 MB and 1.44 MB disks). Other USB candidates include tape drives, scanners, digital still cameras, modems, and printers. Newer Technology has also announced plans to create a USB-based floppy drive, specifically for the iMac. Many cable modems and ADSL adapters operate within the bandwidth of USB, so we might see those kinds of devices as well. The 12 Mbps variant of USB is faster than standard 10 Mbps Ethernet.
Although there will undoubtedly be USB Zip drives (or similar cartridge-type drives like the LS-120), don't expect decent performance from hard disks attached to the USB. Though a USB Zip drive will probably be faster than the PC parallel port version, and more than adequate for the kind of exercise a consumer is likely to give such a peripheral, SCSI is still faster. Even the slowest version of SCSI has a raw throughput of 5 MB per second, more than 3 times faster than USB, and the newer Ultra/Wide SCSI III can reach 40 MB per second. For hard disks and digital video cameras, you'll still want SCSI, or the ultra-high-speed serial port dubbed FireWire, which is yet another topic.
USB and the Mac
How do Mac users benefit from USB? The obvious answer is that we can tap into the competitive jungle that is the PC marketplace. Before long, you'll be able to buy $15 keyboards just like your PC-using friends. (Of course, they'll be PC keyboards, but they'll work on your Mac.) Each USB device identifies itself through a generic "type" ("I'm a keyboard," "I'm a mouse," "I'm a Reality Distortion Field generator"), and a USB-compatible Mac will have a USB Manager with built-in drivers that let it talk to many devices in at least a minimal way. You'll need Mac-specific drivers to take full advantage of many peripherals, but it's a lot cheaper for manufacturers to create an extra piece of software than to make both a parallel port and a SCSI version of a removable-media disk drive for different markets. PC Cards work in much the same way now - the standard PC Card modem drivers work with almost any PC Card modem, but more specialized PC Cards require custom drivers. A few manufacturers have already announced Mac support for their USB peripherals. If the iMac takes off as retailers expect it to, many more manufacturers should follow suit.
USB has faced an uphill battle in the Windows world because of drivers. One of the primary reasons for the success of Windows over the years is that Microsoft includes a vast collection of drivers for different hardware devices with Windows itself, reducing installation difficulty and conflicts. However, since USB came out after Windows 95, drivers have all been provided by the individual USB peripheral developers, resulting in chaos. The just-released Windows 98 includes better USB support, so there's hope that the field will settle down. Apple's strategy of including drivers for common types of USB devices may make USB far more coherent on the Mac.
The iMac's keyboard, by the way, has a built-in two-port hub, so you can attach one additional device besides the mouse. The iMac itself has two independent USB ports (each with its own 12 Mbps bandwidth), which means that the stock iMac supports two additional USB peripherals (along with a mouse and keyboard), one connected directly to the computer and the second connected to the keyboard. If you need more USB ports, 4-port hubs run about $100 right now, but some observers expect them to fall to the $50 range as USB catches on, much as happened with Ethernet hubs.
Along with Newer Technology's announced plans to create a USB-to- serial converter, the rumor mill is hinting that at least one manufacturer will introduce a USB peripheral that will provide "old-style" Mac serial, ADB, and (really slow) SCSI ports, so users who move to an iMac from an older Mac can take at least their old printers and modems with them and hook up their old hard disks long enough to copy all their data over. An iMac with such an adapter and an ADB credit-card reader and barcode scanner would make a groovy-looking point-of-sale terminal (at least until there are Mac-compatible USB versions of these peripherals). Though it's never a good idea to put faith in rumors, this seems like an obvious product, if it can be produced at a reasonable price. Don't expect total software compatibility, though, as some software products unreasonably assume that no characteristics of serial ports ever change.
You can find out more about USB from a Web site operated by a USB industry consortium, and see what kinds of peripherals are available by visiting USB Stuff, a retailer of USB peripherals. Finally, MacInTouch has collected a variety of bits of information about USB contributed by readers.
http://www.usb.org/
http://www.usbstuff.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/usb.html
[This article is reprinted and updated with permission from MWJ, the Weekly Journal for Serious Macintosh Users. If you can't get enough insightful Macintosh news, sign up for a free, no- obligation, two-issue trial subscription to MWJ, or download some of the free sample articles. For more information, see the MWJ Web site.]
[Source: TidBITS #436 / 29-Jun-98. TidBITS address is http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/default.html.]
[Additional information: LAMG recently announced the premiere of USB4Mac.com, a web site dedicated to helping Macintosh users take advantage of Universal Serial Bus (USB) product. Their searchable database is a great place to research your options.
And if you want to take a peek at some of the recently announced USB products released in support of iMac, check out:
Apple's introduction of Mac OS Extended Format, the new disk format better known as HFS Plus, has engendered no small amount of consternation in the Macintosh community because it's incompatible with many previous disk utilities - see "All About Macintosh Extended Format (HFS Plus)" in TidBITS-414. It will be some time before Macintosh users can enjoy a full complement of disk repair tools and optimization utilities. However, last week saw a few steps in the right direction.
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04668
PlusOptimizer Defragments HFS Plus Volumes
Alsoft, well known for their DiskExpress Pro disk optimization software, has released PlusOptimizer 1.0.1, a simple utility for people using Mac OS 8.1 and HFS Plus volumes. PlusOptimizer optimizes your volumes by defragmenting files and free space, which can improve performance and reduce fragmentation of new files. PlusOptimizer lacks the high-end features of DiskExpress Pro, which can optimize disks based on file activity, optimize in the background, verify media, erase free space, log directory errors, schedule optimizations, and defragment disks with open files. However, DiskExpress Pro is currently not compatible with Mac OS 8.1 and HFS Plus, nor were any other disk optimization utilities prior to the release of PlusOptimizer. PlusOptimizer costs $29.95 and is available only from Alsoft as a 504K download.
http://www.alsoft.com/plusoptimizer.html
http://www.alsoft.com/DXPinfo.html
Some DiskExpress Pro users have expressed disappointment that Alsoft is not making PlusOptimizer available to them at a nominal price, given that they've been waiting for six months for a long- promised Mac OS 8.1-compatible version of DiskExpress Pro. Whether or not PlusOptimizer is as capable as DiskExpress Pro is immaterial; these users still feel pressured into buying PlusOptimizer, given that it's the only disk optimization utility available for Mac OS 8.1 and HFS Plus volumes.
Disk First Aid 8.2 to the Rescue
Apple has released Disk First Aid 8.2, the latest version of the free disk repair utility that ships with the Mac OS. Although Disk First Aid's capabilities have never been as complete as those in commercial disk repair utilities, with the introduction HFS Plus older disk repair utilities not only ceased to work, but could cause damage. Disk First Aid 8.2 can repair some problems, mostly related to directory damage, on HFS Plus volumes, plus it can correct problems caused by HFS Plus-incompatible disk repair utilities. As an added bonus, Disk First Aid 8.2 can operate on the startup volume and provides an estimate of how long the check will take. Note that Apple intends Disk First Aid 8.2 only for computers using Mac OS 8.1 and has tested it only with the English version of Mac OS 8.1. Disk First Aid 8.2 is a 339K download and is available only as a self-mounting image file.
Norton Utilities 4.0 in Public Beta
When Apple introduced HFS Plus, Symantec countered with Norton Utilities 3.5.2 to address the fact that previous versions could damage HFS Plus volumes. However, version 3.5.2 simply refuses to diagnose, optimize, or repair HFS Plus volumes. Until recently, Symantec had remained quiet about plans to upgrade Norton Utilities to support HFS Plus, so MicroMat jumped on the opportunity, releasing TechTool Pro 2.0 with HFS Plus support. Now, however, Symantec is saying that it will release Norton Utilities 4.0 in several months, offering support for HFS Plus volumes. Does the phrase "It's about time!" sum up the situation sufficiently?
http://www.symantec.com/nu/fs_num.html
http://www.micromat.com/micromat/TTP/TTP2/ttp2.html
Those foolhardy souls who wish to risk their disks can download and try the public beta of the disk optimization program Norton Speed Disk 4.0, which supports Mac OS 8.1 and HFS Plus. We strongly recommend testing Norton Speed Disk 4.0 on an unimportant disk and keeping excellent backups - a bug in disk optimization software could easily destroy all your data.
http://www.symantec.com/cgi-bin/Core/Core.pl?REGION=na&]LANGUAGE=english&PFT=897671280
Drive Setup 1.5 Released
Finally, although it's not specifically related to HFS Plus (which appeared with Drive Setup 1.4), we thought we'd mention that Apple has released Drive Setup 1.5, the company's free disk formatting utility. Version 1.5 adds support for Power Macintosh G3 computers and fixes a bug where the write cache on some ATA drives was disabled following a restart. Drive Setup 1.5 requires U.S. English versions of Mac OS 7.6 or later; although this isn't an urgent update unless you're experiencing difficulties, if you're installing Mac OS 7.6 or later, it's a good idea to use Drive Setup 1.5 to update your hard disk driver. Drive Setup 1.5 is available as a self-mounting image file and is a 476K download; be sure to go over the Read Me file for important information.
[Source: TidBITS #435 / 22-Jun-98. TidBITS address is http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/default.html .]
By Greg Lindsay, Salon 21st, July 23, 1998
URL: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/07/23feature.html
If you're not already part of the Amiga flock, entering the cramped exhibition hall at an Amiga convention can be profoundly disorienting. Browsing through the software racks and glancing at the aging Amiga 500 and Amiga 1000 machines running demos at the AmiWest conference earlier this month in Sacramento, I felt as if I'd entered a parallel universe where software development stopped in the early '90s. There was no Photoshop, only ImageFX. No Premiere either, but instead the granddaddy of desktop video, Video Toaster Flyer.
How could I take applications with copyrights from 1991 seriously? And these machines were from 1987; how could they be anything other than toys? To me these were inevitable questions, but they didn't seem to trouble anyone else: I had entered the Church of Amiga, and Mass was underway.
While most operating systems profess to have fans zealous enough to form a religion, they fail the fundamental test of faith. It takes no faith to be a Windows user; every application, it seems, will make its way to the platform, and the number of hardware manufacturers who cater to Wintel grows by the minute. Even the Macintosh's "Evangelistas," who were staging their own tent revival at the MacWorld Expo in New York last week, can expect new versions of Photoshop to arrive via FedEx at about the same time Windows users' will. But Amiga users never receive reassurances like these. They're on their own.
Who are they? "They tend to be not average, not mainstream, not in the bell curve," says Joe Torre, senior hardware engineer at Amiga Inc. "Not ho-hum. They're the mavericks, the secret weapons. The entrepreneur, the one that gets the worm. Not the one in the herd. The one that does his homework, and is quite proud of his prowess. They've turned their machines into personal creations. The users have by now filtered out their weak. The ones that remain are an elite club. We're not all in detention hall; we're the honor students."
They purchase machines from as early as 1985 and run applications from 1988. They bear the judgment from the world-at-large that theirs is a dead platform, a relic, the Tucker automobile of their industry. (The last new Amiga model shipped in 1992.) To be an Amiga user is to know that everything Windows and Mac users know about processor speed, memory requirements, bigger hard drives and application upgrades is wrong. It's to know that an Amiga 500 with a 16MHz processor and 4 megs of RAM - the raw equivalent of an outmoded Intel 286 machine - can run circles around a Pentium II PC. You just need to believe.
I can't. The world-at-large doesn't seem to, either. But Amiga devotees still do. And now, for the first time since Amiga's original parent company, Commodore, went under in 1994, there's hope their platform might rise again with its new owner, Gateway.
A new life with a new company, and a new operating system running on a new "magical mystery chip"
----------
After Commodore went bankrupt, it sold the Amiga division to the German company ESCOM, who thought it could turn a profit in Europe - where Amiga has traditionally flourished among hackers and in the demo scene (in which whole conventions of kids show off animations and mini-music videos they've assembled for fun). ESCOM, in turn, went bankrupt in 1997, and sold Amiga to Gateway for a fire-sale price of $16 million. Gateway finally announced earlier this year its plans for new versions of the Amiga operating system: AmigaOS 4.0 (a developer-only platform due this winter) and AmigaOS 5.0, available Christmas 1999, running on a new chip with new software foundations - in short, an overhaul of everything.
Amiga Inc., Gateway's subsidiary, had little to announce at AmiWest, but that didn't seem to particularly upset the attendees. They were older men, mostly - undoubtedly a few were retired hobbyists who enjoyed hacking their Amiga boxes and pondered over lunch whether to add a PowerPC accelerator to their machine. I was told repeatedly that this is one of the identifying traits of Amiga fans: Their machines are things to be picked apart, fine tuned and put back together - not tools to be placed on the desk and booted only to run Microsoft Word.
A quintet of older men I found resting in the lobby of the Ramada Inn in Sacramento during a break at AmiWest included three math professors and a pair of software engineers. As one of them put it: "We are the ones who have been around long enough to know what we want. We know what we're looking for and we know how to put these things together. You won't find a higher degree of computer literacy among users of a particular OS." Another added, "We simply have less tolerance for inferior technology. We don't like the operating system's programmers making performance decisions for us."
They quickly switched topics to Microsoft, the "other OS" that they often had to use at work and whose inelegant design and slow performance irritated them. "A PC needs all that processing power to overcome its bottlenecks," said one. "It works fine when you throw enough hardware at it - 400 MHz Pentium IIs, 128 megs of RAM. An Amiga can run multiple applications well on 1 megabyte of RAM ... A Pentium II running Windows is like a Corvette pulling a house trailer."
Unlike its rivals at Apple or Be, who are eager to embrace Microsoft or coexist with it, and even more so than the flag-wavers of Linux, Amiga fans readily display their contempt for the "Evil Empire" and its Intel ally. Amiga magazines (there are still 30 or so, more than a few of them glossies, according to Amiga Inc.) are the only trade publications that spell Windows "Windoze" with neither quotation marks nor irony.
Thus, when Amiga Inc. announced that AmigaOS 4.0 - a "bridge" OS released for developers working on the consumer OS 5.0 - would run on Intel-compatible chips, the Amiga clan acted as if the devil himself had suddenly been appointed the new chairman of Gateway. My posts to several Amiga newsgroups asking for feedback on the port to Intel chips yielded indignant responses like "AMIGA WILL NEVER RUN ON X86!!!" The feedback to Amiga Inc. was equally vociferous.
"It's basically 'Satan Inside' as far as they're concerned," says Bill McEwen, Amiga Inc.'s head of marketing and software evangelism. "We're not even saying we're using Intel chips. We might use Cyrix or AMD chips. But we are developing OS 5.0 on an Intel reference platform. That's where all the coding and debugging tools are. For instance, what do you use to develop a Sony Playstation title? You don't use a Playstation - you use a reference platform."
But Amiga users are not simply passive-aggressive about hating Microsoft: They refuse to just complain without doing something. "[Amiga users] are an eclectic group and a passionate group," says McEwen. "And they're great with a hacksaw. Once I couldn't fit a PCI card into my Amiga 4000. So a friend produced a hacksaw and sawed off the end of the card. It fit right in." On most PCs and Macs, doing anything more ambitious than opening the case practically voids the warranty.
"Some will never use a Windows box," McEwen continues. "Others will never admit to it. You'll see in the full headers of their e-mail that it was sent via Outlook98, and they'll say, 'No, no. It's a friend's machine.' They get very defensive about their choice of platforms, but they're very proactive. I regularly get entire marketing plans, complete with full-color charts and animation. Along with the passion and sometimes the abuse, there are people who really want to help."
Amiga users' attitudes toward community and support are also holdovers from the '80s, before the giant, institutionalized technical support staffs of Microsoft and PC makers came into being. The bankruptcy of Commodore only made them depend on each other even more. Amiga user groups - local communities of fellow Amigans - have grown over time even as the user-group phenomenon has faded among users of more popular computer platforms. Making its debut at AmiWest was the User Group Network (UGN), a fledgling worldwide organization of user groups trying to meld an Amiga news agency, a technical support database and community into a single organization.
Robert Hamilton, UGN's North American coordinator, blames the fall of user groups on the '90s vision of computers as "information appliances": "They think a computer is a microwave. But Amiga users still have the original focus. It's more than just a video toaster machine - it's a lifestyle for us. The whole demo scene in Europe, where Amiga is very popular, is something so totally different from the corporate structure of support. If someone sees you wearing an Amiga T-shirt or holding an Amiga key chain, they're going to come up to you like a friend."
Wayne Hunt, UGN's administrator, adds, "You don't see that enthusiasm on any other platform. Guy Kawasaki [Apple's former "Chief Evangelist"] is manufactured enthusiasm. But Robert and I are bonded by Amiga. If Robert comes to Huntsville, he knows he can sleep at my place. And I know vice versa is true."
Hamilton also stresses the tinkering nature of Amiga fans, a trait so deep-rooted that it eventually worked to the frustration of Commodore. "When Commodore tried to release a set-top box [a device for making a TV set more like a computer], the response from users was, 'What's inside?' They were busier hacking it than trying to use it," says Hamilton. "Imagine if all the microchips in cars today ran on Amiga; think of the hacks - people would be adding spare gas tanks, ethanol converters, DVD players," he laughs.
But a more appropriate car comparison is with the automobiles of Cuba - where 40-year-old pre-Castro cars have been ingeniously fixed over the years to keep them running. Being shut out in the cold has left more than a few Amiga fans embittered. The flip side of their community is often a communal bunker mentality.
I ask Torre, who's also a former head of the Atlanta Amiga User's Group, about what it's like to work with a "ghetto" OS. "I don't like to use 'ghetto.' I use 'underground' or 'resistance,'" he says.
Gateway intends to bring Amiga up from the underground. According to McEwen, the next-generation Amiga planned for 1999 will be priced in the $1,000 range; the promise is a high-end machine for a low-end price. McEwen also said that Amiga has plans for releasing a set-top box soon after for around $300-$500. As for the machines themselves, none will have Amiga Inc.'s name on them; the company's only product is the operating system. The right to build hardware will be licensed to any interested parties - Gateway presumably among them.
The licensees come later, and the OS plans have been announced, but the choice of processor remains under tight wraps. Its unofficial name in the Amiga community is the "Magical Mystery Chip," and McEwen says that the manufacturer is neither Intel nor Motorola, nor any other top-10 chipmaker. Its specifications have been released, however: By the time of its release at the end of 1999, this chip is supposed to be able to decode four MPEG streams simultaneously - in other words, play four movies at once, if need be. And it's also supposed to do this five to 10 times faster than the Pentium II line.
Dave Haynie, a former Amiga hardware engineer from the early days and now a VP of German computer manufacture PIOS, says that any number of "media chips" could possibly deliver this performance by 1999 - including chips by Chromatic, in which Gateway is a 20 percent investor but that has fallen on hard times; Phillips' TriMedia, which was once slated to be added to PowerPC chips; and VM Labs, recently the subject of a favorable Wired story.
But are these chips really going to be faster than a Pentium II? "Is the thing really a CPU?" Haynie asks. "Oh sure, you could take any MPEG-2 chip and say it'll decode video five to 10 times faster, but what about doing ordinary mix stuff?" McEwen says that the chip will be announced in January 1999.
How do the Amiga faithful feel about this impending shakeup of their world - are they yearning for "world domination" like Linux's legions? "I think every Amiga user wants in their heart for it to become mainstream," Aaron Ruscetta, another former president of the Atlanta User Group, says. "They cannot understand why anyone would want another computer. For myself, I would be very comfortable with a substantial market of 500,000 or a million people - although that's getting very difficult to do, the way Intel and Microsoft are holding guns to the heads of peripheral manufacturers."
But some Amiga connoisseurs look darkly on the notion of their beloved platform becoming Everyman's computer. Torre says: "The average, and by definition, mediocre user will use a PC with Windows. If the average user is using an Amiga, then I think it's time to switch to another platform."
[About the author: Greg Lindsay is the impassioned summer intern for Salon 21st, and is a contributing editor at Netly News.]
(13-Jul-98 02:00:01) I've been back from AmiWest '98 for a few hours now. It was hot. :)
The show was held in the Ramada Inn in Sacramento. The Inn is a small hotel but cozy. AmiWest took up (at least) three rooms for the three day show. The main room had about two dozen (guesstimate) booths and there were two seminar rooms in use almost constantly.
In the main room, Holger Kruse (Miami) was there, as was Chris Aldi (Finale Development, New York, Quill, Voodoo, etc..), Kermit Woodall (ImageFX, Aladdin4D) as well as Paul Nolan (Photogenics_NG) and a few others I can't remember (sorry), various magazines (Amazing, Informer) and services (Amigazone - Harv Laser), and the user groups also had booths as well as a few retail outlets (I got Genetic Species). Business seemed to be brisk; people were walking around with bags full of stuff and wearing new t-shirts as well.
The seminars seemed to be well attended. I sat in when Carl gave his second talk about REBOL, and also the demos/discussions with Chris Aldi and Paul Nolan (I really want Photogenics_NG!!) and the rooms were packed.
The mood was very positive and upbeat in stark contrast to the last show I attended in '92 (WOA) Pasadena.
Neither Jeff Schindler, Joe Torre, Fleecy Moss, nor Alan Havemose could attend. We were told they were at very important meetings/negotiations but no more than that. Attending from Amiga Inc were Darreck Lisle, Events Co-ordinator and Bill McEwen, head of marketing and software evangelist.
The following, in no particular order, (I've only had 8 hours sleep in the past three days) is the information I gathered while there:
Speaking of REBOL, there should be a general version available early in the fall, with Amiga one of the first platforms supported.
Re: OS5.0 The kernal to be used is the Amiga kernal. They will be using Exec. There will be direct Java support (JVM) as well as support for OpenGL.
A developer program will be set up soon, projected date August (this year). Amiga Inc wants ALL developers and developer wannabees to come and sign up on their site. There will be a special area (password protected) for developers to get and exchange information. Anyone who is even slightly interested is encouraged to sign up (this was emphasized).
I don't have much on the MMC. There were some rather specific specs shown but I couldn't get them written down fast enough... (sorry) they will also be posted on Amiga Inc's pages soon. We were told the chip was NOT being made by Intel, Cyrix or AMD. When I get more specific information I shall, of course, post it.
We were also told that Windows would NOT be on the development machine (Amiga Bridge OS4.0). "No money to Microsoft" is a direct quote.
Bill McEwen said that if anyone had any questions, he'd be more than happy to answer them. You can contact him at bm@amigainc.com. He said he would answer all polite mail. He also said he'd not answer any rude or nasty mail but that he would keep it.
Speaking of development. Olaf Barthel has been doing extensive work in the Development CD and the RKMs, they have been bugfixed and upgraded (now version 2.1). This should be available soon.
Dave Haynie has also released a lot of information. It can be found on http://www.thule.no/haynie/. There will be more.
Denny Atkins is coming back to the Amiga.
There might be a bit more, but I'm getting really tired... If I remember more, or get more clarification, I shall pass it on to you. I did have a wonderful time, despite the heat and some physical problems, and I feel more hopeful than ever about the future of the Amiga.
The July 16th meeting began with President Jim Lewis giving the traditional introduction of the CUCUG officers.
Jim then related the difficulties we've been having getting merchant status with a credit card underwriter. Jim said we've failed for a second time for roughly the same reasons: we don't fit the national statistical profile, we don't do a lot of business, and we provide memberships rather than goods at the time of payment. He said our bank is still very supportive of our effort, so we will continue in our quest.
Mike Latinovich spoke about the upcoming Amiga show in Ohio on October 2, 3 and 4. Mike said CUCUG will be going to the show and we need a volunteer to help man the booth. Presently Mike, Jim Lewis and John Lynn are planning to attend. Mike said we are going to raffle an A4000 equipped with a Video Toaster at that event. Anyone interested in helping contact Mike or Jim.
The floor was then opened to the Question and Answer Session.
His second problem was a floppy being ejected upon insertion and then the machine asking for the disk that had just been expelled. Richard Rollins had told Norris to shut off all extensions and then seeing what happened. In doing this, Norris discovered that his problem went away. It turned out that two virus protection programs were causing the difficulty as they were both trying to scan the disk at the same time. One was Virex and the other was Dr. Solomon's Toolbox. Norris thought he had deleted that latter of these programs but found out that 14 pieces of the program remained on his system that he had to track down and delete as well. Richard suggested using a program like File Buddy which scans the creator bits of files in order to root out all of its attendant pieces.
As you all may know, Ed Serbe is an absolute master at squeezing the last little bit of potential from, shall we say, "dated" hardware and software products. Ed has once again demonstrated his unparalleled mastery of graphics skills in demonstrating the CyberGraphics-64 3D video card on the club's Amiga 4000 desktop machine. The Cybergraphics display standard was an early de-facto 24bit graphics standard on the Amiga, and many graphics cards support it.
The card was shown to be instantly controllable by the standard Preferences settings on the AmigaDos 3.0 equipped machine. Some of the software used to demo the cards ability included Cybergraphics-compliant products such as Image FX, AWEB II, Mandelbrot 2000 (in AGA modes only) and "The Gate" (a PAL mode demo).
Ed explained that probably the best feature of the card (other than a 24bit color display) is the amount of Chip-RAM used (NOT used, really). During the various demos very little Chip-RAM was in use at any given time, making the computer faster for other tasks, and enabling more tasks to run concurrently.
Ed explored the virtual-memory features, using a picture from a photo-cd and enlarging the view of a home from about a half-mile across a lake to actually see window treatments and a car parked in front.
All-in-all, another very impressive demonstration from our resident Graphics-Guru!!!
Richard Rollins began the Mac SIG by informing everyone that there seems to be a problem between OS8.0 / 8.1 and some, as yet unidentified, installers. System files are being corrupted by unorthodox shutdowns caused by hangs in Netscape and IDE hard drive problems.
Richard said the way to combat this problem is to copy your Finder file and your System file to a ZIP disk, as a back up. You'll want to do this once you have your machine set up and working properly the way you want it. Richard said you can copy the two files using Drag and Drop, which works just fine. The files will remain "blessed" that way. When things start to hang or get quirky, throw away the System file (not the System Folder) and the Finder file on your machine. Take out your back up of those files and Drag and Drop the System and the Finder back into place.
Another option is to trash the Finder Preferences file in Preferences. This file will be rebuilt automatically. Richard said he has recently resurrected 7 machines using the System / Finder file replacement technique. He added that he has had his worst experiences when AOL software crashes.
Richard then addressed another topic he's been asked about: how to get Eudora to work with Netscape as its default email program. To accomplish this in Netscape Communicator, use the Edit menu to go to Preferences. In the Mail & Groups Category, select Identity and then select the clickbox at the bottom of that option; "Use Internet Config." Next run the Internet Config program and click on Helpers. Double click on "mailto" (probably the third one down the list and set to Claris Emailer). Click on "Choose Helper" and negotiate the requester to your Eudora application. Now, when you click on any email address on a web page, Eudora will be called up.
Richard noted that the reverse is also true. If you double click on a web address in any message you receive, Eudora will call up Navigator and take you to that site. If you double click on the web address while holding the Option key down, you can reset the browser selection to any browser of your choosing. Once set Eudora will use it automatically the next time.
Someone mentioned that their bookmarks were not imported when they upgraded to Navigator 4.x. Richard said Navigator 4.x has user definable preferences so it can have multiple users. An individual's bookmarks must go into their own User Prefs folder. See System Folder / Preferences / Netscape Users / (Your Name) Folder / Bookmarks.html. Separate user preferences can be created when Netscape Navigator is installed, or by using the User Profile Manager application later.
One final item Richard wished to make note of was a little program called Copier 1.1 that came with his new Umax 1220S scanner. Copier 1.1 can be found on the install disk. It is a front end program that effectively turns the scanner into a copy machine by providing all the familiar controls you are used to seeing on photocopiers. Richard thought it was very neat.
Later in the evening, the subject of nag screens came up and Richard volunteered a way to get rid of them. He said before you run the program, set the date on your computer to the year 2000. Run the program and, when it asks you if you want to be reminded later, answer yes. Shut the program down and reset the date on your computer. The offending program is run again it won't bother you until the year 2000. This bit of devious behavior spawned a mini "Year 2000 Bug" discussion.
Emil Cobb then took the floor for a demonstration of his Connectix Color QuickCam. That's the little round eyeball-shaped camera you've seen in nearly every mail order catalog. Emil began by giving a short run down of all the things you can use the camera for, such as making movies, video conferencing, or using it over the web with the CUCME software. The camera can be used to make pictures for T-shirts and buttons. You can even use it to make your own screensavers.
Emil launched his demonstration by talking about making a movie and some of the difficulties he'd had actually sending them over the net to other people. He said you can produce movies, but they must be compressed or all the parts won't be sent as you would normally expect. He said first you have to name your movie, then make the movie and save it to disk. Once you have it recorded, then you can tweak it. He said as a rule of thumb it takes about a meg of disk space per minute of movie shot in color. This, however, is greatly effected by the parameters you set for the movie. For instance, you can use anything from 256 colors to millions of them.
As Emil demonstrated how to record a "time lapse" movie, he made some aside comments about his camera. He stated you have to manually focus the Color QuickCam. Whereas, the grayscale version of the camera auto adjusts the focus for you. He said the camera can be run off the modem or the printer port. Emil said he had purchased a refurbished camera from Mac Warehouse, which cost him between $60 and $70. This particular model has an analogue lens with a digital feed. He said the new version of his camera is far superior, but the new one usually sells for about $199.00. peeking into the manual for Emil's camera, we discovered that it has a CCD image captureboard feeding into to a VIDEC compression board in the camera head. It comes complete with the necessary software programs like Quick Pic and Quick Movie.
Monitoring the quality of his recording, Emil noted that the further away your subject is from the camera, the more "measles" you get on your image. As he made adjustments, he said compressing on the fly makes for a better movie. He noted that saturation can be set manually or done automatically. The camera can be adjusted to a max of 24 frames. Full motion can be managed by reducing the size of the image being recorded. Emil also said the software, Quick Movie, will record audio from the camera or use the Macintosh microphone.
He said the Quick Pic software that also comes with the camera can save snap shots in TIFF, PICT and JPEG format. These frames have a much higher resolution than those produced by Quick Movie. You can crop on the fly in camera mode. You can go into Quick Pic and take snapshots, which are automatically put onto the clipboard. The snaps are approximately 150 KB in size depending on the format and dimensions designated. Emil noted that there are differences between color and BW: Black and White snap shots require less memory, and the BW is clearer and sharper than color. Both kinds of snaps are taken out of the video stream from the camera.
Emil then showed what you could do with one of those snapshots. You can take a picture of, say, some of your fellow SIG members and then put it on a T-shirt. Emil emphasized that the image must be mirrored to come out accurately on the T-shirt. That is, if there is any printing or numbers or distinctive features, other than the image itself, the snapshot must be mirrored to come out correctly when transferred to the T-shirt, otherwise it will be backwards in the finished product.
It was at this point that Emil brought up one of the major negatives of the software included with the QuickCam. It will not load in its own images, once they have been saved. The software that comes with the camera is only for taking pictures, not for processing past work. Pictures can be printed directly out of the programs, but once saved or otherwise cleared from memory, the pictures cannot be loaded back into the programs. Saved images must be processed through some other graphics program, like JPEG View, Graphics Converter, or Claris Works, in order to manipulate them and print them out.
Emil then discussed the next step in the process: printing out the image. He said you do this by printing your picture on to special transfer paper, which you can get just about anywhere. Emil said he finds his at Staples or Best Buy. He uses Burlington T-shirt Transfer Paper which costs about $18 for 10 sheets. No special ink is required in your printer. The quality of your transfer will depend on the quality of the printer you use however.
Emil then got his blank T-shirt, his iron and small board. When ironing the image onto a T-shirt, Emil said the recommended surface is Formica. It's smooth, non-porous, and hard. This allows the fabric to lay completely and flawlessly flat. Your iron should be set at the hottest setting. Emil said keep the iron moving so that no part of the image is scorched. If you make a mistake, Emil suggested Shout or perhaps lighter fluid might remove an image from the shirt.
With that everyone thanked Emil for an impressive demonstration. As Emil put away his equipment, there was a small reprise of Norris Hansel's problem of deleting everything of programs with multiple parts. Richard Rollins recommended using File Buddy to search the creator bits of all your files. It will find every single part of a program you are trying to dispose of.
The July meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, July 21, 1998, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were Jim Lewis, Mike Latinovich, Kevin Hopkins, Emil Cobb, and Kevin Hisel.
Jim Lewis: Jim began by asking if we had started the new logo contest on the web directory yet. Kevin Hisel said no, so Jim said he would write something up and send it to him to get it going.
Jim Lewis and Mike Latinovich: Jim reported that the A4000 raffle is moving forward. August 1 was determined to be the deadline to get action going on this project. There was a discussion of the effect of the QuikPak A4000 shortage on our plans. We also explored the possibility of offering more types of machines, the club having an A1000, A2000, and A3000 in our arsenal. It was decided to stick with just one machine offering so as not to dilute our focus. A $10 raffle ticket price was decided upon as well.
Mike wryly said the Hunan chicken at the last meeting was great.
Jim said Ed Serbe's Amiga presentation was great.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin distributed the mail to the appropriate Board members. He then reported on the bank deposits he'd made.
Kevin then confirmed that Jim would be providing notes on the Amiga presentation at the last meeting.
Kevin related that the problem he'd been having with the Post Office delaying delivery of our newsletters because of them being overweight had disappeared this month.
Kevin reported that club membership now stands at 537 and he has seven more waiting to process.
Kevin closed his segment by relating his experiences in getting the AmiFast memory board he won at the computer fair working on his A3000. The final cause of the problem (no memory being recognized) has yet to be determined, but Kevin spoke glowingly of the help he had received from Tim Corringham of Ramjam Consultants (http://www.ramjam.u-net.com/).
Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had "a handful" of members at the last meeting.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that the BBS was maintaining at a steady level [inside joke - the BBS has been flatline ever since it was shut down.]
Kevin closed by telling a personal story about Dell gouging him on the price of two disk drive mounting rails for $25.
Mike Latinovich: Mike said we need to get a set of 3.1 ROMs for the club's A4000 because of a problem Ed Serbe is having with the machine and some hardware incompatibilities. Ed is babysitting the club's A4000; Quentin Barnes is tending the A3000.
Jim Lewis: Jim closed the meeting relating a trick he learned in his optical business days, with plastic lenses, of polishing scratched CDs back into life by using a buffing wheel and Dico Plastic Polish.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Bresnan Meeting Center in the Champaign Park District Headquarters (398-2550). The Center is located at 706 Kenwood, 1/2 block south of the corner of Kenwood and John Street, in west Champaign. Kenwood is the fourth north-south street off of John as you are going west, after crossing Mattis. The Center is in the northwest corner of Centennial Park, northwest of Centennial High School.
Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.
Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by the postal service or email at the member's choice. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
This newsletter was prepared with PageStream 2.22 on an Amiga 3000 25/100 and output to an HP Laserjet IIP plus. Pagestream was donated to CUCUG by Soft-Logik Publishing Corporation.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):
President: Jim Lewis 359-1342 NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com Vice-President: Emil Cobb 398-0149 e-cobb@uiuc.edu Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 kh2@uiuc.edu Treasurer: Mark Landman 398-2910 mlandman@earthlink.net Corporate Agent: Jim Lewis 359-1342 NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com Advisor & Mac SIG: Richard Rollins 469-2616 Webmaster: Kevin Hisel 406-948-1999 khisel @ cucug.org Amiga SIG: John Lynn 586-3555 jlvideo@pdnt.com
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