The April 15 meeting will be one of CUCUG's split SIG meetings. For the Amiga SIG, we will have an audio tape of Amiga President Jim Collas' keynote address at the Amiga99 show in St. Louis. It is sure to generate some spirited discussion. The Macintosh SIGwill be another in the series of Richard Rollins' mystery meetings. It sure to contain a few surprises. Both SIGs' members are encouraged to bring in anything they'd like to show or share.
We'd also like to welcome back returning members Michael Lynn, Calvin McAfee, Bob Forsythe, David Simpson, Sandy Leeney, John Grant, James D. Miller, Leonard Karpowicz, Michael O. Weathers.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to one of the best.
Phase 5 Digital Products lead with the introduction of the CyberStorm G3/G4 Project. Phase 5 is working on a powerful PPC accelerator for A3000/A4000 systems and the upcoming Amiga OS 3.5, as well as future versions of the Amiga OS. For further information see http://www.phase5.de/amiga/csg3g4e.html and http://www.phase5.de/amiga/csg3upe.html.
Met@box (formerly PIOS and current employer of the legendary Dave Haynie) announced the AmiJOE G3 PPC Accelerator for the Amiga. Features include USD, PCI compatible connector, and SDRAM module sockets. A version for the A1200 is also in the works. Further information can be found at http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/990326-metabox.html or http://www.joecard.com/.
Finally, ACT, Haage & Partner and Titan Computers have announced the Twister PPC G3/G4, a new PPC G3/G4 board for the A1200. The Twister will have emulation of 68k in FlashRom (claiming 68060 emulation speed on 300mhz G3) and 2 PCI expansions. Two expansion products are the Riva TNT2 graphics card and UltraWide SCSI controller (with DVD support). Further information can be gained at http://www.titancomputer.de/PPC-Board/index.html.
16 Mar 1999 - Because of continued file system troubles on the current main site, wuarchive.wustl.edu, we're moving the main site to Germany. wuarchive will be back as a mirror when the file system trouble is resolved. The main site will very probably remain in Germany and we're trying to set up a computer of our own as main site so we're no longer at the mercy of system operators. The most reliable site during this transition should be de.aminet.net with most other mirrors being fully operational immediately or within days. I cannot predict for how long wuarchive will be down. Sorry about the inconvenience, really not under my control.
[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory.]
The developers of PageStream, Soft-Logik Publishing, recently reported that they will be moving their operations to Wisconsin. Many users have been unable to reach Soft-Logik by phone, email, or the web. On the Soft-Logik mailing-list, the following information was stated, "As reported online earlier, Soft-Logik is moving. The building in St. Louis was closed February 24th, 1999. We expect to finalize the purchase of the new location in Wisconsin on Tuesday, March 9th, 1999." So far no word yet from Soft-Logik.
April 11th, 1999 - Blittersoft have announced today that they are now taking back orders for the new OS 3.5 update CD. There will be no monies debited until the day of release.
As a special deal, Blittersoft will also offer our popular Fusion Mac emulator and PCx PC emulator bundle for 15.00 UKP when ordered with the new Amiga OS 3.5.
OS 3.5 will be available for just 39.95 UKP
Shipping of this bundle pack will be 5.00 UKP.
Blittersoft can be contacted on +44 (0)1908 261466, or faxed on +44 (0)1908 261488.
Blittersoft also accept secure online orders on our Web site.
Email: sales@blittersoft.com
WWW: http://www.blittersoft.com/
Randomize brings affordable flatbed scanning to the Amiga in North America by introducing ScanQuix Amiga Scanner and its ScanQuix/Umax Scanner Bundle.
ScanQuix 4 works with a number of popular scanners and provides a universal scanner interface for the Amiga.
The ScanQuix/Umax Scanner Bundle provides ScanQuix 4 bundles with the Umax Astra 610S, 1200S and 1220S scanners giving the cost effective flatbed scanning solution.
Simply connect the Umax Astra Scanner to your Amiga's SCSI port (we offer the DKB Spitfire as a bundle options for those needing as SCSI controller) and install ScanQuix 4 and your ready to scan.
Umax Astra 610S Bundle - $224.95 US, $349.95 CDN
Additional information can be found at http://www.randomize.com/scannerbundle.html
The Amiga West Coast Convention, Amiwest '99 is shaping up!
Thanks to the 700+ Amiga fans that visited Amiwest '98 last year, their
fantastic support makes this years convention a reality.
The AmiWest committee is proud to annouce we are again hosting this
year's show in Sacramento, California, and, because of the need for MORE
ROOM we will hold AmiWest '99 at a new location; the newly remodeled Holiday
Inn in Northeast Sacramento, California, nearly doubling the available
exhibition area of last year.
AmiWest '99 will run from Friday, July 23th, through Sunday, July 25th.
Classes and seminars will be held Friday through Sunday with the exhibit
hall being open on Saturday, July 24th from 10am - 5pm and Sunday, July 25,
10am - 4pm.
Space is available for rent to companies, clubs, organizations, and
individuals producing Amiga related products and services. This three day
weekend event will showcase the progress that IS the Amiga Community.
Booth pricing and future developments are available on our web page at
http://www.sacc.org/amiwest/ .
Admission to the event is as follows:
$8 (One day Pass - Paid by July 5, 1999
$12 (Two day pass - Paid by July 5, 1999
There will also be a banquet on Saturday evening, July 24th, with guest
speakers to be announced. Price is $35 per plate.
For more information contact John Zacharias, AmiWest99 Chairperson, at
jzachar@calweb.com or write to us at:
AmiWest99
[Editor's Note: On a related note, the Amiga Central Ohio Network won't be
doing the fall MAE show this year. For more on that, see
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/990325-amicon.html.]
The National Capital Amiga Users Group [http://www.ncaug.org] is happy to
announce in conjunction with Software Hut [http://www.softhut.com] a cookout
for their May meeting. The festivities begin at 12 noon on Saturday May 1st
at Software Hut's West Chester location. Come early, the fun ends at 3 p.m.
Aside from special deals for those who attend, there will be food, fun, and
a surprise or two.
Members of NCAUG will meet at predetermined locations to arrange car
pools to Software Hut. Please consult the NCAUG Web Page and newsletter,
Amiga Intuition, for more information. Amigans from New York, New Jersey,
and surrounding areas are also encouraged to attend, you do not need to be a
member. It is asked that you either call (800-932-6442) or e-mail Trish at
Software Hut if you plan to attend. A map of Software Hut's location is on
their web page.
The National Capital Amiga Users Group has been serving the DC Metro
Amiga user since 1985. Home of the famous Blimp Cam, our group is world
reknown as one of the most active Amiga User Groups there is. We offer the
latest in Amiga developments and informations. SIGS supporting the Internet,
programming, and video production available to all members. Please come by
for an afternoon of fun.
Contacts:
Come celebrate as we commemorate the life of the Amiga. Join Carl
Sassenrath, Ron Nicholson, Dave Haynie, Matt Dillon, and many many more
Amiga luminaries for presentations on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Topping
things off will be a banquet awards dinner on Saturday night honoring those
in the Amiga community, and remembering those who are no longer with us.
You can sign up for a yearbook that spans from the early days of the
Lorraine right up to the show, complete with development notes from the
designers, pictures, and stories from the original Amiga, Inc, and
Commodore-Amiga teams. Also, tidbits from developers and trade shows will
round out the yearbook. There will also be a Boing class ring, as well as a
limited edition event T-shirt autographed by VIPs at the show.
and.. much... much... more.
Contacts:
Mailing List:
Web page:
In order to listen to the Amiga Radio News on the Amiga you will need to
download an Amiga compatible streaming audio player that supports either
ADPCM or GSM 6.10. Fortunately two such players exist and are available off
Aminet. ADPCM_Package.lha (from Aminet in util/pack) is needed for the ADPCM
file, and GIR06.lha (from Aminet in comm/tcp) is needed for listening to the
GSM encoded file. Real Audio and MP3 formats are also available. In the
future the 8SVX file format may also be added.
Amiga Radio News gives exclusive rights to any usergroup to record and
play streaming audio released on the ARN website, as long as it remains
fully intact and unchanged. Distribution can also be made on floppy disks.
You may contact Amiga Radio News at arn@amiga.org or Casey Halverson of
Digital Lightyear Technologies at commando@wolfenet.com .
Apple will release a faster version of its popular iMac desktop in the
near future, a product rollout that will help stem a growing shortage of
first-generation "fruit-flavored" systems at most retailers.
Apple Computer's newest iteration of the iMac is expected to include a
333-MHz PowerPC processor in place of the current 266-MHz chip, said
industry sources, but otherwise will virtually be identical to the current
iMacs. Even the suggested retail price, $1,199, will be the same.
While a release date has yet to be set, Apple is expected to officially
introduce the systems after it reports quarterly results April 19, according
to industry sources. Resellers, however, said they hope to be receiving and
selling the updated iMacs as early as this week.
Apple declined to comment.
Apple released the fruit-flavored iMacs in January, and supplies of the
most popular colors at most dealers have been tight in the months following
since. Notwithstanding, iMacs were the fourth best-selling systems on the
market in February, according to PC Data.
No official price cuts on older iMacs will come from Apple as the company
moves to limit its exposure to losses incurred from inventory issues, but
the move could force some stores with many iMacs to lower prices anyway.
Dealers with inventory of the older Bondi Blue "classic" iMac have been
selling systems for below $900, and those prices could fall further with two
other variations of the iMac available to consumers. The lowest-priced
iMacs, the original Bondi Blue models have been outselling the individual
fruit-flavored iMacs, although the fruit flavors as a group are selling in
larger numbers.
One source at a large reseller noted that they had not been notified of
exact system specifications yet, and that Apple might still ship a 300-MHz
chip in the revised iMac.
No new colors are being added, but dealers will have some ordering
changes to take into account.
Apple has discovered that the blueberry systems have outsold all other
fruit colors by a significant margin. To facilitate production planning,
dealers will have to buy four blueberry iMacs to go with one each of the
other four colors when they buy systems from Apple, sources said. Dealers
can still order individual systems from distributors.
For consumers, the end result of Apple's moves is better availability of
their preferred colors.
Meanwhile, Apple has launched its first promotion for its PowerMac G3
systems by offering either a free built-in modem or Zip drive. In addition,
customers buying Apple's 17-inch monitor get a $100 mail-in rebate. The
offer runs through June 27 for qualifying systems.
Although this near-legendary sound program needs little introduction,
here's a quick recap for the uninitiated: SoundApp is a freeware audio
player/converter that has become the standard sound tool for many casual Web
surfers, MP3 enthusiasts, and digital audiophiles alike. Its simple
interface, combined with its extensive file format support and playlist
capabilities, make it an essential download for anyone interested in
listening to audio on a Mac. This updated version improves SoundApp's MP3
playback capabilities, adds support for the MacAmp MPEG file format, and
enhances the playlist interface. While it may not be the snazziest audio
player on the market, SoundApp is arguably one of the most versatile audio
downloads--and it's absolutely free. Sounds good:
http://www.download.com/DD/dl/0,302,0-0323-2-008,00.html
Find the latest multimedia and design software here:
http://www.download.com/DD/dl/0,302,0-0323-2-009,00.html
Using USB? If you've been thinking about adding another USB input device
to your iMac or blue G3 minitower, then let USB Overdrive take the headache
out of the installation process. This universal driver can recognize and
configure USB joysticks, gamepads, trackballs, and mice from a long list of
manufacturers, letting you configure each one individually for both global
and application-specific needs. It also supports macros for
Control-clicking, scrolling, application launching, and keyboard emulation.
What's more, USB Overdrive works with any number of USB devices, and you can
even test an input device's compatibility before registering it. Put your
USB Mac in Overdrive:
http://www.download.com/DD/dl/0,302,0-0323-2-010,00.html
Find the latest drivers software here:
http://www.download.com/DD/dl/0,302,0-0323-2-011,00.html
Microsoft continues its efforts to bring all of its products into Y2K
compliance before January 1, 2000.
The Redmond, Washington-based company next week will issue a patch for
Windows 95 that will make the operating system Year-2000 compliant, company
executives said Friday.
Microsoft will maintain the operating system at "compliant" status if any
additional issues are reported by users, Don Jones, Microsoft's year 2000
product manager, said.
The patch will be posted to the company's Web site next week.
Previously, Microsoft offered patches to Windows 95 that made the
operating system "compliant with minor issues."
The new patch allows Windows 95 users to achieve Year-2000 compliance
without upgrading to Windows 98, Jones said.
"Year 2000 is not a reason to upgrade to Windows 98," Jones said.
"Clearly what we've done is make a commitment to our older platforms."
In related news, the software giant also released new tools to assist its
customers in their Year 2000 compliance efforts.
The Microsoft Year 2000 Product Analyzer and the Microsoft Year 2000
Product Guide Workbook are designed to help customers inventory their
Microsoft products on PCs and network drives and take appropriate action to
make those products Year-2000 compliant, Jones said.
The Product Analyzer and the Product Guide Workbook are currently
available in English and will be available in more than 12 other languages
within the next 60 days. They are both available free of charge at
Microsoft's Web site and will also be released via subscription service to
the Microsoft Year 2000 Resource CD, according to Jones.
"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?" asks a
Microsoft employee.
"Watch and you'll see," answers the Apple engineer.
They all board the train. The Microsoft employees take their respective
seats but all three Apple engineers cram into a restroom and close the door
behind them.
Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around
collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, "ticket,
please."
The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in
hand. The conductor takes it and moves on. The Microsoft employees saw this
and agreed it was quite a clever idea.
So after the conference, the Microsoft employees decide to copy the Apple
engineers (as they always do) on the return trip and save some money (being
clever with money, and all that). When they get to the station, they buy a
single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Apple
engineers don't buy a ticket at all.
"How are you going to travel without a ticket?" asks one perplexed
Microsoft employee.
"Watch and you'll see," answers an Apple engineer.
When they board the train, the three Microsoft employees cram into a
restroom and the three Apple engineers cram into another one nearby.
The train departs. Shortly afterward, one of the Apple engineers leaves
his restroom and walks over to the restroom where the Microsoft employees
are hiding.
He knocks on the door and says, "Ticket, please..."
The Cannonball Express was the fabled train that was so fast it took
three men to say "Here she comes," "Here she is," and "There she goes."
Computers are fast too, although unlike trains, most aren't self-propelled.
What makes a computer fast, and how much effect does software design have?
How much faster are today's computers than yesterday's? Recently I revisited
some of these questions, beginning with a trip down memory lane.
Back in the Stone Age
Twenty years ago, I was teaching myself programming and had access to a
DEC PDP-11/60 minicomputer on evenings and weekends. This beast was bigger
than a washing machine, and during workdays I shared it with two dozen other
technicians and engineers. I found a word puzzle in a magazine and thought
it would be fun to program the PDP to solve it. The puzzle was as follows.
Given a phrase and a sheet of graph paper, write the phrase on the graph
paper according to these rules:
1. Write one letter per square on the graph paper, like filling in a
crossword puzzle. Ignore case and anything that's not one of the 26 letters
of the alphabet. The phrase "N. 1st Street" is thus identical to
"NSTSTREET".
2. Put the first letter of the phrase in any square you like.
3. After writing any letter, put the next letter of the phrase in any
adjacent square. Here, "adjacent" means any of the eight neighboring
squares, up, down, left, right, or diagonally. You may reuse a square if it
is adjacent and already holds the letter you need; otherwise you must use a
blank square. You can't use the same square twice in a row - no "hopping in
place" for double letters.
The goal is to write the phrase inside a rectangle of the smallest
possible area. (A subtle point: you are not trying to write in a minimal
number of squares.) To score your solution, draw the smallest enclosing
rectangle you can and take its area. The rectangle may enclose some blank
squares; count them, too.
Got it? Tongue-twisters are the most fun because they have lots of
opportunities to reuse whole snaky strings of squares. The 37 letters in
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" can be packed into a 3 by 5
rectangle, like this (view this in a monospaced font):
In those days I knew computers were "fast" but had no idea how fast. The
answer turned out to be "not very." I wrote a program to solve these puzzles
and called it Piper after the tongue-twister. I set Piper running on a
medium-length phrase on a Friday evening, and came back on Monday to find it
still running. It had found several less-than-best solutions but hadn't
finished. Way too slow - I found a better solution myself on paper in about
half an hour.
Why did it take so long? Piper was a "brute force" program. It tried
every possible solution to the problem, one after another. The trouble is
that there are too many possible solutions. Exactly how many depends on the
phrase, but for any non-trivial phrase the number is astronomical. I
realized for the first time that "fast" sometimes isn't "fast enough." This
point may be obvious today, when we all use computers and are weary of
waiting for them. But in 1979, that PDP-11 was only the second computer I
had ever seen!
What Part of Fast Don't You Understand?
I saw that I would have to make
Piper faster. There are two basic ways to speed up a program. Plan A is to
find a better way of solving the problem, but after twenty years I still
haven't thought of a better solution. That leaves plan B, the classic
efficiency expert's solution: eliminate unnecessary steps. For example,
Piper created every possible solution, then calculated the area of each. It
built each solution one letter at a time, so instead of taking the area only
for completed solutions, I changed Piper to check the area after placing
each letter. If placing a letter made the solution-in-progress take up more
space than the smallest complete solution found so far, Piper could skip the
rest of that solution (and all other solutions that started the same way)
and move right on to the next one. This eliminated a huge amount of work and
greatly improved Piper's speed. Finding clever ways to track the area of a
growing solution helped too, because it was faster than calculating the area
from scratch after each letter. I also found a way to calculate a minimum
size for the final solution quickly: I couldn't guarantee that the best
solution would be that small, but I could guarantee that it wouldn't be
smaller. If Piper got lucky and found a solution as small as that calculated
minimum, it could stop immediately. Otherwise it would continue on after
finding the best solution, vainly seeking a still better one.
Eventually Piper became clever enough to finish that original phrase in a
reasonably short period of time. But the holy grail continued to elude me: I
wanted a solution for "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck wood?" That PDP (and, perhaps, my cleverness) were not up to the
task. I had run out of ideas for speeding up Piper, and runs still took
longer than a weekend. But if I couldn't improve Piper, I could at least
hope to run it on a faster computer.
Big Iron
People tend to think of processor speed as the speed of a computer, but
many factors affect overall performance. Virtual memory lets you work on
bigger data sets or on more problems at a time, but it's slow, so adding
more physical RAM helps by reducing your reliance on virtual memory. Faster
disks and I/O buses load and save data more quickly. RAM disks and disk
caching replace slow disk operations with lightning-quick RAM access.
Instruction and data caches in special super-fast RAM offer big improvements
for some programs. Well-written operating systems and toolboxes can outrun
poorly written ones.
But in the end, little of this matters to Piper. Piper has always used
only a small amount of data, doesn't read or write the disk after it gets
going, and does little I/O of any kind. With its small code and data set
Piper can take good advantage of data and instruction caching, but what it
mostly needs is "faster hamsters" - a faster processor to make the wheels
turn more quickly.
As the years rolled on, I ran versions of Piper on my first Macs, but in
the middle 1980's I worked for Apple Computer, and had access to a
programmer's dream: Apple's $15 million Cray Y-MP supercomputer, one of only
two dozen in the world and arguably the fastest computer in existence at the
time. I figured the Cray would make short work of Piper. But the Cray was
not well suited to the problem. It could barrel through parallel-processing
floating-point matrix calculations like the Cannonball Express, but Piper
was a highly linear, non-mathematical problem. Piper used only one of the
Cray's four processors and didn't do the kind of operations at which the
Cray excelled. Piper wasn't a fair test of the Cray's power, but the Cray
was still the fastest machine I'd ever used. The Cray succeeded where all
previous machines (that PDP, my Mac Plus, my Mac II) had failed. It solved
"woodchuck" in less than a day, taking only about 20 hours to finish its
run. I was awestruck - 20 hours?! I'd no idea that "woodchuck" was _that_
big a problem!
Young Whippersnappers
I set Piper aside for many years, but recently I began to wonder how a
modern desktop box compares to those old minicomputers and mainframes. I
rewrote Piper from memory and ran it on my new 400 MHz ice-blue Power
Macintosh G3 with "woodchuck." The output is below. Piper first reprints the
phrase, then prints solutions and elapsed times as it finds them. Each
solution is the best found so far, culminating in the best of all. The times
are in seconds from the beginning of the run; the final time is the total
run time. (Unfortunately, the best solution for "woodchuck" is larger than
Piper's calculated minimum, so Piper continued to run for a bit after
finding the best solution.)
Here are the results. Some intermediate solutions have been left out for
brevity, but you can see Piper finding ever smaller solutions. In the end,
the 57 letters in "woodchuck" are packed into a 4 by 4 rectangle. Have a
look at Piper's total run time, and the time needed to find its best
solution:
There you have it: a shade over a minute to find the best solution, under
two minutes to finish its run. Two minutes! So much for the big iron of the
1980's. My new G3 Mac finished "woodchuck" over 600 times faster (and 5,000
times cheaper) than that 15 megabuck Cray. (For a more realistic comparison,
see this description of UCLA's Project Appleseed.)
http://www.apple.com/education/hed/aua0101/appleseed/
If you want to check Piper's speed on your Mac, I've placed the code in
the public domain; it's a 40K package.
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/misc/piper.hqx
The Future
What's yet to come? 400 MHz already looks a little pokey. It's the best
Apple offers today, but I've seen claims of 550 MHz or so from third party
accelerators and over- clocking tricks. People are predicting 1 GHz (1,000
MHz) chips for the near future. Buses are getting faster, and caches hold
more data in less space and are moving onto the processor chip for still
more speed. (Small is fast. Did you know that the speed of light is a
serious limiting factor in modern computer design? The closer together the
components are, the faster they can signal each other.)
And like the old Cray, multi-processor desktop systems are starting to
appear. They gang up on a problem by having separate processors work on
different parts of the problem simultaneously. Although I didn't try to use
the Cray's extra processors, I've done a little thinking lately. Piper
doesn't have to be completely linear. On an eight-processor system, I bet I
could come close to making Piper run in one-eighth of the time of a single
processor.
Are you ready?
Each year, the St Louis Gateway show has faced many questions.
It seems that most every Amiga show passes as a milestone to the fitful
existence the Amiga platform and community has passed along the way. Last
year marked Gateway's regrouping after the fiasco that was the London show.
This year, a shadow was cast over the show by Amiga Incorporated's lack of
progress, the cynicism that keeps resurfacing in the community and the
resulting scrambling, politics and factionalism. Many of the community's
diehards planned to return to the show regardless. Bill Borsari led
Washington's contingent, anxious to see what Amiga Inc. was going to say
about OS3.5 and what their newly named president would say. Below is
summary coverage of the OS3.5's American debut and Jim Collas' inaugural
community address.
Our next Operating System
One of the most closely watched, heavily attended seminars was Juergen
Haage's introduction of parts of OS 3.5 and discussion of the target
features Haage & Partner was rolling into 3.5. At the meeting it was
revealed that NCAUG's friend Chris Aldi is playing a central role in the
development of the new operating system. Chris joins a number of known
Amiga developers that are doing more than just contributing their existing
wares to OS3.5, but adding their efforts with new and refined offerings.
While Juergen and Chris didn't exactly expound on how things were
proceeding, these things are intended, being planned and worked on:
Most impressively, Juergen Haage announced that the OS 3.5 update was not
to be the last operating system upgrade for our Classic Amigas. While the
3.5 upgrade is not going to require a hardware upgrade on 3.1 machines,
future operating system upgrades - OS 3.6, 3.7, etc. - are bound to involve
ROM upgrades. Such improvements will allow future incorporation of native
PPC support, more changes to core system functions, etc.
The following Question and Answer session filled in more of the picture
of the Haage & Partner team's early progress. "Alpha" releases are to be
released to developers in a couple of months. More public beta releases
will come throughout the Summer and a final public OS release is to arrive
at the end of Summer. Some other points were revealed about the new
operating system:
Optimistically, Haage & Partner's efforts seem to be an reflection of an
apparently renewed interest on the part of Amiga Incorporated in supporting
our Classic Amigas. For a view of the second, domestic long term initiative
by Amiga Incorporated, we heard from a new face: Jim Collas, the new
President of Amiga Incorporated.
An Introduction
The Gateway show was also an introduction of sorts - between the Amiga
community and Jim Collas. As Fabian reported in a recent NCAUG newsletter,
Jim Collas picked up the reins of Amiga Incorporated after spending six and
half years working within Gateway, finally as the Vice President of Global
Engineering. In his speech, Jim outlined some of the ideas behind Amiga
Inc.'s efforts on the next generation Amiga and hopes for the Amiga
community.
The speech started off expounding on the Amiga community's "passion,
resilience and endurance" - that there was no other computer community to
compare with what we have done, gone through and our survival of Gateway's
"mismanagement" and "fumbling" of the Amiga.
Jim then proceeded to describe his and AI's view of the computer world,
focusing on a number of realizations: That the PC revolution was over, but
the Computer revolution was not. To the entertainment of the audience, he
described how a "dark period" had smothered the computing world, with
"dominant standards stifling innovation". But a new computing revolution
was coming - new colors were not that revolution, an operating that didn't
crash was not a revolution, but computing becoming "part of natural life"
will be the revolution.
To use a heavily battered term, the "Information Appliance" would be the
tool of that revolution. For the millions of households and desktops still
without or disaffected with today's personal computing, the new appliance
should bring "mind boggling power AND ease of use". This isn't a matter of
talking dishwashers, but hardware that blurs the definitions between
computing, game consoles and media devices.
A small company would be the standard bearer for this revolution - "a
company with balls". Someone to bring forth a whole range of devices, doing
things other computers just couldn't do. Intrinsically supporting a whole
range of buzz words: powerful programming structures, scalable
architectures, distributed computing, networking, revolutionary GUIs and
powerful multimedia hardware support. Bringing forth not what "any of us
would expect".
Rubber Meeting the Road
The next generation Amiga computer would be that machine. Instead of
Operating Systems, a series of "AmigaSoft Operating Environments" are to be
released: Alpha versions of OE4.0 are to be released this September,
providing a full development environment; full multimedia computer support
is to come by the end of the year; during the first half of next year, OE5.0
will appear providing a full Information Appliance Environment, supporting
multiple CPUs.
Jim promised that Amiga Incorporated was making progress towards these
goals, would be opening more communications channels to the community and
supporting users, dealers and developers more closely. He knew we had heard
much of the vision and promises before, but that things had changed: Jim's
transfer to AI was representative of a renewed seriousness on the part of
Ted Waitt and Gateway. Amiga Inc has been given a long term budget and,
more importantly, unhanded to freely proceed - without having to constantly
plod things through the Gateway legal department and review decisions with
Gateway managers. Already Jim has raided additional staff from his former
department to work in AI: Jim VonHolle is the new AI VP of Marketing and
Michael Reese a VP of Operations and Administration. Jeff Schindler
continues at AI as VP of Strategy and Product Management. A specific point
of support was made for Jeff: that the last year's inactivity was the result
of Gateway inactivity, not Jeff's.
The Amiga community was to play an integral role in Amiga Incorporated
plans: Jim Collas called on the community, as a unique Army, to help carry
this new vision of computing forward. That only the Amiga community had the
"spirit, spark and passion" to lead this computing revolution. Amiga
Incorporated would give us the operating system, we should "be ready to
fight for innovation".
Unfortunately, for as good as Jim's speech was, as earnest as his intent
and inspiring his vision, it was too close to previous speeches given by
Jeff in Toronto, Bill in Ohio, VisCorp's David Rosen in Montreal and Petro
all around, in between. Those good, earnest and inspired efforts faded away
into inaction. As cynical as these words are, Jim Collas is burdened by
this history. His progress can separate him from his predecessors and any
difference there is bound to be a good thing. Already as this article is
being written, AI has hired more engineering staff and things seem to be
happening. Could this be the start of a good trend - progress, even? What
else will we see this Summer?
On the Floor
Almost as a sidelight to the news of Amiga ncorporated presentations,
there was a computer show in St. Louis too. The new show floor provided
some of the best, most spacious accommodations of Amiga shows in a long time
- a continuation of the upward trend of recent years and a tribute to the
organizational skills of Bob Scharp. Many of the same exhibitors were
present, yet this year's show was tarnished with a few developer absences.
Right inside the front doors were our Virginia neighbors, Nova Design,
with their well known products. For top power users, they announced PowerPC
accelerated plug-ins for ImageFX called "Power Station". The new set
includes superfast Clouds, Liquid, Fire, Bubble and FXforge plug-ins
featured in ImageFX 3, along with some possible surprises.
Also for graphical power users, Nova Design announced the availability
of Wildfire PPC in version 7. In addition to features covered previously,
this version highlights AVI and QuickTime loading and saving for foreign
platform compatibility - again with PPC acceleration for folks needing
maximum speed.
Nearby former Amiga report editor Jason Compton was present with his
ImageFX tie in products. He announced that in a short while a third
"Catalyzer" tape would be available, including coverage of ImageFX scanning
and printing techniques.
With spectacular demonstrations, Paul Nolan was also at the show giving
the premiere demonstrations of version 4 of his Photogenics paint and image
processing package. While not as comprehensive as ImageFX (with its broad
scanning and format support), the new Photogenics boasts the most modern
user interface now available.
John Zacharias was showing off a new version of his EMail client
"AEMail". Version 2.0 featured heavily revised configuration screens, more
comprehensive handling of multimedia and HTML attachments.
One of the most anxiously awaited and interesting products previewed at
the show was the new "Neila 498" Amiga compatible computer by AntiGravty,
using Mick Tinker's Boxer motherboard. This motherboard, called by Joe
Torre "the most advanced Amiga ever", features a built in 060 processor, a
custom hybrid multimedia chip (combining a number of functions of the AGA
chipset), a number of ZorroII slots and active PC bus card slots. With an
impressive feature list, AntiGravity expects to be shipping base models for
$1495 round mid-May.
NewTek was also present making comments hinting at their continued
interest and connection to the Amiga. In general support of Amiga users,
they announced arrangements making the high color, graphics card capable
TVPaint freely available to all Amiga users. Following the computer world's
"open source" trend, NewTek also announced that they were releasing the
source code to their Amiga Video Toaster and Flyer software. Greg RoadRuck
also suggested NewTek Amiga patrons also keep their eyes peeled to the
NewTek web site for details of a Flyer and Toaster convenience update
package, including Flyer video compression improvements.
Sharing space with NewTek, the German hardware developer RBM was present
with their Towerhawk A1200 tower cases. Given a combination of cases,
daughtercards and adapters one can build a "big box" Amiga capable of
running NewTek Toasters and Flyers with the traditional big boys. RBM was
also providing information on their IOBlix serial & parallel port I/O cards
and ScanQuix software.
Local Amiga developer, Weemsware, was present again with the latest
version of their AniMouth - an interesting blend of the Amiga speech system
and a live animation system. With this software, a live interactive "Max
Headroom" is easily possible. The latest version of the software provides
the capability to create speech coordinated animations and videos with the
NewTek Flyer non-linear video system.
Another small Amiga developer, Brain Technologies, was onhand with a
couple of applications: PixLib and Mr. Robot Speak and Spell. The first
utility is a unique library of nearly 1000 images on a single 800k floppy
disk which can be viewed and exported for paint and desktop publishing
usage. The second application is a speaking educational game based on the
PixLib algorithms for teaching children vocabulary and spelling.
Brewster Productions was present with their library of SuperBase
applications: Organize Pro, a mailing list manager with an updated
interface; and PayrollPlus, a employee management application for generating
and managing payroll and federal tax matters for a small business. A shadow
was cast over Brewster's booth and the whole show by the news that Amiga
diehard "Mr. Hardware" - Joe Rothman - passed away just before the St Louis
show. Mr. Hardware, the current developer of SuperBase for the Amiga, was
to announce their progress with the important application. Joe's widow,
also an Amiga loyalist, promised that development of Superbase is continuing
and the new version will be released as soon as it is ready.
In one of the biggest announcements of the show, Holger Kruse of Nordic
Global and Miami fame announced his latest Amiga project: Daytona - an
Amiga implementation of Java. Holger's implementation will be broken into
three parts: "Daytona", a *free* Java2 platform including the standard Sun
AWT, Java Foundation Classes Swing & Java2D, and the CORBA distributed
applications system. Another free add-on "Daytona DEV" with a Java
byte-code compiler, disassembler and other Java development tools. Finally,
there will be the "Daytona PLUS", a paid add-on with Holger's own unique
Amiga implementation of the AWT classes with native GUI and graphics card
support; a Java applet runtime system; a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler and
full PPC support. Holger reported he already has the core of the system up
and running and he expects to be releasing the Amiga's first Java
implementation towards the end of this Summer.
The sole Canadian representative were the Randomize guys - hosts of the
last Amiga show in Toronto. They had a booth chock full of very nice
quality Amiga wear - shirts, pull-overs, hats, beach balls and such - as
well as a wide range of Amiga tower systems based on RBM hardware (see
above) and the Ateo towers (providing peecee slots and the "Pixel 64"
graphics card).
Joining the absent Canadians - AsimWare and National Amiga - was
Softlogik. Discussions with the show organizer, Bob Scharp, indicated that
Softlogik's vacant booth was not the result of some dire or dramatic change
in the Amiga developer's health or outlook; but that company's owner had a
personal situation that forced a major company relocation, superseding show
attendance.
The Nomads
A few folks were wandering around the hall talking up their products in
hand or during seminars held during the show. Long distance traveller Jens
Schoenfeld came all the way from Aachen, Germany to show off his Amiga
hardware: IDE and floppy drive controllers (Buddha series and Cat Weasel
series), serial and parallel port devices (HyperCom series), with a variety
of versions for nearly every modern Amiga computer. Jens also showed us the
prototype of a new non-Amiga specific piece of hardware: a digital, optical
filter for removing copy protection bits otherwise encoded by new digital
audio equipment, like MiniDiscs. Finally, Jens told us that work on the
Atlantis external MP3 player was proceeding and it should be available over
the Summer and include a digital SPDIF output port.
At one of the seminars, Jamie Krueger, a software engineer from Best
Power Systems made the announcement that his company was going to be
officially supporting the Amiga with the next version of their "CheckUPS"
software. Why does a UPS have software? Their suite of applications
communicates with power supplies to let your computer monitor a number of
factors concerning power conditions and battery capacity. The Amiga
implementation will even include client/server tools to allow monitoring and
control of Amigas over network connections. Keep the name of that company
in mind for the next UPS you look at!
The Next One
As this show coverage wraps up, it was announced that there would not be
a show in Ohio this Fall. On the other hand, John Zacharias showed pictures
of a new, larger hotel he was going to be holding the next AmiWest show at.
So it looks like we all need to be looking for cheap airfares to
[Sacramento] for the July 24th weekend? We may also see a Fall show in
Toronto., if Randomize goes through with some of their explorations. Keep
your eyes peeled for future NCAUG newsletters!
[Source: The National Capital Amiga Users Group newsletter, "Amagi
Intuition" April, 1998. NCAUG's address is P.O. Box 12360, Arlington, VA
22209. On the web it's http://www.ncaug.org ]
[Editor's Note: Here are a few other sources for Amiga99 reports. ]
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/990313-amiga99.html
The St. Louis show a few weeks ago was the first Amiga show I attended as
president of Amiga. From the feedback I have received, the show was a great
success. The show was well organized with good attendance and was also a lot
of fun. The number of people who attended was approximately 1,200 but more
important is the fact that there was a 14% increase in attendance from last
year. I made my debut as president of Amiga and I want to thank everyone who
welcomed me to the community. I especially want to thank those who welcomed
me until 3:00 a.m. in the morning and taught me that Amigans really know how
to have fun. You know who you are.
In St. Louis, I had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time
with people in the Amiga community. Several times during the show, I
publicly made the statement that the Amiga community is the greatest
community in the computer industry. I am now more convinced of this than
ever. The Amiga community is the most innovative, dedicated, heroic and
enduring community in the computer industry. I am amazed at what the
community has done with little or no support from a corporate entity. You
have endured through extremely tough times and kept the spirit of Amiga
alive and strong.
Unfortunately, some of the difficulties the Amiga community has endured
in the last two years stem from some misguided decisions made by Amiga Inc.
It is now obvious to me that some very big mistakes were made in defining a
path for Amiga in the last two years. The low priority and support given to
Amiga by our parent company, Gateway, aggravated this situation. Gateway was
preoccupied during this period with significant internal restructuring to
strengthen its core business for the future. The intentions relative to
Amiga were good but the situation was mismanaged. Some people have told me
that I should stop talking about past mistakes and only look toward the
future. I agree with this but I also want people to clearly understand that
I realize how much our past mistakes have hurt the community and delayed
progress. This is important because I do not want to repeat these mistakes
so be patient as I discuss this one last time.
In my opinion, the biggest mistake was the decision not to evolve the
current Amiga architecture as we developed the next generation. This hurt
the current Amiga community the most. The right decision would have been to
overlap product generations just as Apple did during the Apple II to
Macintosh transition. Apple evolved the Apple II architecture by introducing
the Apple III even after Apple came out with the Mac. The Apple III wasn't a
big seller but it helped Apple II hardware and software companies and
allowed them time to transition their products to the new Mac platform.
In hindsight and from the vantage of the Amiga community, not evolving
the current architecture may look like an incredibly stupid mistake but it
was not as obvious to people coming from the PC industry. I am not trying to
justify this flawed decision but to give some insight as to how such a
decision could be made. Living in a computer industry dominated by Wintel
PCs skewed the thinking of people making this decision. In a computer
industry dominated by Wintel PCs, computers are obsolete within six to
twelve months. The inefficiency of the architecture requires a continuous
upgrading of CPUs, graphics, and storage devices in order to deliver
acceptable improvements in features and functions. This is what happens in
an industry where revolutionary innovation has been replaced by constrained
evolution. From this PC centric view, no one could imagine that a computer
architecture that stopped evolving in the early '90s could have any life
left in it. Obviously this view was very limited and flawed as the Amiga
community has proven over-and-over again how much life was left in the
current Amiga architecture.
It is obvious that the community would currently be stronger if we had
made the decision two years ago to evolve the current Amiga architecture.
Two years have now passed and we are faced with a tough question. Is there
still life left in the current architecture? I believe that there is. The
release of O/S 3.5 in late July or early August will allow the current
architecture to live on for a few more years. In addition to O/S 3.5 we are
looking at supporting companies that are looking at hardware enhancements to
the current architecture. We will also support emulation of the current
Amiga architecture on the next generation Amiga so that people can use most
of their old software. I am spending time with key people in the Amiga
community to finalize transition plans between the current Amiga and the
next generation.
Now, it's time to talk about the future! I know this has been an
extremely difficult and painful period for the Amiga community but I would
like to put that chapter of the Amiga story behind us and look toward the
future. We have a difficult road ahead of us with many important decisions
to be made on our future plans. I will not make the mistake again of not
understanding the Amiga community, its requirements, and its dynamics. St
Louis was a good start for me but I require even more input to better
understand the situation. As all of you know, the Amiga community is very
strong in Europe with many Amiga companies and extremely impressive
individuals. I am planning a trip to Germany and the U.K. in late April to
meet with more leaders in the Amiga community. The objective of my trip is
partially to communicate our current thinking but mostly to listen and
understand. I want to understand the opinions of prominent people in the
Amiga community. I will use this input to finalize our future architecture
and plans. I especially need help in planning out how we will transition
from the old architecture to the new architecture in such a way that keeps
the Amiga community healthy.
One thing clearly requested by the Amiga community was BETTER
COMMUNICATION on the activities at Amiga. I promise to improve our
communication starting with this letter and continuing with frequent
postings on our Web site as well as increased interaction with the
community. Our participation in the St. Louis show and my upcoming trip to
Germany and the U.K. are good examples of our efforts in this area. The
letter you are currently reading is posted on our Web site in the new
"Executive Update" section that I will personally be updating on a monthly
basis. In this section you will also find an update on major activities
listed after the monthly letter to the community. I think this is a good
start and we will continue improving our communication as we go forward. If
you have any input on my executive update web page or on how to improve our
communication please send your suggestions via email to executive@amiga.com.
You can also send email to me directly at jim.collas@amiga.com but I get
significant amounts of email so it may take me a few days to respond. The
executive@amiga.com email address goes to my assistant who in turn directs
the email to the Amiga executive that can most effectively reply.
I know that I have yet to prove my dedication or win your confidence but
I hope to do so over the coming months. As many of you already know, I
stepped out of a senior executive position with Gateway that was a very
prominent position in the PC industry to lead Amiga. I did this because I
believe strongly in what Amiga stands for. I believe in the Amiga spirit of
revolutionary innovation. I believe that the PC revolution is over because
innovative revolution has been replaced by constrained evolution. I believe
that there is a new computer revolution on the horizon, one that will
fulfill the promise of bringing the power of computing to the masses. Most
importantly, I believe that Amiga will play a significant role in this new
computer revolution. But Amiga can't do this without the full support of the
Amiga community. The Amiga community is one of the greatest and most
innovative communities in the computer industry. It is a revolutionary army
waiting to strike and reclaim its prominent position in the computer
industry. I truly believe this from the depths of my heart and I promise to
use all of my experience, resources, industry contacts, and energy to give
Amiga a strong and aggressive push. I hope I will not let you down.
Let's keep the momentum going as we come back for the future.
Sincerely,
New Staff:
Major Development Programs:
Shows and Community Activities:
The March 18, 1999 General meeting began with the traditional
introduction of officers. President Lewis then gave his general overview of
computing in the last month. He reported that Don Shaffer had represented us
at the Amiga99 show in St. Louis. He noted that Kevin Hisel had also
attended. Commenting on the general computing press, Jim said Steve Jobs is
getting no end of praise for his leadership of Apple.
President Lewis then asked Kevin Hisel for his impressions of the Amiga99
show.
Kevin held up an "Amiga Press Information Packet" which came from the St.
Louis show. The fact that one of these even existed, Kevin took as a sign
that something is different now.
Kevin said of Amiga's new President, Jim Collas, "he's is a seven figure
a year guy. Gateway's vendor guy." He's a real pro.
Kevin talked about the new name given to the Amiga OS and related
software: AmigaSoft. This seems to be just so much rearranging terminology.
What signifies is yet to be seen. As for other terms being used by Amiga
Inc. the "Amiga Information Appliance" is still causing some real confusion
and suspicion bordering on dread. What is it, a Palm Pilot?
Kevin reported that the Amiga.com (USA) website is now gone. It has been
supplanted by the Amiga.de (German) site. This is one bit of useless
duplication whose disappearance seems to indicate the begins of some
cohesion of the fragmented Amiga approach over the last two years.
Don Shaffer let us know he was present at the UGN meeting with Amiga Inc.
officials at 11 am on Saturday morning at the show. Don's impressions of the
meeting pretty much paralleled what was reported in last month's newsletter.
Reporting on the wider view on the show floor, Don and Kevin both stated
that people were impressed by the simple fact that Gateway bothered to show
up. The fact that Collas showed up was a big deal.
Kevin then focused on a few of the vendors he visited with that made
special impressions: Randomize with their Towerhawk Amiga machine, NewTek
offering TVPaint v3.59 for free, and Holger Kruse's Nordic Global presenting
Java for the Amiga. For the rest of his report check out Kevin's Amiga99
show article on the AWD at
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/990313-amiga99.html.
President Lewis and Kevin Hisel thanked Don Shaffer and particularly his
wife Kay, who was at the booth the whole time, for their service to the
club. Don reported that he had signed up 18 members at the show and that he
sold out the remainder of our T-shirts. Don concluded by saying, "It was
fun."
The floor was then turned over to Richard Rollins for his monthly Apple
review. Richard said the new 500Mhz G3 would be arriving soon, with the G4
coming in about a year.
There was a discussion of Intel P3 embedded identification number
problem. Jim Lewis said that beside the "political" problems with the P3,
technically there is not much difference between the P2 and the P3. Jim
views the P3 as incremental progress not a jump in performance. It P3's
improvements are more in the graphics and sound area rather than processing
power.
Returning to the Macintosh, Richard said the Mac SIG would be looking at
iCab, a new browser from Europe. Richard said it can use your Netscape
bookmark file and has a very small memory footprint. He said he would also
be showing the new Star Wars trailer and a South Park spoof of Star Wars.
This evening's Amiga SIG was principally a discussion of the fallout of
the Amiga99 show. The main question to be answered was "Where is this
going?" There was a real diversity of opinion. For most, there is guarded
optimism with a wait and see attitude. Those attending the show said they
were "Really happy and surprised to see Gateway get behind Amiga."
For others, the current cover story of Amazing Computing/Amiga influenced
(or at least echoed) their belief that Linux would be the operating system
of the future. Jim Lewis noted that major forces in the computing industry
are beginning to ally themselves with the Linux movement. Slashdot.org was
recommended as an information source for following Linux. Someone said that
all the non-Intel people are looking at them.
Turning the discussion back to the Amiga, Kevin Hopkins noted that Amiga
Inc. will be at Comdex this year. This sparked another digression. This time
it was a discussion of Comdex and planning among members to attend.
Probably the blackest comment of the night was voiced by one of those
that had migrated to the PC. Speaking of Amiga Inc. he said, "It's over. It
doesn't matter what they do."
So is the glass half empty, half full, totally empty, filling again? It
seems to correlate with what hardware you have your money in.
When we came to the meeting, the first thing we did was watch the brand
new Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer. This trailer is only viewable with
Quicktime 3. We also had the first trailer for Phantom Menace, a trailer for
Red Dwarf (a British sci-fi comedy of the absurd on PBS) AND, last and maybe
least a trailer lampoon of the first Star Wars trailer a la South Park. All
of the trailers had very good quality except the "South Park" Star Wars
trailer which was even less sophisticated than the South Park show itself.
But it was still funny. And they killed Kenny, the ba_ _ _ _ds!
Then we gathered for the opening of the meeting and ritual introductions.
After the usual pleasantries and exchange of the latest computer news,
rumors and complaints, we broke into our preferred SIGs.
Rich Rollins, Mac SIG coordinator, had been surfing around and came up
with a new Mac-only web browser called iCab from Germany. He was passing out
copies to anyone who had disks for transfer. This was fairly easy as the
application has a VERY small footprint (1.8 mb) and minuscule RAM
requirements (2.5 mb) compared to the other browsers out there. WAIT!
There's more! It's free! (for now), partly because it is a "preview". It
can be downloaded at http://www.icab.de/ if you would like to try it out.
iCab looks a lot like Netscape. It uses a cute funky little taxi as a
logo icon instead of the "N-over-the-world" icon Netscape uses. On start-up
it will immediately ask you if you want to use the Netscape bookmarks. It
also uses the "Favorites" toolbar like Netscape, and the same plug-ins. AND,
it seems fairly stable, too.
Unfortunately, we couldn't see it run because we misplaced our spool of
phone cable that we use for such connections at the meeting center. I have
tried it out since the meeting and find it stable and friendly, BUT I
couldn't get all of the plug-ins, like Shockwave and Real Audio, to work. I
have to admit that I haven't gone through the monstrous preference window
completely. It has choices for just about everything (I haven't got to the
hot tub or the automotive analysis/troubleshooting settings, yet). iCab has
setting for everything (more than I cared to count), Netscape has three (3),
plus some sub-settings. I may have to adjust something to get the plug-ins I
have to work. Overall, the browser looks good and has a lot of potential, it
just needs a little more work.
iCab's extremely small disk space footprint and it's small RAM
requirement brought up the subject of programming code and why Netscape and
Microsoft's Explorer are so large. The discussion went from 'it's sloppy
programming" to "there is a lot of 'overhead' in the programs so they can
run on a variety of platforms". No grand decisions were reached by the
group, but I think many were leaning towards the "slop" opinion.
We came back to the continuing soap opera of trojan horses and worms.
Evidently there is another trojan horse out there in the wild world of
computing. And the Microsoft Word worm is still around and causing damage.
If you travel the internet or work with foreign file from foreign machines,
you need a virus checker. Don't practice "Unsafe Computing", get your cyber
prophylactics. Now!
Writer's opinion follows ... Since then, we have had the "Melissa" and
"Papa" virus scares and the arrest of the alleged virus engineer. There is
something to think about in this in regards to personal anonymity and
security. The "supposed" virus engineer was caught by tracing codes in
Microsoft documents identifying the application/machine used to create the
virus (among other methods). These "identifier' codes are double-edged
swords. I don't have any Microsoft software on my personal machine, so I am
somewhat immune to the Microsoft-based worms, but I often wonder if
Macromedia (Freehand) or Quark (Quark XPress) or Adobe (Illustrator,
Photoshop) have the same "identifier" codes. On one side I resent this sort
of thing, but then, you don't really own the software do you? You "rent" it.
If in doubt re-read your license agreement that comes with the software. And
so, they can put just about anything in the code they deem necessary. Their
thought being, "If you don't like it go elsewhere." I am now off my
"soapbox".
A question came up about Quicktime 3. Do the new systems have it built in
or do you have to get it separately? It is in OS8.5 and later, but you have
to pay $30 and register it to get the Quicktime 3 Pro option. OS8.5 comes on
the new blue & white G3's. QT3 is a full program that is completely enabled
when you pay the bucks and register it. If you are just looking at movies
and the like, you don't really need the "Pro" option. But, if you want to
export movies or use the other option such as the new compression options
and the like, you will need the "Pro" option turned on.
We talked about text editors. Rich uses Text Edit and likes BBEdit Lite.
Jim Huls likes BBEdit, as well. (Rumor has it he has the BBEdit logo
tattooed to his chest. Or was that a t-shirt?!?) Rich has removed all copies
of SimpleText and TeachText from his hard drive. This is a continual task,
seeing as how most applications come with AND install copies of it all the
time.
I asked how to get the computer to read a text file. This was so simple I
was almost embarrassed to have asked it. You open SimpleText, open your less
than 36k document and pick the "Speak All" option (Command J) under the
Sound menu and away you go. Here I thought it was something exotic and
arcane. I then went home and did some OCR (optical character recognition) on
a book and started the computer talking. I used the results on my radio show
and in a live improvisational performance of a group I am in. I have to say
that the voices are problematic if you want something that sounds
non-synthetic. Radio comes out as Raw Di Oh, but if you spell it Ray Dee Oh
it sounds more human. Of course this begs the question, "Do you really want
it to sound human?" Rich also mentioned websites that read/speak and
shareware readers. Rich couldn't remember any names and I haven't looked for
any, yet.
We got a little sidetracked from the Mac when the discussion turned to
computer chips in everyday appliances like toasters, phones and the like.
Harold Ravlin asked if anyone knew what household appliance had the first
computer chip inside. The answer is ... wait for it ... the Singer Athena
sewing machine. Rich said he remembered it. The date for this machine was
not given and/or remembered.
A question came up about what machine OSX will run on. Rich said that the
604e's were safe, but it won't run on the 601 and 603 machines. And it
probably won't run on some clones and upgrade cards.
Harold mentioned that there was a new version of Linux (freeware Unix OS)
available for the Mac that doesn't require separate partition to operate.
Linux has increased in popularity over the last few years, and some
mentioned it might (a big "might") eclipse more established operating
systems. There is a copy of Linux on the latest MacAddict CD (May. 99). They
have the caveat that unless you are very knowledgeable, you should avoid
this one. The Unix operating system is very flexible, which means you have
to make a lot of decisions when setting it up. As one friend, a better
hacker than I, said, "Unix does everything you tell it to do, but you have
to tell it EVERYTHING!" The system makes no assumptions. It's like telling
your kid that he should go to his room. He goes to the room and stands there
looking at you quizzically. Then you have to tell him to find the door, find
the doorknob, turn the knob, pull the door open, step inside the room and
pull the door shut. Unix systems have a steep learning curve. The software
is free, but help, consultation and sympathy cost you greenbacks.
The subject of help for computer problems was brought up. Where to find
good info about options and troubleshooting, etc. Rich mentioned a MacWorld
Macintosh bible. I don't remember the name, but it is about 5 inches thick.
There is also Mac for Dummies. This series has a "Dummies" book for just
about everything, including, I think, one for how to get out of bed in the
morning and put on your clothes. But outside of these sort of books and
CUCUG there are few choices for help in the local area. The one exception to
this is if you work at the University of Illinois, where there is wide
variety of help available. But this is a continuing problem for Macs, Amigas
and even PC's to a certain extent. Nothing helps more than a close friend
with years of experience or a young computer nerd with a brain the size of
Brainiac. This last one can be a real loose cannon, though. I have used Mac
Addict at times to help set-up and troubleshoot things, but this can be
dangerous, too, if you have a small amount of knowledge and experience. I
know of at least two situations where the people got some ideas from
MacAddict that smashed their systems. The problem wasn't really MacAddict's.
The people involved did not check things out thoroughly and blindly started
throwing away system items. It is always smarter to not burn you bridges
behind you.
There was a question about encryption. It was met with a lot of shaking
heads. Unfortunately, no one knew anything applicable. I have checked into
some software from my job at the University of Illinois, but haven't had the
time to twiddle with it, yet. There is plenty out there, but no one has
worked with it. (Anyone got any ideas or suggestion on this one?)
Emil Cobb has had problems with messages appearing in triplicate at
Start-up relating to printing hassles. After tossing the problem around a
bit we figured it was probably a problem that is internal to the
Hewlett-Packard printer he uses. Rich mentioned that the HP site has a
wealth of drivers and driver updates. Maybe he needs a newer version of the
driver. Unfortunately, we couldn't answer this question completely, partly
due to the fact that we had to vacate the premises in short order. Maybe he
will have new information or a solution for the problem at the next meeting.
The March meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday,
March 23, 1999, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to
attend - which is encouraged - the address and phone number are both in the
book). Present at the meeting were Jim Lewis, Emil Cobb, Jim Huls, Kevin
Hopkins, and Kevin Hisel.
Jim Lewis: Jim said that it had been worth attending the Amiga99 show in
St. Louis. He expressed the club's thanks to Don Shaffer and his wife Kay
for their shouldering the CUCUG banner - manning our booth - at the show.
Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had 19 members at the last meeting.
Jim Huls: Jim reported that he had miraculously recovered a copy of his
Macintosh vendor database (thought lost due to a hard drive crash) when a
faulty mail server at his work began spitting up old, undelivered mail, one
of which was a copy of the database he had mailed himself.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin delivered an updated copy of the database to Kevin
Hisel, for his and the President's use.
Serving in Richard Hall's absence (due to a previous commitment), Kevin
gave Rich's Treasure's reported. The month as a whole was in the black, but
if preliminary expenses become final, it looks as though we did not meet the
expenses of attending the Amiga99 show. Both President Lewis and Kevin Hisel
expressed the belief that it didn't matter. It was part of our support for
the Amiga community.
Kevin mentioned the appearance of sound files of Amiga President Collas's
address at Amiga99 on the UGN website in the less than familiar ADPCM file
format, all 28MB worth of them, and the furor that had caused. He made the
suggestion that the MP3 fans in our club should make these files available
on our site in the more universal (and compact) MP3 format as a service to
those requesting it. Webmaster Kevin Hisel said he understood the dilemma
but stated he was unwilling to trespass on the UGN's presentation of that
information. He said the AWD would only link to their page. [The UGN has
since added the MP3 format to their offering.]
Kevin also brought up the topic of the database the UGN is attempting to
construct for Amiga Inc. of Amiga user groups around the world and of Amiga
users, both past and present. Since they've had two previous attempts crash
(without backups) no one was overly interested to entering our information
for a third time. We'll wait and see if they can keep a database working
before addressing the issue.
Kevin then initiated a discussion of how CUCUG sees its role in light of
current events and how the future may unfold. The consensus was on a "wait
and see attitude" and an independent stance.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin stated that he has been in contact with Paul Nolan of
Photogenics 4.0 fame.
Kevin reported that hits on the AWD have been holding steady at an 80,000
to 100,000 hits a day average. Kevin noted that the posting of his report on
the Amiga99 show had spiked our hits to over 200,000 a day.
On a final note, Kevin said that the long defunct CUCUG BBS will be
having a legacy effect. The line once used by the BBS will make the
installation of an ISDN line into Kevin's house far easier. He will have
ISDN by mid April.
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):
Surf our web site:
Umax Astra 1200S Bundle - $289.95 US, $449.95 CDN
Umax Astra 1220S Bundle - $319.95 US, $499.95 CDN
Randomize, Inc. Phone: 905-939-8371
R.R. #2 Fax: 905-939-8745
Tottenham, Ont. Email: sales@randomize.com
L0G 1W0 WWW: http://www.randomize.com/
AmiWest '99 Coming!
from John Zacharias (jzachar@calweb.com)
Where: Holiday Inn, Sacramento Northeast
5321 Date Avenue,
Sacramento, California
When: Friday, July 23, 1999 through
Sunday, July 25, 1999
$10 (One day Pass - Paid at the door)
$15 (Two day pass - Paid at the door)
c/o Sacramento Amiga Computer Club
P.O. Box 19784
Sacramento, CA 95819-0784 NCAUG Cookout at Software Hut
from Fabian Jimenez (fabian@cais.com)
Bill Borsari - tekmage@amiga.org
Mike Skov - skov@moon.jic.com
Software Hut - softhut@erols.com Amiga:2000 - 15th Anniversary Celebration
Class of '85 Reunion: On July 21st, 2000, Amiga Atlanta is celebrating
the 15th anniversary of a machine that started a revolution that is still
felt today. The Amiga spawned a cult religion of unbelievable proportion and
magnitude, which keeps the spirit alive in spite of tremendous adversity.
William Coldwell, A2K coordinator (billc@warped.com)
Lamar Morgan, A2K coordinator (lamar@mindspring.com)
Send "subscribe a2k" to listserv@amiga2000.org
http://www.amiga2000.orgUGN Announces Amiga Radio News
The User Group Network (UGN) has announced the arrival of Amiga Radio
News, the first Amiga news source to broadcast live to the Internet using
streaming audio! Amiga Radio News is a weekly radio digest produced by Casey
Halverson of Digital Lightyear Technologies. The current state of stream
serving technology on the Amiga platform is very limited. Although live
streaming tests and small scale distribution has had (limited) success, it
will be some time before Amiga Radio News will switch to a live broadcast
format. Currently, streaming audio files are uploaded to the server. Every
Friday, a new update will uploaded to Amiga Radio News, located at
http://ugn.amiga.org/arn/. Amiga User Groups can download and playback
these weekly Amiga news updates. Faster iMacs on the Way
By Jim Davis, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 5, 1999, 5:20 p.m. PT
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,34636,00.html SoundApp
File size: 738K
License: freeware
Minimum requirements: System 7.5, QuickTime 2.5 USB Overdrive
File size: 249K
License: shareware ($20)
Minimum requirements: PowerPC, Mac OS 8, USB input device Microsoft offers Y2K patch for Win 95
By Erich Luening, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 5, 1999, 7:30 a.m. PT
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,34613,00.html The Humor Section:
Potty Training
Three Apple engineers and three Microsoft employees are traveling by
train to a conference. At the station, The three Microsoft employees each
buy tickets and watch as the three Apple engineers buy only a single ticket. The Macintosh Section:
Power Macintosh G3: The Cannonball Express
by Rick Holzgrafe (rick@kagi.com) from TidBITS#472/22-Mar-99
> OFIPT
> KCPER
> LEDAS
> How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
>
> 0 seconds:
> ULD ADLU
> HDOAIUCOHWUHOD
> UCOWFKHDOMCWOW
> K WO
>
> 1 seconds:
> DLIFADLU
> UCKOHWUHOD
> OHDWOMCWOW
>
> 2 seconds:
> ULCHC
> HWUHODKUK
> OMCWOWAFI
>
> 7 seconds:
> HWUHOW
> OMCWOD
> IKAUCW
> FLDHK
>
> 9 seconds:
> HWUH
> OMCW
> LUOK
> HDOI
> CWAF
>
> 65 seconds:
> HWM
> OUC
> IKH
> FWC
> ADO
> LUO
>
> 67 seconds:
> HWMU
> OOCH
> UDWK
> LAFI
>
> Total run time: 107 seconds
Here she comes -
Here she is -
There she GOES! The Amiga Section:
Saint Louis: A Show as Big as Their Arch?
by Paul Sadlik (pjs@cais.com)
http://www.amiga.de/diary/exhib/misc1999/stlouis-e.html
http://www.io.com/~joeobrin/Amiga99Sum.html
http://mushypd.dynip.com/~st-louis99/
http://www.startext.net/np/agm/amiga99/Amiga99.htm
http://lonestar.texas.net/~rebbi/amiga'99.html Open Letter to the Community - April 1999
This is my first open letter to the Amiga community. In many ways, I am
honored by the opportunity to address such a great community of people and
represent such a unique brand as Amiga. There are many remarkable Amigans,
both former and current, that are responsible for Amiga's impressive
products and its spirit of revolutionary innovation. These are the people
that created the Amiga phenomena and the people that persevered through
these tough times. Amiga communities from across the world have kept the
Amiga spirit alive. I can't claim any responsibility for the early success
of Amiga or the current endurance. I can only praise the people responsible
and hope that I can help bring a new era of greatness to Amiga and fulfill
the hopes of the Amiga community.
Jim Collas
President, Amiga Update on Major Activities - April 1999
Operations/Planning:
The CUCUG Section:
March General Meeting
reported by Kevin Hopkins The Amiga SIG
reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu) The Macintosh SIG: Richard Rollins shows the iCab browser
reported by Edwin Hadley (e-hadley@life.uiuc.edu) March Board Meeting
reported by Kevin Hopkins The Back Page:
The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983
to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users.
We've grown since then.
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: Richard Hall 344-8687 rjhall1@uiuc.edu
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
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821