| Those with satellite dishes and/or cable television may be interested
to know that the Preview Guide (Channel 3 on Continental Cablevision in
west-suburban Boston) is built on an Amiga. The cable company buys the
whole package (an A2000 with a Genlock to produce the actual output, an
A500 for video production, and the software) as a unit.
I first noticed this when the system GURUed and later saw it mentioned
in an article in Amiga World.
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| While wandering (if that's the word 8^) through Spag's on Saturday, I
encountered a large box with a CRT and joystick in the paint
department. It turns out that the box contains an A500 (mounted
vertically on the side door), a Xetec hard disk, a monitor and a
printer. It runs a dedicated paint color selection program.
The store was having a bit of trouble getting the system started. (The
application's startup-sequence tells you to press the button if you
want to park the hard drive prior to moving the unit. Natural tendancy
is to press it; if you leave it alone, then everything comes up OK.)
The department manager came by and opened it up. As the closest thing
to an Amiga expert in those parts, I moved right in to help.
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| Re: .2
There is an Amiga video tape magazine that has just come out. The video
tape contains news about the Amiga, interviews, demos, etc. I bought
the first(?) issue recently at System Eyes. One of the interviews/demos
was a paint selection kiosk built out of an Amiga. Sounds like the
system at Spag's.
The video tape magazine was a bit, er, lame. A real Amiga enthusiast
would probably like it (I qualified), but anyone in their right mind
would be bored to tears.
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| I have a friend who has a interesting use of the amiga in product
development. He works for Rockwell International as a project
manager for the Hellfire missile. He has 10 Amiga 2000's with the GVP
3001 upgrade, with the quantum HD's and 8 megs of internal 32 bit ram.
7 stock 2000's, and a smattering of 500's. He also has just recently
ordered several 3000's from C=.
What he uses the Amiga for is the development of the software which
detects the reflection of the laser from the target and then guides the
missile to the target. I asked him what kind of software was he using,
<<<HA!>>> without batting an eye he told me wb 1.3 and Lattice 5.04...
In simple terms, he writes the software for the laser detection sensors
and the guidence system for the missile, has some of his engineers
make a board which he pops in the expansion slot on the 2000. Then
once he gets most of the bugs out and he's ready to test, he burns in
the guidance system on the chips, places them on the board, and then
perfects the system right on the Amiga. When they think they have it
perfected, then the chips go into the missile for a test firing.
During a test firing at white sands, they take along several Amiga's to
download telemetry from the firing.
He says that all of his programmers love the machine, and that the
Amiga is the only machine which was versatile enough to allow such
development use.
Made me down right proud to be an amiga owner...
JK
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