Conference hydra::amiga_v1

4328.0. "Info on Toronto Wold of Amiga show..." by KOOZEE::OWEN (It ain't over til Milli Vanilli sings) Wed Dec 05 1990 09:09

Article        72874
From: [email protected] (Brett VanSprewenburg)
Subject: Toronto World of Amiga Show
Date: 4 Dec 90 16:15:15 GMT
Organization: Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, NY
 
[I shot the Line Eater]
 
My good friend attended this show. He just sent me a report on it. It
sounds great.
 
Further questions can be addressed to him at [email protected] or
me since I have had an extensive conversation with him and may just have
the info your looking for.
 
 
Anyways, I won't babble anymore...enjoy.
 
==Brett
 
Hi there, you missed one kick ass show.  Let me give you some of the great
highlights:
 
1. Video Toaster:  def'n: the most incredible piece of machinery ever to be
created, even rivals the Amiga computer.  The toaster was there and a video
tape demo reel of it that was partially done by Penn & Teller.  Penn was
narating while Teller was doing REAL-TIME special effects.  They went on to
show some of the toys that come with the Toaster, and the software.  The
picture quality of the device is beyond wows.  The crowd surrounding this
booth was huge, all day.  They showed some 24bit 3-d animations done on an
A2000, absolutely out of this world!  The walker demos are just walks in the
park in comparison.  This is the tool we need to do just about everything
in Video, quickly and easily!  Super-Drool item!
 
2. ATonce AT/286 emulator board:  Was seem running IBM lotus 123 while Amiga
dos was still active.  In 286 emulation, the board opens a custom screen of
its own, that can be blinked to the front or back to allow Amiga applications
to run.  Seemed quite stable, and fairly quick.  It even was displaying IBM
graohics created by the plotting functions in lotus.  Very nice!
 
3. ICD's internal HD for the A500:  Incredible!  This is a controller that
fits inside of your A500, attaches to a HD via ribbon cable.  Harddrives are
about the size of thick credit cards.  (put three floppies on top of each other
to see how thick the drives are.)  ICD will provide you with the drive if you
desire, but will also give you names and addresses of the manufacturors of
these drives.  Sizes range 10,20,25,30,40 meg HD's today.  These drives are
being made more often now, to be put in laptops and portables, there will not
be a shortage of them, and they are widely supported.  It will autoboot if
the controller detects 1.3 or higher ROMS.  Demo system: A500 with AdSpeed,
ICD 4 meg internal board, 2 meg daughter board, (Both fully populated),
ICD internal HD.  This system was incredible!  What you get: one very fast 
500 that runs off of an internal HD, "Almost portable".
 
4. A3000UX: The hottest Amiga yet developed!  The system I saw was running the
OpenLook graphical environment.  Under the GUI (our blank WB usually that ugly
blue unless changed) was displayed an incredible photograph that would rival
HD TV.  I asked about the graphics abilities of the Machine, and the REP
replied "It uses the University of Lowell 24 bit card"  I then wiped the drool
away from my mouth and asked about prices on the system:
 
A3000UX: 25 MHz
         200 Meg HD (75 meg used by UNIX, 125 for the user)
         1950 monitor
         ULowell Card
         2 Meg Chip Ram
         7 Meg Fast Ram (kinda an odd number)
         Unix operating system
         OpenLook GUI (as an option)
         $4999
 
Can we say dirt cheap system, especially for a UNIX box?
 
5. CDTV : there were about 6 CDTV's set up so that people could come up and
play with them.  They have a really neat remote control that replaces the
mouse.  Information access time was generally quite fast, but in some spots
the wait caused me to loose interest.
 
6. XETEC : These guys were demonstrating the controllers that they make, and
were showing off the CD-ROM devicce they sell.  The access time on it was
like lightening!  I could pull up and load animations fast, and could pop
up fred fish disks like they were in ram!
 
7. GVP : these guys had a huge booth, and were showing off everything they
made, I want their drive more than ever now!
 
8. Just about every booth was running 3000's, the vendors and displayers were
talking about how stable the newest 2.0 is, not a word on any incompatibles.
 
4.5 A3000UX: the system also comes with an Ethernet card.
 
Well, thats a really quick summary of the show.  It was about a million times
better than the Penn. show.
 
9. Pulsar: they have introduced a color printing method on the DESKJET!  It
creates color pics at 300 dpi, by using a color separation method and blending
the colors one at a time, just like a printing press.  Works with any program
that will output 4 color separated sheets (ie.Pro-Page).  They are also writing
a program that will output 4 color separations from programs that do not
support color separations, DPaint, and other paint programs, penpal, etc.
 
10. ICD : Adspeed, 14 MHz accelerator gave a very noticeable speed differance.
Also sold out the first day of the show!
 
 
Jason R. Oliver
[email protected]

    re. .0, item 6, XETEC:
    
    Is your friend saying that the Fish disks, and other Amiga stuf is
    available on CD-ROM?  
    
    What CD-ROMs are available for the Amiga, and where can I get them?
    
    How much do they cost?
    
    What SCSI adapters and drivers will work on the Amiga; do the existing
    drivers work? 
    
    What file system do the CDs use, AmigaDos or ISO?
    
    Thanks,
    
    John

RE: .1

Though I may be wrong, I suspect this was not a DECie's friend but was simply
pulled off Usenet.  I would mail your questions to the source the author of
the article mentions on BITNET.  From DEC that would be:

	MAIL> Send
	To: DECWRL::"[email protected]"
	Subj: World of Amiga show...

Use the quotes as shown above or the mail will not work.  Also you want to
add an 'nm%' before the DECWRL if you have nmail as DECWRL is usually bogged
and takes some time to service incoming mail messages.

George

    re .2
    
    That's correct... although I do have a friend who went, as mentioned
    somewhere else around here.
    
    (the "When's 2.0 comming" note, I think)
    
    Steve
    

    
    Having spent most of Saturday at the show I too came away with a WOW
    feeling about the new hardware gizmos and the unix box. 
    
    My only reservations though concerned the vendor representation at the
    show.  Past years at WofC in Toronto were top-heavy with local vendors
    and lacking in "show" type of material.  That has been changing
    steadily with fewer vendors and more show space emerging.  If one's
    purpose for attending the show was to purchase show-priced items, then
    disappointment due to the lack of selection was probably what one ended
    up with.
    
    Yet it was not only the lack of vendors which was surprising.  What the
    vendors were selling was also surprising.  On the second day of the
    show there were (for example) many places selling such archaic items
    as SkyFox (anyone remember that?), Maurauder (in its original shrink
    wrap), and even a 1050 Memory Expansion Board (quick quiz: who
    remembers what it is?).  One booth in particular was selling most of its
    software at $10 (Cdn) a pop (mostly games).  Other software was
    slightly more expensive (Pagesetter I at $20 with a 249.00 Cdn price
    tag on it).  It felt more like clearance day at K-Mart than a
    competitive computer show.
    
    All in all it was an enjoyable show.  I miss the days though when
    vendors from the states were allowed to undersell EVERYONE else by an
    extremely wide margin.  Too bad they were banned from doing it again.
    
    
    
    
    
     

    Re .4:
    
>   ... and even a 1050 Memory Expansion Board (quick quiz: who remembers
>   what it is?)
    
    I didn't have an A1000, but as I remember it, the A1050 installed in a
    bay in the FRONT of the A1000, doubling its memory to a princely 512KB!