Conference hydra::amiga_v1

	Microsot Word is not availalbe for the Amiga.  Mc
	Microsoft has no applications for Amiga.
	according to AC Guide/Amiga
tom

    Re: -.1

    Correct (that MS-Word is not available for the Amiga), which is why
    the base noter is looking into the A-Max II emulator.

    If you haven't gotten a hold of the March 91 issue of AmigaWorld, do
    so. There's a review of A-Max II in the issue. You also might want
    to check out some Amiga dealers for demos. The Memory Location stocks
    it, though a few months ago when I went to see a demo, they'd sold
    their last set of Mac roms that day. 

    -Dom

    	I've seen a demo and my son-the-Mac-owner played with it for a bit.
    It seemed to work fine to me but he sniffed at it because it wasn't as
    fast as his SE30 and had a tight memory limitation. So it could do
    color, his SE30 could too - if he threw enough money at it. If Word is
    the only program you NEED to run then it should be fine - though I
    can't speak to the disk concern. If your needs expand to DTP then you
    may have a problem, you may not have enough memory available. I seem to
    recall that you have a 1Meg limit.

    
    	Thanks for the pointer to rag - I'll go get it...   The memory
    	problem doesn't bother me - my wife actually doesn't really like
    	computers and uses Microsoft Word to write reports.  Currently,
    	she has to go in on Saturdays (ugh) and type them up.  
    
    	I've heard that the Amiga is really a hacker's dream - lots of
    	pd software, games, ect.   How are sw development tools for the
    	Amiga - compilers, toolkits, ect?   Do you get any programming
    	support at all when you buy it?   How about a VT-something or
    	other emulator, file transfer and modem support?
    
    	Rick Beldin
    	ps.  I'm in Atlanta, so NE dealer refs don't do me much good ;-)
    

Buy it, you'll like it!

Regarding development environment, my setup is Lattice "C" compiler, now using
a PD telecomm program (VltJr) which you'll find amply praised in this
conference. A big help in developing applications is the commercial package
PowerWindows from Inovatronics- but I recommend that you get the ROM kernel docs
and understand what it's doing for you! PowerWindows is *somewhat* like VUIT
for DECwindows, if you're aware of that utility.

BTW, the Lattice compilers are now supported by their "parent" company, SAS,
which was responsible for a lot of the development anyway. They're releasing a
C++ *compiler* quite soon- I'll be posting experiences with it as soon as it
arrives (beta test allegedly within two or three months).

I haven't used it, but there is also a PD development environment, DICE, which
includes a C compiler. It's from Matt Dillon, who has an excellent rep among
Amigans. Perhaps others could comment on this one.

I still haven't "bitten the bullet" on the I-word and A-word compatibility
issues- *if* I do, I'll probably do it within the Amiga, for purposes of desk
real estate and ease of data transfer.

Good luck on your ruminations.

Cheers,
	Bob

    re .4 - Have you visited Ampex Systems out on Jimmy Carter Blvd?  They
    have quite a few Amigas doings all sorts of things.  This may help you
    make a decision.
    
    Tony of Birmingham (Alabama, that is)

a couple things:
    
    1. Microsoft wrote AmigaBasic.  That comes free with every Amiga (not
       sure about that for the Unix Amigas).  It is usable, but painful.
       Not one of their better programming efforts :-)
    
    2. Check this notesfiles for references to AMAX, the MAC emulator.
       The traditional MAC drive is a strange critter, it varies the speed
       the disk spins at.  Last time I looked, the AMAX people hadn't
       figured out a way to write a full mac floppy with an Amiga disk
       drive - they just write to part of the disk.  So it is possible
       to write files that you can read on the mac.  The other method
       is to attach a mac disk drive to the AMAX, then it can write the
       full floppy.
    
    Dave

    I don't have AMAX myself (yet), but I've had a chance to 'play' with
    one for a few days.  It's quite impressive.

    In general, the emulator runs slightly *faster* than a real MAC with
    equivalent processor.  This is due to some display management functions
    which are off-loaded to Amiga's custom chips, rather than stealing some
    of the main CPU's cycles.

    The 1 meg RAM limitation is only if you need maximum compatibility.
    Many "well-behaved" programs work with non-contiguous memory, so you
    can configure for more than 1 meg if you have an expanded Amiga.

    Any RAM that isn't configured as MAC memory becomes available as a RAM
    disk.  This feature is very useful, and in some ways *better* than a
    real MAC.  You can copy your MAC system and applications into the RAM
    disk and *boot* directly from RAM.  Rebooting this way takes only about
    10 seconds!  That's much quicker than any real MAC will do.  (They
    don't have recoverable RAM disks.)

    Having a MAC-style disk drive on the machine is almost essential.  It's
    very hard to import software otherwise.  The AMAX II+ (A2000 card) is
    supposed to be able to read and write MAC format floppies on the Amiga
    internal drives, but I don't think it's available yet.  It's been
    promised for a long time...

    The biggest problem now is availability of MAC ROMs.  Apple has pretty
    effectively stopped the flow of ROMs by requiring old ones in exchange
    for new (i.e. replacement parts only, NO outright sales).

Re .0:

	Call me in the morning at 928-3009 and ask for Max or after 1 at 31676. 
    I've got one of these critters, like it a lot and live near Atlanta...

Re general topic:

	As I understand it, AMAX requires the 128K ROM to work.  I also heard
    that the HD floppy upgrade for the MAC included a new set of ROMs.  Is this
    the same set of ROMs?  In other words, could you buy the HD MAC floppy 
    drive and AMAX and end up with a working system?

I have AMAX-II and its great. If you have a processor accelerator in your system
with a MMU, then the fragmented memory issue is not a problem. AMAX-II will let
you use the MMU to remap memory to be contiguous the way the MAC likes it. You
can also create a MAC partition on your Amiga hard disk and boot from it. There
have only been a couple of things I have run into that don't run under AMAX.
These have mostly been a few random inits and such. All the standard stuff
works fine, including WORD, EXCEL, some games etc. I have successfully ran
up to MAC system 6.05 on it with no problem. 6.07 did not run very well, and
would bomb every so often.

In my opinion, if you really want to run AMAX on your Amiga, you should have
an accelerator with MMU, a flickerfixer and an external MAC floppy drive.
If you don't have a flickerfixer, you will have to live with screen flicker
or a scrollable MAC screen. I have run some speed tests, and my 25mhz 68030
amiga runs slightly faster than a 25mhz MAC IIci.

Of course you could always get a PC bridgeboard and run Miscrosoft word for
the PC.

Frank

I've never really looked closely at the AMAX-II. Questions:

Does it work on the 3000? In that environment, will it emulate a MAC-II of
some flavor? Can it use all/most of the FAST RAM in my 3000?

	Thanx,
	<mike

    Yes, it works fine on the A3000.  That's the configuration nephew has.
    It will run at speeds comparable to a MAC-II, but I think there are a
    few differences because the MAC-II ROMs are different.  I don't think
    AMAX supports 32-bit color, etc.  According to recent comments, AMAX
    will use the MMU to form contiguous memory from whatever is available
    on your system, so I'd guess that means you can use all of fast RAM.

    
    Does it run multifinder OK?
    
    Do the parallel and serial ports work OK?  I heard there was
    some problem with the parallel/printer port... 
    
    Another interested party...
    
    -steve

AMAX should run fine on the 3000, since it runs on my 2000 with an A2630. It
uses ROMs from a MAC-PLUS, so it therefore emulates a MAC-PLUS (a very fast
one if you have an accelerator). MultiFinder works fine. In fact, almost
everything I have tried has worked fine. The emulation is much better if
you have an MMU, since it can use that to map the memory the way a MAC likes
it. If you don't have an MMU, you might find some applications that won't
run. The only one I ran into was an older version of MicroSoft Excel.

As far as the serial and parallel ports go, yes you can use them. You can
assign either of the MAC ports (both serial) to either of the Amiga ports.
So, you could assign the MAC printer port to your parallel printer, and
the MAC serial port to the Amiga serial port with a modem. Or, if you
have a serial printer (like I do), you can assign the MAC printer port
to the Amiga serial port.

The emulator allows you to assign a portion of ram to a recoverable MAC
ram disk. This is really nice. I have 7MB, and assign 5MB to the emulator
and 2MB to a ram disk. If you put stuff in the ram disk, reboot your amiga
and run some amiga apps, then restart the emulator, your MAC stuff is still
there in the RAM disk!

Overall I am very impressed with AMAX-II. It seems however that the MAC
ROMs needed to make it work are drying up. If your interested, ya might
wanna go for it soon.

Frank

I understand there are starting to be MAC Clones including cloned ROMs.
If so, will AMAX run with these?

	Paul

    	The "Mac Clones" that I have seen reported have not cloned the
    ROMs. They have emulated the functions of the ROMs in software. Perhaps
    you have seen other reports.

re                 <<< Note 4575.16 by DELNI::MEYER "Dave Meyer" >>>
>                                 -< unlikely >-

>     	The "Mac Clones" that I have seen reported have not cloned the
>     ROMs. They have emulated the functions of the ROMs in software. Perhaps
>     you have seen other reports.

	There is an article in the current Mac-something (User ?) rag 
about Mac cloning and a company that has taken all the  "Mac-ness" 
that isn't in the 680x0 chip and implemented it in VLSI.  I don't know
what a Mac HAS that is worth-while aside from the 680x0, but they seem
to think there's a market for it.  OK, there's a market for silly
putty too.  The article pays a lot of attention to the care that was
taken to avoid legal hassles - it seems Apple has more lawyers than
engineers;  more and better  {couldn't resist THAT one (-: } 

Tanget:

	Our group is currently going through a project to bring 
"contemporary workstations to our desk-tops"  -  there will be a 
number of standard PC and Mac configurations from which to chose 
(how friggin' exCITing ?) they will not be "max'd out configurations", 
but around 75%, i.e. representative of what our customers use.  I have
asked TML to submit a couple of nominal configurations for
consideration too - the existance of AMAX & the bridgeboard might make
a significant difference to how those quotes are received.

	Reg