Subject: REVIEW: World of Commodore-Amiga, Toronto, December 1992
From: [email-masked] (Scott Withington)
Date: 21 Dec 1992 17:49:39 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

NAME

	World of Commodore-Amiga, Toronto
	The International Centre
	Mississauga, Ontario
	Friday, December 4 to Sunday, December 6, 1992

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	This is a review a recent World of Commodore-Amiga show held
in Toronto, Canada.  It features demonstrations by Commodore and various
3rd-party vendors.

REVIEW

	The World of Commodore Toronto was fascinating on Saturday (the only
day I was there). First, Commodore's booth was large, with a big front area
split between displays showing the A4000 & A1200 quite effectively. You then
walked through a doorway to their "interactive multi-media" display. On the
right were two Virtuality Cyber 1000 stand-up units linked together and two
virtual reality studio environments from Mandala (one from Star Trek that
caused your image on the screen to appear to go through a transporter
sequence, and the other one a game that used themes similar to Nickelodeon's
Nick Arcade show).

	Continuing on through the booth you went to the back, which had a
history of Commodore presentation being run by several Amigas, each using a
display generated by Scala to show a different phase of system development
in C='s history: founding - 1970, 1970's, 1980's, and the Amiga. They also
had on display several products from each period. These included: a Commodore
manual typewriter (they started off as a typewriter repair shop and office
supply store in Toronto, then bought their supplier), Commodore adding
machines, hand-held calculators, digital watches, and other electronic
gadgets.

	The next phase surrounded the purchase of companies manufacturing LCD
screens and circuit boards. After Texas instruments (their supplier of
integrated circuits) started manufacturing calculators (and raising their
prices to competitors), they bought up a small IC manufacturing company, MOS
Technologies.

	The next display began with the production of the first hobbyist
micro computer (beginning the 6502 computer craze that created Apple and
Atari computers in the garages of their respective founders) and then the
first consumer microcomputer, the Personal Electronic Transactor (or PET)
which grew in sales so fast that it caused CBM to cease production on almost
all other products at the time. The next monitor covered the VIC-20, the
Commodore 64, 16, +4 (yeah I know, enormously successful, but did you know
that, except for RAM the 16 was superior to the 64 - more colours, higher
resolution better sound, and so on?).

	On display were prototypes of the VIC-20 (painted silver) and the C=
64 (painted gold), as well as the SX-64, the Plus-4, and the C= PC-10,
Commodore's entry in the IBM PC compatible market. The final monitor told
the story of a little company called the Amiga Corporation and the exciting
computer they were developing, C='s acquisition of it, and the history to
this date. On display here... well you can guess, can't you?

	The final section was a TV set playing all of the TV ads from the
late 70's and early to mid 80's which helped sell 13,000,000 + C= 64's (this
laser disk should be mandatory viewing for C= marketing people) including
hard-hitting ads showing what you would need to ad to an Apple II or an IBM
PC to equal the 64 which retailed for a fifth the price.

	If you continued to the right, you passed C='s MS-DOS compatible
systems, including a colour 486-DX laptop (grrrr......). You then went on to
a small section with A500s, A3000s and CDTVs. On the other side was a DPAINT
IV art contest on A4000's.

SEMINARS

	I went to two seminars at the show, one on Amigavision Pro and a
public session with Lewis Eggebrecht (VP of Engineering). I'll cover Lewis
Eggebrecht's talk first.

	Mr. Eggebrecht began his talk telling us a little about his past
experiences. Starting off at IBM, he led the team in Boca Raton which was
responsible for developing the original IBM PC. He then moved to Franklin
Computers where he helped to develop the 1st Apple II clone chips. After a
period of serving as an independent consultant, he then moved to C= where he
took over as VP in charge of the the MS-DOS clones.  While there he became
interested in the Amiga, and when position of VP of engineering opened up,
he took it.

	He then covered the anatomy of C= engineering (only 200 full time
employees) the Largest being CATS, followed by VLSI design (23 people), also
System Hardware, System Architecture, Software Development, Product Planning,
Agency Certification (FCC, etc), Publications, Product Assurance, Test
Engineering, Mechanical Design (cases, etc), Component Quality, and
Engineering Services.

	Next was an AmigaVision slideshow and address concerning engineering
goals. Objectives included:

        - enhancing and extend the Amiga architecture
        - improving development tools and design methods. This will allow
          for faster development of new systems
        - producing a family of state of the art Amiga systems, from the low
          (sub $500) home & family systems, to high-end systems to compete
          with the most powerful graphics and sound workstations

He then covered the VLSI chipset development strategy.  Key points included:

        - this area is the key to new product development and therefore a
          top priority of the engineering department
        - aimed at providing a quick response to industry developments, so
          that C= can be the one of the first companies out with a platform
          incorporating new technology, This includes new processors such
          as the forthcoming Motorola 68060.
        - upgraded development methodologies, including going to an all
          CMOS-based system, and using the most powerful development tools
          available
        - low-end systems will be cost-effective, and retain backward
          compatibility as much as possible
        - high-end systems will cater to markets which require significant
          performance and extensive graphics capabilities

Next he covered the current AGA chipset:

        - this development marked the first use of new development tools
          and procedures (took less time to develop than ECS)
        - Lisa manufactured by third party (NCR (AT&T) and HP)
        - 4x video bandwidth of ECS
        - 25 bit palette (24 bitplane colour + 1 genlock bit)
        - 8 bit display
        - sprites useable in screen border (overscan)
        - 2, 4-bit play fields useable in all resolutions
        - Scroll with 35 ns granularity
        - 16, 32, and 64 bit wide sprites supported independent of screen
          resolution

FUTURE VLSI CHIP SETS

        CONSUMER AND LOW END SYSTEMS

        - 2 chips each with >100k transistors
        - synchronous to video clock
        - 160 - 280 pin packages
        - 32 bit DRAM or VRAM
        - 57 MHz pixel clock
        - ECS & AGA downwardly compatible. Ensuring this is one of the
          things that slows development
        - Support for 1, 2, & 4 MB floppy drives using standard technology
        - support for ALL 32 bit Motorola CPUs (including 680x0, and 880x0)
        - 8x memory bandwidth over AGA, 2x (at least) blitter performance
        - 800 x 600 72 hz resolution, higher at lower refresh rates.
        - 1 - 24 bit colour at any resolution (this was decided the week
          before WOCA, at Pasedena he said 16 bit)
        - FIFO serial port with large buffer to support very high baud rates
        - 8 meg chip RAM, all but unlimited fast RAM

        HIGH END SYSTEMS

        - 4 chips (750k - 1M transistors)
        - 32/64 bit VRAM
        - 57 - 114 Mhz pixel clock (asynchronous design)
        - chunky pixel mode (commonly used in IBM PC systems) which will be
          supported by the blitter (bit instead of word)
        - CD-ROM with 100 Mbit/sec transfer rate
        - frame buffer/grabber built in
        - screen promotion
        - 1k x 1k x 24 bit 72 hz screens (more at lower refresh)
        - 8 voice 16 bit >100Khz sound
        - on-demand DMA
        - 12 - 20 x memory bandwidth (32-64 bit memory)
        - 32 bit blitter (8x performance of AGA)
        - 24 bit true colour mode
        - will support multiple simultaneous chip sets working together,
          allowing separate displays, or drastically higher resolutions
          (multiprocessing)
        - enhanced hardware compress/decompress including JPEG/MPEG
        - video upgrade modularity
        - 100 Khz
        - 32 bit processor independent bus for new CPU's (multiprocessing)
          including RISC chips (they should announce a choice for RISC chip
          in less than 1 year)
        - asynchronous design
        - 1 downside is that it may not be 100% ECS/AGA compatible

Immediate, and near (less than 1 year) plans

        - AGA and above across entire product line
        - modularity of all new systems to ease upgrade path
          (slots/motherboard swaps)
        - all surface mount chips
        - timely introduction of new processors and upgrades
        - Add DSP support (040-DSP board almost ready, using AT&T 25 MHz DSP
          & "personality" slot built in)
        - SCSI II 32-bit fast & wide controller, with >10 MB/s transfer
          rates (mid-January 1993 delivery)
        - move CD-ROM (CDTV) across product line.
        - add full-motion, full-screen video (MPEG, & better) to Amiga family
        - cost reduce & enhance CDTV (including upgrade (MB-swap) to
          existing users)
        - upgrade Amiga software & multimedia capabilities
        - accelerate deployment of VLSI
        - become active partnerships with other companies

AmigaDOS, "THE TRUE MULTITASKING OS"

Ongoing development in terms of:

        - compatibility
        - stability
        - flexibility
        - localization (international - 18 languages and growing)
        - retargetability
        - increased performance
        - multimedia extensions

Future AmigaOS releases:
        - 3.1 - API networking extensions, file exchange, printershare,
                DSP support
        - 4.0 - retargetability, full postscript support (including display)

Additional details from Q&A session:
        - intend to move high-density floppy across line
        - new family of monitors forthcoming (QuadSync) 
        - new third-party bridgeboards for 4000 & 1200 (386 DX, 486)
        - laptop will have to wait until they finish converting from HMOS to
          CMOS (the models they've prototyped are < 1 hr life and HEAVY), they
          have not done anything to hinder 3rd parties from developing them
        - totally programmable resolutions at high end
        - full design kit for A-1200/4000 is available through CATS

Amigavision Professional

        Well, what can I say its 100% improved, full support for AGA, CDTV,
and several new formats. Much better editing and debugging tools and a
freely distributable player.  Price - for AV owners - $90, list $299.

-Scott, the Amigavangelist
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