4]------------------------------ 3]AMIGA 90: Big Times in Cologne 3]By Tom Jones 4]------------------------------ "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?" Though I saw that message on a sign in a South Carolina stock-car tuner's garage, it equally applies to what I saw at this year's biggest Amiga show, Amiga 90 in Cologne, Germany. It was a show at which the A500 finally "got some respect," acquiring PC boards, networking, accelerators and more. These are "professional" high-end enhancements offering speed for money. The Cologne show was managed by a new German subsidiary of AmiShows Inc. Two large halls were reserved. Altogether it occupied 25,000 square meters and was expected to receive 60,000 visitors, compared to 38,000 last year. Commodore GMBH was generally upbeat and optimistic, not a surprise from a division that contributed about 70 percent of Commodore's sales last year. Helmut Jost, General Manager of Commodore GMBH, predicted confidently the company will see the three-millionth Amiga sold in the next three or four months. AMIGANET: Word is out Amiga is now a "connected" machine. Advanced Computer Design GMBH and GVP from the U.S. both demonstrated their versions of AMIGANET, which provides 10 megabit/sec Ethernet controller cards for both A2000/3000 and A500 machines for about $600 each. Up to 30 stations are possible. Once you are on the network you can run Amiganet software (included) to treat any device listed by "ASSIGN LIST" as if it were on your system, including RAW, SER, scanners, hard disks etc. GVP demonstrated accessing a 600MB read/write CD drive from another A3000 on the Amiganet by simply clicking on the "RHD1" (for remote HD1:) icon. The speed seemed the same as accessing files from the A3000 direct connected to the CD drive. Amiganet also includes a CHAT mode and a MAILBOX facility. The ACD software included a printer spooler, network monitoring, and a conference chat mode. ACD also had Decnet TSS/IP, Novell software and X-Windows available for users needing mainframe access. This is a full MIT implementation of the X11 standard, which runs as an AmigaDOS task in one window. When using TSSnet on a DEC network, X-windows makes Amiga DECwindows- compatible. DeltaNet is a lower speed (100 kbs) and lower cost net for A2000/3000 machines. Cost is $400 for the first two stations, $230 for each additional station. DeltaNet offers features similar to AmigaNet, and is fully multitasking. Under development are chat mode, conFerence chat, network monitoring software, A500 and A1000 interfaces, and a card for "connecting PC <> AMIGA, to make possible an Amiga-PC network," which may be a card for the PC-compatible machines. New accelerators for A500 and A2000 were there. Stormbringer 530, the newest Hurricane 68030 board for the A500 and A2000 was in stock in 28mhz, 33mhz, and 50mhz with a socket for coprocessors. The board is similar but not identical to the Mega-Midget 68030 board sold in the U.S. by Pulsar for $795. Tornado by Rossmoeller is a speed-up board for the A500/1000/2000. It replaces the CPU chip with the 68000-16 running at 14.32 mhz, adds a 16k cache memory and has a socket for the 68881/2. It doubles the speed of an Amiga even without the coprocessor, costs DM498 ($335.) Harms Computertechnik of Bremen sells another pair of A500/A2000 accelerators, in 68020 and 68030 flavors. Both GVP and Supra were running animated shows, digitized from popular VCR tapes, at 15 frames/sec direct from the hard disks. GVP had its 3001+ 68030 accelerator on show, from 28mhz to 50mhz versions. The news, however, is the brand new "Faaast Rom" upgrade for that board and all the firm's SCSI controllers. On this product I can give personal testimony: It makes my 3001 hard drive scream! From CTL-AMIGA-AMIGA to the Workbench screen is 19 sec. and it preps 40MB in only three minutes. It includes a new icon-driven install program that allows you to let the program walk you through installing a new hard drive or take control yourself. Under manual mode you can prep or unprep the disk, assign partitions of any size, format, and for SCSI (not AT) drives you can remap bad blocks and do low-level format using the SCSI built in functions. Bad- Block deallocation for the AT drives is done using a CLI command. Hot tip: When I somehow developed a corrupt bootblock not long ago, even the GVP tech center could not help me reformat the AT HD using the original install disk programs. The "FaaastPrep" disk can ignore the error and get around it. Still not enough? GVP will also throw in a multitasking memory test that works on 16 and 32 bit available memory, a MC68881/68882 test, and a BridgeBoard install program. Gigatron introduced Arriba, an internal A500 20Mb 2.5-inch Quantum (16 bit AT interface 23ms) drive. That's right: 2.5 inches. GMBH advertised an "affordable flicker fixer" (external for A500, a card for A2000) at "fantastic prices." Soon. ICD Europe GMBH showed its high-tech internal "Flicker Free Video" card for the A500/1000/2000. It installs in the Denise socket, leaving the video slot free. It automatically adjusts to PAL or NTSC. With NTSC it is possible to use a standard VGA monitor. The price is $600. At last, 24-bit video cards were in evidence. The Visiona card displayed by Xpert Systems brings the A3000 the full 16,777,216 colors on screen simultaneously on a 1024X768 screen. This card is compatible with the A3000. Future plans are to extend the Visiona 24-bit paint program to run on transputer systems and to add a 120 MIP Intel 860 chip to the board. In the same arena, the Amiga Centre Scotland brought the Harlequin 32 bit frame buffer to the show, stating in the brochure that "while 24 bits is sufficient for a 16 million color display . . ." The Video Toaster by NewTek was demonstrated with its 24-bit output, incredible video effects and equally great 24-bit paint program. Star Printers showed the new LC24-200 Color, which I confess I have lusted for with its true 24-pin letter quality, 50-222 cps, 30K buffer, 360 dpi and color. To deliver the printouts your color (or B/W) printer is supposed to be capable of, IrseeSoft can provide Turboprint II. This program does away with those strange "stripes" in color printouts, and that isn't all. Turboprint is a multitasking program running in the background that makes graphic printouts look like photographs on almost any printer. Turboprint Professional even prints giant posters in segments and has built-in color separation for four color offset printing. TurboprintII is DM98. ($66.) and TP Professional DM188 ($125). Though I was assured it will work with NTSC Amigas, I have not tested it yet. Upgrades to reliable business programs, rather than new programs, seemed to be the rule this year, which probably means the Amiga is maturing a bit. Caligari Broadcast was used to do impressive 24-bit 3-D images, which will now no longer have to be displayed with Targa graphic cards in the PC side of an A2000. The new BeckerText II from Germany is a strong contender incorporating AREXX support, the ability to personalize pulldown menus, open 15 windows on the monitor simultaneously, and wrap text around graphics. It should be available in the U.S. soon from Abacus. In the game area, The Larry Story and Elvira were popular U.S. imports. More good news was the release of MicroProse' Silent Service II and Knights of the Sky, both with decent graphics. Ironically, the long awaited F19 Stealth for Amiga has a Persian Gulf playfield. It also has IBM graphics in common with Flight of the Intruder. FLOTI, as it is known here, plays great and is a detailed recreation of the air war against Hanoi, despite the VGA scenery. For programmers, the newest release of Dr. Wirth's Oberon arrived at Amiga'90 from Switzerland. It is said to be highly structured, object- oriented, and based mostly on the earlier Modula-2. A new revision of M2- Amiga was also distributed. Emulations of every type of computer were available. While I realize this is like putting a farm trailer behind a Porsche, they are available. It has been noted (mostly by PC magazines) Amiga users are notorious for refusing to accept the inevitability of IBM domination of the market. Perhaps we have mended bridges a bit this year by giving Amiga users several hardware options to make their machines PC compatible. I had to go back months to find an ad for even the Commodore Bridgeboards in the U.S. press. Could this mean dealers are aware the A3000 doesn't support a Bridgeboard and are dumping it? One of the most interesting is the Profex Power PC Board for the A500, sold in the U.S. by Pulsar. This AT card runs Phoenix Bios, MSDOS 4.01, and 8mhz V30 processor. The specs say it is equal to an IBM AT when using the bios TTY driver to scroll text, but when directly accessing the screen it is seven times the speed of an 8mhz IBM AT. It now supports CGA and Hercules video, but the next Eprom release is planned to offer VGA and EGA emulation. This board, unlike the Commodore Bridgeboard, takes total control of the A500 while running. The ATonce PC board, another A500 offering from Vortex not yet in the U.S. to my knowledge, is an internal piggyback style AT-compatible. This board runs an 80286 CPU at 8mhz. It plugs in the 68000 socket and will use 640 KB of a one meg A500's memory. It can use the Amiga hard disk and floppies and emulates Hercules and CGA video. Like PowerPC board, it does not multitask. It does leave your expansion slot empty, however. Alternative A2000 PC cards: Rossmoeller AG has a 14 mhz XT-compatible board with a coprocessor socket, to be available in January. It is not multitasking but should be fast. It retails for DM348 ($235.) You can get a 386si add-on module for the CBM2088 XT ($850) and a turbo option to double its speed ($130). Rossmoeller also offers a 7 mhz AT-compatible w/o Coprocessor for DM498 ($332). There were three simulators for the Amiga. Medusa V. 1.2 is a combination hardware/software Atari-ST emulation and is reported to be able to run the English version of TOS1.6. It is now compatible with the 68030 accelerators and TOS1.6 can be loaded to 32 bit RAM. It runs 20 times as fast as a stock Atari-ST when a 68030 is used. It can use the SCSI hard drive. As with AMAXII, one must buy the TOS ROM chips from an Atari dealer. It costs about $350, and ROMS are about $10. Chamaleon is a software-only Atari-ST. It will run in a 512K A500 and uses only 128K. It runs at the actual Atari-ST machine speed and reads and writes ST disks on the Amiga floppy drives but cannot access hard drives yet. It costs DM89 ($60). AMTARI version 2.0 is the latest software-only emulator. It runs in 512K, at full Atari-ST speed. It can access hard disks and can be installed on the hard disk. AMtari claims to have a "software flicker-fixer" to improve the high resolution mode screen. All this and only DM69 ($46). While it may never be used on home computers, it is a great coup for Commodore to be field-testing Unix System V, V. 4.0 with plans to have it ready by the end of the year. The Amiga Markt & Technik, a German magazine, reports CBM had A3000s running UNIX and X-windows at the Dallas Comdex, and that CBM was using a new A2420 video card which has the Texas Instruments TI34010 chip to generate 1024-by-1024, 24-bit color. It is reported to be an A2000-compatible card driven by a device driver named Tiga.Device. Xpert Systems showed transputer cards and announced it had the Assembler to write programs for it, but no software yet. So what is a transputer? Physically it is a full size A2000/3000 card which can support smaller transputer cards, creating a parallel processor. It could mean a worker would have all the power of a supercomputer sitting on his desk. If Commodore won't do it, someone else will. Gigatron is still working on its laptop Amiga and may have it ready in "one to three months" according to an employee. Rumor is it will have a color LCD screen and the extended chip set. It may be ready for the Berlin AmiEXPO. MC68040 fever: Not only is Commodore listed by Motorola as a 68040 developer, but Supra is now developing its own A3000 68040 accelerator. The entrepreneurs and small companies that fill the needs that bigger companies don't find profitable had some fascinating products. One such company specializes in interfacing pocket computers and digital diaries to the Amiga. Transfile is a software/hardware system to interface the Casio SF7000/7500/8000/9000 or the Sharp IQ-7000 and ZQ-5100-5300 series or the Sharp E500. This costs around $125, is unprotected and can be run from hard disk. The software is not NTSC compatible, but an NTSC version is promised soon. A hardware security system, produced by NordSoft, plugs into the 68000 socket and has Eproms on board which contain programs that execute when the system is booted or times out. Anyone who works with older computers will recognize the message that now jumps up on the Amiga screen: PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD. Extensive administration software is built in. Kickstart3 allows three Kickstart Roms to be switch selectable. Rossmoeller even sells an Eprom Burner with software for the Amiga. Amiga'90 was fun and recharged fans' batteries with new enthusiasm for the future of Commodore and Amiga. The next German AmiExpo is to be in Berlin on April 25, 1991. 4]END OF TEXT