From myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 25 18:50:16 1994 Received: from nak.berkeley.edu (nak.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.136.21]) by CSOS.ORST.EDU (8.6.4/8.6.4) with ESMTP id SAA02362 for ; Tue, 25 Jan 1994 18:50:13 -0800 Received: from uclink.berkeley.edu by nak.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.40) id SAA07873; Tue, 25 Jan 1994 18:50:11 -0800 Received: from localhost by uclink.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.33(web)-oc3) id SAA19462; Tue, 25 Jan 1994 18:43:14 -0800 Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 18:41:22 -0800 (PST) From: Alexis David Dinno Subject: Amiga Laptop Quest Report #1 (fwd) To: ridgwad@CSOS.ORST.EDU Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: R disclaimer: Look, you all ride the net, some of you've probably read Focault's Pendulum, you KNOW that ANYONE can be misinformed. I've tried to put together what seems to be the most accurate picture of the Amiga Laptop in Contemporary Society. Don't sue me. Amiga Laptop Quest Report I Hello there oh ye faithful! Thanks for all your interest and contributions which have made this quest possible. First let me say one thing: as far as I can tell Ami portables have existed, do exist and will continue to do so (though I might halt at grow and flourish). The undertaking of this project initially started on bulletin boards local to the Amiga's birth place in the San Francisco Bay Area for the purpose of turning my A500 into a laptop portable (I recently upgraded to an A3000). I hopped onto the internet and discovered a wealth of interest from many people in issues relevant to our Holy Grail: the laptop Ami. The recent shape of my efforts has been directed toward the larger question of ANY Ami laptop. An abundant wealth of response has prompted me to organise this information into several sections: -The Whys of an Amiga Laptop -The Existence of such Beasts -The Involvement (or not) of C= -The Hacks -Hurdles -Current Projects -The Future You all would not believe the ammount of crap I had to sift through when ASCII dumping from the likes of comp.sys.amiga.hardware to my text editor. The sheer ammount of info has been enourmous (and much appreciated lest I appear ingracious). In order to facilitate the edification of the Ami SIG, I will be posting and mailing only this highly edited file (and ones like it in the future). However, I will be making the net, mail, and board transcripts available via FTP site. This is so that we can focus directly on the most pertinant information and progress toward the general accessability of laptop Ami's for those who so desire them. Fast, and open communication has been the key to this quest's initial success. I will continue to provide e-mail updates for those who wish to contact me via e-mail at: myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Furthermore, I will attempt to provide a list of individuals who wish to work together on actually developing laptops. This list will be by requested invitation only (that is only if one so desires and e-mails me about it). Alright on to the report. THE WHYS OF THE AMIGA LAPTOP/PORTABLE Why portables? In general, many users find that their computing needs or applications do not need to be limited by the location of their desks. We like to write notes on the train, plot graphs in physics class, and in my case, use MIDI sequencers in places other than my own home. For some these needs can be met by the use of commercially available laptops such as ATs or powerbooks or even HP calculators. Data can often be uploaded or translated from one system to another. In such a case the available portables may serve well. But for others among us, only an application of laptop Amiga software will allow us to perform the task at hand in a way which harmonizes with our other computing lives. Still others may want a portable Amiga only, one's game system, or flight or road trip planner/organizer. And finally, there are those of us who desire the use of Amiga hardware/software packages to perform tasks unique to Ami, wich have never been portable. One such notion is the 'on the road video editing workstation' - an Ami portable, with a video slot and a toaster. Perhaps there is even the glamor of the idea 'my own DON'T PANICK clad electronic book.' While we are certain that this Ami laptop beast comes in many forms, all research to date suggests that there are many limitation and/or hurdles to their creation. An important consideration for those in search of the beast: what are the realities of technical possiblity for my needs? Do I need color displays? Long lasting power supply, or just a plug with no BRICK? Sound? Speed? Memory, Hard Drive? Serial or Parallel? While sift all your comments, it seemed very clear to me that we all have different needs and perspectives on what best constitutes and Ami laptop. I propose, that for those of us interested in developing the beast, we give some time to discussion of central or common needs so that our efforts may be easily built upon by those of us with more specialized requisites. That is enough of Why? for now. THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH BEASTS The Amiga portable has been in the world, probably is now, and will be again. My research (or more appropriately, your contributed words) has given the following 'sightings' of our quarry: -A1000 portable hack. I've heard rumors of a plan, and one respondant apparently made one. -A500 laptop/portable hack. There are many reports of this animal. I'm currently trying to locate two individuals who have made the attempt (uncertain of the particulars of their success. -A600 MANY suggestions that this is the way to go. Several individs indicate they are en route to hacking their A600s into portable form as we speak. Rumors of a diagramed hack. One 600 portable spotted. -A1200 Many also suggest the 1200 to be the path to an Ami hack. Not much else to mention. -Commercial Portables Sevral sightings and published words and images about these. Apparently one was actually PRODUCED in germany for a breif time (we suppose). This beast was a laptop, with AC power supply and a monochrome screen. Other sightings have been made of American product(s) within various Amiga 'zines, both as advertisements and as product reviews. -C=64 portables were made and sold. These chasses are apparently pertinent to laptop construction. OK time for a little reality check on these puppies. There are a number of characteristics surrounding the various hacks which are recurrent and need pointing out. -About half of the reports talk about AC power supplies. Batteries are also mentioned but we'll discuss the problems in the HACKS section -About half of the hacked portables relied on small screen portable TVs. In other words the portables were portable SYSTEMS where the chasses of the various components had been reduced only. -There were very FEW (one in fact) reports of color graphics used on an Amiga portable. THE INVOLVEMENT OF COMMODORE OK here's some of the really bad news. According to several interviews with C= folks like Dave Haynie, Dave Pleasance and Lew Eggebrecht as well as information given to C= stockholders by C=, there are absolutely NO plans for the development of an Ami portable. C=, well you know, we can all say good and bad things about this company. They seem resolute on this one. Apparently legal action, or its threat was used to leverage other firms who tried to develop and market a third party laptop Amiga clone. For those of you who are stockholders, and those of you who can organise, you can decide for yourselves if C= can or should provide a laptop. I believe however, that for the short term, WE are going to have to provide any laptop. THE HACKS That's really how this whole thing got started right? So why doesn't she shut up and get on with it. Ok we know the beasties exist, and more are on the way. As mentioned previously there are problems and conditions (aren't there always?) which we'll deal with before we talk about what IS being done and what WILL be done. Hurdles The problem which many kind people have reiterated over and over again: Whoooeee! That Suckers a fat Juice HOG! Well she IS called the FAT Agnus ...te hee. Ahem. Seems to me there's a couple of issues here: -What chipset suck more juice? Words like CMOS NMOS and TTL get bandied about. OK get the specs and find out what the power reqs are for each, so we can see where we need to build our power base from. -What machine sucks more juice? We're fortunate to have several versions of the same thing to play with, that is, the As 500, 600, 1000, 1200 and CDTV are roughly withing the same computing ballpark (yes I KNOW which one I'd rather have, and which one I rather not). So which of the Doggesses is the best suited in terms of low power consumption? -Peripherals. This is a large topic. Ideally we'll find some LCD solution to the monitor issue, but for some, the portably TV is an answer. Unfortunately these also take up the juice. Another issue are the floppies, hard drives and video toasters we're all going to need. Those babies suck it up. -Battery technology will need to be on the cutting for our beasts. Several individs maintain that video-cam equipment often uses heavy duty cells designed for sustained loads. Which one is best. Alternately, what about an integrated AC adaptor for those who want portable to mean transportable? I guess the gist of my point here is that laptop construction is going to require extreme care and consideration for power. We'll hear much more about this. Another set of hurdles for hacks is functionality. What level of performance are we going to get for our little beastie? -Displays are going to be tough. For some, a simple monochorme LCD (oh heck...LED) would do the trick as far as their applications were concerned. For others, a 256 grey scale would work. Then there are those of us who want, who need 1088x1088 16.8 Million colors on the screen at once for their workbench screen (snrk). From what you've all said so far, there are two paths. -The first is the portable TV, not too much needs to be said although if anyone could provide specs on weight,power consumption quality, etc. that'd be just fine. -The second would of course be some kind of LCD display. Not too many seem exactly sure as to the precise KIND of LCD, nor of exactly HOW to interface it. The most coherent notion we seem to have at the moment is the gre-pc Color VGA display from IBM which apparently is an LCD emmulation of a standard VGA monitor. This sounds pretty good especially since I understand that all the screen modes available to, say the ECS (PAL AND NTSC) are displayable by a VGA monitor. Also we may have someone who can order these things in bulk. Another peripheral question would be that of the keyboard and mouse. I'm totally clueless about this one and could use some enlightening. Some have suggested that a C=64 joystick can be effectively implemented via joymouse to replace the rat. What can anyone say about small powerbook-type trackballs? We are really going to need to find some way to deal with the keyboard also. Or are we? What do you all think? Oh goodness it's getting late! Well one last thought on this section before I get to bed. What can anyone say about the use of a CDTV for a hack? I've heard it's more a more compact motherboard than the A500, and that it consumes less power. Whatch y'all know 'bout dat? Current Projects It appears that a number of individs are keen on hacking an Ami laptop presently. I've tried to note the most pertinant hurdles they are encountering. I will also mention that the majority of them seem to be focussed on the A600 as the Amiga to train to heel. I've also mentioned that a good basic setup which reflects the meeting of many common needs would be an excellent step toward the creation of a public Ami portable hack. I propose, as a general goal and with an open, invitation for discussion, that the creation of an A600 laptop portable, with and LCD display (color? grey scale?), FD and HD?,serial, disk, video and parallel ports integral controller interface (whatever replaces the rat and keyboard), and some form of unintrusive power supply (no BRICK, no marine ship batteries) should be a reasonable goal to aim for; we may fall short of it, or be pleasantly surprised at the results. THE FUTURE Well who can say? I for one will continue to provide facillitation for this topic as long as there are people on the net who want to participate. I will certainly continue to provide compiled information and act as a relay for those wanting to follow this material closely. I certainly hope that we can together create some kind of collective effort which results in what would be called, to some extent, by everyone, success. And who knows, maybe when C= makes its next big shift in production, it'll include a state of the art laptop Amiga (which those of us with little in the way of financial resources can drool over longingly as we write poetry on our A37000 laptop hacks ;} ) Always open to your comments, insights advice and whatever. Alexis myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu From myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Mon Feb 7 10:18:12 1994 Received: from nak.berkeley.edu (nak.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.136.21]) by CSOS.ORST.EDU (8.6.4/8.6.4) with ESMTP id KAA18113 for ; Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:18:08 -0800 Received: from uclink.berkeley.edu by nak.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.40) id KAA04892; Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:18:07 -0800 Received: from localhost by uclink.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.33(web)-oc3) id KAA26058; Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:11:19 -0800 Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:11:18 -0800 (PST) From: Alexis David Dinno Subject: Amiga Laptop Report #2 (fwd) To: Dean Ridgwad Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: R disclaimer:You KNOW that ANYONE can be misinformed. Open your door to a good day, but be prepared for a bad one. Don't sue me. Amiga Laptop Quest Report II Hello there oh ye faithful! thanks for all your interest and contributions which have made this quest possible. I would like to start this report with an announcement. The Developers' list which I alluded to in the last report is now a reality. This list is for those interested in actually creating a set of laptop hacks. Any who wish to join can e-mail me expressing you desire to do so. Hopefully we'll have a working set of hacks to spread all over creation in short order. The undertaking of this project initially started on bulletin boards local to the Amiga's birth place in the San Francisco Bay Area for the purpose of turning my A500 into a laptop portable (I recently upgraded to an A3000). I hopped onto the internet and discovered a wealth of interest from many people in issues relevant to our Holy Grail: the laptop Ami. The recent shape of my efforts has been directed toward the larger question of ANY Ami laptop. This time around, we'll discuss the following: -Amiga Laptop Advocacy -Sightings -Development Report (proto) -The Hacks You all would not believe the ammount of crap I had to sift through when ASCII dumping from the likes of comp.sys.amiga.hardware to my text editor. The sheer ammount of info has been enourmous (and much appreciated lest I appear ingracious). In order to facilitate the edification of the Ami SIG, I will be posting and mailing only this highly edited file (and ones like it in the future). However, I will be making the net, mail, and board transcripts available on request. This is so that we can focus directly on the most pertinant information and progress toward the general accessability of laptop Ami's for those who so desire them. Fast, and open communication has been the key to this quest's initial success. I will continue to provide e-mail updates for those who wish to contact me via e-mail at: myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Alright on to the report. Advocacy: Well this time around, the advocacy forum seemed to focus on two issues: Should C= make an Ami laptop/portable? And WHY Ami laptop portable? Let's start with C= hmmm? Should C= or Shouldn't C=? That is the question...well most people in this discussion seemed to feel some need for an Ami laptop/portable, but few actually directly suggested that C= produce it. The first point for C='s investment in a laptop seemed to be the recognition factor. A large number of uses for multi-media were touted, from field sales, to portable demos. Other uses, and users, of an Ami laptop were mentioned. The point being that a laptop Ami is going to visit the real world, and that means Name Recognition for C= et al. Everyone reading this knows C='s US marketing is the pits (despite the fact that C= has sold between 1/2 to 1/3 the number of PC units as Apple this year which is a damn sight better than the past, although this does reflect more of a slump Apple's market share), Ami laptop would generate some significant product recognition in the States, which we'd all love. I'm not too sure about Europe (where Ami is number 2, last time I looked at stats, and Apple doesn't even count). The other point made in the case for C= to produce an Ami laptop is stereotyping. Yes, Ami IS fantastic for multi-media and desktop-video. BUT, there are a number of functions which Ami performs just as well, if not better than other platforms, and getting Ami out there in public doing it will foster an Ami positive environment for developers and for users. I mean, I haven't seen the Mac DTP program which I prefer to Page Stream, nor have I seen the Mac sequencer which I prefer to Music-X (my own humble personal oppinions, flames not welcome), yet the Mac is "KNOWN" to be the "BEST" platform for these types of applications. Amiga recognition via laptop would do a great deal toward creating some elbow room for Amigites among the rest of the PC world; YES you have some valid choices, and NO you don't have to maintain a patheticly hostile and defensive stance by trashing the other platforms available. There was basically one point with variants for C= not to produce a laptop in the near future. On a simple level it boils down to C= just can't hack it right now. Not that Ami laptop couldn't be created, but C= is having enough trouble trying to allocate its resources efficiently among its incredibly successful 1200 and CD32. The drain imposed by the creation of Ami laptop would take too much from the development of AAA, the 5000 and the sustenance of C= in general. Some have noted technically, that the cost of such a machine (assuming it was about on par with the 1200) would run into the unaffordable and uncompetitive (a comment we've all been hearing much of late by way of comparing the costs of PeeCees, Macs and Amigas, I think). The notion that C= has its hands full at the moment seems to be widely regarded. Which leads to asking "Assuming some third party can develop the Ami laptop, why have it anyway?" Well, we've already talked about the visibility factor. We've mentioned multi-media. We've heard my tirade about stereotyping. We can all accept that there are a vast range of legitimate uses of the Amiga. The issue then seems a question of general laptop legitimacy. Some feel no need for $2000 gameboys (well gosh what Else is there to life?). Others, like myself, find a nice integration of my Amiga with many my lifes activities, and would like to make such integration more seamless, by removing the physical impediments imposed by lugging 75 pounds of machine around. Really, some would find the laptop amusing, helpful, practical or a solution in many senses and not necessarily in that order. Others would find it useless, except as a plaything or status symbol for "yuppie scum." But then that's why we're trying to develop these hacks anyway... Sightings: Well on the commercial side of our quest we've found some dissapointing news. The US company rumored to have designed, if not actually produced, an Ami laptop has been reported by several individs as Newer Technologies, a third party Macintosh developer. According to one source, who apparently interviewed the engineer heading the Ami laptop project (one Mr Pete Estes) "They never (at the time they were advertising) had a working prototype, and they were pulled from a Toronto WOA show because they were trying to pass off a mockup connected to an Amiga hidden in the display as a working laptop." However another individ has claimed "They completed 1 prototype, before they were stopped by Commodore. Their initial release would have been a 68000, [an '030] version was going to be available." No one has been able to produce a mailing address or phone for the company which is rumored to be located in Topeka, Kansas. Another sighting (of dubious merit) has apparently occurred in the UK courtesy of some unnamed British Amiga magazines. Allegedly, advertisements of a C= laptop (complete with photos) have surfaced. This, of course, would contradict what C= has announced to its stockholders. As would similar reports from German Amiga rags... Reports from Ami laptop home micro-breweries are encouraging. A number of people have brought forth accounts of their personal hacks and the hacks of their acquaintances. Unfortunately, no one has produced a non-miniTV solution for the portable, however one individ is using a text-only LCD run out of the parallel port with some success. Currently, the development project is working towards a color VGA LCD solution to display. Another discouraging (perhaps) note concerning the laptop portable quest, is the overwhelming indication of AC adaptors being used, instead of batteries, although one of the developers has reported a battery solution, and should be forthcoming. Development Report: Okay, there's really not too much say here as we've only just got started. In the future this section will keep you informed on the progress we are making regarding particular technical aspects of Amiga hacking. This section will also serve to ask you all for any pertinent information you might supply. For example, the developers are currently looking for hard specs on any color VGA LCD which has a standard VGA interface. We are especially interested in manufacturers, price and part numbers if available. One thing more, the developers are trying to create some set of hacks for the Amiga community, if you feel you have any information or insights to contribute (aside from telling us for gazillionth time that the chipset uses too much power ;} ), please contact me at: myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu THE HACKS Sorry to dissapoint you who've read all this way with the expectation of glorious knowledge found...But we've only got one documented hack (A500) so far, and it needs a bit of cleaning up before we publish it. Patience til next time; I'm one woman and can only get so much done. Always open to your comments, insights advice and whatever. Alexis myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Next report out around March 1st 1994 From myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Wed Mar 2 15:05:37 1994 Received: from nak.berkeley.edu (nak.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.136.21]) by CSOS.ORST.EDU (8.6.5/8.6.4) with ESMTP id PAA21214 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 1994 15:04:09 -0800 Received: from uclink.berkeley.edu by nak.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.40) id PAA29532; Wed, 2 Mar 1994 15:01:32 -0800 Received: from localhost by uclink.berkeley.edu (8.6.4/1.33(web)-oc3) id OAA04581; Wed, 2 Mar 1994 14:53:25 -0800 Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 14:53:23 -0800 (PST) From: Alexis David Dinno Subject: Amiga Laptop Quest Report #3 To: Amiga Laptop Report Subscribers -- Phillip Garrow , Brian Lee , Paul Liss , Taufik , Dan Griffin , Andy Shelley , Edward Yee , Dean Ridgwad , Tom Lanhaus , Suras Gulrajanai , Mark Riederer , Chris Darnell , Ken Santiago , greg , jordan , jsevinsk , grover , eriechel , wicke , zsolizso , kleca , ao443 , Peter Phillips , wilks , bliss , Skyfox , morgan , kd , keithburns , Jiadar , spoon , "I.T.Dearing-SE2" , AMF , Andrew Pettifer , Jamie Krutz , Graham McLeod , Ahmad Badr , Jardar , steve , idr , richard , Christopher , wintermute , Thomas , Nathan Morse , Teemu , Chris , Ryan , Calum , Dave , Joseph , Roger , Fred , Tedd , Gus , Brian Ernst , Dana , Roger Anderson , Jonathan Dinerstein , Rodger Ang Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: R Disclaimer: Never trust what anyone tells you, and trust what your senses tell you only for the moment. You know that Anyone is capable of lying and being misinformed. Don't sue me. Amiga Laptop Quest Report III Howdy all. This report will be a slim one and focus on some rather eclectic issues pertaining to laptop development. I don't really have anything to report on this time other than the progress made in the Developers' Group. This seems to be due mainly to the end of discussion about the prized Amiga laptop/portable. OK, this time around I'm going to talk about three things: -Display Reality -Development Projects -A Tenative Hack Display Reality This is the hot question right? I mean are we going to be able to take advantage of our 24-bit graphic board/toaster setup on our laptop/portable's display (leaving aside power requirements)? In a word: no. I've spent a good deal of time sniffing after luke-warm trails of color LCD displays since the last report. I've also done some amount of library research. Frankly, the production technology, as well as the actual LCD technology isn't quite there yet. For those of you who aren't aware of how LCDs are made, I offer the following illumination (any EEs may feel free to correct any mistakes I make). Color LCD displays rely on Active Matrix technology. This sort of LCD is different from the ones we're all familiar with in our calculators and wristwatches. Active Matrix LCDs essentially have a circuit (transistor) for each pixel on the screen. This has two repercussions. First, Active Matrix LCDs draw more juice than passive LCDs. Second, and more importantly, EACH transistor has to be placed accurately and function properly. The consequence of a failed transistor is called a Stuck Pixel. Stuck pixels on a grey scale LCD may range in their visible effect from a dark pixel (one which never lights up) to a pixel which is always on. On a color LCD display, the effects are much more noticeable: "Hey! How come that red spot won't go away?" This can be quite annoying. The trouble with producing color Active Matrix displays, is that you need Three transistors per pixel: one each for red, green and blue. This creates two problems. First the probability of having a stuck pixel is tripled due to the number of transistors needed being tripled. Second, the probability of having a stuck pixel is further increased because the transistors need to be packed much more tightly together. The result of this difficulty in error free production, is that up until recently, a 50% quality fail rate was about average (pretty good actually). Recently some producers of color LCDs have reported 45-35% fail rates. This is VERY costly in terms of production. Furthermore, the production time on these things is SLOW. The major producers of color LCDs were making about 100 a month or less in 1992. The production technology is apparently improving however; NEC (which is attempting to become THE premier producer of color LCD displays...but that's another story) has claimed recently that they expect to be able to produce color LCD displays in the thousands to tens of thousands per month. They also claim to have the unit price of color LCD screens down to around $300-$500 by 1995. The upshot of all this is that unless you're willing to pay the $3,000.00 to $15,000.00 (nope, those aren't typos) price for color LCD displays at the current time, color for your Amiga laptop/portable isn't very likely. OK a little bit about color LCDs themselves. They're on their way, as far as production is concerned. As far as their technical specs go they're nearly here already. Most of the specs I've seen for these devices talk about 640x480 pixel display resolutions. Not so good for PAL in interlace, but close. Some color LCD displays are limited in terms of the number of colors they can display. Some are limited to 250, some to a few thousand, some to 250,000. The price tends to correspond. There is also a promising trend toward analog (RGB) interfaces. While most of the units currently being produced (as far as I can tell) are digitally driven (TTL), the future of LCD monitors will boom in analog. Or so some corporations think. Apparently, NEC feels that LCD displays will entirely replace CRT displays due to comfort of use, and the lack of RF interference from LCDs. Therefore NEC is investing heavily into analog LCD R&D. The useability of these types of displays in Amiga terms, will increase. On the other hand. B&W and grey-scale LCDs are pretty common, and in some cases cheap (about $30). The problem, is the interface. Most LCDs are driven by a digital signal. However, all Amigas generate digital signals (in addition to the standard RGA analog) and the Developers' Group is currently hacking the appropriate interfaces. B&W? Grey-scale? ...faces falling, hopeful smiles wilting. Yeah B&W. Grey-scale. Leaving aside the issue of small screen TV displays. The question people need to ask themselves is this: what am I going to use a laptop Amiga for? Word-processing? DTP? Programming? Music? Terminal Apps? Most of the non-video/non-graphic apps work fine in B&W. Workbench certainly does. If you don't believe me try playing with a two color palette in your favorite apps (fer cryin out loud, Page Stream is B&W...pretty much). On the other hand, games might be a problem. Both in terms of color, and in terms of custom screen formats which might not be compatible with the LCD display (go buy a LYNX or Gameboy). Video, graphics and presentation apps might also suffer. Those of you who've diddled with your own hacks might want to start a discussion on c.s.Amiga.hardware about the merits of small TVs and B&W, or text-only (did I fail to mention that thois has been done?), or grey-scale display experiences. Developers' Group Well we've been getting along. I'd like to thank in particular Mike and Brian who've been putting a great deal of effort into this project, particularly with regards to the display issue. Right now the Devs are working on a TTL interface to drive a B&W display. The upside to this particular display solution, is that it should cost $60-$80 at the most (that includes LCD and interface), and the parts are easily found. The next step would probably be working out a similar hack for a 16 shade grey-scale LCD. I'm also doing some research into power supplies for those interested in the stand alone laptop (yeah I know, the custom chipset uses so much juice, that it would drain any battery in about 41 seconds....we'll never get anywhere with that mindset). This research is taking three directions. First, I've got a source who knows his stuff about camcorder and camera battery sytems. There may be a simple solution right there. One of the Devs apparently has built a battery power supply, and plans will be forthcoming. I'm doing some CRAZY research into alternative battery technology, particularly into the stand-alone flywheel electromechanical batteries being produced this spring by Honeywell (...what?). Anyway, this busy student has lots of research to do for her classes, so it may be a while before I can work significantly on the power supply solution. Cases have been another point of research. An industrial design artist has offered insights into the creation of custom cases. Furthermore a number of you have found some laptop-case solutions and shared them (please continue to do so!). In fact, one question I have is this: Are cases available as retail units, or is finding one simply a matter of luck at your local surplus/wasteland electronics store? A number of people have mentioned particular cases, but how would one go about acquiring such things? Any insights? Another proposal has been the modification of the existing Amiga case. One of the Devs is planning on creating a hinged fold-up display to attach to his A600. How about some well documented feedback about cases? Well that's about it for the Devs this month. If you have any information you think would be helpful, drop me a line via e-mail. If you are interested in working to help develop an Ami laptop/portable drop me a line and tell me what you are or were working on or what you'd like to help/be helped with. Hacks Well I promised I'd have an A500 hack ready for publishing this month, but I don't. Sorry. However, I am reporting here the rough sketch of an A500 hack offered by a member of the Amiga community (really it's more of an account of a hack). I'd like to note that the goal of the Development project, is to create a Well Documented set of detailed hacks, including illustrations and step-by-step instructions hopefully. The following information is offered up as brain-fodder. Perhaps it may be useful to some of the more ingeneous among us for creating a hack. Perhaps it will serve to stir up new ideas. THE FOLLOWING IS INFORMATION IS OFFERED AS IS, WITH NO ASSUMPTION OF LIABILITY FOR DAMAGE TO SELF OR PROPERTY RESULTING FROM ITS ATTEMPTED IMPLEMENTATION. (in other words, be careful and know what your doing) I used the old Compaq "sewing machine" style case. I slipped in an A500 motherboard (don't remember vers#). Added an AddIDE for the 52 Meg HD (works great!), and the Supra RX500 (?) ram board, with some hacks to make it fit sideways in the case. I created an I/O panel (for the right side of the case, where there was just a ventilation grill before) that has all the standard Amiga ports available, as well as a new interface for an external RGB monitor (that's right--2 monitors at the same time. handy for presentations!). Display is by a Sony 10" Trinitron RGB monitor that I heavily reworked (made the contoller board 1/4 the previous size). It uses the original Compaq power supply. I also modified the A500 keyboard so it would fit into the portable keyboard case (involved cutting up the keyboard metal and PCB, and glueing it back together in a different configuration). The final touch was to make a number of Amiga logos, via PostScript, and laminate them, and glue them into the logo spots (sort of depressions in the plastic case) so that it looks more or less professional. Does anyone want to expand upon this and maybe rework it into something more presentable? Parting Words And so we come to the end of another exciting blah blah blah. No really, thank you all for your input. The internet has given us access to the great wealth of resources and information that individuals possess, and allowed us to share them. If anyone has any questions, insights or criticisms, please feel free to write me at: myrtle@uclink.berkeley.edu Warmest Regards, Alexis Next Report out around April 1st