====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors- / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional Newsletter) KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING || ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Gateway, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 981204 A N O P E N L E T T E R F R O M T H E T O P A M I G A N R E P O R T O N C O M P U T E R ' 9 8 O F F I C I A L Q N X A N N O U N C E M E N T T H A N K Y O U , A M I G A N S I C O A S P R U C E S U P W E B S I T E T H E R E T U R N O F D I C E G A T E W A Y C O M P U T E R S H O W G R O W S G A R Y P E A K E O N F L E E C Y E L S P E T H M O S S O N F L E E C Y P E T R O H E A D S T O I N D I A A M I G A O P E R A A P P A R E N T L Y D E A D A C T T H O U G H T S A F T E R K O L N A M I B E N C H N E E D S I N P U T S I M A G E F X S P E C I A L O F F E R G E N E S I S F L Y E R A N N O U N C E D N E W N E T W O R K I N G S Y S T E M Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: It's become very apparent that a watershed in Amiga history has been reached. People are realizing that the days of the Classic Amiga are numbered, and that Amiga Incorporated is much more interested in the future. Why this should surprise people is beyond me - it's what Amiga Incorporated has been saying all along. They did promise one last upgrade to the Classic Amiga Operating System before the end, to help bridge the gap. Recent events have made many lose faith in that promise. The unexpected removal of Fleecy Moss from Amiga, and the disappearance of the Amiga OS 3.5 pages from the website were taken as a sign that 3.5 was abandoned. (The A.C.T. article below seems to be an example of such thought.) Amiga OS 3.5 IS still in the works. It would be very nice if Amiga Inc. would tell us exactly what's going on, and it doesn't credit them that they're so secretive. However, there's no justification in saying they've gone back on their word, at least not yet. Incidentally, they claim the disappearance of the 3.5 pages from their website was an error. Those pages have been restored. The Fleecy Moss situation is more bothersome to us. This is because we've come to know and respect, as well as like, Fleecy at "Amiga Update". We'll miss him for professional and personal reasons. One problem is that we'll never know exactly why he's no longer there. That's the way it should be. Internal personnel matters should remain internal, though we don't have to like it. In fairness, we must point out that most reports state Fleecy's contract was not renewed. That terminology is important. It would seem Fleecy was actually a contract employee, and not an Amiga Incorporated employee. If so, part of the deal is you can be gone for any reason at all as soon as the contract is finished. The status of a contract worker is much different than that of a hired employee, and different rules apply. After all this is said, we'll still be watching as closely as we can. In the interests of keeping you informed, we have two items below to keep you up to date on what's being said about Fleecy in the Amiga Community. We'll also be watching because A.C.T and other vendors may well know something we don't. Despite all that, we refuse to lose sight of the fact that the QNX announcement was a very pleasant, positive event. If you're going to build a new version of the OS based on someone else's kernal, and that's been the announced plan for a long time, then you can't pick a better kernal to use. Folks, that's GOOD news. Don't ignore it. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail to the E-ditor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 30 Nov 1998 Hi Brad, ... By the way, prodigy is completely (?) usable with the Amiga, you may want to pass it along, or not. Thanks Brad. Len. === Len, Thanks for the information. Yes, we'll pass it along, in the expectation that some readers will certainly find it useful. Brad ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hi Brad, Why so many occurrences of the word "Havemose"? Is the new Amiga called the Havemose Amiga? Andy === Andy, Errm, well, this is embarrassing. Dr. Allan Havemose is head and VP of Development at Amiga Incorporated. In our special edition on the QNX alliance announcement, we picked up his name incorrectly in the spell checker as Havermose (and we apologize to Dr. Havemose for this). We copied it from one of the other transcripts and added it to the dictionary without realizing it was wrong in the transcript. Then, because of the way the transcript of his remarks was originally typed, his name looked more like a word than a name. We tried to correct this, but missed several occurrences of his name due to the error with our spelling checker. The instances we missed are probably what you're referring to. On the other hand, calling it the Havemose Amiga is not entirely without merit. Brad ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 16 Nov 1998 Brad thank you for the MOST enlightening bit of news in many ,many moons. This entire prospect sounds great. I am glad I hung on and waited it out, Put my order in for a havemose amiga!! I also find it interesting to note the large number of amiga owning and using folks on their staff!! watch out we're back! dan P.S. now the only question is what to do with the Old 2000 be nice if they had a trade in/up policy! hint hint nudge nudge otherwise I am going out to look for a video card === Dan, Suspect there won't be any trade-in policies, though it's just barely possible a video shop would be interested in the old 2000 - at a reasonable (that is, low) price. We do agree with your appraisal of the announcement. It was very encouraging, and one of the most positive signs we've seen for the future in some time. Brad ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A N O P E N L E T T E R F R O M T H E T O P A M I G A N Dreams and Reality As General Manager of Amiga, Inc. there are times when we can all lose sight of dreams vs. reality. I have to admit I would sometimes choose to dream the impossible Amiga is not just about dreaming; it's about implementing dreams and making them a reality. We've been working very hard to see that this happen. I believe that in order to take this company to the next level, we must stay focused on delivering the dreams not just talking about them in hopes that they will happen. At Computer '98, we announced of our alliance with QNX as the foundation for the Next Generation Amiga Architecture. We have taken the leap towards flying and I saw the enthusiasm in many people's eyes, and could feel the electricity in the air! The excitement that the future holds is great; we are looking forward to working with QNX and their team. QNX brings the foundation of technology and the values of what Amiga has always been. The QNX RTOS is a foundation that we can build on. It's only with a secure foundation that the tallest of buildings arise. This will not just be an architect's dream, or a contractor's vision, we are dedicated in making this a reality. Reality is the tallest buildings are not built overnight. They take planning, commitment, focus, and a lot of sweat. We are embarking on new territory, and there maybe those who will oppose our strategy. Some will struggle with change and not support our future plans. Some will disagree with the path we have chosen. To those I would say, "Lets not get stuck in the past or live in a dream world." Let's all work together in making Amiga not just a community name, but a name that will be recognized throughout the world. A name we can all be proud of. The recent events over the last few weeks, have hit the community like a shock wave rippling with excitement and fear. It's unfortunate that we have had so much confusion and rumors. Change is difficult and please believe me when I say, I understand the value that the community brings. I empathize with each and everyone one of you through these hard times of rebuilding. You must remember that Amiga is bigger than any one person or computer. It's about people who aren't afraid to walk up to the edge, look over, see all that's there, and then take the leap to fly. We don't live in a dream, we live in reality and this is where the rubber meets the road. The vision is in place, the architects have started work, now we must be patient to see the building rise. In order for this to happen, it is vital that community is united. The User Group community support is essential in evangelizing the world (come see this new building). The Development community is critical in expanding and networking it from one building into many. This is Amiga and now more than ever we must all take the leap towards flying as the world stands back in awe. We can do this a community of not only dreamers but dreamers who know reality and aren't afraid to fly. Thanks for your support and always keeping Amiga in your heart. Jeff Schindler General Manager Amiga Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- R E P O R T O N C O M P U T E R ' 9 8 Reprinted with permsission from AmigaWorld News & Stories, http://www.amigaworld.com/news/index.html Computer '98 We arrived on Friday 13th, at about 10:30 AM. The hall was pretty crowded already, although I could remember more traffic from past years - but that was on Sundays. PC booths were more numerous than they used to be, and there were much less "Amiga highlights" present. Especially the absence of phase 5 was felt easily. According to their own statement, this was because they would not be able to show something really new, since the BVisionPPC would not be ready before the end of November. Other sources claim that phase 5 would rather be present at a Mac exposition held at the same time. The booth of German distributor Schatztruhe saw the most traffic, where Magellan II, SuperView, CyberGraphX 4, Linux 5.1, Miami 3.2 / Deluxe, PFS II and lots of other goodies were sold in the dozens. Paul Nolan showed another preview of PhotogenicsNG (when will it finally be released?), and Martin Berndt (Bodyguard, MultiCX) was also there. Other well-known distributors saw similar sales, like Vesalia, Haage & Partner and Oberland. At the Haage booth, PageStream 3.4 was the best-seller since the StormC DSK did not make it into the box in time for the exhibit. However, Haage took orders and promised to ship them - free of p&p fees - as soon as possible. A similar fate struck at Oberland, where the Amiga version of monzoom3D (formerly Reflections) had a faulty installer script and thus was unavailable at their booth. Oberland, too, took orders and promised not to charge p&p for the delivery. Amiga International, Inc. once again was present with their large booth, with lots of VIP standing and sitting inside and outside. Petro Tyschtschenko, who had kindly invited me to a press conference scheduled for 5:00 PM (many thanks to him!), was also there, talking to developers, distributors and users alike. It was my first close encounter with this man, and he made a very positive impression on me. He was friendly, open for questions and suggestions, and despite the stress very calm and optimistic. After attending the press conference that evening, I can understand his positive mood - that was a real ace up the sleeve, but more to that later. The Amiga booth had a large video wall, where several demos showed the gfx and sound abilities of "Classic" Amigas. Every now and then there was a presentation, among others with Scala MM 400, a preview of Octamed Soundstudio v2, and the Melody1200 soundcard. At each corner of the Amiga booth, two Amigas showed some piece of soft- or hardware. Nightshift showed the excellent Scala software, and reassured me that the MM 300 package shipped with the A1200 "Magic" can still be upgraded to MM 400 for the bargain price of 99,- DM (roughly 55 USD) by sending the registration card to Nightshift. He also showed me some of the new MM 400 features, like fly-on text, improved shuffler handling, an online documentation fully done as Scala presentation, and a nice extra digital vernissage, the first issue in a series of presentations of artists' work. Ateo Concepts showed their AteoBus/Pixel64, a gfx card for the A1200 that connects to the expansion port and gives 800x600 resolutions in 24bit plus Alpha, 1024x768 in 16 bit, or 1280x1024 in 8 bits (50-150 Hz vertically, 31-100 kHz horizontally). According to their hand-out, it is fully compatible with Picasso96, and several expansions to the AteoBus are also planned (multi-serial, multi-parallel, SCSI, EIDE, ethernet, sound...). Short of purchasing a bus expansion, the Pixel64 is the only way to add a gfx card to an A1200 - at least until the BVisionPPC finally arrives -, without the need for a PPC card. Speaking of bus expansions, RBM was also present and showed their Towerhawk ex for A1200/A4000, and their ONBoard1200, a Zorro-II expansion for the A1200. Most impressively, it allowed to use a NewTek Video Toaster/Flyer on an A1200 motherboard. For those who look for a less "invasive" way of expanding their A1200, the IOBlix1200 S/P was available, adding fast serial and/or parallel ports to the A1200 clock port. With the use of the clock port multiplexer, 3 such cards could be used synchronously, with still more room for a soundcard or a Catweazel. Funny enough, owners of A4000 systems asked about solutions for their boards, and sure enough, RBM offered a Zorro card that sported a clock port... ;-) But RBM was not the only one to offer serial / sound solutions. Kato Dev. showed their Melody1200 cards, and the new Twister1200 add-on, a fast (460800 bit/s) serial card that connects to the clock port, or to an already fitted Melody1200. The Melody1200 itself was available in its "pro" incarnation, with a DSP allowing for MPEG2.5/Layer 3 playback with no CPU load (!). For the less ambitious user, the "base" version came without the DSP, but still with 16bit, 44.1/48 kHz sound support. All Kato products were available at the Oberland booth. Two new, all-Amiga print magazines had their first issue sold at several booths: Amiga Fever and amigaOS. While amigaOS concentrates on applications and "serious" work, Amiga Fever seems to cover all aspects of our platform of preference. Both are glossy, with Amiga Fever in full-color and amigaOS partly b/w, partly color. Both magazines made a good first-glance impression on me, with interviews with W. Dietrich (phase 5) and Fleecy Moss of Amiga Inc., dispelling some dark rumors spreading recently. No, phase 5 is not in financial trouble... ;-) VillageTronic offered the new Ariadne II, as well as their famous PicassoIV and the add-ons Concierto, Paloma and Pablo. Moreover, they handed out a form to gauge interest in a 8 MByte Voodoo-II add-on for the PicassoIV. If they get 500+ orders, it might become reality, pushing Amiga 3D perfomance to previously unknown heights. Visit the VillageTronic website for more information!{Note: see Author's corrections at end of report. Brad} After resisting the lure of the "common expansion fever" for one hour or two, greed finally took over and I did spend a small fortune on hard- and software. After that, when vision became clear again ;-), the hall was rapidly getting empty. It was about 2:00 PM, and most booths had only a couple of interested users left. Sad as it was, it left room for some interesting talks. Martin Berndt seemed to be positive that Bodyguard, although cancelled by Schatztruhe officially, might appear at some later time. At the Vesalia booth, there was some complaining about dropping sales, the same at CoolBits and some other booths. However, while being sceptic and somewhat depressed, all of them shared the same credo: we did not come to this point only to surrender now. Most distributors have a "second leg" in the PC world, since the Amiga market cannot feed many mouths anymore. Those who do not, experience hard times indeed. From myself, therefore, the call upon arms once again: Software worth using is software worth buying. Support the distributors that support the Amiga. We are one community, and we cannot survive without another! Petro, however, was still smiling like a cat that found the cream, but it took some more hours to find out what was making him so happy. Meanwhile, we (I was accompained by the majority of our freshly founded user group) spend our time watching Annex' dance performance and buing yet more equipment, which left our backpacks very full and our purses quite empty. Finally, I forgot the time, and when one of my friends told me it was past 5:30 PM, I realised I missed the press conference. S**T! However, when I arrived at the conference room, a guy dressed in a boingball shirt calmly informed me that the conference was delayed "for hardware reasons". Fact was, not a single piece of the hardware needed for the planned presentation had arrived in time or were simply missing. So, there would be only one conference, for both the press and the users, at 7:00 PM - which was then again delayed... Jeff Schindler opened the doors and called the waiting people in, excused for the delays and handed out coke and soda. While standing in the crowd, I spotted Aaron Digulla (AROS) and Urban Mueller (AmiNet), among other VIPs that obviously did not feel too uncomfortable among 200+ users. Finally, the conference room was opened for all of us, where one third of the people found a seat, two thirds a place to stand. Then, the conference started... The press conference dropped the bomb we all were eagerly waiting for - and it was quite a surprise to all of us. Petro welcomed both press and users, and apologized for the delay. He told us about the settlement between QuickPak and Mr. Hembach, which allowed for the A4000T to be assembled and sold again, and asked to place orders now. (Not at the conference, of course, but at your local dealer. ;-) ) Bill McEwan then took over, and said that sadly his trusted A1200 was "too weak" for the presentation to come, and that he was sorry he had to do the presentation with PowerPoint - which earned him some "boooh"s, and some laughter as his shoulders slumped and he walked away as if it broke his heart... ;-) Bill then welcomed Mike Rees, Darrek Lisle and Alan Havemose, and passed the word to Jeff Schindler. Jeff said that Petro recieved an overwhelming response to his invitations to this conference: "are you sure you want to do this on Friday 13th?", which he answered "yeah, sure". From the back rows someone shouted "make it a bad day for Windows", which resulted in yet more laughter. Jeff stated that only now, Amiga Inc. is where they intended to be back at the WoA. And he repeated his promise given at the St. Louis show, that Amiga Inc. will be honest to the users, and tell only about what is real and done. "Great things take time", he said to the audience. "We want the Amiga to be as great as it was when it was first announced, nothing less" - those were his words. Then, first mention was made that the OS kernel partner has been found, and that later on some presentation would be made that would show "things that you never believed possible", a phrase that certainly earned some attention, and disbelief. He then presented some slides, which did say nothing breathtakingly new: the OS 3.5 upgrade to come, dedication to press and user groups. He mentioned that the Amiga users share a special bond no other platform has to offer, which made several people nod in agreement, including myself (I would not maintain a time-consuming service like the News & Stories for any other platform). He told us of the possibility to ship a special "Developer OS 3.5", with some special power-user options, technical documentation and some "NG starter apps", that should give a first idea of what the OS 5.0 would be like. Then, he moved on to OS 5.0 subjects. He said that it was the focus of Amiga Inc. to make the NG architecture "as ground breaking as when the Amiga was originally introduced", and that the ultimate goal was to establish the Amiga as "world leading standard for digital convergence". Again he reassured the audience that desktop computers are still a target market for Amiga, but only one among many. Then, Alan Havemose took over, and shortly introduced himself. Stating the fact he actually purchased a kickstart 1.2 upgrade, and had been in charge of the AmigaOS since v2.1 certainly made some impression on those who did not already know. Alan then gave some insight on the specifications of OS5: Build on a state-of-the-art OS kernel, with the final AmigaOS kernel being even better than that; with a high performance 3D engine capable of calculating "hundreds of millions tri-linear mapped 3D pixels per second", enough to fill a 1920x1200 24bit screen with fluent framerates; high performance internet solutions - he mentioned ADSL, which ranges between 2 and 8 MBit/sec. and is currently established as future standard in both the US and Europe; higher resolutions up to HDTV, 1920x1200, 24bit, with 1.2 GByte/sec. 3D output (which, again, he compared to the 8 MByte/sec. of the ECS or the 28 MByte/sec. of AGA chipset); support for new digital interfaces, like data communication by TV cable or satelite links; support for industry standard APIs like OpenGL. "If there is a standard for it, of course we will support it." running on almost every hardware/CPU there is, be it PPC (!), Intel (!?!) or RISC; Amiga convergence APIs where no standards exists; support for leading digital convergence processing hardware; fully memory protected, preemptive multitasking, with processes and tasks; efficient and compact ( fully 32bit, prepared for 64bit; Multimedia / Gaming / Network centric. The tension rised, because now Alan began to talk about the OS kernel parter, and began to describe the partner OS as audio/video/frame hard real-time OS with virtual memory, being ROMable, with support for Multi-CPU systems, with support for OpenGL and Java build in, being scaleable. By now, most people were on the edge of their seats. Alan told us that the company he was talking about was founded 1981, therefor had 16 years business experience, with long-time Amiga connections, and being an established embedded RTOS leader. Business partners included Cisco, IBM, Phillips, Dupont, VISA, and the NASA using the software on the Space Shuttle. Reportedly, 10 to 15 engineers of the company used Amigas... And the name is - QNX! Here, my scribblings done during the presentation start to fail me, because what was shown to us was really amazing. I did not understand the name of the man who now continued the presentation, but from what I understood he was one of the co-founders of the company. He told us about his realtime OS company, and the Neutrino kernel which will be used by future Amigas. He also told us about his strong bonds to the Amiga, with his companion and himself owning Amiga #1 and #2 in Canada back when the A1000 was first presented. Over 70% of his employees own and use Amigas. He then continued that the Neutrino kernel is completely self hosted on PPC, x86 and MIPS CPUs, less than 50 KByte in size and completely up-/downscaleable on-the-fly. He showed some graphics explaining the general architecture, which is build around a messenger microkernel, where process managers, filesystems, TCP/IP stacks, GUI, audio and character I/O are all mere applications that communicate with each other by means of the microkernel. While this means a lot of communication, we were told that Neutrino handles a complete context switch in less than one microsecond, mere hundreds of nanoseconds. "We are nothing proprietary, we use standard ELF binaries" - this sentence did bring back some bad memories about the powerUP / WarpUP disagreements. Full BSD 4.4 support of the kernel, an almost 100% compatible POSIX enviroment that allows compiling the Apache web server without modifications, either full-blown or in a restricted way to save space, 128bit, IPV6 compatible, endianess transparently managed, only 1 TCP/IP stack needed in a whole network, with all connected systems using the same stack, scaleable fonts with anti-aliasing, full unicode support with japanese / korean / chinese interfaces natively embedded, a platform independent GUI... my scribblings fail to list all the stunning things we were told and shown. A browser was shown, showing the Amiga International homepage, Yahoo Japan (in Kanjii!) and Amiga Inc. homepage (with full JavaScript support) in three separate windows. A desktop including TCP/IP stack, dialer and JavaScript-enabled browser was booted from a 1.44 MByte floppy - although Alan saw some people in the audience doing quick file size calculations, and said that QNX has some competition in this field by the Amiga... The most stunning thing, however, was Photon, the QNX GUI microkernel. Two PCs were connected together by a TCP/IP link, and an application opened on the left machine - and the window was then transfered to the right screen by two mouseclicks. Then, the two systems were "joined", which means defined as a single desktop. Dynamically, the task bar (Win95-like) expanded to the right screen. A Doom demo was started, and the window dragged to the border of the two screens, so that the left part of the window was displayed on the left machine, and the right part of the window on the right screen. The audience was informed that this was possible for a virtual unlimited number of screens, distributed all over the world by nothing more than a 28.8k modem. There was more shown and told, but I could not write the things down as fast as they came, and as the Q&A session started, I had to leave to catch my train. I heard some question about "why wait for an AmigaOS5, when we can have QNX now?", and it was answered that QNX is a mere kernel/OS company, and all the higher APIs are left to Amiga Inc., and that the QNX kernel will change in look and feel until it becomes AmigaOS5. That was about the last thing said before I had to take off. Newsmaster's comment We were taken by surprise. As the QNX logo first appeared on the screen, the reaction was almost nil - the majority of the audience probably never heard of QNX, and neither did I. What was shown afterwards, however, made some people (including myself) nervous with excitement. This kernel has something definitely Amiga-like to it. Some negative reactions were heard when PowerPoint was used for the initial presentation. The Doom trick failed once, and the second time window movement was slow and did hang for several seconds. When the QNX guy rebooted the two computers, it showed that they were PIIs (233 and 266 MHz respectively) from Gateway. The reboot across the TCP/IP connection failed once. But those were the "technical difficulties" that delayed the conference in the first line, since, as we were told, the hardware intended to be used in the show failed to appear in time. Intel CPUs do field some massive firepower, are very well supported by development tools and hardware manufacturers, and widely used and readily available, so it comes quite naturally that an OS company like QNX makes use of them. The fact that QNX also runs natively on PPCs and MIPS shows that QNX is no Intel breed, but truly cross-platform - "which gets ugly when it comes to endianess", to cite from the presentation. For my part, the show was an exciting one. The QNX people are very concerned about creating and maintaining a micro(scopic)kernel, with multi-user, multi-CPU, multi-platform, networking capabilities, no buts. It is not very hard to imagine the AmigaOS philosophy fitting perfectly onto the QNX kernel. We were shown efficiency, productivity and scaleability. That, together with the hardware power of the MMC, is a very good foundation for a high-performance, low-resource platform like the Amiga was back in the 80ies. By the way, Alan mentioned that "Silicon Valey moves very fast", and that by now, there are two more companies that will probably field something comparable to the MMC with roughly the same timetable. Even more, that AmigaOS will be build around the MMC, but it will be able to be used on any comparable media processor. And the QNX multi-CPU capabilities will allow for adding a wide variety of CPUs to any MMC system, if you need the horsepower! Seeing that QNX runs natively on PPCs, there might even be a chance that AmigaOS5 might run on "Classic" PPC Amigas... AmigaWorld News & Stories 16 Nov 1998 Computer '98 corrections... - Two mistakes in my earlier report from the Computer '98 have been discovered by readers: The VillageTronic add-on will make use of the Voodoo-I chip instead of the Voodoo-II, and it is not the peak of Amiga 3D performance, since the Permedia-II (as used by the CybervisionPPC) is faster. The latter I cannot confirm, I openly admit, since I have little knowledge about which 3D chip is better than another. I only know that the MMC will outperform both... ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- O F F I C I A L Q N X A N N O U N C E M E N T {We've already reported on the QNX alliance in our recent special issue and the story just above. However, for your reference, here's the official word from Amiga Inc. Brad} Next Generation Amiga Architecture Amiga Announces Alliance with QNX for Next Generation Amiga Architecture Amiga Inc. has announced an alliance with QNX Software Systems Ltd. to utilize the QNX realtime operating system (RTOS) as the foundation for the Next Generation Amiga architecture. "The Amiga shook the industry in the 80's with world leading multimedia architecture." said Jeff Schindler General Manager of Amiga Inc. "QNX's RTOS resembles many of Amiga's unique qualities. It provides the foundation in reaching our vision for the rebirth of Amiga in the new millenium." "We see this alliance as a powerful combination of superior OS technologies, common corporate cultures and shared business vision." said Dan Dodge, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of QNX Software Systems Ltd. Building upon the QNX OS foundation, Amiga, Inc. will work with QNX to add features and functions needed to create the Next Generation in Computing, as Amiga did in 1985. Next Generation Targeted Features Operating System Core Features Scalable and modular design Fully Protected Preemptive Multitasking; with processes and threads Efficient and compact OS (under 4MBs) Full 32 bit True RTOS Virtual Memory support ROM-able Multi Processor support Distributed processing support Open standards architecture Support for industry standard API's Multimedia High performance 3D (Open GL) Full 24-bit true color Support standard TV, SVGA and resolutions up to HDTV Multi-Media Gaming centric Real-time animation (audio/video/graphics) Internet/Networking Network centric architecture High performance Internet solutions Full Java support Consumer networking Convergence Support new digital interface standards Amiga convergence API's where no standards exist Support leading convergence processing hardware Frequently Asked Questions Q: Should Amiga developers start programming for QNX now? A: No. While QNX is the foundation OS, Amiga in partnership with QNX will add user interface enhancements, more multimedia support and a host of other convergence features. This will be released through Amiga Inc's developers program. Q: Will I have to re-write my application to run on Next Generation Amiga's? A: Yes. The new OS has a programming model that is similar to the Classic Amiga's, but also sufficiently different. In particular, the new OS features processes and threads (a "thread" is like an Amiga Process/Task), virtual memory and a very clean microkernel architecture. All access to hardware is through drivers, so if your application "hits the hardware" it will not work. Most well written applications should be able to be ported, but to take full advantage of the new architecture you will want to take advantage of the new APIs. We also intend to offer significantly better development tools than are currently available for the classic, which should ease the transition. Q: How about my Classic applications? Will they run? A: For the Development System, we are investigating either an "Amiga Classic PCI card" or an "Amiga Classic Emulator". Therefore well behaved 3.1/3.5 Amiga Classic applications should work. For more information about QNX Software Systems, visit www.qnx.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- T H A N K Y O U , A M I G A N S FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Open Letter of Thanks from VillageTronic 17 November, 1998 News Source: VillageTronic Dear friends, customers and supporters. The Computer`98 fair is over. We are glad that so many amiga people visited our booth and showed support for our amiga products. Thank you all for your enthusiasm about the amiga and all the products it still brings up. As you all might know we brought out an AVI-animation grabber for our PalomaIV add on module for PicassoIV. Our friend Laszlo Török from Hungary visited us for the whole fair and presented it to interested people. You can leech this software with the name PalomAVI in a week on our webpage "www.villagetronic.com/amiga" for free. The animation player Moovid will be included as a shareware version. Another thing of interest was our voodoo add on board for the PicassoIV that we showed as an "early beta" made of paper with glued voodoo chips on it. Probably you saw our survey about it. Now it`s monday and I returned more or less tired from the show... I opened my mailfolder to see how many people contributed in our survey about the Voodoo card for PicassoIV. The actual state is: 185 preorders and about 439 interests. Now again I ask you all for support: Can you manage to spread this information to any people that could be interested? If you know people that might be interested in a card like this they should really preorder here that we can manage to produce it. We are still devoted amigians here and we really want to make this card happen (even against our mac department here :)). Okidoo... Here I send you the "official" information again, that you can check out what and how we want it... With best regards and all the best for the amiga future... Here you will now find the text that we released before the fair in cologne... If you want to join our survey reach "www.villagetronic.com/amiga/survey.html" or for germans "www.villagetronic.com/amiga/surveydt.html" Here we go... Survey about PicassoIV and 3dfx Voodoo AddOn Module Dear customer. After the development of the AriadneII ethernet card VillageTronic (one of the few remaining hardware companies for the zorro based AmigaClassic computersystems) is considering about the ongoing support and development of new addon products for the graphics board PicassoIV. As far as there are no clear statements about the current amiga market we need to know how many people would show us support for the development of such a new product. So we came to the conclusion to make a survey. Our aim is to develop an 8MB 3d-addon board with Voodoo chipset (3dfx). This card would need a ZorroIII based amiga system like A4K, A3K or A1200 with special ZorroIII extensions. For us the point is that we need about 500 preorders that shows us that the product will be viable and we can pay our development costs. Now the point is on you to fill out our survey that we can see if there will be enough pieces sold. Help the amiga market and you could see a modern and progressive product for your miggy... (all product names are registered trademarks of the concerned producer) ------------------------------------------------------------ Yes, I preorder an 8mb Voodoo 3d module for the PicassoIV for the preferential price of 249,-DM. If there won`t be enough preorders and no card will be developed this contract will become invalid. Payment will follow shipment. name:_______________________________________________________ street:_____________________________________________________ city:_______________________________________________________ email/Tel.No.:______________________________________________ date & signature:___________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------ Yes, I`m interested in an 8mb Voodoo-3d-Module for picassoIV. For now I`m not able to preorder but I will show my support for the idea with my signature and buy later. Later the card will cost 299,-DM name:_______________________________________________________ street:_____________________________________________________ city:_______________________________________________________ email/Tel.No.:______________________________________________ date & signature:___________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you, Ekkehard Brueggemann Village Tronic Support Team Village Tronic Marketing GmbH Mühlenstr.2 - D-31157 Sarstedt www.villagetronic.com amigasupport@village.de Tel.: +49(0)5066-7013-20 Fax.:+49(0)5066-7013-49 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I C O A S P R U C E S U P W E B S I T E FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New ICOA Web Site Now Online 20 November, 1998 The Industry Council Open Amiga (ICOA) is please to announce that their web site is finally online at http://www.amiga.net. This site will serve as a focal point for developers both large and small to communicate with each other and to bring together information of use to all. Some sections of the site are not yet complete, but it has been decided that things can move forward more quickly given the input of the entire ICOA membership. If you would like to volunteer to assist in any part of the site, please contact Ted Wallingford at ted@server.pantheonsys.com and let him know. The new site features special sections for documentation, workgroups, discussion lists, news areas and more. Many areas, such as Your News, allow items to be immediately contributed by ICOA members to go online. The ICOA is a professional society of Amiga developers and serves to help developers and advance the Amiga platform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- T H E R E T U R N O F D I C E 24 Nov 1998 DICE is a freely distributable C compiler environment for the Amiga computer by Matt Dillon. It started off life as shareware but became a commercial product published by Obvious Implementations Corporation. With the decline in the Amiga market, Matt released the source code to DICE in 1997. This is where Richard Drummond came in. Richard perceived an interest still remaining in the Amiga community for DICE and in October of this year he produced a cleaned-up release of DICE based on Matt's source. As a result Richard received enthusiastic responses from many Amiga users. So, with Matt Dillon's help, he set up the DICE Development Group to continue work on DICE. The Dice Development Group would like any programmers wanting to help with DICE overhaul to join. Dice will be a totaly free compiler with source. New features: Compiler optimisations,(PPC/C++), Your suggestions. Mail Richard Drummond: dice@drummond.u-net.com or Matthew Fletcher: Matthew.Fletcher@student.shu.ac.uk Visit these sites: http://www.drummond.u-net.com/ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/5278/page13.html or join the Dice mailing-list: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/dice ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G A T E W A Y C O M P U T E R S H O W G R O W S November 20th, 1998 The Gateway Computer Show - Amiga 99(tm) will be held on Friday March 12 through Sunday March 14, 1999, in St. Louis Missouri, U.S.A.. The show is organized and owned by Amigan-St. Louis's Bob Scharp. Bob has organized all the Gateway Computer Shows(tm). Amiga 99 will be the fifth and largest show yet. Every Gateway show has had continuing increases in attendance year over year. The Amiga shows in St. Louis are a great confirmation of doing something right. The things attendees asked for were, a bigger show, and a better banquet hall. Amiga-St. Louis(tm) is listening to your concerns. We are moving Amiga 99 to a bigger hotel, the Henry VIII Hotel. We are making the banquet bigger and it will be held in it's own hall. Keep the page "http://www.amiga-stl.com" book marked on your browser. Visit our site, and see the exciting things that are planned for Amiga 99. Bob Scharp Amigan-St. Louis bscharp@icon-stl.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G A R Y P E A K E O N F L E E C Y 18 Nov 98 22: Fellow Amigans, As most of you now know, Fleecy Moss is no longer with Amiga Inc. It is important as users and developers that we closely examine the sudden demise of Joe Torre and Fleecy Moss from Amiga Inc. and whether this does or does not impact our goals. I invite everyone to debate this issue with an open mind. There may well be concerns here which do not bode well for the community at large and in particular those of us who have stayed the course over the last few years without any assistance from any outside sources. There is only a limited time that revenue and resources can be devoted to any cause without some interaction from those controlling the flow of that cause. I am not talking about interaction from a financial standpoint, but rather from a technical sharing of knowledge and information. If the aim is to keep a finger on the pulse of the community, Amiga Inc will find it hard to do that without interaction with the community at large. We are at an important juncture with the recent announcement of QNX as the OS partner. What we, as users and developers, do with the Amiga Classic and the Amiga II may or may not be important to Amiga Inc and thus QNX (as a partner). We must look at the OS3.5 developement, PPC development, and QNX developement from the proper vantage point of what it will and will not do FOR US. Lest anyone misunderstand my personal resolve or committment, Team AMIGA will not only stay the course but will make efforts to also involve others in the linux, unix, posix community in our efforts to attain open platforms and open systems for the long term future. I invite anyone interested in our cause to email with specifics as soon as possible so that a concerted effort can be made to achieve our long term goals of open systems for the community at large. Sincerely, -- Gary Peake Team AMIGA Global, LLC (pending) gpeake@teamamiga.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E L S P E T H M O S S O N F L E E C Y 17 November, 1998 Forums: comp.sys.amiga.misc Hello amiga people, my name is Elspeth Moss the wife of fleecy. He is bound by some of the contract he signed to keep quiet but I am not. I want you all to know that to my husband, the amiga is very, very importnat. Many times I have gone to bed without him, weekends have disappeared and there are times I have wanted to pull the plug on his computer just to get him back. I know the children and I are the most important thing to him but the Amiga isn't that close behind. I don't understand the fascination myself but when he talks of the plans, the community, the ppl, I can see that it is more to him than just a computer. Over the past 18 months he has gone from the happiest of the happy to the saddest of the sad. Frustrated, angry, ranting as the job has progressed - or not progressed. When he got the news on wednesday, he was devastated. It took him 4 hours before he was back on the computer. First he started moves to get a new job so we wouldn't be deported - in fact with our new daughter Evie not having a birth certificate yet, we would probably have to leave her - thanks Jeff Schindler - and then he was back emailing ppl, coming up with new ways to keep the community going, to prevent it from being destroyed. Of course he has to find a job first but I think I know that I won't be seeing him much for the next few months in the evening. I am used to it. I just want you all to know the kind of man he is - honest, principled, always figthing for the underdog, obsessive - a pain in the backside. He may have been sacked but he will never give up on the Amiga, unlike some others. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P E T R O H E A D S T O I N D I A November 27, 1998 Petro Tyschtschenko to speak at the BSC India '98 On the 10th of December, Petro Tyschtschenko will be attending the Videoshow BSC India '98 in New Delhi, India. He will be speaking at the "Cable Channel Session", which is an emerging medium for advertisers and he will stress on how well the Amiga can improve the quality of presentation of the Cable Channel and make it much more viewer friendly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A O P E R A A P P A R E N T L Y D E A D Unfortunately the Cologne show did not provide the hoped for boost for the Amiga Classic market, and Ramjam Consultants have therefore abandoned the Amiga Opera port. Previous offers of support from Amiga Inc appear to have been withdrawn, and the future for the Amiga Classic market now seems even more bleak than at any other time. While the big public news from Cologne is undoubtably good for the future of the new generation of Amigas expected to be released sometime during the year 2000 - the new kernel will be Neutrino >from QNX Software Systems Ltd - a lot has happened out of the public eye to cause most remaining Amiga Classic developers to lose confidence. If you know of some rare bird who starts where others have already given up, this may be his chance. let me know atmagic@operasoftware.com . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A C T T H O U G H T S A F T E R K O L N {Before you read this, please look at the Editor's Thoughts at the beginning of this newsletter. Brad} Albrecht Computer Technik Thoughts after End of Computer98 Finally things seem to clear up. After having discussed further Amiga development and commercial oportunities on the Amiga platform with a number of hard- and software people A.C.T. draws this conclusion: Amiga Inc does not seem to be interested in supporting the Real Amiga. Their continued back-and-for and the announcements show a complete ignorance of the remaining market and an incredible insensibility for the needs of developers, retailers, press people. It is not likely that anyone will be able to make a fortune out of Real Amiga development or sales now. It is not true that Amiga Inc is in close discussion with developers - not a single developer known to the partners of A.C.T. has been seriously contacted. Pretending that such cooperation takes place is a slap in the Amiga community's face. Just like others A.C.T. will continue to produce, enhance and support their current product range. It is not possible to invest in future projects though, so four software products have been cancelled right after the fair and two major hardware projects will not be carried out (Festiva, the High End Soundcard at a price BELOW that of a comparable PC soundcard, is among them). Prelude additions, software etc. will be continously developed and supported though - we will not let our customers down, but we will not be able to grant the wide service and support we have given to users all over the world in the future to the same extend. The disapointment about Amiga Inc being unable to show any real products (QNX is NOT an Amiga Inc product) convinced us that they do not have anything to offer right now. A.C.T. is interested in cooperating with companies having products in development or actually on the market. We have a position to keep and extend, we have a reputation to defend and we have families to feed. We would also be interested in helping a company that does not have anything to offer at the moment getting started, but that company has to ask us - not vice versa. Our knowledge in Digital Audio as well as driver programming, hardware expertise and customer relation could be helpful - if this help would be accepted. We do not beg for open ears. Computer98 set an end point to an area of home computers. The Amiga market can not be revived and developers still active on this market will try their best to support the users that haven't migrated - but it should be clear and kept in mind that most of this support, even new products that pop up from time to time, base on enthusiasm, not on market power. What about the future? QNX offers a powerful kernel and interesting features, yet it is a system among others and will have to prove that it can penetrate the home computer market the same it does with the embedded system market. Amiga Inc's future plans seem to target to SetTop boxes, Dishwashers with intelligence, TVs that cook your coffee and take your children to bed. Although this may be a market in the future it is not a market at the moment or within the next two years. We do not have the financial means to develop applications for two years without selling in the same time, so we cannot and will not develop for the "new" Amiga OS at the moment. We would have needed detailed, usable information and developer support NOW - we did not get it, so this unknown, indifferent system is no choice. The way the owner company presents itself in public is not destined to raise trust in their ability of support in the future. Amiga OS 3.5 seems to be dead. There is no information available about it, no contract has been sent out, no discussion took place. We are not interested in an OS that does not even support the feature nearly every modern Amiga has (through Shareware) nowadays. A Plus-Pack is of no interest to us. We have withdrawn our offer to implement ARTAS - at least based on the financial agreement so far. ARTAS will be made publically available but NOT a component of an Amiga Inc OS3.5. This issue is subject to change depending on professional offers from Amiga Inc (which we do not expect any more). A last few words: any developer needing help is highly welcome to contact us. We will try our best to share our know how in software design and we will continue to support and sponsor developers wherever possible. We are very interested in participating in serious, professionally guided projects that might regain a bit of market space. Contact information: Marc Albrecht, Seth 2, 21769 Lamstedt EMail: albrecht@act-net.com http://www.act-net.com This statement may be released to web sites, news groups or FIDO echos but only in its complete, uncut and unedited version. Marc Albrecht, 20.11.1998 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I B E N C H N E E D S I N P U T S 29th November 1998 'Bench gets busy AmiBench has for the last year and a half provided a first class Amiga Service to thousands of users. With over half a million hits under its belt this resource could be a major benefit to Amiga Users/Dealers Worldwide. We now need your help to improve this well used and maintained service even more. The AmiBench Dealer Directory is due for a major upgrade but before we do so, we need your help! We need as many Amiga / Draco / Flyer Dealers, Amiga supporting ISP's, Repair Centres as possable to be entered in to the database. Please dont worry if the details have been entered before, We'll sort it out. Please check http://www.thunderstorms.org/AmiBench/ for more details. Remember this service can not acheive its aims without the support of the Amiga Community. Dont forget that AmiBench is the best online Amiga Classified site in the world that deals with only Amiga and Amiga Clones which include Toasters and Draco's. Mark Wilson : Public Relations for AmiBench Web: http://www.thunderstorms.org/AmiBench/ Email: AmiBench@thunderstorms.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I M A G E F X S P E C I A L O F F E R Special Video Offer with ImageFX Upgrades For Immediate Release Available through January 1999, when you purchase an ImageFX 3.2 upgrade, from any version, you can also order the top-rated Catalyzer video tutorial volume for less than half the normal retail price of $49.95. Your price is only $20 plus shipping! The Catalyzer video tutorial series have been acclaimed by users and reviewers worldwide for showing how to unleash the power of ImageFX with apparent ease. These videos show you how to achieve stunning animations and amazing results with ImageFX is a series of practical tutorials. This limited time offer is only for the first volume of the Catalyzer video tutorial series for ImageFX. Other volumes are available through your local Amiga retailer or mail order firm. Thanks to the great people at Legacy Maker for helping us make this holiday offer possible! But Wait - There's More! We've also made special arrangements with Visual Inspirations, makers of Control Tower and VisualFX, to include bonus coupons in the ImageFX package to allow you to order their VisualFX for ImageFX for a whopping 50% discount as well! VisualFX replaces ImageFX's interface with a powerful, yet easy to use, icon driven interface that makes creating sophisticated transitions and animated effects nearly effortless. Ordering Upgrades Upgrades from ImageFX 2.0 through 2.6 are only $79.95 plus shipping. Upgrades from earlier releases are only $124.95 plus shipping. Call between 1pm and 4pm eastern US time at 1-800-IMAGE-69 in the US and Canada, or call 804-282-1157 from anywhere else in the world to order. Orders can also be faxed to 804-282-3768. We take VISA, Mastercard, and (International) Money Orders. ImageFX is the Amiga's award winning image editing and special effects package. It combines nearly every tool you could possibly need for creating images, painting, image processing, image file format translation, special effects, morphing, and more. It has all the high end tools without the high end price. ImageFX is a must-have package for all Amiga, DraCo, and Video Toaster/Flyer owners. There simply isn't anything else that offers you everything that ImageFX has - and with this special holiday promotion, it's a value that can't be beat! Happy Holidays from Nova Design, Inc. and Legacy Maker! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G E N E S I S F L Y E R A N N O U N C E D Genesis by Randomize, Inc. Annouces the Genesis Flyer, The Video Toaster Compatible Amiga Toronto, Canada - Nov. 26, 1998 Randomize, Inc. is pleased to annouce the release of its Genesis Flyer, the Video Toaster Flyer compatible Amiga. The Gesesis Flyer is available as both a complete turn-key system including Computer, Toaster, Flyer and Drives or as just the Computer. The Genesis Flyer Computer Features: Video Toaster / Flyer Compatiblity Compatiblity with other Video Slot Applications 060 CPU Speed 32 MB Ram 5.1 GB IDE HD 36x IDE CD-Rom High Density Floppy Drive 5 Zorro II Slots AGA Chipset including standard features More! System Price - $2449.95 US, $3749.95 CDN Turn-Key System Includes: Genesis Flyer Computer Video Toaster and Flyer 2 x 9 GB Video Hard Drive 1 x 4 GB Audio Hard Drive System Price - $7999.95 US, $12239.95 CDN For more information, visis the Genesis Flyer site at http://www.randomize.com/flyer.html Dealer and reseller inquiries welcome. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- N E W N E T W O R K I N G S Y S T E M   PlipWorks ( System Shock Solutions, Italy) is a hardware and software package which allows, for a small cost, to connect two Amiga computers together thanks to a parallel cable and to get very good speed, better than a standard serial nullmodem connection. The software is Sana II compliant, and so it's possible to use a standard TCP/IP stack or Amiga Envoy networking software. With it it's possible to reach a very good transfer rate like 50k/s with 68030 based machines or 80k/s with 68060 processors. A 2 mt. Plip cable, the software driver and an installation and using manual are provided. The price is 39.000 lire (23 US$, 39 DM). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: some issues available at: Australian Mirror Site: http://www.comcen.com.au/~paulm/index.html All back issues available (in ASCII text) at: http://www.globaldialog.com/AdventureCentral/AU/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1998 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ A M I G A /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ amigaupdate@globaldialog.com ======================================================================