Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Ami Fantasy Wishlist Message-ID: <7750@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 24 Aug 89 18:31:53 GMT References: <6223@ingr.com> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 71 in article <6223@ingr.com>, phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) says: >>The only place hardwired IDs have >>worked is in similar places like Apollo machines in the same price range, so I >>guess this fantasy is at least self-consistent. Of course, the OS will be UNIX, > Hardwired IDs have been used for a while. The first one I worked with was on > a PDP-11/05 system in 1976. The second was an MC6809-based energy management > system I designed in 1980. Both of these systems are similar to Apollos where it counts. Neither is owned personally by folks who'll hack the system around the protection ID. In fact, most likely, you'd have to directly hack the OS on an Apollo or similar machine to spoof the ID, while any user program could conceivable do this on an Amiga, at least on AmigaOS. Read on... > The ID circuit added about a $1.20 to the design cost. Probably less... > The circuit consisted of a jumper header (of wiring the ID) and a > register. Can't make it easily changed by the user, or the pirates simply adopt a standard Pirate ID and ship all their stolen code with that ID installed. Don't think it won't happen. > It is a rather inexpensive scheme to provide software developers an > non-intrusive means of copy protection and peace of mind. If you're not running a protected OS, there are some reasonably simple things you can do in software to spoof such a system (eg, install the ID of your choice). There ARE things we as system designers can do to make some of the spoofing methods impractical, and it's something we've thought about. I'm not about to say it'll never happen, and I think in general it's a good idea. But it's not the clear-cut foolproof solution many make it out to be. >>You have to start thinking Workstation. Most if not all PC tools aren't out >>for workstations. Something like Interleaf is what I'd expect here, maybe. > Interleaf is as (IF not more) expensive than Illustrator and I would call > the high-end ATs, and MACs workstations (low-end, but workstations just the > same). You're missing the point. Interleaf is expensive simply because it's mainly on Workstations (started out there, I know it's out for Macs now too). It has a target market of O(100,000) machines, not O(1,000,000) Amigas or O(10,000,000) PCs. So it's naturally more expensive. Illustrator is in the O(10,000,000) PC market; it can naturally sell for less, and as well, it make little sense for Adobe to port it to a workstation market of O(100,000) machines. > Also, there is a company in Austin, TX that generates 3D AutoCAD files on the > AT side of their Amigas, then translates them to the Ami side for rendering. AutoCAD is certainly very popular, and the idea of porting to workstations is becoming more lucrative for companies like this as the workstations change from Apollo, DEC, Sun, Intergraph, MIPS, etc. to _UNIX_. Which is the whole point of standardizing things -- volume. But ports of PC software to other systems has been very slow in coming from all but basically one product companies. The main reason is that, compared to the PC market, there's no $$$ in workstations. On the other side, there's lots of excellent workstation software that won't run on most PCs, and it's too expensive anyway for most PC users. As more PC type machines have UNIX with 4-8 megs of memory this should slowly change too (of course, that stuff would work on Amigas, but there aren't enough of them out there). > Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy We have no choice. We are, after all, professionals.