Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site eneevax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!eneevax!ravi From: ravi@eneevax.UUCP (Ravi Kulkarni) Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm Subject: Re: Commodore's Lorraine Message-ID: <243@eneevax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 25-Feb-85 01:09:09 EST Article-I.D.: eneevax.243 Posted: Mon Feb 25 01:09:09 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 27-Feb-85 21:06:17 EST References: <705@topaz.ARPA> Organization: U of Maryland, EE Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 72 >From: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS.ARPA >From: The.Uninformed How true!! But then when you are in the rumors business you can take it for granted. >1) Turbo Pascal, built in. The Macintosh boards on the nets >have busy with the fact that development of Turbo Pascal for the >Macintosh has been put on a back burner in favor of the version >for the Amiga. This is apparently true since it came straight from Philipe Kahn(sp?) the author of turbo pascal. It is certainly an advancement over basic. He might also be doing the OS which is going to be integrated in with GEM. > 2) 8 Mhz 68000 cpu with expansion slots able to handle 7 Meg. >I know the 68000 can address much more, and 7 Meg is a lot of >memory, but why stop there? Lot's of memory implies several things. If you are going to have several megabytes you will need at least some form of parity checking like the IBM pc. Fast I/O and a hard disk almost become necessary otherwise the wait to fill memory will take forever. Efficient use of megabytes of memory almost certainly implies a multi tasking environment. If commodore has added an mmu they almost certainly have had to introduce wait states(foregoing costly alterernatives) slowing things down. If you think commodore's( the designer of the slowest disk drive in the world and the bringer of sparkle to our application programs) going to add any of these goodies you are a bigger sucker than I thought. Oh well, I guess we can always hope. >3) As for graphics and sound, I've heard 640x300 resolution with >4096(!) colors. Seperate rgb, composite video AND rf modulated >signals. Also, there are supposed to be 256 sprites available. >Could this mean a graphics coprocessor? For sound there are >supposed to be 16 channels with stereo sound (could this mean 2 >main sound outputs?). This could be the saving grace for the amiga even if commodore manages to muck up everything else. The graphics chip set that is supposed to be used(originally developed for atari and now under litigation) is very exciting. It is supposed to support raster ops in hardware and have support for animation. The 4096 colors and 640x300 resolution is more likely to be a palette of 4096 colors with only a few available at any one time(probably similar to atari's gtia chip). The resolution is more like 640x200 so it can drive tv sets and standard analog rgb monitors. >4) Release date is purported to be sometime during the early bits >of summer. The cost I last heard is under $700 with one disk drive. >Is the drive a programmable format drive? - 3.5 inch??? I think cost is likely to depend on whether or not they include slots. If they do I have a feeling it will be more like a $1000 with about 128k of ram and a disk drive I certainly hope the amiga is a successfull machine but, if I seem a bit sceptical it is because of my past experience with the c64. I am really rooting for both commodore and atari as right now the only alternative for people wishing to upgrade is an IBM pc(curse their segmented architecture) or an apple mac which has it's own problems for >$2000. I don't want to suggest that the atari and commodore machines don't have problems but, somehow they are easier to put up with knowing the relative costs of the machines. -- ARPA: eneevax!ravi@maryland UUCP: [seismo,allegra]!umcp-cs!eneevax!ravi