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From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Some thoughts and questions about the Ranger
Message-ID: <8703060857.AA19199@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 6-Mar-87 03:57:34 EST
Article-I.D.: cory.8703060857.AA19199
Posted: Fri Mar  6 03:57:34 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 04:08:33 EST
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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	Interesting thoughts.  Basically, you want a SUN.  All the questions
seem to pertain to that notion except the last few, so I'll address those:


>5)  Thank heavens the A2000's planned 68020 upgrade includes an MMU, 
>    according to BYTE and COMPUTE.  That means our Ranger will have to, also.
>    Has anyone heard when this upgrade should hit the streets (maybe we may
>    hear after C-A announces the A2000 or units ship in volume).  Given how
>    quickly the A2000 followed the Sidecar, I think it is not unreasonable to
>  assume the Ranger announcement will follow fairly quickly after the shipment
>    of that upgrade.

	The way it looks, with its special 'cpu' slot, the A2000 will be the
upgradable to just about anything (68020, MMU, you name it).  Unless there's
a nut heading C-A, I doubt the Ranger will come out the door until C-A sees
how the A2000 pans out.

	My personal opinion is that the A2000 will become the 'ranger' and
the ranger will become vaporware.


>6)  CA seems to doubt whether there is a market for a $2500-$3000
>    super-PC.  Certainly marketing realities rather than the dreams
>    of comp.sys.amiga subscribers (this one included)  must dictate many of
>    the details of the machine, but I think they are underestimating the market.
>    Look at how many business types and even home users paid $3000-$5000 for XT
>    or AT systems when they first came out.  When they see how much they can get
>    done on the A2500 with  the horsepower, large and elegant windows, and IBM 
>    compatibility and slots (which seems to be a given), I think a lot may jump.
>    (Perhaps I should say *IF* they see this, because CA advertising types seem
>    to like chiq BW pictures of schoolchildren or pictures of King Tut rather 
>    than showing off the multitasking and elegent windowing interface, which
>    set it apart from all other PCs.  The machine sells itself, given half
>    a chance).   And there are a lot of companies that would like to give each 
>    technical type a workstation on his/her desk but are too cheap or lack the 
>    insight to pay $10K-$15K per desk.  Me thinks a lot of these may jump, too,
>    especially with Unix and X-11.

	The IBM compatibility is definately a plus, but for different reasons.
having IBM expansion slots means the A2000 will suddenly have access to ALL
the third party boards out for the IBM.  The A2000 is specifically configured
to allow the Amiga to own a partition on an IBM compatible hard disk (with
no limitations on size).  Having a window "which is the IBM" is a delightful
extra, but I personally don't plan to use that aspect of the compatibility.
In otherwords, you can add *CHEAP* hard disks to your Amiga.



>7)  8 sound channels would be very nice.
	Nahhh.


>8)  An SCSI port built in would be nice, too, and a strong selling point.

	Now this *would* be a good idea.  And C-A, if you do plan to do
an SCSI, please do it right.  Apple screwed theirs up totally.  Use one
of the new SCSI controller chips and make it DMA.


>9)  Finally, a question.  Could the OS provide a convention for a program
>    to detect which Amiga model it was running on so it could fully exploit
>   its features.  Otherwise, programs might be written to the lowest
>   common denominator (A500) and not take advantage of the 2500.   For
>    example, if the A2500 had 8 sound channels a software vendor might have
>    to have an A2500 version of his music program or only use 4 channels.

	The OS already allows you to do this.  Simply try to allocate more
than 4 sound channels and you'll soon know.  In the same way, you could 
attempt to allocate a different serial device... on some later Amiga with
additional serial ports it would work.  On the current A1000, it would
return an error.

	Checking a system by model is a *bad* idea, since you don't know
what a person might have added to his Amiga.

			-Matt