Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekig5!waynekn From: waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A new Amiga from Japan? Message-ID: <5366@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> Date: 11 Jan 90 18:25:51 GMT References: <5337@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <25aa930b.37ff@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or. Lines: 145 In article , portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: > w> At the lowest level it could be considered just a PC clone, however at the > w> higher end from the stuff I saw, it breaks ground that Amiga can't even > w> begin to tread in. From the things I saw I would have to say that the > w> FM Towns is far more suited for Video/Animation/Sound Production/Multi- > w> Tasking/Multi-Media applications than the Amiga is. The big deal is that > w> I never realised just how far behind the Amiga is getting until I saw the > w> FM Towns. > Ummm, could you give us some examples of the sort of things that were > running on the FM Towns that is beyond the current state of the art of > Amiga technology? I'm not trying to challenge your claim -- rather, I > am more interested in hearing about the things you saw that led you to > this conclusion. Glad you asked. Outside of the Multi-Tasking (which I consider VERY minor and VERY easy to add) I believe that everything I've said is true. One problem we face that we get so wrapped up in our Amigas that we don't look at what is going on in the rest of the world. So what make the FM Towns so great? Well to large extent it is the same things that make the NEXT machine interesting. Not much new ground was broken with the NEXT but the machine takes many good things and wraps them into a nice system. Next thing we know people are crazy about the NEXT. Well the FM Towns is sort of like that. It isn't that it pushes that edge of technology or anything (16MHz 386 system is pretty run of the mill these days) but it is a how system. Everything is working together and it is a case where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. One thing that helps it a lot is the Fujitsu is really supporting it and and it is a complete system. Take hardware as an example. The FM Towns comes with at least a floppy, CD-ROM, 1 or 2 Megs memory (max. of 8) and a SCSI interface. Then Fujitsu also supplies the following thing if you are willing to pay for them: (I now looking a Fujitsu catalog) * 4 different keyboards, additional keypad, 2 different monitors * 4 kinds of mouse or joystick type input devices * Laser printer with some kind of color support * 9 other kinds of printers, and even all the needed cables, etc. * 6 kinds of hard disks ranging from 20MB 25msec to 315MB 18msec * a 20MB or 120MB tape backup units * 3 kinds of floppy disks * memory expansion in 1 or 2 MB sizes * To NSTC cards (I believe one can also do frame grapping) * 80387 daugther board * 1200 baud modem card * additional SCSI ports * some kind of Addition serial expansion that can be used with MIDI * A normal MIDI interface card * RS-232C with two ports card * a color scanner * 1200 and a 2400 baud external modem * 2 kinds of pen plotters * extern stereo speakers These are the things that Fujitsu sells and supports. I don't even know what all the 3rd party stuff is. The point is that Fujitsu (and other Japanese companys) sells a complete system and supports it. None of this crazy having to use stuff from 8 different vendors to get a half- way reasonable system stuff. You can get what you need and it works well together. However it wasn't the hardware that impressed me so much but the stuff I saw running on it. Read on ... > From everything you've mentioned so far, it doesn't seem to me that > the FM Town is much more than a PC clone with a nifty graphics card > and a CD-ROM drive attached to it. That's certainly nothing to be > excited about. What kind of software are these things running? What > do they do? I have in front of me about six or seven application notes and catalogs for the FM Towns. All this stuff was freely avaible for the taking at most computer stores. In these broshires I can see some of the following: * Complete Image processing hardware/software * a C-Trace ray-tracer that has output as good and any Amiga ray-tracer. (One picture of 3 cats in a alley is really neat) * A application note on using the FM Towns hardware and painting tools to do cel animation. * All kinds of business software * A word processing package called FM-OASYS that provides many word processing tools on a CD-ROM * Some very graphics even somewhat 3D educational software * Several hunderd games (it seems) that all look like they have fantasic graphics/sound. All kinds from 3D golf, war-games, board games, video games, role playing, truly an impressive selection * A apple like deaktop and applications notes on the stuff avaible in CD-ROMS. Great color graphics up to 32000 colors, image processing tools, and music related stufware. * All kind of information on how to expand the system to do different kinds of applications. * Another item called CD BEST 10 seems to be about 10 diffenert music based packages. Remember the FM Towns can also play normal CD's * Books on using FM-Towns with IBM application like: Multplan, MS Windos * More CD packages like - - HYPER JUGLE with over 100 differnt MS-DOS program, a Habitat program were people build a computer town all is 3D, Audio & Visual software, OS/2 support stuf and many more things I don't understand - A MS/DOS <-> TownsOS support CD ROM. The TownOS looks like a nice windowing enviorment. - Video Bible and other CD databases. * A 3D visual world program billed as "OPERATE YOUR OWN AVATAR", seems related to the Habitat above. and there is mention of LUCASFILMS games and stuff like that. * Another borshire that is about what they call HYPERMEDIA * Compliers * Paint and sound programs. Some of these programs really impressed me, and when I saw them I said to myself - "There is no way I could ever get this working on my Amiga." I think a lot of programs were greatly enchance by the data avaible to the program on the CD ROM. I think programs like Space Ace and Dragons Lair would be easy to do on the FM Towns, sure the Amiga can do them but I don't think nearly as well. Also the speed of some of the graphics just blew me away. Some of the demos show very fast graphic drawing speed that seemed much faster than anything I've every seen the Amiga do. The Amiga was great in 1985 but I think the custom chips that gave it the edge then have become the major bottleneck now in the Amiga. I thought my Amiga software was pretty hot until I saw some of the Japanese software, now to be honest I would be somewhat ashammed to show my software in Japan. I have good stuff as I even showed it a SIGGRAPH in the Comodorare booth, not a lot of stuff I saw on the FM Towns was better. Clearly the hardware gave it a clear edge! > w> However, as an aside I should say that the Japanese computers have always > w> been ahead in graphics at least in the small computer area. Japanese > w> computer hardware seems to be really good stuff. I saw genlocking of > w> computer graphics onto video in 1984 on cheap MSX computers, it must have > w> been late 1986 before it was easy to get a genlock for the Amiga. > > The MSX standard was based on the same display chip used many years > previously in the TI-99/4A. The Japanese certainly weren't breaking > new ground in display technology there. The MSX machines competed > with each other on the basis of the accessories they offered, such as > built-in MIDI support or genlocks hardware. It sounds like the "FM > Towns" are the same concept applied in PC/Clone arena instead of the > 8-bit home computer arena. > > \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc. Perhaps you are right there. Wayne Knapp