Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc! From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Black Belt Video Message-ID: <998@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> Date: 11 Jan 90 04:02:16 GMT Lines: 103 Return-Path: To: van-bc!rnews The following message is from ben Williams of Black Belt Systems. He has asked that I post it to the net in response to Wayne Knapp's recent posting. I will add only one comment to this posting. Ben is capable, honest, and so far, has produced everything he has said he would produce, and usually in less time than he said he would. ------ begin forwarded message ----- To Wayne Knapp: Since you obviously read the part of the message that stated that I don't have usenet access, I guess your remark about my posting being late must refer to some documents we were to mail you? C'mon... sure it was late. I responded as soon as I saw it, that's all there is to it. Bandwidth problems: Yes - when you run 640 mode stuff with four bitplanes, there are very serious demands made upon the CHIP memory's bandwidth. Serious _moving_ animation might well require that the system doing the animation have a reasonable amount of fast ram for the program to reside in... there is a lot of data, no way around that at all. It has to be moved, and the only way you can ease that bottleneck is to do the movement from fast ram. That relieves half the problem. Keep in mind that 6 bitplanes of HAM data isn't a whole lot better in terms of bandwidth than 4 bitplanes of hires... And we still see nice HAM animations. Re costs of the unit: Yes, we charge $300.00 for the unit. For developers, for end users, etc. Yes, we can't afford to give the thing away - that's not a crime, you know. We're here to try and help the Amiga, to be a viable business, and so on. If we had scads of $$$ floating around, we'd be providing the units at a deep discount. We don't. It's not like there are 20 million Amigas around. As I said in my previous note, you are entitled to your opinions, and if you're not interested in the HAM-E, then there you go. It's only the least expensive and most compatible video display expansion device available for the machine. As for other developers being interested or not, it would seem that "us developers" are very willing to get involved with the box, change code, and so on. We see very little resistance from developers, $300 or not. We had to expand the intial run from 100 units to 250 to accomodate the developers who felt they _had_ to have an early box. I appreciate the "go jump in a lake" comment and decline with a smile. Sounds like you spent a lot of time carefully working out a well reasoned reply. :*) It's not often someone degenerates to name calling in the first round of messages... a rare pleasure to see such a show. Never heard of us? There's that not enuf $$$ issue again. We have not (yet) been able to advertise other than in Amiga Transactor... we designed (and got FCC approved, unlike most Amiga developers) the Amiga AVT system, a video transceiver. 55 SSTV modes, 9 G1 FAX modes, telephone interface, ARexx, etc, etc. Marketed by AEA in Lynnwood Washington, mostly to HAM radio operators, so far. It's only the most powerful system of it's type ever made, that's all. We did Board Master, a mid level interactive PCB CAD system... $99.99, not exactly "raping the consumer". Then there is CoComm, a network managment telecomm program. We did C Ltd's (may they burn in hades) SCSIdos 3.0... until they stopped paying us... We've done numerous PD programs such as the JakeBoard, a logical KBD for the handicapped; SetPri, a nice Intuitionized priotity utility; Crypt, an encryption utility; A whole buncha stuff. We know the Amiga. Been at it since day one of the a1000's release. As far as your 24 bit compressed file format goes, good for you. There is 24 bit IFF (which is compressed, of course, to some degree) and Impulse, Syndesis, and ASDG are all interested in working with file formats and etc with our system... I don't think we'll miss you if you decide to stand by and wait for whatever else you think is coming along. Re the # of colors available on screen at one time... You're quite right, and I've changed the file to reflect the exact meaning of the term... thanks for catching the error. The correct value, without getting into overscan issues which would increase it quite a bit, is 128,000 pixels - not 40,000 as you said in your reply. You really do need a calculator, I guess. :*) That's 128,000 out of 262,144 possible, or, if you want to notice that the color registers are 24 bits, out of 16 million or so. Wayne, not to be mean or anything, but thinking about it, seeing you do math twice and screw it up twice, I guess even if you _did_ have a 24 bit compression method, we would take a pass on it. Hate to find out there were only 64 colors in your files. :*) Looking forward to your next inept attempt to be mean and nasty. Bye! Ben Williams - AA7AS, for Black Belt Systems. ---- end forwarded message ------ -- "Cavett Emptor - Let the talk show host beware!" - Evan Marcus +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+