Conference hydra::amiga_v1

     >>NO plan to support WorkBench 2.0 on the A500.
     
     So then, where is the A500 to A2x00 or A3000 upgrade plan?
     Or is that what WB 1.4 is for?  %-)
     
     Dave

    Hmmmmmm.....
    
    		Me thinks that you have just opened up a proverbial
    		Hornets Nest !!!!!
                
    
    After giving away 1.3.2  This a major 'downer'
                                           
    			- Pete -
    

    
    For any references that floated about regarding WB 1.4 please read V2.0
    
    TomF
    

    Hi,
    
    If the A500 becomes 'unsupported' for 1.4/2.0 then I will be somewhat
    annoyed, well actually very annoyed.
    
    Maybe I should have bought an ST or something ?
    
    hmmmmm,
    
    Mike

    I too was somewhat miffed at reading .0, but after being calmed down
    by my fellow Amiga (2000) owners here in MRO, reread the CBM announcement
    posted in the A3000 note. It does say that "Availability of a 2.0 
    enhancer kit for for A500 series machines will be announced at a future 
    date". The CBM announcement seems a lot more "official" to me than some
    posting on the usenet. Guess we'll have to wait & se

							-Dom

    (Escaped the orphanage once by selling my 128; don't want to have
    to escape the orphanage again ;-)

    
    I think that the basic problem will be convincing hundreds of thousands
    of A500 owners that they should rush out and spend money on 
    
    a) hard drive
    b) extra memory
    c) multisync monitor
    
    These little goodies will set you back well over $1K, but will pretty much
    be needed to realize all the benefits of 1.4/2.0/ECS.  The multisync
    monitor is pretty optional, but I mntioned it anyway.
    
    For what it's worth, from the little playing around I've done with a
    Beta testers' 1.4, it is a simply amazing software package.  The Amiga
    will be superior to _any_ personal computer or workstation you may have
    stumbled across.  You WILL NOT be disappointed, except in having to
    upgrade your hardware.
    
    The important thing to remember is that 1.4/2.0 IS A VERY GOOD THING! 
    You may be personally miffed at having to spend more $$$ to protect
    your investment, but without this major upgrade, the Amiga could have
    been in serious trouble.
    
    I think Commodore is just buying a little time to figure out exactly
    how best to handle all these A500 owners.  I bet you won't be
    forgotten.
    
    Ed.

    I don't mind buying s hard disk, I want an A590 anyway.
    
    What I am somewhat concerned about is if I have to upgrade my 500 to a
    x000 system. In thoery I shouldn't - right ? However marketing
    departments have been known to stop quite reasonable hardware options
    every reaching the field.
    
    Also, as I've stated before, I believe there are a lot of small users
    out there who tinker away on their Amiga 500s, play games etc. These
    sorts of people probably aren't interested in spending quite large
    dollars in order to be able to run the latest and greatest amiga os.
    
    So, if there is a reasonably large section of the Amiga user base that
    can't or won't upgrade, what does that do for software developers ?
    
    We have an additional problem Downunder in that the hardware is
    reasonably expensive (better part of a A$1000 just for an A590 with the
    20mb drive and 0 memory).
    
    I'll wait and see what happens, I'm hoping that Commodore will do the
    right thing, but...
    
    Mike

    Commodore are bound to look after us 500 owners and give us a free upgrade?
    
    
    ;^)
    
    NO??
    
    Greg

Re: .*

An Amiga 2000 is pretty much an Amiga 500 with an extra half meg and
slots.  The custom chips are interchangeable.   I find it hard to
believe that it is possible to upgrade one but not the other.

I don't think that there is any technical problem standing in the way
of a 500 upgrade.  The Commodore press release announced that there
would be a 500 upgrade in the future.  I believe it is best to take
this one on faith.

Commodore would be slitting its throat not to not offer an upgrade
to the 500 owners.  I can't believe that a company that wants to
stay in business would do such a thing.  I believe that predictions
in this notesfile were correct:  Commodore offered the 1000 trade
up deal one last time because they were going to drop the 1000.
I can't believe that Commodore went to that much trouble to do
the right thing by folks who bought machines three to four years
ago, but intend to screw last week's customer.

    I just returned form he press announcement in washingon DC. From
    what I could gather the 500 owners should have nothing to fear.
    The 500 is still a viable product,and some versions will be bundled
    with Amiga Vision software,so it is safe to assume that the 500
    will be CBM's entry level Multi Media system. I heard mention of
    a 500P but did not get to see one.It is basically a 500 with a meg
    of memory.No big deal considering I saw a 4 meg internal board for
    the 500 at System Eyes. Version 2.0 is surly a step in the right
    direction.The word was an enhancer pagkage is in the works.I don't
    think it will be available as soon as 2.0 purchased with new 
    systems.By now you have probably all seen a 3000 w/.20 running at
    your dealers,So you can see how slick an interface it is.
    							bill

The A500 was and is actually very well sold in Europe. I don't believe CBM will
take the risk to make the A500 obsolete. For the purist Amigan as I am the A500/
A590 combination is a very good alternative to the A2000, as long as you don't
want to add special cards. I understand on the other side that CBM may take in
consideration that changing chips in the A500 is less easy than in the A2000.
Now I have my A500/A590 with a total of 3MB and probably I'll add some new ECS,
but I should be quite disapointed if there will be no WB2.0 available for it.

Now about the A3000, the fact that only the CPU has 32 bit access to chip memory
is not so bad because it means the new custom chip set is compatible with the
previous machines. De-interlaced display is a compromise compared to hi-res
non-interlaced display but if they do this, it is maybe to avoid changing *all*
the chip set (including maybe the 7MHz 68k) in the previous machines. The same
applies to the 8 bitplane extension. If you consider a 512x640 8 bit plane
screen refreshed at 50 Hz this gives you 16,384,000 bytes/sec. I doubt the A500
has the horsepower to do this and still multitask. In exchange, while the
de-interlaced screens are not the best for annimation, they are excellent for
limited dynamic images like those used in desktop publishing for example.
I think CBM considers that power graphics users of the A3000 will add
special graphics cards like in the case of the Mac IIfx. In any case the A3000,
with its price and features is a strong competitor to the Mac II (but not the
fx).

My last but *big* question is:

The A3000 has the general Amiga multitasking advantage + horsepower (Unix is not
for free and AmigaDOS is a good platform for developing Unix applications),
*but* has it memory management in order to protect the concurrent tasks ?
Imagine you prepare a long document in the background and develop in parallel.
Can you still crash the system because a stupid free-same-memory-twice error ?
This may be a problem for the use of the multitasking in the real world.

Sorin

> for free and AmigaDOS is a good platform for developing Unix applications),
> *but* has it memory management in order to protect the concurrent tasks ?

> Sorin


<CB> what realm does this question fall into (hardware or WB2.0) :-) :-)

Way back there were some heated discussions over memory management and
virtual memory  (Remember your friend Valentin? 8-)

What is the status of this? 

(tactfully posed:)  Does the A3000 have virtual memory

john

    Running some applications in multitasking but without memory protection
    on the fast A3000 may be like racing with a Porsche with no brakes..
    
    Re. 12
    If Valentin is Valentin Pepelea, you guessed : he and me have roots in
    the same country (but I don't know him personally).
    
    Sorin

    To return to the question of WB2.0 on the A500, I suspect the thorny
    issues are indeed related to the requirements for a hard disk and at  
    least 1MB of memory.
    
    The latter requirement already exists for A500 owners who want to use
    the Fatter Agnus' 1MB Chip RAM abilities.  As an A500/A590 owner, I
    can't IMAGINE going back to a diskette-only configuration any more than
    I can imagine trying to run without the A501 memory/clock board.
    
    When the WB2.0 Enhancer Kits come out, they should be more specific
    about the REAL pre-requisites.  I suspect that what 2.0 wants is the
    Fatter Agnus (1MB Chip RAM) and any auto-booting hard disk.  Commodore
    service centers already know how to upgrade systems' chip sets.
    
    While I'm impatiently waiting for WB2.0 and the rest of the ECS to be
    generally available, I'm not losing a lot of sleep worrying that I
    won't be able to add them to my system.  The C-A engineering crew has
    done PRETTY WELL by us, whether or not marketing has been up to snuff.

     I think Bill (.14) says approximately what I was getting at back in
     .1. It seems clear the enhancer kit hardware/software will be
     available to bring current machines up to or close to the 3000
     configuration. The real question is whether the requirement for
     enhancement is based on memory or model number. I think Commodore will
     put together a modified 2.0 (my original cryptic reference to 1.4) for
     the non-hard disk low memeory machines. 
     
     I hope they don't tie it to some idiosyncratic difference between a
     500 and a 2000, forcing 500 users with the required memory to use
     a scaled down WB 2.0 available six months later.
     
     BTW. I wonder if it will make sense to upgrade a 500 or if it
     will make more sense economically to buy a new one bundled with
     Amigavision, ECS etc. $150 here and there and pretty soon you have
     passed the cost of simply buying a new one and selling your old 
     one.
     
     Dave
     
     
     

    Re .15:
    
>   BTW. I wonder if it will make sense to upgrade a 500 or if it will make
>   more sense economically to buy a new one bundled with Amigavision, ECS
>   etc. $150 here and there and pretty soon you have passed the cost of
>   simply buying a new one and selling your old one.
    
    ... or sending it off to college with #1 son in September of '91. 8^)

    Besides ECS I would like to see a working 68020(68030)/6888X/32bit
    memory add-on for the A500.  <---might be wishful thinking, tho.

    
    There is a 68030/68882/4 MB board from Hurricane for the A500.
    
    Ed.

    I wrote Imtronics for information about the Hurricane 500 but haven't
    heard from them yet.  Anyone have any info?  As soon as I get
    comfortable with Plink, I will query there also.
    
    mark
    
    /go ami;qscan subj accelerator?

I understand that CBM has proposed not doing a 2.0 for the A500 at all
on BIX. The developers were upset - after all, that's the largest chunk
of their market.  Why should they bother upgrading a product to 2.0 when
the bullk of their sales are to machines that it won't run on? Methinks this
would be suicide on CBMs part. However, CBM has a history of having a death
wish, so I wouldn't put it past them.

As for the minimum requirements to get all the advantages of 2.0/ECS: who
cares? I don't have a mutlisync monitor (they weren't available when I
bought my machine, and I haven't felt the urge to go buy one). I'm not
about to now, just because there's a new magic mode I can use. It's nice
that it's there, but it's not required. Including such in the cost of
upgrading the hardware to run 2.0 isn't a fair comparison; you should only
consider the minimum required to actually use 2.0.

Now we come to that minimum requirement. 1MB of memory - that I can see.
Requiring that the internal 500KB card be installed isn't to bad. But a
hard disk?  That could well be asking that someone double their investment
in the machine, which isn't reasonable. I can understand why CBM would be
loathe to release such a system. Of course, I think that not releasing it
for the 500 at all is even worse.

Is 2.0 bloated so badly that they can't get a minimal system on one disk
any more, with everything else on N disks of extras? That seems a bit
ludicrous.

	<mike

    re: whines about the 500  :-)
    
    Look at it in a different way, what does 2.0 offer to a user of a
    system with 1 Meg RAM, 2 floppies, and a 1084 monitor?  Marketing
    can't assume that the wonderful new features of 2.0 will be enough
    for everybody to rush out to get harddisks and Multisync monitors.
    Remember, this is primarily a home based market, they'll be lucky
    to get people to buy a new OS ROM, let alone the ECS.  And if 2.0 
    breaks too many applications (games) then that will really slow 
    the upgrade.
    
    It looks like CBM Marketing believes the A2000 owners will be willing
    to spend the money needed to take full advantage of 2.0.  That might
    not be so.  Add up the cost of a Multisync ($500), Fat Agnus
    & Denise (?), memory (?), harddisk controller & drive ($600).  Depending
    on how much you already have, it could be quite expensive.
    
    What is needed is a 2.0 that will run on a 1 Meg, 2 floppy, 1084
    monitor system.  And will run even better if you give it more memory,
    disk space, and a multisync monitor.  Hopefully somebody at CBM 
    is trying to make that happen.  
    
    -Dave

re:
    Look at it in a different way, what does 2.0 offer to a user of a
    system with 1 Meg RAM, 2 floppies, and a 1084 monitor?  Marketing

If nothing else, fixing the )(*&*&%(*& layers bug!!!!

	<mike

    
    Re -1
    
    How big is 2.0 . 
    		Does anyone one have any ideas, let's not speculate...
    .. Guesstimate..
    
    Amigados
    Scalable fonts (Compugraphics) available on Pagesetter 2.0 [how
    								big ?]
    Additional Libraries (see other notes)
    Multimedia
    Misc  ( I'm sure there is a lot here )
    
    
    	Answer does this fit on one boot floppy
    	What aa high density floppy     ?
    
    
    		- Pete -
                  
    Who saw a beta test of 1.4 (I think it means "beta not release it
    yet !")
    
     

re .21
	With the realease of the 3000,and WB 2.0 I think CBM is
targeting the professional,commercial market.It will be available
to all but the primary goal that was set by the tone of the 
"MultiMedia Live" show in DC was to break into Corporate America.
	This was also renforced by the announcement of the new
networking capabilities,and plans.I guess it is just another one
of these wait,and see situations.I did see a person that bought
a 2000 on sunday walk away with a rain check for 2.0. You fill out
the card,mail it to CBM,and then when 2.0 is released it will be
sent to you. So while it is not released,it is included with any
new 2000 now.I did not read the entire thing so cannot comment
on the 500. Your dealer will be able to give you info.
							bill

Couple of things from USENet.

First, someone from CBM stated that 2.0 does _not_ require a hard disk, but
that having one sure helps performance.

Second, a second source reported that 1.4 Beta ran just fine on an A500
with 1.5meg of memory - 1.5 because it put the 512K kickstart roms in ram.
So, unless something drastic has changed since that beta, 2.0 should run
on a 500 with a full meg.

Finally, the most logical reason I've yet seen for delaying 2.0 for the 500 -

  This could just mean that they haven't figured out when they'll have enough
  parts made for all the A500s, and the different kits they'll need for 
  various motherboard revs, if you need the A501ram/clock, and so on.

Of course, someone with more data might be able to shoot this down, or
provide better support.

	<mike

    I stopped by the Memory Location in Wellesley, Ma last Friday,
    they have an A3000 on display that you can play with, i.e. it isn't
    running demos.
    
    Looked nice, watched somebody trying to change the background color
    from that awful gray to a nice blue :-)
    
    There were signs about a new CBM deal, something about a $100 from CBM
    if you buy a CBM monitor & amiga computer.  You almost get the
    impression that CBM has decided to start really marketing the Amiga :-)
    
    re: the wait for 2.0 on the A500
    I'm waiting for the official "its dead" announcement about the A1000.
    Why can't I use 2.0 on a 2.5Meg A1000?  A previous note mentioned about
    loading the OS into RAM.  With 2.5Meg, that alternate beats making it
    into a doorstop or planter :-)  How about half in the WKS and the other
    half in normal RAM?
    
    -Dave
    p.s. is it more professional to have the disk icons down the left side
    of the screen or the right?

Article 55403 of comp.sys.amiga:
Path: shlump.nac.dec.com!e2big.dec.com!decuac!haven!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!ken
From: ken@cbmcats.UUCP (Ken Farinsky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga OS 2.0 on an A500
Message-ID: <11178@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 30 Apr 90 15:01:26 GMT
References: <17840@snow-white.udel.EDU> <90117.121053UH2@psuvm.psu.edu> <134943@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <90118.102409ERMENKIR@MTUS5.BITNET>
Sender: news@cbmvax.commodore.com
Reply-To: ken@cbmcats.UUCP (Ken Farinsky)
Organization: Commodore Business Machines, Tech Support
Lines: 27

In article <90118.102409ERMENKIR@MTUS5.BITNET> ERMENKIR@MTUS5.BITNET writes:
>Good points concerning CBM's A2000 market vs A500.  As someone stated before,
>perhaps the reason A500 won't have 2.0 right away is not all of them have
>more than 512K and without jumper/trace hacks they won't likely have 1MB chip
>ram...who knows what sort of limitations 2.0 places on memory...my guess is
>it will require a good deal more and will make the A500 with 512K a sticky
>piece of machinery...

Would everyone please stop with all of the speculation about why the
A500 was not mentioned in the AmigaOS 2.0 stuff!!!!!  You are simply
wasting everyone's time.

The A500 is equivalent to an A2000 without the slots.  If an enhancer
package is released for the A2000, then you WILL be able to upgrade
your A500.

AmigaOS 2.0 does NOT require 1Mb of chip memory.
AmigaOS 2.0 does NOT require the new 1Mb Agnus.
AmigaOS 2.0 does NOT require the new ECS Denise.
AmigaOS 2.0 does NOT require a hard disk.
AmigaOS 2.0 does NOT require two floppy drives.

AmigaOS will work on an A500.
--
Ken Farinsky - CATS - (215) 431-9421 - Commodore Business Machines
uucp: ...{uunet,rutgers}!cbmvax!ken
bix:  kfarinsky

Re: *

Gee, I guess Ken pretty much summed up what I wanted to tell ya folks.

As far as Memory Management is concerned, sure thing.
The A3000 features a nice 68030 with a cute integrated MMU.
So all you have to do is writing the necessary setfunction() calls to give
Exec memory protection and virtual memory. ;-) ;-)

Seriously, 2.0 will _not_ have protection, it's just to complicated regarding
compatibility. There will be VM however, in a short while after 2.0...

Cool down folks, it's all management hysteria anyway...

<CB>

>  So all you have to do is writing the necessary setfunction() calls to give
>  Exec memory protection and virtual memory. ;-) ;-)

I hear rumor that 2.0 does have the MMU tables hanging off an Exec list 
(i.e. Exec *owns* the MMU) so all MMU operations to the MMU go through Exec
so it can "keep an eye" on it...

john

Re: .29

>I hear rumor that 2.0 does have the MMU tables hanging off an Exec list 
>(i.e. Exec *owns* the MMU) so all MMU operations to the MMU go through Exec
>so it can "keep an eye" on it...

Yes, but right now it looks the other way... ;-)

<CB>

    2.0 seems to break a lot of software an I am not talking games only.
    Even if they gave it to me today I would not be able to use it most
    of the time. This is a major problem in my eyes. I do not see how
    the developers are going to meet the needs of both 1.3 & 2.0 .It
    will be an interesting year for sure.As it stands now 2.0 is pretty
    but also pretty much useless.
    								bill

RE:.31

>   As it stands now 2.0 is pretty but also pretty much useless.

Come on now! It *IS* in field test; what do you expect. Well behaved
programs run just fine in most instances. Folks who did nasty things
like depend on private system structures (like using overscan in 1.3
required) got burned. Even some of these practices have resulted in 
code in the OS to make them work anyway, or at least not trash the
OS by poking at a changed data structure.

Commodore is going quite far to make 2.0 compatible and I am quite
impressesed. I would also not judge by the 2.0 *beta* that has been
sent to dealers so they may demo the 3000. It is not the release that
will be delivered to non-developers/non-dealer-demos.

	-SES

re .31, .32 -

It's a bit early to judge just what will/won't run on 2.0. That's one of
the points of beta test - to let developers determine what won't work,
and fix those things that break even though they follow the rules.

Even for that, in my trivial testing, everything I've tried on it ran, with
one exception - a program that reached into Intuition's private areas to
change the looks of the system's window gadgets. Expecting that to run is silly.

In any case, I know my editor runs, and Lattice assures me that the current
compiler will run. CB, PopupMenus, Snap & Rexx all run. What else do I need?

	<mike

Re .31-.33

As Mike and Steven already pointed out, what you see these days is pre-release
stuff and _NOT_ what you'll get when you'll be able to purchase it.
Having attented the Paris DevCon and tested quite a number of programs I can
just restate:
1. Programs that follow(ed) the rules work in about 90-95% off all cases.
2. The ones that break do so because old "tricks" (like overscan) now have
well defined mechanisms that may break these. However any developer worth that
definition had time since January to fix any "known" and unavoidable
incompatibilities.
3. CBM has indeed gone to extreme lengths to ensure backwards compatibility,
even in areas where private structures have been abused. BCPL, like many other
things is still "in there". But for the Amiga OS to evolve, most of these
artifacts will have to removed in upcoming OS releases. But the timeframes
between these upgrades make it not a burden to developers.

Tell me how many VMS4.x executables of more complex applications still run 
under V5.3 or V5.4 _without_ at least a relink...

Just relax and wait for the "real thing".

<CB>_(not_the_console_buffer_;-)