By Michael Webb, Editor-in-Chief, MikeWebb@CompuServe.COM
What's this? The Amiga's dead? I'm sorry, but you'll have to tell QuikPak, Impulse, Cloanto, and many more Amiga users and developers the world over about it, because they apparently haven't heard.
In their "ignorance" of the platform's "deceased" state, they continue to develop new products and make new commitments, and some of them (are you ready for this) actually seem to be turning a profit and making progress.
I have either found, or personally received, a number of interesting bits of information since our January issue. They cover a wide variety of topics, but they all have one thing in common: the Amiga, and the intense loyalty so many users and developers maintain towards it.
From all this, you can't help thinking that the Amiga is here to stay.
With all due respect to the people behind all the many fascinating things happening in the Amiga Community these days, one of the most important news items to all of us is what is happening to Amiga Technologies. A few short months after announcing their intention to bid for the technology in earnest, it appears we may finally be on our way to a resolution. And by that I don't mean a Commodore-style resolution to Amiga Inc.'s financial troubles; I don't mean an ESCOM-style resolution to Commodore's bankruptcy; I mean a final resolution that can potentially restore the Amiga to a known, respected status in the computer industry.
The days now count down to February 28, 1997, a date which may (and I emphasize this, because we have been disappointed far too many times by unfulfilled promises) prove to be one of the most significant in Amiga history. The bids were due in by the end of January 31, and a winner is supposed to be announced by February 28. So we wait and we wonder...
I don't want to "spoil the party," but I'd like to remind you that assuming QuikPak does emerge victorious, just because they do does not necessarily mean the Amiga is automatically back and ready to do battle as we would all like it to be. First, all business must be finalized. Then, of course, we will have to wait to see exactly what QuikPak's intentions are. I believe that we can rest assured, however, that they have the platform's best interests in mind. Virtually the Amiga's proprietors even now through the development and manufacture of the most powerful Amiga ever (the A4060T) and various new models and configurations, they have clearly demonstrated their interest in the platform.
What is important, however, is the next generation. Powerful as they may be, the Amigas currently being manufactured by QuikPak, still using Amiga OS 3.1 and the AGA chipset, are based on the last generation's technology. We must hope that the new owners can "Quik"ly develop the next major update to the Amiga's hardware and software, and perhaps just as importantly, in a direction consistent with everything that the Amiga is, and has stood for, to date.
In the meantime, take the time to rejoice; rejoice the Amiga's survival of two bankruptcies, and rejoice its potential resurgence. But no matter what happens, rejoice our case-in-point of just how far a little computer platform, and a lot of dedication, can go.
Imagine has been a mainstay for Amiga 3D graphics artists for a number of years.
Impulse is still supporting the Amiga. The greatest evidence of this, at this time, is the recent completion of Imagine 5.0. New features include CyberGraphX and ARexx support.
For more information, visit Impulse's web site, http://www.coolfun.com
Some readers may recall our previous mention of the Independent Amiga Rejuvenation Survey, also known as "IARS." The first phase involved Amiga users submitting their ideas for future Amiga designs and strategies in free-form documents, and from that, the coordinator, Gunnar Liljas, compiled a long list of specific questions.
With that, the second phase is now underway, with information neatly broken down and the question forms now online. The original submissions are still there (including mine :)), and, in fact, all those who fill out the forms are encouraged to read the original documents first.
For those who are thinking "Oh great, another useless Amiga survey," IARS has received official recognition from Phase 5 itself, and attention from others including ProDAD and Carl Sassenrath. This survey definitely has the potential to go places.
If you would like to submit your ideas, or just peruse some other people's, visit the official IARS site at http://www.skip.adb.gu.se/~gunnar/iars/. This is chance many of us have been waiting for to truly influence the future direction of the Amiga.
Carl Sassenrath, creator of the Amiga's multitasking kernel and ex-employee of VIScorp (of his own accord), recently surfaced in the Amiga news headlines once again.
When I first heard about this, I assumed it was some kind of a port of Java over to the Amiga, but in reality, it's anything but that. LAVA stands for "Language for Audio Visual Applications."
To summarize, LAVA is a user- and solution-oriented language. It will allow for easy development of small applications involving various multimedia or scripting operations, etc.
An alpha-ready version is expected by March 1997, and a beta version is due in May 1997.
For more specific information about LAVA, go right to the source at http://www.sassenrath.com.
The following information became available to us through the course of an unrelated e-mail exchange between Senior Editor Sam Ormes and the person by whom it is written. It may be of value to many A3000 owners.
Most, if not all A3000's (even A3000T's) and A2091 or similar SCSI controller cards are fitted with the WD33C93A-PL 00-04 scsi controller chip. While this chip is ok when you only have one device connected to the scsi bus (usually the internal hard drive), anything less than rev 00-08 can start to give you trouble when you start to add multiple devices to the bus. Most common symptoms are random scsi bus lockups (especially with cd-roms and tape drives), and random checksum errors when transferring large files between devices. The 00-08 revision addresses and fixes these problems along with reselection problems that were present in earlier versions. Once again, I am a source for this upgrade. Current asking price is $20.00 per chip which includes all shipping to anyplace on the planet. Cash, check (drawn on a U.S. bank) or money order (converted to U.S. funds) are all fine with me. My address is:
B. Krusinski
7556 S. Madison Circle
Littleton, Colorado 80122
I will notify buyers via e-mail when I receive their letter and mail the chip. If anyone has addition questions, I can be reached at the e-mail address below.
Thanks.
Now for the bad news. I have confirmed with Western Digital that they have ceased chip production (including the WD33C93A-PL 00-08) as of January 1, 1996.
I do have the AMD AM33C93A-16PC chip which performs as well, or slightly better than the WD33C93A-PL 00-08. I am using this chip in my A3000 right now.
My advice? I think the AMD clone is a good (and may be the only) alternative and I do have these chips available. If you have any additional questions, or would like to get an AMD chip, let me know.
There has been some debate over the differences between the WD33C93A and WD33C93B chips as they relate to the A3000/A2091. Unfortunatly the WD33C93B chip does not appear to offer any benefits for the A3000. Listed here is some information that I have compiled concerning both chips. Feel free to use this info, or ask me additional questions in determining what, if anything, you should do.
Machine: A3000/25mhz, 2 chip 8 fast. Tests were performed on WB versions 2.04 thru 3.1. SCSI devices used were both SCSI-1 and SCSI-2. Custom external shielded/grounded scsi cables were used. Termination (both internal and external) was checked about a dozen times and proper external termination voltage was present. Chips used were WD33C93A-PL 00-04, WD33C93A-PL 00-08, AM33C93A-16PC, WD33C93B-PL 00-04 and WD33C93B-PL 00-06. In all cases, only the chip was changed with the scsi hardware remaining the same.
Initial problem:
After adding a tape drive (Viper 5250) and scsi-2 cd-rom to the system, random scsi bus lockups would occur. These lockups prevented a successful tape backup from being completed and generally hosed things up.
Results:
Swapped the WD33C93A-PL 00-04 chip with the WD33C93A-PL 00-08 chip. Problems were resolved. Replaced the WD33C93A-PL 00-08 chip with the WD33C93A-PL 00-04 chip and the problems returned. The same scenario was performed with the AM33C93A-16PC, WD33C93B-PL 00-04 and WD33C93B-PL 00-06 versions with identical results. I.E., problems that existed with the WD33C93A-PL 00-04 chip were resolved when using any of the upgraded versions.
Compatibility:
- WD33C93A-PL 00-08 - No noticeable compatibility issues.
- AM33C93A-16PC - No noticeable compatibility issues.
- WD33C93B-PL 00-04 - Would not work in A3000's that are softkicked. For the A3000's that are booted from roms, there appear to be no compatibility issues.
- WD33C93B-PL 00-06 - Same as WD33C93B-PL 00-04.
Speed:
No noticeable difference between any 33C93 chip version with either scsi-1 or scsi-2 devices. :( It appears that without modifications to the internal A3000 scsi controller hardware, and/or improvements to the scsi.device the 'B' chip (which supports scsi-2 commands) does not provide any advantages over the 'A' chip upgrade. If you think AT/VIScorp/QuikPak (or whoever owns the Amiga this week) will make these upgrades, you're REALLY optimistic.
Conclusion:
I'm not going to state any. This situation reflects a common problem that was resolved on my machine by a chip upgrade. Hopefully, this will just provide people with more information to make an educated decision..... or add more fuel to the fire, take your pick. Your mileage may vary.
VaporWare's Voyager 1.0 made a splash last year when it was first introduced, but IBrowse, with advanced Tables support among other advantages, quickly surpassed it.
Now, Voyager-NG (Next Generation) has been released, and is the first Amiga web browser to support Frames. Frames, for those who don't know, are a very recent addition to the HTML standard which divides your browser window up into several independent, yet related, regions.
When Voyager-NG was first introduced several weeks ago, the VaporWare web site was so unbelievably busy that it was nearly impossible to download the file. Later, the web site was rearranged in such a way that the Amiga Web Directory's link to it was, for all intents and purposes, broken. I was finally able to obtain it when somebody sent the archive to me.
But if you are looking for any more information, or perhaps to download Voyager-NG, you can visit http://www.vapor.com, which might be a bit more accessible now.