This is a U.S. Army helicopter flight simulator at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
When the scientists here needed a computer that could handle the fast graphics and multitasking
required by a simulator, they didn't go out and buy an expensive mini computer system.
They bought a Commodore Amiga, in fact, 15 of them.
Today we take a look at the underrated and too often ignored Amiga on this edition of
the Computer Chronicles.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte Magazine
and Bix, the Byte Information Exchange.
In print and online, Byte and Bix serve computer professionals worldwide with detailed information
on new hardware, software and technologies.
Welcome to the Computer Chronicles.
I'm Stuart Shaffer and this is Gary Kildall.
Gary, this is an optical worm drive and with something called a handler, you can get a
gigabyte of storage in your computer.
These are 3D glasses used with a very high-powered CAD program.
What's interesting about both these peripherals, they're not for a Mac 2 or a 386 PC, they're
for the Commodore Amiga.
Gary, I get a lot of letters from viewers complaining about the fact that the computer
press seems to ignore the Amiga.
Why is that?
Well, Stuart, I guess part of it's got to be the genealogy of these machines, both Atari
and Commodore with the Amiga, of course.
Our thought of them as game machines and over the years, the power of these machines has
increased tremendously and of course, they still maintain a fairly low price.
Now that low price has been sort of a negative in a sense.
Yeah, they're really getting all the computing power they really need.
But there have been some especially good niche markets these machines are applicable to,
for example, video.
The Amiga handles video very, very well.
And of course, the other factor is the marketing power of IBM and Apple in the United States
and machines like this tend to have more success than outside the United States.
Gary, we're going to take a look at the latest Amiga hardware, the 2000HD and the 2500.
We'll see new Amiga applications from games to multitasking and of course, we'll take
a look at graphics, music and video on the Amiga.
Many people buy an Amiga because of its graphics or video capability, but they soon discover
the rest of its power.
That was the case with some scientists at Stanford's Linear Accelerator.
We have a report from Palo Alto, California.
About 30 miles south of San Francisco is the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a two-mile long
shaft buried deep underground where high energy particles are propelled at almost the speed
of light.
The particles collide in large detectors where the resulting explosion creates several million
events.
To sift through that mass of data and extract the useful information requires staggering
computing power as databases containing that information will soon approach a trillion
bytes in size.
Recently, theorists and researchers at the center added Amigas to their number crunching
mainframes, principally as graphics terminals and for multitasking.
The Amiga was unique in that it was a multitasking machine and we realized that early that that
could create an environment where you would always be on the mainframe if you wish to
be sharing the mainframe and still have a machine which acted not as something independent
but rather as a symbiote off the mainframe.
Dr. Weinstein uses his Amiga to juggle up to four different programs running on either
the mainframe, the Amiga, or both.
He can take advantage of the Amiga's color graphics and the mainframe's calculating powers
simultaneously.
A locally written terminal program is compatible with the REX language operating on the mainframe
so documents can be transferred seamlessly from mainframe to Amiga and back.
For Dr. Weinstein, it's a way to bridge the best of two inherently different worlds.
One is always going to be living with a mainframe so what I want is something that will symbiote
off that mainframe, will make my life as pleasant as it is to work on a microcomputer but allow
me to use that when I'm on the mainframe too.
Joining us in the studio now is Tom Stearns.
Tom is district sales manager with Commodore out here.
And next to Tom is Lou Wallace, contributing editor of Amiga World Magazine.
Gary?
Lou, you're a fan of the Amiga system.
Why do you like the Amiga better than say an IBM PC or a Mac or something like that?
Well, I guess I could just say it's more fun and it is that but it's also more productive.
It enables me to do things that I simply can't do with other computers.
Like what?
Whether it's running more than one application at a time or whether it's playing a game or
whether it's doing both of those at the same time or video applications.
There simply isn't another computer available on the market that can do the range of tasks
and functions that you think it's capable of.
Lou, what do we have here?
What kind of configuration is this?
Let's give us an idea of what's inside the box.
Well, this is the Amiga 2000HD.
This particular model is a 3 megabyte machine.
It has a 40 megabyte hard drive auto boot system.
It has a graphic resolution of 320, 200 to 640, 400, 4000 color speech multitasking.
And the processor is what?
Motorola 68000.
I mean at approximately 8 megahertz.
Right.
Good.
Now you've got a game that demonstrates the graphics, right, in the Amiga.
Yeah, I have a couple of games today.
Both games are very different and show off the machine to its best degree.
The first game is called Menace, and it's a true arcade quality style game.
It's a lot of fun.
I understand Lou's a pretty hot Menace player.
I don't know.
We're going to have to.
I'm going to ask you to describe it, but turn the mouse and the pad over to Lou.
Now I'm on the spot.
You're on the spot now.
Here you go.
Okay.
If you can get it going, and maybe give us play by play, Tom, as Lou starts to play,
tell us what's going on here.
Okay.
The object of this game is to capture the planet Draconia.
Okay.
As you can see, it's done in full overscan, which means that the entire screen is being
utilized for this particular game.
Okay.
Are you playing, Lou, or what?
I'm waiting to attack.
Here we go.
Okay.
So where are we?
So you try to stay alive through the entire game.
It's got great sound.
Is this underwater, Lou?
Is that what's going on?
Yes.
This is the undersea attack.
So just this portion of the game is underwater.
Others take you elsewhere on the planet?
There are six different levels, each one, I think, better and better graphics and interesting
creatures.
Lou, Tom, you were about to talk about why this is a good example of great graphics.
What's going on here?
You mentioned the full scan, the overscan.
Right.
It's got full overscan.
It's got great scrolling technique, terrific colors, great animation.
It's really multi-layer scrolling going on here.
Absolutely.
Yes.
How do these Amiga games compare with the arcade games?
Most of the Amiga games have been ported over from the arcade or their own community.
Lou, actually, you were mentioning you think some of the Amiga games are actually better
than the arcade games.
I think some of the later ones really surpass even the most contemporary of coin-op games.
These graphics are pretty hot.
That's for sure.
You lot, ooh.
Watch out.
What's this?
The enemy multiplies.
Lou, you're hot.
You should see me with a rapid-fire joystick.
I know you could play this game for a long time.
I'm going to play it for a long time.
I'm going to play it for a long time.
I'm going to play it for a long time.
I'm going to play it for a long time.
I'm going to play it for a long time.
I know you could play this game for a long time, Lou.
How far have you gotten in this thing?
I've actually made it to the last level, attacking the last master alien.
You're a super menace.
I've never gotten the last creature yet, but maybe tonight.
It's a good thing your name isn't Dennis, I'll tell you that.
Tom, I'm going to ask you to dump out a menace and get Battle Chess up, okay?
Great.
And while you're doing that, tell us about Battle Chess, Lou.
What kind of game is that?
Well, Battle Chess is your typical chess game.
I mean, you play chess against a computer or against another opponent.
The difference with Battle Chess from more conventional computer chess games is that
the game is in three dimensions, a three-dimensional board with animated chessmen.
And they walk, they have sound effects.
Each one attacks, it captures the other piece in a very characteristic and humorous manner.
All right, Tom, we have Battle Chess up on the Amiga now.
Show us how this works.
Okay, we're going to have this rook overtake, excuse me, this knight overtake the blue knight.
Okay, so the red knight's going to take the blue knight.
Correct.
This would be a normal chess move, right?
It's a knight move capturing a knight.
Yes, it is.
Great graphics.
Okay.
Great sound.
Okay, but in this game, they actually beat each other up.
The final outcome is preordained, just like in normal chess, but you get to watch a little
humor.
Some of them are very creative.
This is right out of Monty Python.
He chops his arms off and his legs off.
Ouch.
Lou, does this have value, you think, to encourage kids to play chess because of the graphics?
It certainly does.
I mean, I've caught my children with books on the rules of chess, learning how to play
just so they can play Battle Chess.
All right, what happens next, Tom?
We have to wait until they finish their move.
Okay, so we're waiting for the knight to die?
One more leg.
There it went.
Okay, blue knight is gone.
Okay, what happens?
Then he disappears.
Okay, so the knight's gone.
Now you're going to do a blue move?
Right.
Okay.
So you actually hear the pawn walk into the next square.
And then we're going to take the rook over to the queen.
Okay, so what, red rook is going to take blue queen?
Correct.
Okay.
It has to access the disc to find that graphic.
Is that what's going on?
Right, we don't have this on our installed.
Okay.
Lou, you were mentioning, this is something like what was in the original Star Wars movie,
right?
That's right.
Remember the Wookiee and the droid were playing and the creatures would actually fight on
the chess board.
Okay.
King Kong.
This is the best part.
That's pretty mean.
Poor queen.
Oh, gosh.
Nice twist to the game.
Nice twist to the game.
This used to be a nice intellectual game, guys.
What have you done?
A new level of class.
All right, thanks for showing this.
Lou, I want to ask you about the graphics on the game.
These are just games and they're not important, but what does it show us about what the Amiga
can do?
Well, games have always taken more computer power than just about any other application.
And the same power that's channeled for games and graphics can be used in more productive
applications such as business, productivity software, and multitasking, which all Amigas
can do.
Right, and they've done that for quite a number of years.
From day one.
Exactly.
So, you want to have a computer that has multitasking built in, and the operating system from the
base up.
Absolutely.
Now, you have some examples that show off the multitasking.
Yes, I do.
I'm going to show a quick little scenario here of what I consider a real world application.
Traditionally, I always start up a virus program to check to watch for viruses in Trojan horses
because you never know when you're going to pick up one.
Then I'm going to load up a partially completed document into just a standard word processor.
But what I want to do is take some data from a spreadsheet, which I did not previously
prepare and incorporate that into the word processor.
So I've got my document, I just push it to the background and you can see that the word
processor is still there and waiting to do whatever I want.
And I'll load up the spreadsheet.
So the point is you're really going to run both programs at the same time.
They're both running.
I could be spell checking or printing or I could have a terminal program running.
So now you're in the spreadsheet.
Absolutely.
These are both active applications right now.
I'm loading up a prepared template, which is a sales history of the Acme Fruit Company.
And using the Amiga clipboard device, I'm going to transport data directly from the
spreadsheet into the word processor by highlighting the area that I want.
And I'll just pop back into the word processor, position my cursor and paste it in.
There you see the data is now part of the document.
But to go a little further, I'm going to incorporate some graphics as well and go to yet another
program.
So you're up to the fourth thing you're running at the same time?
There's actually more tasks than that running because there's DOS and Workbench itself.
So here I'm generating a three-dimensional pie graph of that same data.
Push that to the background, bring up the window.
And now this is a little program I wrote that just grabs all the screens and memory and
saves them off to a RAM disk.
I've already done that.
Now it's done.
It saved the screen.
I don't really need the spreadsheet any longer.
I'll load up a little paint program, which is Deluxe Paint 2, the standard that most
paint programs are compared against on the Amiga.
And I'm going to load up that program, the pie chart that I just generated.
And there it is.
Now all I'm going to do is just clean it up a little bit before I put it in my document.
Clear the screen, position it, and save it back.
All right.
Through with that program.
Let's go back to our word processor.
Select Insert, which allows me to insert graphics into the document.
Change to the appropriate drive.
Click on the graphic, and it will be loaded into the memory of the word processor.
And here you see I now have a graph.
I have spreadsheet data, and I have word processor.
They all were active, and I was extremely productive.
I did not have to stop what I was doing.
I was able to work in the more human stream of consciousness, getting the work done the
way my mind was working.
And the Amiga allows you to do that.
That was a great demo.
Lou, Tom, thank you very much.
In just a minute, we're going to take a look at Deluxe Paint 3 for the Amiga.
We'll also take a look at Video Effects 3D.
First of all, though, if we're talking about the Amiga, we have to talk about its music
capability.
And Wendy Woods has a report on that.
E, also known as Eric Myers, and Mike Kingsley are in a band called Me.
They do their composing in E's converted garage on a variety of electronic musical instruments,
all controlled via a MIDI interface by an Amiga.
Why an Amiga?
It's reasonably priced.
The software currently available fits their needs.
The custom sound and graphics of the Commodore machine, they say, set it apart from the rest.
As computers in the past, they're blind and they can't hear.
This computer, I believe, is the first human-like computer in that it can see and it can hear,
in that it can take in a sample of sound, it can take and digitize a picture.
And what that's going to be great for is it's going to be great for art, it's going to be
great for being able to express yourself.
The software used to create this music is called Texture from SoundQuest.
The program enables them to store 24 tracks on disk, digitally record and control sounds
made by the keyboards and sampler, and to play them back from the computer.
In performance, they use a program called Performance, which supports any MIDI file
format, plays their pieces in a sequence they choose, even allows them to remix sounds for
a live performance.
E and Mike see all this as part of a big experiment designed to test the limits of the
Amiga and their imaginations.
In Saratoga, California, for the Computer Chronicles, I'm Wendy Woods.
With us in the studio now is Dan Silva.
Dan is the author of Deluxe Paint 3, and next to Dan is Jim Schneider, president of InnoVision
Technology.
Jim, on the last segment, there was a machine here that said Amiga 2000, this one says Amiga
2500.
What's the difference between those two?
Right, this has just been updated.
This is a brand new version of the Amiga 2000 series.
It's called the Amiga 2500.
And this has a 14 megahertz processor, 68,000 processor, and it also contains a 40 megabyte
internal hard drive.
The machine's advantages over the predecessors are that it runs at a 3 to 4 times faster
clock rate, so you get performance in your packages magnified by that amount.
And what would you expect to pay for a package like this as a retail price?
This advanced model with the accelerator would cost about $4,000 for the monitor and the
basic Amiga 2500 system.
And can you compare it in, let's say, computing power with the Mac product line, for example?
Yes, with the Macintosh, Macintosh 2 specifically.
This would gain a slight performance advantage in general processing.
In addition, the graphics co-processor built into all Amigas would give it the advantage
in graphics.
All right, Dan, speaking of graphics, you're the author of Deluxe Paint.
You've got Deluxe Paint 3 coming out in just a couple of weeks, I guess.
What are the new improvements in Deluxe Paint 3?
Well, almost every aspect of the program has been enhanced.
We've got the ability to paint and overscan, which gets rid of the black border around
the picture.
You use extra half-bright mode.
It's an Amiga mode that gives you 32 additional darker colors.
And there's a new font requester, which lets you load color fonts and reassign the font
directory.
There's new fill and paint modes, but the most important feature, and I think the one
I'm going to demonstrate today, is the animation capability.
This I'm going to play an animation that was created entirely in Deluxe Paint.
As you can see, I can create three-dimensional transformations, moving any bitmap object
through three dimensions.
And I'm going to show you interactively how you can actually create animations.
This is still a paint program, and I can paint in every frame, jump to the next frame, and
paint in that.
By doing this, I can create an animation.
I'll play that back.
You'll see I've actually created a moving object there.
In addition, all the normal painting tools can be used to create animations.
If I click this tool, instead of just painting on one screen, I can hold down and key on
the keyboard and paint on separate screens, creating an animation.
I can then reduce the size of the brush interactively and have it fade off in the distance.
And just by hand, I've created an animation.
What does each picture take in terms of storage?
I'm not storing the entire picture.
I'm only storing the differences between the pictures so you can get much more use out
of your memory.
Do you have the ability to change light sources and so forth?
No, this is just a painting program.
There's real no three-dimensional modeling.
I'm moving bitmaps around.
I also have the ability to create anim brushes.
Here's what I call an anim brush that was painted in this program and then picked up
off the screen, cutting through all the pictures.
I can now paint it down on one frame, or if I hold down the animation key, I can fly it
through separate frames.
I'll fly him off the screen here.
Now if we play that animation, we've got a bird flying.
I can also do a three-dimensional move of that to demonstrate the three-dimensional
capability.
I'm going to tell this to start 600 frames away.
I can do a preview of this, see the rectangle coming up.
Now I can tell it to render it.
Now I have a bird flying out of the distance, getting closer.
I can now tell him to keep flying.
He's flying past me there.
Now we've got a bird doing a fly-by.
Here he comes and zooms by.
These anim brushes can be used to do anything that a normal brush can be used for.
You're doing this in real time now, right?
This is all real time.
Just as I can use a normal brush to paint with, I can paint with an anim brush.
This turns out to be an unexpected useful feature.
You can create anim brushes which, for instance, are a bunch of different leaves on trees and
paint trees without them looking repetitive.
So what we've got is a program that's both a full-featured paint program and an animation
program rolled into one.
Dan, that's great.
I want to ask you to slide the keyboard over to Jim there so we can get the video effects
3D up.
Let me ask you while he's getting ready, Dan.
At what level is this kind of paint program being used?
I mean, is this professional level graphics being created?
It's being used both by professionals and by five-year-olds.
It's probably the most popular paint program on Amiga, and I find everyone uses it.
All right, Jim, what do you have?
I have a product called Video Effects 3D for the Amiga.
This is designed primarily for the video graphics industry.
This is a professional level product that allows the creation of animation sequences
for titles and logos.
A lot of times you see these kind of animations on TV.
I have a demo here of several sequences that were created with Deluxe Paint, as a matter
of fact.
These titles were loaded in, and these three-dimensional special effects were created.
We have the ability to do multiple object motion.
You're seeing playback at real-time speeds from computer memory.
Here you're going to see a page shatter, very easy to do.
This is an effect that normally $100,000 machines can do.
Right here, the Amiga word, notice it's flat.
We're going to turn that into a 3D-extruded logo right here just by pressing one button.
That extrudes it into a light-shaded three-dimensional object.
Jim, is this used for broadcast work?
Yes, it has been used in a number of programs, national campaigns, and even TV commercials.
All right, what's next?
Basically, the logos here, or the menus here, are actually explained here on the screen.
One unique feature of the user interface is that if you have a question about a particular
function, you just place your cursor over the button.
It gives you an explanation.
It's very easy to start up with.
The next product I'd like to show is Broadcast Titler.
You have got to load that up now.
What does Broadcast Titler do while you're loading there?
Right.
Broadcast Titler is a professional-level character generation program.
The titles that you normally see on television are generated by expensive equipment that
bring on titles with different effects in high resolution.
This package here does the same thing on a very affordable Amiga system.
We have the ability to display multiple colors, up to 320 colors on a page, with extraordinary
high-resolution graphic characters.
We have the ability to do transitions with each page of text.
We have up to 1,000 pages of storage.
I'll show you an example here.
Here's an example title page that was created with the package.
These are all standard fonts available on the Amiga system.
I can play some of the effects that the program can do, slides from different directions,
nine speeds for all the effects.
The graphics you are seeing here would normally be overlaid over video using a Genlock device.
This is, as well, a very high-resolution package.
All right, Jim, that's very impressive.
This is being used at the professional level.
Is this being used by TV networks now, for example?
Yes, it is.
The actual Video Effects 3D and broadcast title have been used for professional commercials,
national campaigns.
It was even used in the Super Bowl for the Jumbotron scoreboard.
What's the cost of your package?
Our Video Effects 3D is $199.95, and the broadcast titler is $299.95.
This is going to revolutionize the TV production business, I guess.
Jim, Dan, thank you very much.
That's our look at the new Amigas.
We'll be back with this week's computer news in just a moment.
In the random access file this week, an underground group with contacts inside Apple has been
distributing the source code for the Apple Macintosh.
The group, calling itself Software Artists for Information Dissemination, has mailed
out floppy disks containing portions of the Mac code to several industry insiders.
The group says its aim is to spread the genius of Apple developers uninhibited by legalities.
The group says it will distribute the complete source code to the Mac filing system, as well
as the codes for the computer's memory and systems software.
Apple has never licensed its source code to anyone.
Clone makers or individual hackers could use the source code to clone their own low-cost
Macs.
The group says it is investigating and will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
Lotus has announced that it has added fax capability to its Lotus Express communications
program.
That means you can send a fax using Lotus Express without having a fax board.
Express is used primarily to interface with MCI Mail.
And Lotus has announced a deal with NEC to put 123 and Lotus Agenda on a ROM card for
the NEC Ultralight laptop.
Also coming out on ROM card versions are Lotus Agenda and Lotus Express.
Finally, Lotus has announced a rebate program for purchasers of 123, version 2.2 and 3.0,
offering a $100 rebate for buyers who also purchase freelance or manuscript.
IBM has announced a new high-end desktop publishing program called Interleaf Publisher.
It can import files from graphics, CAD and spreadsheet programs.
And IBM says it will actively market Interleaf Publisher to clone users, breaking the old
big blue tradition of selling only into the IBM user community.
How do you find out what kind of software is out there these days?
Well, there is now the computer software version of books in print.
It's called the Bowker Software Encyclopedia.
It lists over 20,000 personal computer software titles.
The volume has more than 2,100 pages and it retails for $180.
You've heard of large type books.
Welcome to large type computer displays.
A new program called iRelief is a word processor that allows you to display the characters
in enlarged sizes, up to nearly three times their normal size.
It's a great program for those with bad eyesight or for anyone struggling with a laptop and
poor lighting conditions.
It's made by a company called Ski Soft Publishing.
Nintendo says it has a new game up its sleeve.
It is looking into turning those millions of Nintendo game machines into home terminals
for use in a new online service.
Nintendo already uses its machines in Japan as data terminals.
21% of U.S. homes now have Nintendo units.
Finally, in the computer snafu of the week category, New York Telephone has just patched
up one of its long distance dialing programs after it discovered that everyone else had
discovered that a few pay phones on the Long Island Expressway would call India, Pakistan,
Italy and Spain without asking for money.
A phone company spokesman said it was a computer programming error.
That's it for this week's Chronicles.
We'll see you next time.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte Magazine
and Bix, the Byte Information Exchange.
In print and online, Byte and Bix serve computer professionals worldwide with detailed information
on new hardware, software and technologies.
For a transcript of this week's Computer Chronicles, send $4 to PTV Publications, Post Office Box
701, Kent, Ohio, 44240.
Please indicate program date.