Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

he other day I saw a posting on CLX
heralding the 'new A4000T • It was
attnbuted to Alex Moor's Creative
Equipment International, an American company
who'd been involved in the bidding for the
Amiga before Escom finally snarled it up.
It was headed 7 July 1995 - FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE - and described how the A4000T
be positioned as a high-end video workstation.'
It goes on to describe it as 'a tower-based model
with the Motorola 68040 processor operating at
25MHz. Initial configurations are expected to be
6Mb of RAM and 540Mb hard disk. Introductory
pricing is set for a street price of US$3499 (El
will be offering different configurations •
Furthermore we realize that the price of the
A4000T is slightly higher than we all would
have wished. At the same token there is pent up
market demand
Now, knock me down with a feather but I
couldn't help taking this with a very big pinch of
salt. After all. (El didn't win the bid, but had
been making big noises that they were
confident of winning. They've been out of the
limelight for a while, so a message from (El
serves, if nothing else, to keep them on the map
° during these lean times.
Then came a contradictory message from
Gilles 13ourdin of Amiga Technologies GmbH in
Germany, dated I 4 July, which says that as yet
there have been no firm distnbution contracts or
agreements signed for Northern America, nor
have pricing levels been set for the A40001. So
just what is going on? Did CEI Jump the gun?
Did they dream this A4000T up themselves?
TURKEY
Let's look more closely at the spec No
monitor or CD-ROM is mentioned: the drive is
quite small by high-end standards - 6Mb of
memory isn't even enough to run that TV
favourite LightWave, and other crucial programs
such as Art Department Professional, ImagelX2
and Real 3D are all going to need more rnemory
for serious TV work.
On top of that it doesn't say whether the
A4000T will have any form of video output, so
an encoder card or good-quality genlockwill be
required. This A4000T looks like a machine
which is tailored to run something like Scala
MM400 rnot that I'm knocking MM400 - it's a
great application1 and not a 'real' video machine
after all.
And then there's the once - USS3499IEven
loosely translated into 1)01 currency that's around
E2 190. or [2600 including VAT - and not even
a monitor thrown in. Couple that with the
relatively slow lby high-end standards125MHz
040 processor and the only conclusoon I can
come up with is that (El have announced a real
turkey
A friend of mine has just bought a Pentium
90 PC costing around E2400. The price includes
a I Gb drive. 15" multisync monitor, I6Mb RAM,
sound card, 24-bit graphics card, speakers and a
quad-speed CD-ROMI And it runs LightWave like
a dream, knocking off a full overscan,
annaliased render with refraction and reflection
in a matter of minutes. In fact, when I phoned
him he was rendering the textures exam* and
it took less than three minutes to do the
business. I can't see a 25MHz '040 even getting
dose_
Okay. his PC will need a few more add-ons to
11135Et in
uldealand
achieve full
video
compatibility, but,
unlike five years ago,
these extras are becoming
more and more accessible to PC
users. There's now a PAR card for the
PC. and genlocks, video processors,
framegrabbers and edit controllers are all readily
available. The A4000T will also need additional
hardware, which might include a PAR card and
a framegrabber. A 24-bit card would also be
very useful, plus all the bells and whistles
imemory. CD-ROM, monitor, big hard drive, etc1
which are no longer luxuries for serious video
producers and animators.
Now, let's hope that all this is theoretical, and
that the new A4000T will not only have
reasonably priced bundle options, but that the
base machine itself will not make a Pentium PC
or well•appointed Mac look even more tempting
than they already do. It's one thing relying on
the Amiga's video reputation to sell it but
Escom/Arniga Technologies are going to have to
come up with something really special to keep
video folks on their side.
After all, PC and Mac development continues
apace while Amiga R&D appears to have
ground to a halt, developers are still waiting to
be contacted by
Amiga Technologies,
and a new high-end
Amiga will still only be
playing catch-up with current
PC and Mac systems by the time it
hits the streets - unless some rapid
behind the scenes developments are
going on.
This is not a good state of affairs to
be in, even if you're the most rabid of Amiga
supporters. If I was in the market for a
video/graphics Amiga I'd want one which could
see off the competition, and at a sensible price.
I'd want a built-on video output which was at
least composite, preferably S-VHS or even bothj,
even for lesser machines such as the Al 200 or
rumoured A1300.
Until Amiga Technologies take a good hard
look at what Amiga users actually require for
high-end video applications and come up with
some solutions, I can only conclude that this
A40001 price and spec certainly isn't going to
cut it. For all our sakes, let's just hope that CEI's
message was low on substance and high on
hype. Only time. and Amiga Technologies, will
tea.
The source
Thanks . to Jeff Walker of JAM for posting the
original messages on CDC
Gary Whiteley can be e-mailed as
drgazecix.compulinic cauk.
Amiga Computing
OCTOBER 1995
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