This is a transcript of parts of an advert which appeared in the German "Amiga
Magazin" (2/95):
[DraCo is an "Amiga clone" produced by MacroSystem. (MacroSystem Computer
Trading GmbH, Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 85, 58454 Witten. Tel. (0 23 02) 8 03 91.
Fax (0 23 02) 8 08 84 ) ]
[...]
DraCo comes without the Amiga custom chips. These are replaced by powerful
soft- and hardware components. So for instance the function of the Amiga
blitter is filled by the several times faster blitter of the NCR graphic
processor.
[...]
Price and date of shipping is not yet 100% decided. We believe the shipments
will start in the spring of 1995 -in sequence of the orders.
[...]
The basic set up (68060, DraCo-Retina, CD-ROM) will lie in the same price range
as an expanded 4000.
[...]
DraCo -Technical data
Possibilities: Classic Amiga uses, professional video-workstation
Processor: MC 68060
Housing: Full-size tower
Operating system: AmigaOS and others (UNIX-ports)
I/O: Fast SCSI-II with 53C270, parallel-port
Card slots: 2 DraCo-direct-interfaces (32 bit, > 20 MB/s) for DraCo-Retina and
DraCo-VLab Motion, 5 Zorro II slots for Toccata, Ethernet etc.
Drives: Delivered with CD-ROM, other SCSI-units (Hard drives, floppies,
streamer) optional.
Graphics: Delivered with DraCo-Retina (which is also necessary) (120 MHz pixel
frequency, data rate > 180 MB/s, 24 bits)
RAM: 4-128 MB own RAM (PS2-Module)
Software compatibility: Amiga software which can run with graphic cards (System
friendly programming)
DraCo-VLab Motion: Software compatible HighEnd-MJPEG-Card, data rate to
100% JPEG
>Has anyone else heard about 'DraCo' ?
Yes, this press release has appeared in several places. As of now, though, the
only thing MS has to show IS a press release.
Jason Compton FAX: 708-491-4064 jcom...@cup.portal.com and @bbs.xnet.com
Editor-In-Chief Amiga Report Magazine and Coverdisk
Contributing Writer Amiga Game Zone Magazine
The time to rise has been engaged. Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid.
>
>Has anyone else heard about 'DraCo' ?
>
>This is a transcript of parts of an advert which appeared in the German "Amiga
>Magazin" (2/95):
>
>[DraCo is an "Amiga clone" produced by MacroSystem. (MacroSystem Computer
>Trading GmbH, Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 85, 58454 Witten. Tel. (0 23 02) 8 03 91.
>Fax (0 23 02) 8 08 84 ) ]
>
Will Draco have an Amiga style video slot and will it support the use
of a Toaster card?
Thierry.
--
**************************************************************
Thierry Humeau tel: 301-933-3008
Cameraman/Producer fax: 301-933-2868
CANAL+TV France correspondant thi...@ix.netcom.com
**************************************************************
: [...]
: DraCo -Technical data
: Processor: MC 68060
: Housing: Full-size tower
The only problem that I can forsee with the DraCo is that since it can
only use Amiga hardware that does not rely upon the custom chipset, it
will be limited in its hardware expandability.
Who is this thing for? It won't run games, it won't run the toaster.
There goes better than 90% of the already tiny market. What in the
world are they thinking?
It'd certainly be nifty to play with, but I can't imagine many folks
actually buying these things.
--
***********************************************************************
* Chris Hurley * Plantation:Scalable Distributed Rendering*
* chr...@shell.portal.com * for Lightwave 3D. Available Now. *
* irc: Mr_Scary * (706)793-4007. InterVISUAL Software. *
: Will Draco have an Amiga style video slot and will it support the use
: of a Toaster card?
no and no, DraCo will _NOT_ be an Amiga. It will be bale to run some
Amiga software, but will break as soon an anything even looks at Amiga
specific (custom) hardware.
It is therefore a lot of hype and nothing to get excited about.
--
Paul 'Starchild' van der Heu, The MotherShip Connection
pv...@motship.xs4all.nl
This is an airconditioned room, do not open Windows.
- Panu on IRC #amiga
Really? True, you can't plug the toaster board in, but you can run
LightWave, Imagine, etc., etc., etc. on it, and at 3 times or better the
performance of the best '040 system, it could be quite worthwhile... not
as fast as the RISC machines in the ScreamerNET setup, but nothing to
discount, either.
I wouldn't mind having one just to run compilers on! :-)
Think of it as a partially Amiga compatible workstation...
--
---------------
Jim Cooper
(ja...@unx.sas.com) bix: jcooper
Any opinions expressed herein are mine (Mine, all mine! Ha, ha, ha!),
and not necessarily those of my employer.
Remember, "Euphemisms are for the differently brained."
Depending on the price, it may be very attractive as a machine to
run productivity applications (you know, word processing, page
layout, spreadsheet, database, email, scheduling, accounting,
structured drawing, painting, image processing, animation, etc.). I
don't need another Toaster machine or a game machine, but I could
use another machine to run applications. I run applications like
these on a Spectrum card, currently, not the Amiga chipset.
Draco will also drastically improve the video quality of the VLab
Motion.
I think price will be a very important factor, but if they can
keep it competitive there will be a market.
Keep your Amiga for games, Toasters, etc., and buy the Draco
as a second machine - a faster applications workstation.
Regards,
-Jamie
Any reason why they are only using zorro II slots rather than ZIII's?
Bob.
Yes, there are good reasons (IMO).
First of all, the Zorro-III requires quite a bit of logic to implement
and therefore increases the cost of the system, especially if you
support both Zorro-II and Zorro-III and all the capabilities of each
(including DMA, quick interrupts, etc.). The Zorro-III bus, as imple-
mented by C=, was never all that fast. Most cards never got more than
7 MB/s on it, if not much less. Also, most of the Z3 cards I have seen
offer resources which are already incorporated into DraCo (DRAM, SCSI,
video/graphics frame buffers). So, I think that Zorro-III is a poor
price/performance choice.
The DraCo CPU card is highly integrated, including lots of very fast
DRAM, bus-master DMA SCSI-II controller and some other standard I/O
interfaces. The DraCo 32-bit expansion bus is much higher bandwidth
than either Zorro-II or Zorro-III and is intended for cards like the
new DraCo Retina and VLab Motion. Most remaining expansion functions,
like audio, ethernet and serial i/o, can be found on common, non-DMA
Zorro-II cards. Designing a basic Zorro-II bus is relatively easy and
cost effective. This is a big win, considering the number of Z2 cards
on the market.
I really don't mean to put down the Z3 bus at all, it just happens to
be too hard and costly to implement for the limited bandwidth that it
provides, and there aren't that many Z3 products on the market to try
to take advantage of. Zorro-II, OTOH, is slow (around 3.5MB/s) but
easy and cheap to implement, and there are several products on the
market that DraCo user's can take advantage of.
Thanks for your bandwidth,
Steve
>Regarding Draco.
It will run the next generation of ARexx-integrated applications, which will
provide more power than any of the Plug-In style software available elsewhere.
When there's high quality digital video with that kind of horsepower,
you don't need a toaster. Simply preview transitions at low-res realtime
and let it compile out complex wipes via hooks to Lightwave standalone.
JC> Yes, this press release has appeared in several places. As of now,
JC> though, the only thing MS has to show IS a press release.
And a full page add in a German magazine...
Greetings, Edmund
-- Via Xenolink 1.95, XenolinkUUCP 1.0
>In <3h3hnr$7...@due.unit.no> skrs...@nvg.unit.no (Rune Skaarsmoen) writes:
>>
>>Has anyone else heard about 'DraCo' ?
>>
>>This is a transcript of parts of an advert which appeared in the German "Amiga
>>Magazin" (2/95):
>>
>>[DraCo is an "Amiga clone" produced by MacroSystem. (MacroSystem Computer
>>Trading GmbH, Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 85, 58454 Witten. Tel. (0 23 02) 8 03 91.
>>Fax (0 23 02) 8 08 84 ) ]
>>
>Will Draco have an Amiga style video slot and will it support the use
>of a Toaster card?
>Thierry.
no, you won't be able to use a toaster in it.
Greg
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"ED Beta is simply the best consumer videotape format available."
--Video Magazine (Nov.1992, p. 30)
"Manufacturers may have a point when they perceive the U.S. consumer
electronics market as unsophisticated." --VideoMaker (March 1993, p. 88)
I opted for Betamax, the world for VHS. I for Amiga, the world for IBM clones.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> : Think of it as a partially Amiga compatible workstation...
>
> Any reason why they are only using zorro II slots rather than ZIII's?
Any idea how to build ZIII without custom-chips?
> Bob.
Bye,
- Ibi -
--
"We have no disease, no trouble of mind,
We're fighting for peace, no regard for the time,
We never cry, we never retreat,
We have no conception of love or defeat"
-- Queen: "Machines (or 'Back To Humans')"
Yep, it will never be an Amiga, 'cause this name is Copyrighted :).
But it will run the Amiga OS 3.1, so every software running on a
high end Amiga with a gfx card and programmed OS friendly
(I didn't want to say coded:) should run. And if there are
sold quite a lot of them (I am not shure ..), programms will
be ported (NetBSD for ex) or made compatible soon, I am shure.
Maybe you think of stuff like demos etc when saying
'..specific (custom) hardware..', but these thing are for FUN only
and would most probably fail on AAA ore whatever would have come, too.
I think the DraCo IS an alternative to an A4000 if it is cheaper
than a basic A4000. It will never be a replacement for game and
demo machines like A1200,A500 or CD32, thats clear.
Remember that most actual commercial (non game) Programs ARE
coded OS legal, not even looking at a single bit of the Amiga
custom chips :).
|>
|> It is therefore a lot of hype and nothing to get excited about.
Maybe it can help the AmigaOS survive in some high end areas,
Gfx for example.
(Why not build a toaster for it ? .. :)
|>
|> --
|>
|> Paul 'Starchild' van der Heu, The MotherShip Connection
|> pv...@motship.xs4all.nl
|>
|> This is an airconditioned room, do not open Windows.
|> - Panu on IRC #amiga
--
----------------------------------------------------//----------------------
| TUM: oliver....@informatik.tu-muenchen.de | \\// Oliver -IR- Brunner |
| InterFace Connection: o...@ifconnection.de | Certified Amiga Developer |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Really? True, you can't plug the toaster board in, but you can run
: LightWave, Imagine, etc., etc., etc. on it, and at 3 times or better the
I am fairly sure neither will run on it.
Well for a BBS machine it should work fine.
___
/ John Hertell «·» FidoNet: 2:203/616.0 · InterNet: Chu...@Spray.ct.se
Chucky/ViRTUAL «·» Aerosol Art +46 (0)54-833882 USR 28.8 - 040
... I admit it , I tried ms-dos, but I did not inhale.
( UUCP Dialup connection )
Read the description...it will cost as much as a "similarly equipped Amiga
4000". If they're thinking of today's rates, an 060 Amiga 4000 with
triple-speed CD-ROM isn't exactly cheap.
(Going by the projected costs of an 060 board, that is.)
> no and no, DraCo will _NOT_ be an Amiga.
It will be the first Amiga Clone. (which is almost equal to Amiga ;-)
> It will be able to run some
> Amiga software, but will break as soon an anything even looks at Amiga
> specific (custom) hardware.
That is true, BUT most programs nowadays are made according to CATS
rules -> they should work on DraCo just fine. And besides ...
They can probably catch a lot of custom chip accesses with the MMU and
emulate them from there on. The question is ... have they bothered.
(Because ... as I said ... RTG has gone far enough to discourage
Software [!=demo] writers from using the hardware.)
> It is therefore a lot of hype and nothing to get excited about.
This however is the way that Amiga is bound to go. Independency of EVERYTHING.
(starting here with custom chips.) And the first Amiga Clone is ALWAYS worth
getting excited about ;)
> This is an airconditioned room, do not open Windows.
> - Panu on IRC #amiga
--
Metalite [a...@modeemi.cs.tut.fi] A Bodiless Voice in the Void of CyberSpace.
> Who is this thing for? It won't run games, it won't run the toaster.
> There goes better than 90% of the already tiny market. What in the
> world are they thinking?
Can't you see that it's not aimed at the traditional Amiga Market.
> It'd certainly be nifty to play with, but I can't imagine many folks
> actually buying these things.
It is probably meant for the very high end of the market. CAD-Designing,
DeskTop Publishing and whatever you would use your average UNIX-system
for. And thus the UNIX-Clone version (to be released later) will be
their main product. (Games and rendering aren't everything you know ;-)
--
Metalite [a...@modeemi.cs.tut.fi] A Bodiless Voice in the Void of CyberSpace.
ADA, instead of C, is for programming, what
acidous stomach juices, instead of milk, is for cookies:
Just an alternative:-)
CH> Regarding Draco.
CH>
CH> Who is this thing for? It won't run games, it won't run the toaster.
CH> There goes better than 90% of the already tiny market. What in the
CH> world are they thinking?
Any application that works on an gfx board will work with the DraCo.
I would be able to run about 95% of my software on the DraCo - sure
these are defenitely no games but almost any application software.
MacroSystem is planning DraCo to be a machine for video editing; the
VLab Motion will be optionally available.
See Ya,
EDDIE
(Sorry for orthographical mistakes - English`s not my native language!)
-> WORKIN' ON A2000T/030/14M/710M/Merlin-II - Only AMIGA makes it possible <-
What makes you think so?
Regards,
-Jamie
They believe that PowerUsers don't use games and toasters. And they
are right. The toaster never made it in europe, so why bother with it.
--
Markus Illenseer
Bobby Huang hacked the keyboard on 8 Feb 1995 03:34:34 GMT about `Re: DraCo - an
Amiga Clone' in comp.sys.amiga.hardware and wrote:
BH> : Think of it as a partially Amiga compatible workstation...
BH>
BH> Any reason why they are only using zorro II slots rather than ZIII's?
Yes, the Zorro II could probably be implemented without custom chips whereas the
ZIII needs the fat buster.
Bye
Rene Laederach
FIDO: 2:301/723.4 | Mit Penn-Tiums faengt die neue Aera des
Internet: mu...@snoop.alphanet.ch | Schlafgenusses an...
> In article <vO7HRMD...@point78.people-s.people.sub.org>, ed...@people-s.people.sub.org (Thomas Domin) writes:
> A mere gamemaschine with 040/40 and fast 24Bit-Graphics depending on
> OS-complying software and a (2do)-ExtraLowlevel.library could blast every
> PC-entertainmendsystem. Ok, no more banging the hardware, but instead
> getting each year four times faster systems for less money sounds nice
There's this game called 'xpilot' that depends on Xwindow and UDP which runs
quite nicely without banging on the hard ware. Also I've played DOOM without
PC hardware and it was quite fast too. So why should we really need hardware
depended games anymore?
--
Stefan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:Les...@Fishtwn2.han.de|Realname:Stefan Payment|Voice:+49 4721 65077
runnin on AMIGA1200/030/882/50/2C/6F/428HD/SCSI2 but who cares ? ;-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the info. I'm thinking of buying an audio board for my a4000.
I *do* want developer stuff with it though! Are there any other options?
> Joking around, eh? The average 32Bit-VGA-Chips are 10x faster than Amiga-Blitter
>and the high-end 64Bit-VGA-Chips are at least 80 times faster than native
>Amiga-Grafiks!
Actually I meant: do programs using this type of OS call run at all? I
presume not, although it should be possible to use the MMU to monitor
writes to custom-chip space and emulate what the program is trying to
accomplish through normal OS calls ;-) . Did they implement something like
that?
Hans
I doubt any expanded A4000 (with good ol' slow chip mem) could give you
anything like the performance of an asynchronous bus under the new '060
protocol. And `if Alex Amor gets his way', the A4000 will be given away
free starting next week. Honestly, do you really believe everything the
man says? He obviously lacks the vision it takes to save the Amiga and
he obviously tries to make up for it by telling you what you want to
hear. It's easy and seductive to fall for that, but it is wrong nonethe-
less!
Jeroen.
>The only problem that I can forsee with the DraCo is that since it can
>only use Amiga hardware that does not rely upon the custom chipset, it
>will be limited in its hardware expandability.
Q: What Amiga hardware relies on the custom chips?
A: Video slot peripherals.
Anything that doesn't live in the video slot will have absolutely no
hardware reliance on the Amiga chips. Things that live in the video
slot are certainly dependent on the Amiga chip timing. Simple clocking
is very easy to duplicate, though some of the more esoteric behavior
of the Amiga's pixel stream might be hard to duplicate. Maybe the
Toaster won't work, but most hardware ought to.
Dave Haynie | ex-Commodore Engineering | See my first film
Sr. Systems Engineer | Class of '94 | "The Deathbed Vigil"
Scala Inc., US R&D | C= Failure n. See: Greed | in...@iam.com
"Caught a bolt of lightning, cursed the day he let it go" -Pearl Jam
Dieter Jaeger (jae...@wap15.zi.biologie.uni-muenchen.de) wrote:
: I just gor the new issue of Amiga Magazin which contains an advert
: from MacroSystem with new infos about Draco:
What;s in the basic DraCo?
--
Joshua Galun
+========================================================================+
| co-Editor in Chief of Amiga Link: | Sysop of the Wolf's Lair BBS |
| You ultimate source of Amiga info | Run off an A500/030 and CNet 3.05c!|
| and articles! | Tons of Amiga files, no PC files |
| Available on Aminet and BBSs | allowed! And tons of GAMES!! |
| worldwide | (201) 666-9472 In Westwood, NJ USA |
+========================================================================+
****************************
*Lover of Amigas, Tolkien, *
*and Hobbits! *
****************************
: >
: > I'd go for an expanded A4000. Same price (according to the
: > press release), same performance, same expandability (if we
: > assume the A4000T) and on top of that you keep the AGA-chips..
: > And - if Alex Amor gets his way - the prices od the A4000 will
: > decrease when (if) put in to production again....
: > Cheers...
: I doubt any expanded A4000 (with good ol' slow chip mem) could give you
: anything like the performance of an asynchronous bus under the new '060
: protocol. And `if Alex Amor gets his way', the A4000 will be given away
: free starting next week. Honestly, do you really believe everything the
: man says? He obviously lacks the vision it takes to save the Amiga and
: he obviously tries to make up for it by telling you what you want to
: hear. It's easy and seductive to fall for that, but it is wrong nonethe-
: less!
Well, take into consideration that most gfx-operations would
take place in "my" expanded A4000's V-ram, and that the '060
would have SCSI-II (even though the A4000T includes this on the
motherboard),ram and ethernet on the CPU-card and this wouldn't
differ too much from the Draco......
I don't know what you've heard from Alex A, but his "vision"
of a cheaper A4000 is sertainly achievable....
And I still don't think the Draco is more likely to hit the market
in any better fashion than the possible remanufactured A4000...
Cheers...
According to an add in the german Amiga Magazin (3/1995, page 13)
Draco hardware specs:
68060 CPU, NCR-SCSI Chipset, Tower, CDROM (triple speed),
3 Draco Slots (>20 MB/sec), 5 Zorro II(!) Slots, keyboard,
3 button mouse, 4MB RAM
4.498 DM (1 US DOLLAR is about 1.60 DM)
You need also:
Draco Retina gfx board 998 DEM
Draco CDROM 548 DM
All included:
5.998 DM
Available early 1995 (They hope so)
As stated in the add, the ZII slots are for the toccata sound card
(598 DM, 16 bit), Ethernet, Emplant etc.
Well, I just cite the add, nothing else.
Gerhard
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| /// Gerhard Leibrock | fa...@cipsol.cs.uni-sb.de |
| /// Neuhaeuselerstr. 12 | |
| \\\/// D-66459 Kirkel | leib...@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de |
| \XX/ (+49) 6849/6134 | ge...@stud.uni-sb.de |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
I can count on my single hand of what decent games there is already for
the PPC, so they have every bit of a chance to succeed as anyone else.
--
j...@usis.com