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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on April 27, 2009, 09:05:59 AM
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Maybe some of you have noticed that Sage IV computer standing next to Lorraine (http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/lorraine.html) and being involved in the development? Well it seems it has an history as interesting as the Amiga itself:
http://suddendisruption.blogspot.com/search/label/Stride%20Micro
Semms it was called Agony: Portrait (http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/cbm-rlorr-agony.jpg)
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DTACK Grounded poked fun at them repeatedly for having claimed a performance of 2 MIPS :lol:
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Very interesting article.
- Ali
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DamageX, Seems 68000 uses 5 clocks/instruction * (http://www.tradechess.com.br/artigos.htm). Would even make 6502 look impressive ;)
Didn't know it had this crappy clock to instruction rate ;)
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DamageX wrote:
DTACK Grounded poked fun at them repeatedly for having claimed a performance of 2 MIPS :lol:
:lol: to be fair he did say "2 million additions", but yeah... I think that rate is a bit far fetched ;-)
Great lunch time read!
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The summary of the Sage computer history seems to be to hire people that know what they are doing, AND have a genuine interest in the subject. If they have a sane human interaction also helps ;)
Obvious counter examples were the seller that sectioned the country into monopoly sectors. The reseller in Texas that had no clue in computers but wanted to make money.
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That Sage computer looks interesting, but I think it had only text modes and not graphics at all. That's why the Amiga 1000 shines next to it - better graphics, better sound, 3 inch disk drive, more software support. The article is very good.
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There was "graphics terminals". Though IF they are connected via RS232 that would still not be good.
Now VME graphics.. *mmmm* :D
However numbercrunching wise I think the Sage IV was a way better performer. 3,5" discs where not available when it was constructed I think.
As for software support, it seems it was not a problem due to the amount of engineers using it ;)
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Okay, after reading that article, I have to admit I'm a little disappointed the "NOD" was never picked up on. Sounds like it would have been a fun little gimick. I suppose the actual praticality of it would have been dependant on how well it was implemented.
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I think the price of the NOD killed it. Not that they could have avoided it. Just the wrong time.
"multi-user version of the BIOS" .. and now the punch "Not only did this new BIOS support more than one user, it could run DIFFERENT operating systems for each of those users at the same time." .. and something that seems similar ;) "Again, we were pushing the limits. This opened up new applications.".
Now this seems to affected the computer industry of today: :D
"Bill Gates seemed more focused on drilling for business data about our products and users"
"Steve Jobs was interested in packaging and presentation, but he also understood and appreciated technology."
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@freqmax
Thanks for bringing this up, very interesting indeed. I love these biographies of computers, and here we have an autobiography! It's interesting to note that the cousin he fired comments on the article!
@all
After reading the article I went searching for more and by complete coincidence I found this Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOx-ZadCGDg) which shows the restoration of a Stride 460 machine.
Boring you say? Well take a look at 7 min 40 sec. You will see that once he gets this 25 year old system to boot there is an "Amiga" directory on the hard disk!
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Intrigue thickens.. Wonder if that's the machine used for Lorraine development ;)
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Well, in the credits (8:25) the author thanks Dale Luck for rescuing this system. As most of you know, Dale was one of the original Amiga engineers.
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So is there any files that the Amiga community might have use for ..? ;)
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In fact, that is my Stride 460 that Dave restored. We bought the Stride 460 after Commodore bought Amiga. We transferred the development environment from the Sage IVs to the Stride. Not a lot was done on the Stride except to verify the integrity of the development environment because at the same time we were now testing Sun-2 workstations out to be the next development environment. The OS on the Sage/Strides was a Unix workalike called Idris and the Sun-2 was Unix, but the UI on the Sage/Stride was strictly VT-100/serialport whereas the Sun was a windowing environment. I hung on to the Stride and the Sage's after the Los Gatos shutdown, and we are planning on showing them at the Amiga 040th celebration at the CHM in August, 2025.