New Amiga spans the spectrum

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 27

New Amiga spans the spectrum

One of the first Commodore Amiga personal computers to arrive in New Zealand was demonstrated at a meeting of the IBM PC and Compatibles Users’ Group in Christchurch earlier this month.

The machine is one loan to Dr Noel Doughty, of the physics department at Canterbury University. It is one of three prerelease models of the Amiga imported by Commodore New Zealand, Ltd.

Commodore believes that about- another six Amigas have been brought into New Zealand independently of Commodore New Zealand.

Dr Doughty is evaluating the Amiga both as a basic workstation and as a top-end personal computer capable of supporting up to eight megabytes of memory and a 20megabyte hard disc. “It appears to be able to span a broad spectrum of performance, from a home computer up to a rather sophisticated scien-

tific computer,” Dr Doughty told the meeting. “I don’t know of any other machine in its class,” he said, noting, in particular, its high resolution colour graphics and sound capabilities. In the United States the Amiga with a colour monitor sells for about SUS2OOO. When volume shipments arrive in New Zealand midway through the year it is expected to sell for $4500 to $5OOO.

The demonstration machine has 512 K bytes of memory, one internal and one external -inch floppy disc drive and a mouse. It is not converted to New Zealand television standards.

An impressive range of documentation for the Amiga had been collected by Commodore for Dr Doughty’s evaluation, including technical reference and software developer’s manuals.

As with any new machine, the Amiga is suffering from a lack of software. However, a videotape showed at the

meeting in Christchurch illustrated software available for the machine from some big software companies. Products demonstrated included music, graphics, text handling and animation programs.

The Amiga also is said to have a software package to emulate an IBM PC and an optional s^-inch disc drive for reading and writing IBM-compatible diskettes.

With its pull-down menus and use of the mouse the Amiga has much in common with the Apple Macintosh. Its colour graphics and sound capabilities make it an. exciting computer for home use.

Before the Amiga demonstration the first annual meeting of the IBM PC and Comptiables Users’ Group was held. The yearly subscription was set at $2O, with a $3 charge per meeting for non-members.