Amiga haul in Topeka

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Sat Apr 13 09:57:39 2002

At 11:13 PM 4/12/2002 -0500, Gary Hildebrand wrote:
>Yeah, I thiught it was the dregs from NewTek, but one A2000 has a
>Washburn University (also in Topeka). If it was Newtek, why would they
>need ethernet with their Toasters??? I'm doing some research, and I'll
>let the list memebers know exactly where they came from, once I retrace
>the trail.

Why does anyone need a network? Of course they used them.
It certainly sounds like a haul from one location - or for
that matter, maybe Newtek donated a bunch to Washburn,
or when they left town. Yup, those Ethernet cards still
fetch a few bucks on eBay. They're a must for keeping
an Amiga useful these days.

For that matter, I still think a Toaster would be a useful
standalone at the average community access cable channel,
as long as it could stay alive. It would also be a great
platform for driving a community guide channel (text crawl,
scroll, info pages, etc.) that was linked to the web and
to e-mail. I daydream about doing that. I don't know
if there's an easy way to do that on a PC these days.

Once upon a time, I wrote the first version of the "Video
Toaster for Windows". Like many apps, the Toaster was
highly controllable via ARexx, and these commands could
come in the serial port.

Newtek needed a splash for COMDEX, so I wrote a GUI in
Visual BASIC running on a PS/2. It spit out ARexx via
the serial port to a Toaster under the table. It had some
of the same functionality as the Amiga GUI, except it was
driven under Windows.

The sad fact is that it won the "Best New Product of the Show"
crystal trophy at that COMDEX. Pay no attention to the
man behind the curtain, or to the Amiga under the table skirt.

- John
Received on Sat Apr 13 2002 - 09:57:39 BST