From: u894776@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (James McCoull)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Atari Falcon Discount Supermachine Re: Sydnes is gone?!!
Date: 21 Aug 92 23:56:45 GMT
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.

daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:

>In article <u894776.714264773@bruny> u894776@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (James McCoull) writes:
>>skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:

>>>Too bad the Falcon doesn't really have an OS.  

>>Please tell me when the Amiga gets an OS, i bought mine in 1986
>>and am still waiting for an OS.

Read my statement again Dave.  In light of the line above it.

>You should have read the manuals.  The OS is on those funny looking 3.5"
>roughly squarish things that fit in the front slot of the A1000.

	Whoops! the cat ate one of them - and was sick on another.  I managed
to find two of them:  One is labelled "Kickstart v1.1 50Hz Pal" or so,  the
other is labelled "Kaleidoscope:  Free Software from Electronic Arts(tm)".
Managed to slip the second disk in the slot on my 8th attempt - having
exhausted all the possible configurations/rotations.  Anyway nothing
changed... so I had a brain wave!  Why not try the other disk... *whammo*
action.  Then out with that and in with the KaleiDOScope (dos?) disk: cool
sure beats the 6+1/2 years I have spent looking at the "hand + disk" image.

>							           But you
>really don't want those, you want some updated ones.

	Yeah I rushed straight into the bit town (all on my own), and
went to a local computer shop and asked the assistant for help.
I held out my disks at arms length - and asked "Update disks please".
She said "Sorry we don't support the Commodore-Amiga, we only support the
Apple Macintosh and IBM PC compatible range,  we have a wide range of
upgrades available for these machines, including System 7.0, Windows 3.1,
and OS/2.".  I then asked "How do these upgrade things work?  Do I have to
open up a computer or anything?".  She replied "Of course not!  You
should only need to open the case of a computer when the hardware changes -
no company would put a complete OS on rom inside the machine - except
maybe in the case of machines which can almost be used without disks
[on power up] such as the Acorn Archimedes range.  Any company that put
a complete OS on a rom would be foolish - especially if you still needed
much floppy disk access to get anywhere!  Also it is not good for the company
when they release new machines - if OS development stumbles in certain areas
..." - at this stage she started babbling way out of my league!  She was
talking about strange things like digging a hole, and paying memory protection
so the criminals don't get you or something;  She said it would be possible
to ship machines without these features, and then add them later as totally
new OS upgrades - she explained how if the OS was on ROM, it would develop
at a much slower pace, and if all my programs broke on a new ROM there
is very little I could do about it!.
	Anyway... I left the shop [after some parting shots from her,
suggesting that people like me really ought to think about the Macintosh line
of computers (whatever that meant!)], I was happy in spirit however because
I new my computer had come with `OS' on disk and not ROM!
	Eventually I found my way to another computer store - I guessed
it was the right kind of shop (even thought the computers looked different
than mine!), because of the Commodore-Amiga sign in the window.  I repeated
the actions of requesting an OS upgrade from the salesman.
	...To cut a long story short...
To my horror I found that the OS was now on ROM, and furthermore I would
have to pay a lot of money to add new ROMS to my machine, because it did
not have the right "connectors" on the mother/daugherboard.  Also it
was possible to load the OS from disk, but I would have to break the law
to do it!!!?!

>						       Or perhaps a couple
>of CS courses so that you at least understand the basic concepts of "OS",
>"kernel", "DOS", "program loader", and other such technoid banter.

I did one of these once!  The lecturer wrote the letters
	RTG	DIG	MP	VM, on the board.
and the whole class had fun spelling the letters out loud!

We even covered things like: BSD4.3 and Mach.  Of course I didnt understand
what monolithic kernel of BSD, versus multiple processes with message passing
of Mach - meant.  Nor did I reackonize the monotonic-(structure) inheritance
of exec.library (with respect to lists etc...) when I dissasembled it in
1987-88.  Nor did I notice that before KS1.3 there wasnt a circle drawing
primitive, because there was no blitter BLT_STRT_DRAW_ELLIPSE register (if
you get my drift).  I didnt even notice that the trackdisk.device wont
work without the graphics.library present...

+++
NO CARRIER
From: kevint@hpsad.sad.hp.com (Kevin Taddeucci)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 23:15:36 GMT
Subject: Re: Why the A600? Some ZEN marketing VooDoo?
Organization: HP Signal Analysis Division - Rohnert Park, CA