From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 22:08:42 GMT

In article <C0nMw8.326@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>As an owner of an A4000 who uses very nice SVGA systems at work, I can say
>>that AGA certainly does cut it.  Commodore wanted to upgrade the custom
>>chips to SVGA levels, and they have done so with AGA.  
>
>What do you define as "SVGA."  Trident SVGA is about equivalent to AGA.
>It's also about $50.00.

That's just it, there is no SVGA standard.  There are so many different
chips that supporting all of them can be difficult.  VESA attempts to 
provide a standard, but it is usually very slow and isn't guaranteed to
work on all systems.  

SVGA is equivalent in terms of resolution, but it lacks the flexibility
of AGA.  Here's a little comparison of my A4000 versus my ET4000 486-50
at work:

                            AGA                      SVGA

memory                      2M                       1-2M
palette                     24 bit                   18/24 bit
max colors:
            320x200         256/HAM8                 256
            640x480         256/HAM8                 256/32k/64k/24bit
            800x600         256/HAM8                 256/32k/64k
           1024x768         --------                 256
           1280x512         256/HAM8                 ---
           1280x768         --------                  16
# sprites                     8                        0
15kHz support               yes                      no
31kHz support               yes                      yes
overscan support            yes                      no
NTSC support                yes                      no
PAL support                 yes                      no
genlock support             yes                      no
multi-res support           yes                      no
graphics bus                16 bit direct            16 bit ISA
video bus                   64 bit direct            16 bit VRAM
bandwidth                   ~7M/sec                  ~3M/sec
bit-blitting                custom chip              CPU driven
line-drawing                custom chip              CPU driven
video-effects               custom chip              CPU driven (if possible)

When I find the time, I'll port some of the code I've written for the
Clone to the Amiga and see how they compare.  The Clone is a 486DX-50
with 256k cache, 16M, and 500M HD, but the poor beast has been saddled
with the pathetic ISA bus.  Using brute-force and single-tasking, I'd
expect it to be able to keep up with the A4000 for some operations.

>>Good.  I hate being forced to buy a monitor with a system.  If the A4000
>>had come with an A1960, I'd have sold the beast before unpacking it.
>
>With a PC you aren't forced to buy *ANYTHING*.  If you don't need
>sound, you don't pay for it.  If you don't need NTSC (few do) you don't
>pay for it.

The Clone in question was a Gateway, which does come with a monitor.

>>>the Gateway.  As we all know, the Gateway is a 486DX2 processor running
>>>at 66MHz and the A4000 is run off an 040 operating at 25MHz.  They're both
>>>incredibly fast machines and while the 4000 could be faster, it'll have to
>>>do.  The A4000 comes with 6 megs of RAM and the Gateway comes with 8.
>>
>>So, the Gateway's CPU should come close to the speed of the 33MHz 040, 
>>unless you need to do a lot of floating point.
>
>Give me a BREAK.  What total CRAP.  A 66MHZ 486DX is "close" to the
>speed of a 33MHZ 040, unless you have to do floating poing.   Come
>on...what colour is the sky in your world?

It is not a DX, it is a DX2, which uses Intel's clock-doubling scam.
If Motorola had better marketing folks and if the people who buy the
Motorola machines were as ignorant as those who buy Intel machines,
the could have called the 040-25 a 50Mhz chip.  The motherboard of the
Gateway is only running at 33MHz, not the full 66MHz, and the machines
are not much faster than the regular 33MHz models.  For some operations,
the 50MHz DX machines are faster than the kludged 66Mhz models.

The color of the sky in my world right now is grey, due to the rain clouds.
Normally it is a shade of blue, but due to pollution and volcanoes, it
turns lovely shades of red and orange in the afternoon.

>If you want to talk about overall system performance, do so, but if
>you are talking about CPU speed, then this comparison is a bad joke.

Okay, my A4000 is faster than my 486 at work in overall system performance.
As for the CPU speed, perhaps you need to learn a bit more about the scam
which Intel has pulled regarding the DX2 chips.

>>  The A4000 could have been
>>faster with a better memory system, but 33MHz would also be nice.  As for
>>memory, you'll certainly need at least 8M for the Gateway, while 6M is
>>plenty for most apps on the Amiga.
>
>That's assuming of course you can FIND applications that do what you
>want for the the Amiga.

I have a word processor, a paint program, 2 image processing packages with
morphing capabilities, a "multimedia" authoring system, HD backup software, 
audio tools, a compiler, networking software, various viewers and players,
several system tools and utilities, and much more.  It does everything that
I need and I find the Amiga much more pleasant than the 486 I have at work,
which is better equipped than what most Clone owners use.

>>Do Gateway engineers post on the Internet?  The free advice and info from
>>the C= engineers on the c.s.amiga.* groups is invaluable, IMHO.
>
>When you have an "industry standard" computer, advice is plentiful and
>free.  And when your vendor has 24 hour support (many do) you don't
>even have to wait for a reply to your message!

And by buying an "industry standard" computer, you have helped to insure
that personal computers will be held back for years to come.  And because
the Clones are such pieces of hacked together junk, you'll need that 
support line to get the damn thing running.  "Oh, just set this jumper to
R7 and then reboot, go into CMOS setup, select DF32 OFF, save it to CMOS
RAM and exit.  Edit the autoexec.bat file to include the line C:\DOS\KLUDGE
and the config.sys file to say KLUDGE=3.  Now, reboot again and then run
the MSD program to be sure that there are no memory conflicts.  When done,
go into Windows and edit the Kludge .pif file with ..."

That's what I call total bullshit, yet Clone owners will often come across
things like that when installing new hardware or software.  It is truly a
pity that the world got suckered in by IBM and Microsoft's deceptions.

Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu