From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga 4000/Atari Falcon
Date: 10 Sep 92 17:41:19 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <BuC71z.55I@medar.com> jseymour@medar.com (James Seymour) writes:

>Now, I don't know as I'd call MS-DOS/clone systems kludges as per
>definitions 1 & 3, but I'm certainly of the opinion that "modern"
>DOS-boxes fit #2 perfectly.  

Actually, I don't think the original PC was far from definition one.  It
certainly looked to me as if it had been thrown together rather quickly, at 
least from the hardware point of view.  Most other personal computers of the
same era were much smoother, albeit slightly lower performance (yes, the 8088
was actually a small improvement over the 6502s, 6800s, and Z-80s of the
time, though the 68000 shortly took care of this).

>The IBM-PC/MS-DOS system was kinda revolutionary at the time it was
>introduced.  

Not hardly.  It was evolutionary, very conservatively so.  It was essentially
just a bigger and better Apple II (the most popular personal computer at the
time) with an OS that was basically CP/M (the most popular business OS for
personal computers at the time), at least as far as the user could see.

>If nothing more than for the fact that it was IBM (of all folks) that 
>introduced the open hardware/software architecture and for the vastly 
>improved documentation.  

IBM's involvement may have been revolution from the marketing view, but that's
about the extent of it.  That helped make the "PC" a standard, since there was
a long standing tradition in the industry of cloning IBM hardware and getting
away with it.  Plus, the PC was made with off the shelf parts anyone could get,
and MS-DOS was a third party product, so anyone could buy the OS.  Very much
like the CP/M market, only a step backward in that true compatibility came to
mean "identical to the PC in hardware".  CP/M systems had been moving toward
"Z-80 powered" as the only real requirement for compatibility.

>(Try plowing through a CP/M 1.x or 2.x "users" manual sometime and you'll see 
>what I mean!)  

I don't see.  I used the CP/M manual for the C128 many times, and didn't find
it any more cryptic than the MS-DOS manual for the C= PCs.  As for hardware
docs, IBM gave you a really nice book on the "what" of the PC, including
schematics, but they never produced an actual specification for the PC, XT, or
AT buses (they did produce a MicroChannel specification).

>Problem is: for the sake of maintaining "compatibility" with the original 
>(and by today's standards rather limited) hardware and software architecture, 
>and at the same time trying to keep up with advancing technology, it's 
>evolved into a kludge.

I would agree that it's become kludgier.

>I would note that CBM, IMHO, is dangerously close to following the same
>path, for the same reasons.  And I don't like it :-(.

The Amiga architecture is a zillion years ahead of the PC Clones in terms of
what you absolutely must have for compatibility.  It's virtually impossible
to change much of anything in the underlying hardware of the Clone and expect
anything to run properly.  This isn't a big deal anymore, as most of these
bits and pieces of architectural baggage are contained deep inside glue chips
today, so this baggage doesn't cost much anymore.  

From the software side, even the PC has taken occasional software hits.  The 
Amiga has and will continue to do so, as will pretty much any other system.
There has always been a defined interface for programmers to use that'll 
ensure future compatibility on the Amiga.  This is not true for the PC, where 
the only practical interface as often been "programming to the metal".  Not 
such a big deal in either case -- important software is always being improved 
anyway.  Any software I use that isn't improved to run on my systems will 
become unimportant if its competition foots the bill (I'll wait, as I often 
have to living close to leading edge, but only so long).  If a company doesn't
provide upgrades, you're on shakey ground basing anything important on their
products anyway.

>Besides, being as Motorola processors are better than Intel processors
>it follows that anything based on a Motorola processor *must* be better
>than anything based on an Inter processor, so there :-).

Well, I seem to recall that Atari's "TOS", at least originally, had several
serious problems not present in the MS-DOS it was attempting to emulate (eg,
"emulate" as in "work-alike", not "Soft-PC" -- an MS-DOS function call format
was necessary to use GEM as-is, and DRI decided that the underlying DOS layer
was simpler to muck around with than GEM itself).  Perhaps that was simply
a maturity level and not Intel vs. Motorola.  Though it would be interesting
to see if Atari comes up with a "real OS" kludge and how it would compare to
existing MS-DOS analogs like Windows.

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      BIX: hazy
	"Work like a horse, drink like a fish"	- Psychefunkapus
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy