From: Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Avoid the Amiga 4000
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Oct  1 1992
Date: 08 Oct 92  10:08:00

>   Over two and-a-half years ago, when the Amiga 3000 came out, many people
> remember how much I flamed the system because of the few improvements it
> offered in the overall characteristics that make the Amiga an Amiga.  But
> to
> its credit, the A3000 did not head in reverse on any key technologies,
> either.
> The A3000 offered substantial improvements in areas such as
> display resolution,
> HD access, HD speed, and CPU speed.  It offered no improvements in the key
> areas of sound and color graphics capabilities.  But it was in no way
> worse
> than Amigas that came before it in any areas.

So far, so good..

>   The A4000 is a different story.  With the A4000, the only substantial
> improvement is color.  And it becomes clearer every day at just what the
> costs
> have been to improve the color capabilities.  In the key area of display
> resolution, the A4000 is substantially inferior to the A3000, do to the
> fact
> that the A3000 has a Display Enhancer and the A4000 does not.

Me and my freinds have a phrase that we use for people like you: "You are
on BIG DRUGS!".  You're completely clueless.  The A4000 doesnt NEED a
display enhancer.  The Flicker-Fixer was a HACK!  It was a way of patching
the system to get around a shortcoming in the original chips, a shortcoming
that has been FIXED in the AGA chipset.  There is nothing graphics wise on
the A4000 that is inferior compared to the A3000.  Show me ONE MODE that
the A4000 cannot do that the A3000 can?  It is clearly supperior:  It can
do 8 bits at ANY resolution, and it can produce flicker-free displays
*without* need of a flicker-fixer hack.  It uses LESS chips (no Amber, or
frame-buffer ram needed).

>   The Display Enhancer in the A3000 is arguably its best feature.  It

I'd say the best feature is the 32 bit CPU bus to chip ram, main ram, and
the SCSI controler.  Any Amiga can have a flicker-fixer added.

>   The A4000 is a totally different story.  At first, I was a little

And now you are TOTALY confused.

> confused
> about the function of the scan-doubler and promoter features of the AGA
> Lisa
> video chip.  I thought at first that Commodore had basically moved the
> Display Enhancer internally to the Lisa chip.  I realise now that I was
> wrong.
> The scan-doubler is not new at all, and is present in pretty much the same
> form in the ECS Denise.  In fact, it should be possible to generate the
> A4000's DblPAL and DblNTSC modes on any Amiga with the ECS Denise, but
> with
> very tight color restrictions.  I have also found that the "Promoter" is

So?  They've taken the features of ECS and expanded them.. and you are
trying to say thats a BAD thing?  Now, instead of a flicker fixer HACK, the
chipset can internaly generate flicker free 8 bit-plane modes.

> not
> hardware at all, but simply a function of AmigaDOS 3.0.  With 3.0, the OS
> can be told to intercept calls to open NTSC and PAL screens, and open

Yeah, 3.0 is great isnt it?

> DblNTSC
> and DblPAL screens instead.  This has lots and lots of problems, though,
> which
> I will get to in a bit.

Joi.  I can hardly wait.

>   The biggest problem with the A4000 by far is its lack of
> a Display Enhancer.

No, it isnt.  It DOESNT NEED ONE.

> With the A4000, it is no longer possible to purchase a monitor that will
> only
> handle scan frequencies of 31Khz and up.  If an Amiga problem insists on
> opening a standard 15Khz NTSC or PAL mode screen, the screen will be
> opened
> at 15Khz no matter what.  The "Promotion" feature of the OS only works for
> a tiny few, well-written Amiga programs, and no games.  This means that a

And who's fault is that?  NOT COMMODORE'S!  Its the fault of the programers
who didnt properly write their programs.  Complain to them, not commodore!

> user
> of an A4000 will have to put up with a flickering display in programs such
> as PageStream, and games such as SimAnt and SimEarth that can open
> interlaced
> screens.  And there will be nothing that the user will be able to do about
> it
> until the software is updated to support the A4000.  Additionally, all
> games
> will have scan-lines on an A4000.

You can complain to the software companies.  Not to Commodore.

>   The point of all of this is that it has become clear to me lately just
> how
> much the A4000 retrogrades in the important area of non-interlaced display
> resolution.  The system is vastly inferior to the A3000 in this respect.

Its not.  You are wrong.  The A4000 is fine.  It does everything the A3000
does in graphics terms.  Its application software that has a problem.

> So
> I seriously recommend that anyone considering the purchase of an A4000 not
> purchase one, at least until a Display Enhancer becomes available for it.

I suggest that nobody ever listen to anything you have to say and consider
it seriously.

> Some people might want to simply abandon the A4000 altogether, purchase an
> A3000 instead, and upgrade it with a third-party video card as soon as DIG

So, instead of getting a machine which has enhanced graphics that can be
used now, you want people to get a machine with inferior graphics and wait
for who knows how long for DIG?  What makes you think Commodore will deliver
DIG when you think they screw everything else up?  Seems like you should be
saying "Ah, Commodore is so f*cked they will probably never get DIG right".

> becomes available for the Amiga.  (The A4000 retrogrades in more than just
> the
> area of display resolution, though.  Due to its use of IDE instead of
> SCSI,
> the A4000 retrogrades in the area of HD access and HD speed as well)

I doubt that you (as in YOU, personaly) could tell any real difference
between a typical IDE harddrive and the equivalent SCSI one.

>   BTW, so far the odd-numbered Amigas (A1000 and A3000) have turned out to
> be the marginally good systems, and the even-numbered Amigas (A2000 and
> A4000)
> have turned out to be disappointing pieces of shit.  I hope this trend

And whats wrong with the A2000?  It was the first largely modular Amiga. It
had/has lots of slots, nice keyboard, drive bays, etc.  Sure, its slow by
todays standards, but then again, you can stick an 040 in it and still be
way under the Quadra in price.  The A4000 is every bit as good as the A3000
with possible acception to the IDE interface.

>           Amiga 4000:  JUST SAY NO!!!!

Marc Barrett:  JUST SAY NO!!!!


--- Maximus 2.00