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: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 05:14:51 GMT

In article <C0rLA8.44@rice.edu> abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu (Aaron M. Buhr) writes:
>In article <1993Jan12.032743.20137@ra.msstate.edu> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
>>In article <C0owp0.D15@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:


WARNING!  IF YOU DON'T LIKE CURSING, FLAMING, OR YOU ARE ONE OF THE
WHIMPS WHO WANT C.S.A.ADVOCACY TO BE A HIPPY INFESTED LOVE-IN WHERE
ALL COMPUTER USERS GET ALONG AND HAVE FREE SEX, DON'T READ ANY MORE
OF THIS POST!  YOU'VE BEEN WARNED, SO DON'T CRY WHEN YOUR EYES ARE
SEARED BY THE FLAMES IN THIS POST!


>>>>And what happens if you don't want to use Windows?  You hope that there
>>>>is a driver for your application or game that works with your board.  If
>>>>not, you are SOL.  
>>>
>>>VGA is acceptable.  It's better then the Amiga used for years.
>>
>>Really?  Do you know what VGA is?  Max res is 640x480 with only 16 colors.
>>For 256 colors, you drop down to 320x200 or 320x400.  There is no support
>>for overscan, there are no sprites, and there is only limited panning and
>>scrolling in hardware.  The only area in which it is superior to the Amiga
>>is the 18bit palette versus the Amiga's 12bit palette.
>
>     Skip, do you agree that for non-NTSC/PAL-targeted applications, higher
>resolution and higher refresh rates are more useful than lower resolution
>and lower refresh rates?  If so, plain old VGA is certainly more useful than
>pre-ECS chipsets.  If not, I bet you'd be in the minority (of computer-
>using people; c.s.a.a. has a very unusual following).  Granted, the older

Duh, has you ever thought that most of the people who read and post to
this group are _Amiga_Advocates_?  Is it so hard to accept that there
are people out there who enjoy using Amigas?  Why the fuck do you care
if someone uses an Amiga or not?

>Amigas had faster animation speeds _at comparable lower resolutions_, but I
>wager for most non-video* work (meaning the majority of work of any kind done
>on computers) the higher resolution and lack of interlace flicker would more
>than compensate for lower BitBLT speeds.

Interlace flicker and resolution have nothing to do with BitBLT speeds...

Dude, I am replying to this after reading a few of your articles and let
me say that you are the most boring-ass rational motherfucker I've ever
seen on this group.  I've never put _anyone_ in a kill file, but you may
become the first.  Blech, you make me want to puke with your slow and
careful tone used in your rebuttals.  What the fuck are you, some sort
of law student or psychology major?  My skin is crawling and my eyelids
are getting heavy from reading this heavy stuff...

>>Intel talks about OverDrive, "speed doubling", and that sort of thing 
>>in their ads.  Nowhere do they explain that only the internal circuitry
>>is double speed.  Motorola could say the same thing about the 68040 as
>>it too runs at 50MHz internally...
>>
>>>>Intel conveniently left out the fact that the DX2's do not run at 66 or
>>>>50MHz externally, confusing many people.  In fact, I've seen people become
>>>>very upset when they realize that they'd been had by Intel...
>>>
>>>Yes, I'm sure you have.  I'm sure you told them:"Guess what, your CPU
>>>isn't really faster then a 50Mhz 486." which is bull.
>>
>>No, I explained that their motherboard is still only 33MHz, not the 66MHz
>>that they were led to believe.

What's the matter, you couldn't think of some rational and sleep-inducing
argument for this one?

>>No, their business is making money, just like everyone else.  But Intel
>>should be accountable for their deceptions, especially when their average
>>customer is such a moron.  "Duh, it does so run at 66 mega-hurts!  Says 
>>so right here on the box!  What 'chu mean it ain't no real 66 mega-hurts-her?"
>
>     It seems like you really don't believe that a DX2-33/66 CPU will
>deliver 75% or more of the performance of a fully-66MHz CPU.  Is this true,
>or am I just getting the wrong impression?  Do you not believe Intel's

No, you're just a fucking idiot.

>claims that the on-chip cache catches 85% or more of all memory accesses?
>As long as the CPU stays on-chip, it runs at 66MHz.  As always, for
>non-compute-bounded applications you will not see a system speed increase
>equivalent to the increase in CPU speed; disk, video, etc. will still be
>bottlenecks.  But that is hardly the fault of the CPU, and I don't see how

So you can forget all of the multmedia apps that all the bozos in Clone
land are having wet dreams about.  Fucking idiots are acting like sound
and animation are some sort of revolution...

>you can criticize Intel on that basis, or how you can say people are getting
>"had" by Intel.  That same effect can be had when moving from a 386 to a
>486, or 68030 to 68040, or whatever.  If your CPU isn't the bottleneck, or
>at least if it's not using a significant amount of whatever application
>program time, improving the CPU speed isn't going to help you that much.

So you agree that a 66MHz 486 with an ISA bus is a stupid idea.

>>Compared to the joke that is MS-DOS, Windows is an improvement.  But it
>>is popular because of MS-DOS.  Without it, Windows would be nowhere,
>>just like OS/2 is.  I hate to tell you, but in terms of numbers of users,
>>AmigaDOS is ahead of OS/2...
>
>     Would you like to give some figures about how many of those AmigaDOS
>users are using 2000's or better?  I'll go out on a limb here and say that

Sure, of the 7 million Amigas worldwide, 53% are of the A500, A500+,
and A600 class.  24% are A2000's and A2500's, 13% are A3000's and
A3000T's, and the rest are A4000's and A1200's. 

>the users with 2000's or better would be much more likely to spend
>significant amounts of money on software, especially business software, than
>those with Amigas under the 2000 (1000, 500, 600, maybe 1200?).  In

Ooooh, don't excite me with the thought of business software...

You moron, haven't you figured it out yet?

>contrast, OS/2 users have already invested significant quantities of money
>in their systems (386 or better, 6MB of RAM or better), which again I will
>state would imply that they have greater inclination and ability to pay for
>(business) software.  If you don't believe this, would you like to provide
>some demographics for the Amiga user base, such as income vs. computer type,
>and would you then claim that the low-income people would buy amounts of
>(business) software equivalent to the higher-income people?

So you have a bias against poor people, eh?  That's real nice, asshole.

>    Another interesting datum would be the number of Amigas owned per Amiga
>user, vs. the number of copies of OS/2 owned per OS/2 user.  I would think
>that most Amiga owners would not buy more than one copy of a program, no
>matter how many Amigas they owned, and I would bet there are a significant
>number of Amiga owners who own more than one Amiga.  The point of all this
>is that OS/2 software development would likely be more profitable than
>Amiga software development, despite the relative numbers of each sold.

Oh, that last statement takes a fucking Einstein to figure out.

>>>Exactly which of *TODAY'S* sound boards have you heard?
>>
>>I have a SoundBlaster Pro sitting in my 486 at work and it is pitiful
>>next to the Amiga.  
>
>     The SoundBlaster Pro is old technology, even though it supports 44.1KHz
>16-bit 2-channel, DMA-driven stereo playback, which seems to me better than

Bullshit.  I've got the developers kit and they don't make any claim
to being 16 bit.  And the sampling is 44kHz, playback is only 22kHz.
Try out a few Amiga mod files with >22kHz samples and watch the SBPro
fall flat on its face.

>the 44.1KHz (or possibly higher, albeit no use to humans) 8-bit 4-channel,
>DMA-driven stereo playback of the Amiga.  Even allowing for the (was it 6?)
>bit independent volume control of each channel, that's 14 bits.  The Amiga
>only wins in that it has two extra channels, which I would submit are not

Think again bud.

>a very big advantage.  It seems to me that the only time the extra two
>channels are useful is when you're more or less randomly generating sound
>effects, such as in a game, rather than a predetermined sound sequence such
>as multimedia playback.  And for games, if you depend on the extra two 
>channels that means that you can have a mere two extra independent sounds.

Hah, I love it!  Are you really Jerry Shekhel?  He does the same thing
with arguments.  

>Nice, but hardly earth shattering.  Then you have to start mixing using the
>CPU, and the two extra channel advantage pales.  This of course doesn't take
>into account the 11-voice FM synthesis, which can sometimes produce fairly
>nice background music, or the audio input of the SoundBlaster Pro, or the
>fact that there are many new cards that far outstrip the SB Pro.  Check
>comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard (I think) for more information.

Blah, blah, blah, ramble on all day.  FM synthesis is for cheezy Casio
keyboards that little kids get for xmas.  If you long for the days of
the C64, CoCo, and Atari ST, maybe you'd like such garbage.

Why in the hell would I want to read a fucking PC newsgroup?  Why the 
fuck do you read an Amiga newsgroup?  Do you really think that you are
going to change someone's mind?  Hell no!  Most folks will have you in
their kill file before you get tucked in tonight.

>     Maybe I'm the only one, but to me there seems to be a lot of hyperbole
>and opinion disguised as fact in your posts, Skip.  It probably is just me,
>but I feel more comfortable with more IMO's in people's posts (when that
>is indeed what they are referring to).

THIS IS COMP.SYS.AMIGA.ADVOCACY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!!!!!!

What the fuck do you expect?  Suddendly overnight I'll just start creaming
in my shorts over the Clones like all of you assholes do?  Fuck off and
die, bozo.

>*  (From above)  By non-video work, I mean work for which the final output
>   will not heavily rely on _moving screen images_.  This of course includes
>   word processing, number crunching, programming (the output of programming
>   is a program, not the results of said program), static graphics, etc. etc.

Oh please, spare us your endless explanations, we've heard them time and
again from Jerry, Paul, and the rest of the gang.

>Aaron Buhr
>abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu

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

P.S.  Anyone pissed off?  Serves you right if you are, I did warn you...