Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: dnavas@oracle.uucp (David Navas)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores CA
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 17:38:28 GMT
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In article <1992Dec16.162257.13100@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Sure it's a nice design, but an ISA PC really isn't that bad!  The software
>and cost advantages, IMHO, far outweigh any architectural deficiencies.

"The hardware architecture is great"
<<No it isn't>>
"Yes it is"
<<But the software and cost advantages far outwiegh....>>
"No they don't"
<<Yes they do>>
"But isn't the hardware architecture great?"
<<No>>
"Sure it is..."

Informative discussion you're having here, mind if I join?

>Why?  "Crippled" implies that it has difficulty performing everyday tasks,
>or that there are things that it can't do.  What can't my 386/ISA do?  Please
>explain what you mean.  I'd really like to know.

Well, personally, I would define crippled as any machine whose principle
communication's bus cannot transfer memory at anything even approaching a
rough approximation of processor speed.  You've got these great 66Mhz,
32 bit processors that are running through an 8Mhz 16bit bus.  If you can't
see how that might affect you, you're living in some other universe.

"implies that it has difficulty performing everyday tasks"

Think about this for a minute.  How are you defining "everyday tasks"?  You
are creating a definition which is based on an average.  Your PC box -is-
the average, by an overwhelming majority of units sold.  Of course it would
be ridiculous to claim that the PC is crippled compared to the average, as
your PC -is- the average....

Now it is true that the PC is getting important additions in the way of
LocalBus.  However, if processor-speed access continues to be limited to just
memory and video, you've already limited the extent of your horizons,
confining yourself to a box that is bigger than the one you were in before,
but no less constraining, and no less limited to the (inaccurately ascribed,
at this time) banal mediocrity for which PCs are notorious.

Had you folks existed in a vacuum (sp?), you wouldn't have the hi-res graphics
cards you have now, as "everyday tasks don't require it."  You wouldn't have
sound cards either "who needs those?"  What you probably WOULD have is a
128Mhz Pentium computer with a version of Word Perfect that required two
or three extra function keys and ALT-modifiers that no one has created a
keyboard for yet.

What makes me sick about -some- of the arguments PC folks (that includes
Amiga folk!) put forward is that they DEFINE what computers can do for them
in the future by what they're doing for them RIGHT NOW.  It's all very well
to say that "I bought a PC because I wanted to be able to afford 1024x768,"
or "I bought an Amiga because it had the best animation software I could
find."  But proselytizing (sp?) a particular computer because it somehow
achieves some kind of mediocre standard during "everyday chores" and then,
even worse, proclaiming how cheap these wizz-bang 88Mhz, clock-doubled,
FM stations (aka PCs) are is the most incredibly NAIVE thing to say.  How
can you possibly advocate anything as "a giant leap forward in processing
technology" when all it achieves is (to paraphrase) adequacy in day-to-day
tasks.

That's not revolutionary.
It's not even EVolutionary.
It's sick, it's not what the computer revolution is about, please leave
before you do us any MORE harm.

And that's as much directed to Amiga users who think that the A600 is some
kind of benchmark computer that everything else should size up to as PC
users who think that ISA "isn't so bad."

What can't a 386/ISA computer do?

Use your imagination, please.  There are plenty of things that DO hook up
to PCs that might actually do something useful had they a bus to run through.

>as "incapable of displaying 1024x768 non-interlaced 8-bit graphics", then
>the A4000 is crippled.  Get it?  It all depends on what you need to do with
>the machine.

The A4000 is NOT crippled in that respect.  It IS crippled because it doesn't
do 1024x768x8 out of the box.  It IS crippled because getting that resolution
will require a lot of money.  It is NOT, however, INCAPABLE of doing said
display.  What's probably even worse, however, is that the A4000 cripples
you in regards to the choice of monitors, creating yet another generation
of Amiga owners for which we programmers will have to create bloody 640x200
resolution programs.  Now THAT is crippled.

Having said all of that, you are right about one thing -- it does amount
to what you want to use your machine for.  Frankly, the PC is mostly just
a status symbol.  Let's face it, we don't write 20 letters a day, we don't
do daily mailings to 100s of relatives, most of use don't balance our
checkbooks with or without a computer, and as far as requiring a database,
I'd bet more families have encyclopedias.

As a status symbol, such arguments as "whose status symbol has more actual
status" are going to exist -- mostly because the vast majority of computer
owners don't actually NEEDs to do ANYTHING with their machine.

Which, I suppose, explains as much as anything why more people have PCs
running WINDOZE than anything else.  :) :) :)

David C. Navas						dnavas@oracle.com
Working for, but not speaking on behalf of, Oracle Corp.