From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Subject: Re: New topic of the week - Is ECS dead?
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:00:20 GMT

kontos@clipper.ingr.com (Thorne Kontos) writes:
>
 [stuff deleted]
>its just that I now question who will continue to develop for anything
>not AGA-based. Certainly not the top developers whose packages are
>considered a must for productivity.

     Since for the most part it's trivial to support both ECS and AGA
(and OCS for that matter) simply by using the OS-supplied display database
system, this won't become a problem.  Your 2000 won't be able to run
Pagestream 3.75 in 256,000 colors, but it'll still work for some years to
come.

>    One could draw the analogy that Commodore is pulling off one of the
>best scams to hit the industry in a long time. Instead of a software
>upgrade (regardless of system - most are overpriced, yes, even WB2.1),
>C= is basically asking its 4 million+ user base to upgrade their hardware
>system. My real question here is, just how many will open their mouths
>and swallow the bait?

     Take a look at Windows, OS/2, System 7, etc.  New operating systems
force users of other platforms to upgrade hardware much more frequently than
Amigans do.  3.0 will likely run on a circa-1985 A1000 with little expansion
other than an added 512K or so of RAM... plug a 512K card into an XT from that
time period and see if you can boot up Win NT...


>
>    Consider the following:
>
>A4000 - Pricey compared to a clone...
>A4000 - IDE, not SCSI...be prepared to sell off your old peripherals
>        until C= comes out with the SCSI adapter card (Scratch one
>        expansion slot)
>A4000 - No sound improvement (Scratch one expansion slot)

     No, scratch one internal connector specifically designed to mix
Amiga audio with DSP audio from the processor board, from what I hear...


>Other future problems...No C++ (The industry leaders rant and rave about
>object oriented programming, but fail to realize that writing software
>is still a creative process.)

     G++, Comeau C++.


>No hardware manual for the AGA chipset. This is still very upsetting to me
>when one takes into account that most Amiga users are a slight cut above
>the clone users and bought the Amiga for its ability to hit the hardware.
>It was the demos that first made people buy the A500 at a time when most
>clones were still in their technological diapers. I will eventually
>buy an A4000, but maybe I'll hold out for an A5000 (or whatever else they
>have dreamed up in a few years.) 

     Sure, but having no hardware manual for AGA is assurance that when we
go from AGA to whatever comes next, we won't lose compatibilty in the transition
(or have to bend over backwards to maintain compatibility a la the Intel world).


>So where does this leave the non-AGA machines? I'll make a small prediction
>and say they will rapidly become extinct...(Except for toaster-based
>system whose life-expectancy will last only until Newtek comes out with
>an AGA-based toaster...
>                                                  T. K. Kontos

     Four million pre-AGA machines won't die out too fast, especially in 
worldwide sluggish economy.



-- 
Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
BIX: DRL  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy