From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Commodore Engineer speaks out.
Date: 15 Oct 92 10:17:51 GMT
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries

In article <1992Oct14.094731.164769@dstos3.dsto.gov.au> rws@dstos3.dsto.gov.au writes:
>In article <1b90baINN1n6@uwm.edu>, bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R. Block) writes:
>>>Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.  You must be American

Why?  I've never even been anywhere near America, but I tend to agree with him.

>>   No, in my opinion, the only thing that belongs in rom is the OS.

I think that all that belongs there are those things an arcade game (or
whatever) programmer needs to rely on being there - in other words, just
enough to support boot-from-floppy software.

>> Not all of the niceties that go with it.  Eventually, 512k isn't even
>> going to be enough for the Amiga's OS.  With DIG on the way, 512k is
>> going to become really small.

That's a potential problem, because even shoot'em-ups should be using the
graphics.library, which therefore needs to be in rom.  It's a problem because,
while I like the idea of having basic facilities available in rom, I'm against
having too much of the OS in rom as a general principal.  RAM is cheaper than
rom, and, since it's faster as well, I always relocate the roms to 32-bit ram
anyway.  So, the OS gets loaded into ram in any case, so it might as well be
loaded from disk.  And, disk loading makes upgrades a lot easier.  So, I hope
the roms don't grow too much, but I still want RTG and think that games should
use it.  Like I said, it's a problem.

>> The system rom is not the place to put something just so that low-end
>> users don't have to make disk accesses.

In my opinion, hard drives ARE low-end these days.  Anyone doing more than
playing games needs one.  Witness the A600HD, and note that it's outselling
the non-HD model (in Australia, at least).  People want hard drives.

>I disagree and you obviously have not used an Archimedes.

Heck, I've only ever seen them a couple of times, at computer shows. They're
not exactly common.

>In the 2MB of ROM
>you have RISCOS, The font manager (outline, anti aliased fonts), three common
>font families, Printer drivers, Applications like : Edit, Paint, Draw, Alarm,
>calculator, online help, configuration utility etc.

Surely, if all this is in ROM, it must run slower than if they were in ram.
Why not make optimal use of that fast risc cpu?

>What does this mean as a
>user?  Well with a base model with 1 floppy you can edit some text, incorporate
>it into a drawing, edit a painting, compile it all into a DTP package (which
>you loaded from your single floppy) and print the whole lot out, without
>swapping that floppy once!  This means that a 1 floppy archimedes is very
>usefull and usable indeed!

That assumes that the built in apps are worthwhile.  Maybe on the Arc, they
are, but I seem to remember an incredibly successful Commodore computer called
the Plus 4.  Same idea, huge flop.


-- 
David Meiklejohn (also known as davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - Regional support guy for PC's, Unix, and networks thereof.
 - But I'd rather be using an AMIGA!  Wouldn't you?
Find me in Mareeba, Australia (on the pointy bit in the northeast)