From: addison@pollux.usc.edu (Richard Addison)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: PC (OS/2) / Amiga debate -- hopefully a rational debate, an I an ideali
Date: 9 Sep 1992 14:22:26 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: pollux.usc.edu

In <1992Sep9.154243.23044@ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@connection.prospect.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Greater sophistication implies greater code size, which in turn implies a
>higher chance of bugs.  It doesn't work backwards; take a logic course.

But greater _elegance_ can mean smaller code size.  If you are just patching
a bunch of stuff together to add features, you can run in to a monster of
a program.

>AutoConfig is nice, but you get to use it, what, once every couple of
>years or so?

The Amiga uses AutoConfig (tm) every time it boots.

>As for "real-time", what is it about AmigaOS that makes it
>more "real-time" than OS/2?  Please limit your answer to facts.

Why do you ask others to limit themselves to facts when you don't?

>Do all Amiga owners do video stuff, or is it just something you
>can whine about other systems not being able to do?  By the way,
>call Boffin Limited at (612) 894-0595, and ask them about their
>$199 VGA-to-NTSC cable.  Wow, less than the flicker-fixer even!

OK, the $199 converter (internal or external) is essentially an
NTSC encoder.  For $299 you can get one with S-Video and an RGB
pass-through.  The complexity of this is a good deal less than
a flicker-fixer, by the way.  Consider what it does, I feel it
is over-priced.

Anyway, these converters rely on reprogramming the VGA card to
attempt RS-170 scan rates.  But, then how close does the video
signal come to meeting the NTSC specifications?  [Is the horizontal
scan rate 15734 Hz?  Is the vertical scan rate 59.94 Hz?  Does it
change the phase of the color subcarrier when it should?  Does the
color subcarrier burst occur at the right time?]

It's good enough to work with tolerant NTSC monitors and VCRS, but
that is about it.

>This is insane.  The PC arrived at a time when the typical mainstream
>personal computer had a 64K RAM limitation and a file system that didn't
>support subdirectories.

When the PC arrived, I was writing software for a microcomputer that
was both multi-tasking and multi-user.  The total memory was not limited
to 64K ram, either.  Granted, the file system was primitive (it had no
subdirectories), but the system allowed for multiple logical drives on
a single physical device.  BTW, we did have a 70 megabyte harddrive.
(It had 14 inch platters and took a couple of minutes to spin up).

Of course, when the IBM PC was introduced, it did not support
subdirectories either.

And your point about the planned obsolescence being insane:  IBM works
this way.  When IBM brought out the PC, it had tried various other
small machines with non-IBM microprocessors.  They even had a machine
based on the 68000.  And they had a machine, the DataMaster, that
was based on the 8085.

What kind of support is there for the IBM PCjr?  Or for the IBM PC,
for that matter?  You can't even get ROMs for the IBM PC from IBM
anymore.

>I suppose this is true, but once you do the configuration, it's over until
>you buy new hardware.  What's the big deal with this?

Or, maybe more typically, the user pays someone to do the configuration.

>Send me some mail when you need to add drive #27 to your system.

You don't need 26 physical devices to use up your drive letter
designations.  You can easily use them up with lots of partitions
or with NFS.

I work in a situation where it is very common to take an external
harddrive from one system to another.  It sure is a lot less painful
to have references to "SYS:" and "Gamma:", for instance, that refer
to the desired data without worrying about what other drives are on
the system.  Between PClones, a drive might be "D:" on one system and
"E:" on another.

-- 
Richard

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy