From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 12:34:00 GMT

>Not according to several Clone advocates around here.  Greg Greene and
>Dan Stephenson together play games more than all of the pro-Amiga posters
>combined.  But then again, they do own game machines...  :-)

They sure do...game machines, and productivity machines, and graphics
machines, and development machines....they are so damn FLEXIBLE.   When
I see new and exciting OSes being pioneered on the Amiga and ported to
other platforms, I'll consider it a neat machine too.  Right now, I
prefer the PC, because Unix is being rewritten to be optimized for the
PC, Solaris is being rewritten for the PC, NT originated on the PC,
plan 9 has been demostrated on the PC (I'm not sure if it originated
there).  When Unix becomes PC-geared, in spite of it's workstation
history, I know the PC is going somewhere.

>Funny that none of the system assemblers who advertise in Byte explain
>that in their ads...

How is that Intel's responsibility?????  Intel gave the chips two
different names, clearly explained the difference between them and
published the specs.  They also supported a new bench mark (NOT ICOMP)
that tells you application-level performance.  WHAT MORE CAN THEY
DO????  Run a huge advertising campaign:Don't buy the 66Mhz 486DX2 if
you want to do this and this and this...DO buy it if you want to run
this and this and this.

>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...

Yes, but doesn't it DIVIDE the speed in two for accuracy or something
like that?

>VESA is doubtful.  If and when EISA or MCA become popular, Commodore
>might indeed see the need for such a thing.

I wasn't saying that C= should put EISA or MCA in the Amiga.  I was
saying two differnt bussess like Zorro and ISA can coexist.  So can
EISA/VESA/ISA.  There is no penalty for backwards compatibility.

>Why do you need one?  Doesn't the board you mentionned in Byte do this
>already?  Why is a coprocessor necessary?

Compression and decompression.


>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...

Not in copies sold in the last year...


>If AmigaDOS was a piece of crap like DOS or Windows, we would need a
>better option.  AmigaDOS will continue to evolve and we won't need to
>throw away everything in favor of something else.

I haven't thrown away ANYTHING yet.  I can use my 10 year old games
under OS/2.


>Just think how good it could have been without having to include the 8086
>crap on chip...

OOOH wow!  An 8086 emulator takes up, like 1/20th of the CPU space on a
486, and 1/40th of a pentium.  Imagine the power they could pack into
that 1/40th if they didn't need to support the 8086.

>What happens when Joe User sells his PS/2 Model 80 full of nifty MCA XGA, 
>SCSI, and M-Motion boards to get a new Gateway 4DX-33?  He has to sell
>all of the MCA boards with it because they don't work in the ISA bus.  So
>he gets an accelerated SVGA board, IDE controller, etc.  Then, he realizes
>that the ISA is too slow, so he sells it to get a 486DX2-66 motherboard with
>EISA and VESA slots.  His old cards might work, but they really don't do 
>his new machine justice, so he's out more money for local bus video and
>hard drive controllers...

If he was stupid enough to buy something incompatible with his current
system (it's only a matter of asking a few questions!) then it's his
own fault.  If they guy is on his second computer and doesn't know the
difference between MCA and ISA, he's pretty hurting.

>Competition would be great if there was a standard that they all used.
>Supporting 20 different SVGA chip sets is absolutely ridiculous, yet
>that is what is required to ensure an app will work.

Nobody supports 20 different SVGA chips.  The companies make *DRIVERS*.


>I have a SoundBlaster Pro sitting in my 486 at work and it is pitiful
>next to the Amiga.  

The soundblaster pro is 2 years old and it sucked when it came out.
Get a Gravis Ultrasound or one of it's competitors.  Check out
comp.sys.pc.soundbcard and ask them if the Soundblaster Pro is a good
board.


>Don't forget 3.0 for the Amiga, the Zorro III bus, the Video Toaster,
>the DMI EditMaster, the EGS, IV-24, Resolver, Rambrandt, OpalVision, 
>DCTV, and other video boards, the AD516 and 1012 DSP boards, and lots
>of other goodies.  My A4000 bears as little resemblance to my A1000 in
>1986 as my 486 at work does to a Zenith 8086 from the same time frame.

You are mostly talking about add-ons.  How much has a stock Amiga
improved since 1986.  Do you think AGA is really that revolutionary
considering that it took 7 years?  Now look at a 1986 PC.  286s were
consider souped up.  CGA was average.  

PC advancement has been exponential...the Amiga has been logarithmic.

>AGA is superior to SVGA and in many ways the ECS is also.  Only recently
>have there been Clone sound boards that surpass the Amiga's sound which
>has been available since 1985...

And hasn't changed since 1985....PC soundboards this year are 100%
better then last year (SBPro) which where 100% better then the year
before (SB) which were 100% better then the year before that (Adlib)
which were 100% better then the year before that (PCSqueaker).  That's
exponential growth.

>I'm not arguing that clones are bad, I'm saying that Clones are bad.
>Notice the capital "C", indicating an IBM Clone.  If the world was
>using clones of the Amiga instead of Clones, it would be a much nicer
>place to live in.

Beleive it or not, I agree.  As long as there is an industry standard,
I wouldn't mind a bit if the standard was set by C=...lord knows the
Amiga 1000 was better then the PCs of the day.  But C= didn't allow it
to happen, and nobody found a way around it, like the PC, so we don't
have Amiga clones.  I still say the open standard clone business is
good for computers, and good for users.

Think where C= could be now if it had allowed clones, and sold AmigaDOS
and licensed the Zorro bus.  It might be Microsoft by now.

>Okay, the Clones are like Japanese imports, there are a few really nice
>ones, but most are not that exciting.  The Amiga line is more like the
>European imports, maybe not as advanced at the best Clones, but a heck
>of a lot more fun to drive.
>
Depending on your opinion of "fun to drive."  As a programmer, I like
to have a variety of operating systems, with various strengths and
weaknesses to develop in.  As a CS student, I like to have state of the
art compilers and languages.  As an English minor, I like to have the
world's best word processors.  As an OS hobbiest, I like to compare
OSes. 

This is fun to me.



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc