From: rross@axelon.UUCP (Raymond Ross)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: A1200
Date: 10 Dec 92 07:21:55 GMT
Organization: Superboard Two BBS



>  Srchasm mode off; For $1399, I can get a 486sx 25mhz, 4 megs of RAM, 100
>meg hard drive, 1024x768x256 accelerated graphics, 1024x768 non-interlaced
>SVGA monitor, 3.5" HD and 5.25" HD drives, Windows 3.1 (ick), MS Works,
>mouse, and DOS5.  It has five drive bays (two free), and six slots. (four
>free.)  It also has 2 serial ports and a parallel port and a game port.
>Serial ports that can handle 38,400 without bogging the machine down
>incredibly.  I have heard there are problems with multitasking and serial
>I/O with Windows; I've never tried it myself.  The accelerated graphics card
>will do 10,000 winmarks (10 million pixels a second, I think.)  The graphics
>are better than a 1200's, I don't know if they're faster.

  But this-- Clone-thing-- has no sound, or do you feel that beeps and buzzes
are sufficient enough for your clone-thing needs?  Better add $100 to that
famous price of yours (unless you've found a way to squeeze that junkie speaker
into making a decent buzzing sound...)  And yes, you are right-- Windows sucks
at multitasking and until you can get Windows NT (for a whopping $500 dollars
but you wont' pay for it becuase you are obviously after the cheap stuff and
with it you may have some decent multitasking in your clone thing.)  As far as
graphics, I wouldn't bet that your clone-thing has better graphics and yes, the
Amiga will be faster-- MUCH faster-- no matter how many pixels your clone thing
has.

>
>  Figure $800 for a 1200 with a 50 meg HD.  How much would a monitor that
>can handle all the graphics modes cost??  My Mitsubishi cost $500.  So
>that's $1400 there for 1/2 the hard drive storage, 1/2 the memory, and 1/5
>the processing power.  The 68020 is about a '386 16MhZ; a 486sx will run
>rings around a 386-40.

  Since when does $800 + 500 equal $1400?  I think you need a math
coprocessor... :)  Yes, 1/2 the storage, but it should be able to hook into
larger hard disks soon so you lost on that one too.  1/2 the memory-- you
forget (or maybe you don't know) that Amiga's don't need as much memory as a
hog clone-thing does to run it's GUI.  1 meg is sufficient for most
applications.  2 Megs is fine.  4 or more can be a surplus, unless you are
doing real-stuff that takes thousands to do on a clone-thing.  To compare the
Amiga to the clone in the first place is like comparing apples to oranges-- the
Amiga is like a team (coprocessed custom chips) while the clone thing is one
fast player trying to do all the work.  The team is much quicker, and for that
reason a 7 mhz Amiga can appear to be faster than clone-things that are rated
at 33 mhz.  It may not be able to push a spreadsheet as fast, but a 7 mhz Amiga
sure can push graphics and in that arena the Amiga runs rings around a
clone-thing any day.

  Sorry that I referenced a clone as a clone-thing-- you never mentioned where
you are going to get this famous $1399 price so based on that, I am assuming
that the brand name of your clone thing is probably "Made in Tawain" and it
will come with a manual written under some nasty attempt to produce English.