From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Subject: Re: Falcon's Super was: FALCON SPEED ......
Keywords: FALCON, ST, ATARI.
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 17:11:26 GMT

In article <ygk1!=@rpi.edu> oyakea@warren1a.its.rpi.edu (Amalaye Oyake) writes:
>
>    I talked to a Media Arts Professor at my school. He was very impressed 
>with the Falcon. He said it is an amazing machine, and it is no doubt.
>It is super, like it or not. With true 030, 32 bit ram, dsp, 16bit audio,
>SCSI II, 16bit graphics (no dumb dependence on interlace, I get to choose),
>Audio in and out, midi, lan port, enhanced joystick and input selectors,
>dsp port etc. NOW TELL ME WHY WOULD I WANT A 1200 ?
> What am I going to do with AGA alone ? It has none, should I use caps,
>okay, NONE OF THE ABOVE LISTED FEATURES OF THE FALCON. It is a TOY for

     Wrong.  The 1200 has 32-bit RAM and "no dumb dependance on interlace".
It's also got 262,000+ color graphics at _all_ resolutions up to 800x600
or 1280x512 (more with overscan), 60 fps animation capability, a real
32-bit expansion slot (not a 24-bit processor-direct connection), PCMCIA
slot, a decent blitter/copper system, and ships with 2 megs of RAM standard
in all configurations.  It also runs BLAZEMONGER.
     The Falcon doesn't have any of this - in fact, it doesn't have
_any_ features unless you're a developer, because unlike the 1200 (which
several people from the UK have said they've bought in the past few days),
the Falcon is _still_ _not_ _shipping_, and based on Atari's past record
I wouldn't be surprised if Falconites had a long wait ahead of them.

>me, and would not be the TOOL the falcon would be. I could very nice things
>with a Falcon, whereas a 1200 guy is droolling ONLY over AGA. And besides

     262,000 color displays at high resolutions from a 25-bit pallette with
fast animation is a lot to drool over.

>if I get a 1200, I must choose when I'm buying it if I want an fpu or else
>it's no fpu for me. THAT SUCKS !! It has no bloody fpu slot ( damn !! says 
>an Amiga user, don't think I didn't hear that ). The Falcon does, "ha ha"

     If you need an FPU, just plug one of numerous boards that are sure to
become available very quickly.  You know, the 50 Mhz 030s, 25 MHz 040s, etc
that the Falcon will never be able to make full use of because it has no
full 32-bit expansion slot.

>and is that nice ? So don't even compare your toy with my tool . And
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     All I can say about that one is that Freud would have a ball with it :-)

     
>if you don't like what I'm saying e-mail me. I don't hide nor do I bite.
> Try getting a lan port on any Amiga ( keep dreaming ). 

     You mean like the arcnet/ethernet/Appletalk/etc boards we've been able
to get for years now?  Or the numerous PCMCIA network adapters that are coming
out now from lots of vendors?
     More importantly, what can you actually connect to with that glorified
serial port on Atari's machines?  Does Atari provide (or even sell separately)
the software to actually use the port, or do you need to go out and find
third-party solutions to link your machine into an AppleTalk network.
    Commodore selles TCP/IP software which will let Amigas link into many 
types of networks.  We can also get X-Windows (with some built-in networking
capability), Novell client software, etc., and it's all starting to be
based around the device- and protocol- independant SANA-II networking
standard.
 
> The Amiga to me is a neat graphical tool, it needs more to be considered
>a better computer.

     The only real advantage I see to the Falcon is sound system.  With a
large hard drive and lots of memory, it should become very powerful.
Trying to do 16-bit samples on a 1-meg machine with a floppy drive and
little or no HD space would be, well, painful, to say the least.

     BTW, what are "enhanced joystick and input connectors"?  Is there
something special about the Atari's I/O connectors (except that they
can't handle either analog or digital signals on any mouse/joystick
port like the Amiga's can)?



-- 
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