From: foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: I DID giev up on the Amiga!
Date: 30 Jul 92 22:33:47 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Jul27.010030.27812@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>,
mlelstv@speckled.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes: 
> In <1992Jul26.231311.10696@ra.msstate.edu>
> skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
>>
>>One advantage that these machines have is that they are not locked into
>>ancient technology like the Amiga.  I'd love to be able to throw out an
>>old ECS Zorro II board and replace it with a new super whoop-ass 32 bit
>>AA, AAA, or AAAA Zorro III board.  
> 
> Again the same ignorance. PCs _are_ locked into _ancient technology_
> (I also mentioned PCs.. you see ?). You can't simply throw out an
> old ISA board and replace it with a new EISA or Microchannel board.

The nature of the ISA bus is probably the oldest feature of the PC.
(Even wheezing MS-DOS has been updated more!)  But that is more the
fault of the market than the industry.  The industry came up with
EISA, but the machines were initially too expensive for most people
to buy, and only a few, high-priced cards were available, and most
customers didn't see a great need.  So EISA machines have mostly
languished.  Since Microchannel was a proprietary standard of IBM's,
and since few firms would purchase licenses, you had to buy an IBM
machine to get Microchannel.  Well, we all know how overpriced IBM
machines are, and since there has been little demand for them,
Microchannel cards are equally expensive.  Furthermore, since
Microchannel is completely incompatible with ISA, you have to sell
all your old cards if you buy an IBM, and have no option to get
cheaper ISA cards.  Is it any surprise that Microchannel hasn't been
accepted and that IBM's market share has slipped?

For most uses, the slow speed of the ISA bus hasn't been important.
Serial and parallel I/O are a piece of cake for it.  So is floppy disk
I/O, and hard-drive I/O is only now starting to saturate it.  Networking
has also been well within its bounds until recently for the highest-
capacity networks.  Sound is certainly no problem.  The only exception
is graphics.  That is why the idea of putting a graphics board directly
on the CPU's bus is so attractive, and why you should see machines with
a STANDARDIZED local bus slot by the end of the year.

The only other problem with ISA is its primitive setup requirements:
making sure your interrupt request lines and your I/O port addresses
don't conflict must be a pain in the ass for many people.  But they
only have to go through this when they put a board in.  Apparently
people are willing to put up with it, as they keeping supporting the
old bus and neglecting its supposed successors.

In any case, the technology being put on that bus can hardly be
described as "ancient".  You can get a sound board with 22 8-bit
channels (SoundBlaster) for $100 mail-order, and it's supported by
a lot of software.  If you want 22 8-bit stereo channels, you
can get a SoundBlaster Pro instead ($200 I believe).  If you want
16-bit sound, go for a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 ($300), or you can
wait for the SoundBlaster 16.  (There are quite a few other boards
out there, I'm just mentioning the current popular ones I believe.)

You can get graphics boards with 1024x768 non-interlaced resolution in
256 colors for about $200.  These boards will also support 800x600, 640x480,
etc., modes all the way down to CGA.  Software support for these boards under
DOS is still a tricky business, but in Windows it is guaranteed--only one
driver is needed.  (Now if only most games ran under Windows...)  Obviously
the ISA bottleneck becomes a concern at these resolutions, and it is for
this reason that graphics accelerators have taken the market by storm.
You can get S3 boards for $300, or an ATI Graphics Ultra for $600.  These
are the two most popular, apparently.  They are mainly used for speeding
up Windows, so they are not as universally useful as they could be.  Still
these are modern 16-bit graphics chips, and 32-bit ones (I'm referring to
data bus width) will be released soon.

>>He should get a PC and then he can pay for what he wants.  The Amiga looks
>>like a great value until you realize how expensive it is to expand the now
>>pitiful video and audio capabilities.
> 
> Maybe he doesn't want to be limited by a PC ?

Maybe; the PC certainly is limiting in some ways.  But I'm finding the
Amiga is a lot more limiting in others; namely, I can't see decent
software or hardware support any more, and I can't take decent advantage
of new technologies coming out.  On a PC, even with the old ISA expansion
bus, I could.  (I still think that graphics speed is important enough
to me that I'm willing to strongly consider Dell's hardwired local-bus
video design, though.  Any thoughts, Mike?)

Perhaps living in the US gives me a different perspective from you, as
I understand Germany is swimming in Amiga's.  This reminds me of the
situation with the Atari ST back around '87 or '88.  Now does that make
you feel a little sick in the stomach?  It should.

Don't let Commodore drag you down with them.
-- 

--Colin Howell			email to howell@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
--Cornell Astronomy Dept.	(hopefully switching to computer science)