From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Subject: Re: I DID giev up on the Amiga!
Organization: Citizens for Improved Amigas
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 23:13:11 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.223452.25965@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> mlelstv@speckled.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes:
>In <1992Jul26.191956.2642@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>> That is a concern to far fewer people than you'd think.  Commodore seems to
>>agree, as the only other Amiga besides the A3000 that has built-in hard drive
>>capability -- the A600 -- uses a comparitively slow non-DMA IDE hard drive.
>>Again, it is far better for most people to have a slow non-DMA SCSI included
>>than to have no HD capability included at all.
>
>That is a statement you repeat again and again.. as if Amigas that don't
>have HD controllers on the motherboard could never use HDs at all.

The problem is not the lack of HD controllers on the motherboard, it is
the lack of Amigas with hard drives.  Hard drives have become much cheaper
(I recently paid less for a 200M 15ms drive than I did for a 33M 65ms drive
in 1987), but there are still an awful lot of Amigas with no hard drives.

Some people seem to think that it is wonderful that AmigaDOS is usable on a
floppy only system.  This is obvious or else we'd be able to install games
on a hard disk like PC and Mac owners instead of doing the floppy disk
shuffle.  Oh well, I guess I shouldn't complain, most of the shit code
written by the little boy hackers doesn't work on an A3000 anyway.  The
game console with floppy and keyboard mentality is doing nothing but
hurting the Amiga and it is a damn shame.  What does Commodore do about it?
They introduce a dinky little machine with a cartridge port!  What's next?
An A3000 in a black case with buttons all over it and a light gun?

>That means that a large number of PCs have no HD capability included
>at all which is clearly nonsense.
>Also our VME Suns would not have any HD capability nor do they have
>any CPU nor any graphics since the "motherboard" is a passive
>backplane.

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.  

>>Then I take it that you won't be buying any Amigas ever again, because 
>>the new ones will likely have better than 12-bit color built-in and you 
>>don't like to have that capability included as standard hardware?
>
>As you may have read he didn't want to _pay_ for something he didn't use.

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.

>Do you have to pay extra for the better color in the next Amiga models ?

No, I'm sure they'll just give them away.

>Regards,
>-- 
>Michael van Elst
>UUCP:    universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
>Internet: p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
>                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."

                                                          ___         __
  Skip Sauls, TKKC Charter Member                          |  |/  |/ / 
  skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu                                |  |\  |\ \__   




Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy