From: nwickham@nyx.cs.du.edu (Neal Wickham)
Subject: Re: High-end Amiga as Mac replacement
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Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 05:41:48 GMT

In article <1992Nov24.003857.23968@u.washington.edu> stevep@wrq.com (Steve Poole) writes:

>I've been a Mac user for years. I'm getting close to a point where I'd
>like to upgrade my home system, and am thinking about the possibility of 
>an Amiga with Mac emulation, since I have ROMs.


Upgrading from Mac to Amiga.  I like the sound of it!


>So, I have some specific requirements and questions. Does Amiga still 
>do that cheesy interlaced video?


All new Amigas have some alternative except the A600 which is a very 
inexpensive lower-than-entry-level machine.

>Is 24/32 bit video fast?


It is much faster than Mac 24-bit video I think.  I've played with the
4000 and I've played with my roomates Mac fx and the 4000 seemed quite
a bit faster to me. ...but the 4000 is an 040 machine of course.

>Does Amiga OS 
>enforce memory protection yet? 


The 030 and 040 units with an MMU do.      


>Does the workbench support things like 
>drag/drop, aliases, and multiple views?


Yes, yes, yes and much much more stuff too.

 
>Does Amiga know any networking 
>protocols like AppleTalk or NFS? Does anyone make LocalTalk hardware for 
>the Amiga so I can toss it onto a cheap Mac net?

Amax II+ has built in AppleTalk.  You can get eithernet boards for the
Amiga though for more money than what they cost for the PC.  I don't
know about protocalls.  I also think Emplant is supposed to have Apple-
Talk available.  You could ask Jim Drew over in .emulations. 


>As for Mac emulation, I've been following some of the Emplant squawking 
>over in c.s.a.e. Are there other emulators? Do they do color? Do they 
>really work?


There are two emulators available now which are Amax and Emplant.  Amax
is B&W only but it is rummored that color is not far off.  I would guess
they are working on a color AmaxIII to work with Amiga's new AGA chipset.
Amax works good.  It is more compatible than the LC for example.  I've
used it and had great success.  My roomate is a Mac salesman and used
Amax for quite awhile to learn all the latest Mac software.  Emplant is
bran new so it remains to be seen how well it works.  But it is supposed
to be 100% compatible if you have an mmu.  And it sounds like that with
the AGA chipset, Emplant may even have faster video than many of the
color Macs with the same cpu.  Amax is about 15% faster on 68000 machines.

And BTW, you're supposed to be able to plug a 386 or 486 into the 
Eplant board and emulate one of those too.  It is only vaporware for 
now but Utilities Unlimmited, the makers of Emplant, seem to be on the
up and up.  And they're talking about NeXT and Sun emualtion too. 
...they have some system with the multitasking AmigaOS and programable 
timing hardware (or something) all worked out which makes it easy to
emulate systems.  We'll see but I am mildly optimistic.  


>Here's the minimal hardware specs I'm looking for:
>
>25 MHz 68040, 32 megs RAM, 1280 x 1024 x 32 bit video, 16" monitor (NO
>interlaced video!), Mac emulation with a ROM *DUMP*.


I think for now the best non-interlaced video is 800X600 unless you
buy some rather expensive video boards.  But the AGA chips are 
"programable" so other solutions may come down the pike.  (The AGA was
only released in Sept.)  Further the AGA only has HAM8 which is a 
psudo 18-bit display with 24-bit palette.  (I think, ...someone else 
can give you exact details.)  The monitors I don't know about but 
there are many alternatives if you are willing to buy a video board.
The HAM8 display is good.  IMHO, as good as my roomates 24-bit Mac display.
It also has a file size advantage and the A4000 can animate in HAM8 at
30 fps (and I heard once at 60 fps ???).  Also, there are already games
available which use HAM8 and there are surely more to come. ...games and
more since C= also released the inexpensive A1200 which also uses the
AGA chipset w/HAM8.  There is information about video boards in any Amiga
World magazine.  I'm sure resolutions go beyond 1280 X 1024 but I'm
not sure about 32-bit color. 

You can get PD rom dumps for Amax and Emplant has some rom dump solution
as well. 


>How about good LISP and C++ environments?


...I better let someone else comment here.



                                      NCW


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