From: ins739l@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au (William Fang)
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why ...
Organization: Monash University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 21:47:11 GMT

Glen Sescila (glens@natinst.com) wrote:
: 	... the Falcon beats the 1200.  No, really, these important features
: of the Falcon always seem to get 'brushed off' by Amigoids when comparing
: the two machines.  Imagine how much it would cost to add most of these
: features to the 1200 (and then prey that 3rd party software vendors support
: your add-ons).  In fact, most of these can't even be found on the 4000.

Considering that the Atari ST range software support is virtually non-existent 
in the states, I wouldn't be harping on about software.  In Australia it is
vary rare to see and Advertisement for an Atari computer.  The only Australian
Atari magazine folded years ago, and there are too (that I know of) for the 
Amiga.

: 
: 	10. MIDI

A five dollar cable?

: 	9. Local Talk

If you had more than two Falcons, then it would probably be useful.  Then again
the Amiga 1200 is not priced at the consumer that needs multi-terminals.  If
you really need networking, you can get Ethernet connection for the Amiga with
TCP/IP and NOS support.

:: 	8. CD Codec
: 	7. DSP

Commodore are meant to be working on this right now (well DSP at least).  When
it comes out, I'll be suprised if there was *NO* software support.  Heck, even
the AGA chip set was supported in software *BEFORE* it was released.
With a more efficient chipset and operating system, I guess us amigoids will be
bopping along to all those cheesy (tm) mods and typing up our assignments at 
the same time.  I would like to see how much processor power is left on a 
Falcon running multitos?

: 	6. SCSI 2 (even just SCSI would be nice, don't you know that the
: 	   entertainment/multimedia industries are getting into CD-ROM)

Suprise, Suprise!  Commodore makes a CD-ROM based multimedia/entertainment
system.  FYI it's called CDTV!

IDE may not be the ant's pants, but Amiga-1200 owners are not going to need 
more than two Hard-drives.
If the average Falcon owner can afford a SCSI 2 hard-drive with a theorectical
transfer speed of 10 meg per second, could his system handle it?  Does the
falcon have hard-drive DMA and how fast is it?  What's the maximum through-put?

: 	5. Built in power supply. (a brick again?  jeeez!)

Sheesh... Care factor zero Mr Sulu!

: 	4. 16 MHz Blitter

How much is it going to cost to put a *USEFUL* blitter into the falcon?
The Amiga graphic chipset, blitter included dumps on the falcon from a great
height.  I think the Atari and Commodore engineers have vastly different goals
when the work on a project.

Atari = flashy specs, who cares about real world performance?
Commodore = better bang for the buck.

: 	3. Stereo Microphone port built in

Really useful...  You can make real crappy samples with an microphone and 
impress your friends.  "how did you turn your voice into a Dalek?"
If it had digital input, then I'd be impressed...

: 	2. 1.4 Meg Floppy (you might be able to add one to the 1200 but
: 	   AGA specific software will still come on multiple 880K floppies,
: 	   swap-swap-swap.  With AGA graphics, software is gonna get bigger)

Hmmm.  You've got a point here.  I wish High-density 1.76meg floppies would
become a standard for the Amiga.  Double-density disk cost advantage is 
falling very quickly.  With some brands, double capacity doesn't mean double
the cost.
The Amiga 4000, Amiga 3000 does come with High-desnity drives.  You can also
purchase a high-density external disk drive (from stores in England and 
Australia and probably in the rest of the world).

: 	1. 68030

Judging from reports of the falcon in use, a better question is when will the
falcon get a 68040?  If it's only 2-3 times faster than an ST/STE, I wouldn't
be rubbishing the A1200 for only having a 68020.  It does have a full 32 bit
bus, 32 bit edge connector for add-on cards (or was that 24bit?)...
I would be more interested in seeing a comparison of the tow machines' speed
running benchmarks and in "real life" operation.


- William Fang
  B.CS/B.E 
: "Now You're Playing With Power Without The Price!"  Glen Sescila   |||
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy