From: gfm@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (George Francis McBay)
Subject: Re: Atari Falcon Discount Supermachine  Re: Sydnes is gone?!!
Organization: /etc/organization
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 19:51:51 GMT

In article <1992Aug16.041634.19769@uwm.edu> gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
>instance, Calamus (DTP) could benefit greatly from a 256 color screen.
>However, that will require a total rewrite, to be likely.
>And I just don't think that's going to happen.

	Why? If enough people buy Falcons it will probably happen, one way
or another.

   : You must be expert designer because Next, Sunrize, SGI, Turtle Beach
   : all use 56001 so maybe they do not have you knowledge!  Turtle Beach
>You know very little.  The 56001 is not some awesome DSP, there are
>much better ones currently available.

	Sure there are better DSP chips available, but the whole point of
the Falcon is low price, it seems obvious they'd use an entry level chip
, then.

>You don't seem to get it:  First of all, the reason the Amiga flickers
>is because it's the STANDARD.  Televisions, those things you stare at

	This is true, but Commodore should support more high-resolution
graphics mode flicker-free, not everyone uses their Amiga for video.
(And don't even mention the ECS modes)  I agree that having a non-standard
parallel port would be kind of stupid.

>Having two "sets" of joystick ports is a hack.  One set digital only,
>the other digital/analog.  Does it ring yet?

	Hack? Maybe, but that's two extra digital-only ports that the Amiga
doesn't have.  Such things may only be useful for games, but that's one of
the Amiga's biggest selling points. (I know about the '4 joystick adapter' but
I've already got 3 items fighting for my parallel port, thank you)

   : You forgot comment about 1.44 drive!  People said 2.88 like in new PS/2
   : can be used too so this is very good feature.
>It's a lovely feature, I'm sure.  But I'd prefer a floptical or a hard
>drive.  That's why I have a hard drive now.  I rarely use floppies.


	I'm sure the Falcon will eventually support flopticals as well, 
especially if it does have SCSI-II or at least a port that will make
adding it easy.  Hard Drives are not a substitute for High Density Disks,
they are vastly different beasts and I'd love to see HDD on my Amiga.
If nothing else, they'd make it far easier to backup my HardDrive without
needing to buy a Tape drive.

  : This is very true so Atari should sell Falcon for $2000 and include 
  : over $1000 in FREE software!!  You have very good idea!
>No, they should take the time to develop a few more applications, not
>that I consider a rolodex and a clock to be "applications".  The point
>is that they should have done more work.

	How can you judge without having seen the Falcon's OS? A rolodex 
program isn't a big deal, but I don't remember getting one with AmigaDOS (Then
again I doubt I'd get a package as powerful as ARexx with MultiTOS..)

>Why on earth would they learn about Unix?  It's nothing like Unix.
>Nothing.  If you've ever programmed Unix, you'd know...  It doesn't
>RUN Unix.  And "students" who would use the DSP and 68030 probably
>already know what they are, correct?

	Rumor has it that MultiTOS is call-compatible with some unknown
(I've never heard it states..SYSV? BSD?) version of Unix.  This really
wouldn't help them learn Unix, though.  If anything it would make
a WIDE body of public domain software easily available.. Then again most
Unix programs (Not counting programs that use X or something such as that)
will compile with minimal modification on Amigas with a decent compiler.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy