From: lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Atari Falcon Discount Supermachine  Re: Sydnes is gone?!!
Date: 25 Aug 92 18:02:02 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Chris_Millar@lppl.mi.org (Chris Millar) writes:
: First of all, if you kept up on the financial market, you would see that C=
: lost 21 million dollars - I guess they are TOO dependant on their c-64
: sales, eh?

At least Commodore sells something....

: that it was being dropped a while ago.  The Falcon is full of custon chips,

There are custom chips and there are custom chips - I very much doubt
that there is any custom chips even near the complexness of AMiga chip
set other than 030 and 56002 as it's highly probably Atari could not
have managed to finance the developement of such chips.

: As far as VIDEO modes go, all video modes are available on all monitors.
: The 640x480 "True Color" modes can be interlaced and used on a standard

Are you absolutely sure that there even is a 640*480 true color mode?
Some messages on comp.sys.atari.st say it does, others that the
highest true color mode is 320*480.

: I still can't believe that you continue to claim that the A600 is a better
: platform than the Atari Falcon/030.  The A600 isn't even in the same BALL

It may not be better, but it's not necessarily much worse. Amiga 600
has very small, very fast and very stable operating system, has
NTSC/PAL-compatible video, larger resolution than Falcon (1280*512 +
overscan = perhaps something like 1450*560), has more applications, is
more compact etc. On the other hand Falcon has more sheer CPU power,
more colors, DSP and SCSI.

: PARK as the Falcon - and is completely unable to compete.  

C-64 was often considered a lot inferior to Atari's comparable machine
(was it Atari 800?) - however C-64 was a bit cheaper and sold a few
times more than Atari 800...

: In terms of expansion, more RAM expandibility (even with the PCMCIA slot)
: and the processor direct slot of the Falcon destroysthe PCMCIA slot of the
: A600 in terms of functionality - what would you rather choose?  A 4 meg RAm

I'd choose A3000 if I needed lot's of expansion capability. A600 is
targeted as a low cost low end home computer - too many slots just add
price and would be without use in 95% of all A600's.

: card, or the choice of an internal Macintosh or IBM PC emulator?  I think

I'd have emulators and ram. Ie. A500.

: it is quite obvious.

No it isn't.

: The Falcon also adds a far faster CPU with hardware memory protection for

Far faster CPU, yes. Just wondering: does Falcon use the same bus for
graphics and CPU? Or does the 1 meg falcon have graphics memory? If
Falcon only has one bus for both graphics and progrmas it's wasting
most of it's CPU power.

: MORE productive multi-tasking, plus a slightly superior BLiTTER (new design
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Guesses and probably wishes. Where are the facts?

: - no longer is the LAME 8 bit, 8Mhz BLiTTER - new 16 bit, 16Mhz design) and

Amiga blitter has always been 16 bittish, has always had 3 sources and
1 destination, 256 logical operations, shifts, masks,... MHz-rate of
the chip is irrelavent.

: the DSP processor.  Add the IDE and SCSI II ports, and the price (just
: announced $799 for 1 meg no hard drive, $1399 for 4 meg, 65 meg hard drive
: - RETAIL) - and the A600 falls back into the status of "interesting toy".

A600 is ment to be a small home computer, not a box that is used as a
supercomputer in video industry. Also A600 does alrerady has internal
IDE port - from where do you get your (mis)information?

--
Jarkko Lindblad
lindblad@cc.helsinki.fi