HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Way to go Commodore! Yeah...right./Falcon guff
Date: 26 Sep 92 08:30:56 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes:
: In <1992Sep24.183215.15876@klaava.Helsinki.FI> lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad) writes:
: >tracing needs most? Right - floatingpoints. 68040 would KILL 56001 in
: >ray tracing if speed was an issue.
: 
: No. It will kill it when the 56001 hasn't enough memory to store the objects.

It would kill 56001 even if it had enough ram - 56001 doesn't do
floating points.

--
Jarkko Lindblad
lindblad@cc.helsinki.fi
From: gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Atari BLiTTER
Date: 2 Oct 1992 08:39:22 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

ecarroll@maths.tcd.ie (Eddy Carroll) writes:
: Well, the nice thing about trapezoids is if you use zero slope for the
: edges, you've just got yourself a rectangle command where you need two
: triangles to do the same. On the other hand, triangles have their uses
: as well :-)

Well, I got into a discussion with someone...  :)  Seems that it would
be faster to have the trapezoid itself rather than triangles...  :)
However, I think having both would be nice.

Greg

--
(: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today?  Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :)
(: 	"Yeah, if improving the system is screwing the user base,     :)
(:	 you all need to be screwed more often." -Dave Haynie	      :)
(: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: sparks@disk.uucp (John Sparks)
Subject: Re: Its a sad sad day...
Organization: Digital Information Systems of KY
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 04:52:10 GMT

Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:


>And what if you wanted to go from 386 to 486? Throw away the entire
>motherboard!  Gee.  You get orphaned in the clone world even more than
>anywhere else!  6 months down the line, your machine is obsolete.
>Those things devalue like you wouldnt believe.

>Lets say, that you had bought a 386 instead of the A3000.  And now,
>you want to upgrade to a 486 with better graphics:

>First, toss out the entire mother board and get a 486 board.
>Then, toss out the graphics card, and get a new one.

There are many PC motherboards that are upgradable, meaning you can
go from 386SX all the way to 486DX on the same motherboard. The ones
my company reps should also be able to use the new 586 with an adapter.

and why throw out the graphics card? unless you wanted a better one.

The problem with CBM's method of upgrading is that if you just want to
upgrade the graphics, you have to buy an entire new machine (kinda
like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, eh?)


-- 
John Sparks        |"Help Fight Continental Drift!"| (502)957-4200 2400 BPS
D.I.S.K. Management| Email: sparks@disk.UUCP       | 6 lines, public access unix
                   |      uunet!coplex!disk!sparks |
    *Online Games*Usenet*Email*Chatting*Downloads*Supporting all computers*
From: Gleeep@cup.portal.com (Dave - Silon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The A4000 SUCKS! Commodore BITES! Marc BELCHES! Film at ele
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 92 02:11:19 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

blazemonger, blazemonger, rah, rah, raaaaaaahhhhh.

The CELLULOID ENTITIES have been watching you.  Baby Huey is none too
pleased.  Luckily for you, the BARBIE MOTHER'S attention has been
diverted by her new BARBIE PORSCHE.

Soon, she will crash at 14400 mph and then I shall return to taunt you
once again.

-Gleeep
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: boberg@lysator.liu.se (Stefan Boberg)
Subject: Re: READ THIS AMIGANS, FALCON 030 SPECS
Organization: Lysator Academic Computer Society, Linkoping University, Sweden
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 10:20:33 GMT

kdarling@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:

>boberg@lysator.liu.se (Stefan Boberg) writes:
>>  The reason why people would buy an Amiga instead of an Atari is that
>>the Amiga is a well-supported machine both software- and hardware-wise 
>>while Atari is hardly selling any machines at all at the moment. Very
>>little new software is produced for the ST compared to the Amiga.

>The same argument can be used to explain why people would buy a PC
>instead of either Amiga or Atari :-)   But the latter are bought by
>people who don't mind (and actually like) having something "different",
>even if not as well supported as other systems, so the debate seems
>ultimately pointless.

  Ouch! 1-nil to you :-)

  Of course, that's true. I meant to say that (at least here) it is much
harder to find a place where you can buy an Atari and SW/HW for it than
it is to find an Amiga dealer, which you can find just about everywhere.
There isn't even an Atari subsidiary in Scandinavia anymore (went out of 
business recently) ... To paraphrase Mr. Rune Hyldmo (with modification):
"Amiga Rules" in scandinavian homes.

  As to buying a PC - well no thank you, never! I'll wait for whatever
comes after the PC era, and until then I think I'll stick to the Amiga.

>best - kevin <kdarling@catt.ncsu.edu>
--
Stefan Boberg - AP & EE student at Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden
 Author of LhA, ArjA and LhArcA. Co-author of Alien Breed, Project X ...
  EMail: boberg@lysator.liu.se, lha@augs.se           FIDO: 2:204/404.7
    UUCP:  {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmswe!team17!boberg
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Problems with the A4000
Date: 25 Sep 92 09:16:03 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <kdarling.717167529@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu> kdarling@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:

>A friend tells me that IDE is DMA-driven on his PC.  Anyone know if this
>is generally the case, or is his an unusual machine?

Yes.

Well, watch out when you talk to PC people about DMA.  Maybe your friend
understands it, but most don't.  In Clone parlance, "DMA" means that their
crufty old DMA controller performed the transfer, not the CPU.  When they
say the transfer was run by a "full master" or some-such, they're talking
about something like Amiga-style Zorro or Local bus DMA.

So you could probably point any PC's DMA controller at the IDE bus, but I
think overall system performance dies whenever that chip is fired up for
things it doesn't have to do (it does memory refresh on ISA and a few
other annoying things you can't get around).  The idea of such a chip wasn't
a bad one back in 8088 days.  In DMA controller transfers, data has to make 
two bus crossings just like with PIO, but this controller could do this
more efficiently than the 8088 or 80286, since it didn't have to fetch
instructions.  But it also didn't get any faster, while CPUs and memory did.
So it's probably useless on '386 and '486 systems.

There might be bus mastering IDE cards out there, but that's a pretty silly
idea.  Once you have to pay for the overhead of a PCB, bus interface, bus
mastering controller, etc. the difference between IDE and SCSI back ends is
trivial, a cheap-ass SCSI chip can be had for under $10.  PIO driven, such
a SCSI chip would lose to IDE, but with DMA, most of the SCSI performance
differences are measured only in disk transfer speeds, not loss of total
throughput.


					-Dave

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Cool Advanced High-End Systems You Can't See Yet)
 "The Crew That Never Rests"  {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh   BIX: hazy
             "You lie so much you believe yourself" -Metallica
From: cfury@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (Chris Fury)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: AGA hidden registers - C= is giving me an attitude
Keywords: The worse part is I have the cash for the A4000
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:46:07 GMT
Organization: Virginia Tech Computer Science Dept, Blacksburg, VA

kontos@clipper.ingr.com (Thorne Kontos) writes:

>Some folks here are already beginning to gripe about C=
>not releasing information about the AGA chip set. They
>tell us they don't want us to "hit" the hardware but
>instead only use authorized system routines.

> [DIRECT QUOTE FROM HARDWARE RKM REMOVED]

>I see things clearly, orphan all systems before the A4000.

Oh, go clean your glasses.

>Then screw over anyone who doesn't want to do things C='s
>new way. I hope some happy hardware hacker posts the AGA hidden
>registers to every net he can find. This would definitely serve
>Commodore a bit of their own medicine...

Geez, man, wake up!!  This is, like, a REAL marketing strategy.  
It shows me that commodore might be waking up and trying to get
out of "hacker mode".  Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good 
demo, but I think that computers were made to better our lives
by making them more PRODUCTIVE, and how productive can I be
if every bleeping piece of software I try to run doesn't work
on my system because some Euro-Hacker (no offense guys, you
awe me) has kludged his Super-Page-Write with a neato 
copper trick.  Got it?  I mean, yeah, having hardware specs
could be kinda nice, but what if the amiga line is consantly
changing?  I mean the nets can handle only so much bickering 
about "orphaning old, outdated systems" before they'll 
explode.  This way, Commodore is making an attempt at 
gauranteeing the rest of us who don't own the new SuperDuper-
Deluxe Chip set that we can *still* run software.  Hurrah 
for Commodore!

[flame mode off.]

>PUBLISH THE SPECS/REGISTERS OF THE AGA CHIPSET

Do us a favor Commodore, Don't.  Not until you're sure that
the chips will never, ever change, ever again.

--
Christopher B. Fury        | "...reality was once a primative method of crowd  
cfury@csugrad.cs.vt.edu    |  control that got out of hand" - Jane Wagner
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: gerrymon@eng.umd.edu (Gerry Mon)
Subject: Re: Atari BLiTTER
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 15:05:42 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park

In article <35473@cbmvax.commodore.com> grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.140549.10214@eng.umd.edu> gerrymon@eng.umd.edu (Gerry Mon) writes:
>> In article <1992Sep24.195307.19082@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
>> lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad) writes:
>> 
>> >gerrymon@eng.umd.edu (Gerry Mon) writes:
>> >
>> >: The Atari BLiTTER takes data from the source and destination and
>> >: prepares the result to be put back into the destination.  In other
>> >: words, it's basically a 2 source blitter.  However, the Atari BLiTTER
>> >
>> >So, it uses 1 source and 1 source/destination? Ie. One of the sources
>> >must change? That is bad, too bad.
>> 
>> Why is this so bad?  Don't most microprocessors have an instruction
>> format like this too?  For example, a lot of microprocessors have an
>> ADD R1,R2 instruction where you add two numbers in R1 and R2 and place
>> the result back in R1.
>
>It's not so bad if that's what you want to do.  In some operations the
>Amiga blitter is used with one or more of the source and destination
>operands either disabled or pointing at the same data.
>
>The real qestion is what portion of blits (in real applications) require
>two or more passes over the data to emulate what the Amiga blitter can
>do in one, when a temporary storage area has to be allocated to hold
>some intermediate result or when a certain kind of blit simply isn't
>used because "it hurts"...

That's an interesting question.  If most real world blits are the kind
the Atari BLiTTER can handle then it should be perfectly adequate.

But I must admit, I would love it if Atari could take some of the
Amiga's features and incorporate them in a future BLiTTER.  The
benefits to the "cookie cutter" operation (D = AB + NOT(A)C) would
seem to be worth it since this sounds like it is a commonly used
operation.

--Gerry
From: fheitkamp@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A4000
Date: 29 Sep 92 11:19:26 GMT
Organization: Wright State University

In article <1a2a1iINNa3h@uwm.edu>, gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
> ggiles@cie.uoregon.edu (Gregg Giles) writes:
> 
> : IMHO, with regard to adventures, you'll see EHB adventures for some time yet,
> : and when the AGA base grows large enough to support, then you'll see 256-colo
> : adventures on the Amiga.

	Maybe more AGA compatible games will show up simply because the PC 
	games they'll be porting from will be 256 colors.  Doesn't make a
	whole lot of sense but...

> --
> (: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today?  Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :)
> (: 	"Yeah, if improving the system is screwing the user base,     :)
> (:	 you all need to be screwed more often." -Dave Haynie	      :)
> (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
Fred Heitkamp,  ** Not an organization.  My opinions only **
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan)
Subject: Re: REAL FALCON 030 SPECS
Organization: Xanadu Enterprises Inc.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 18:18:35 GMT

In article <1702@lysator.liu.se> boberg@lysator.liu.se (Stefan Boberg) writes:
|  Didn't you forget the smilies? I wouldn't exactly call US the jewel of
|the earth...

	No, I didn't.

|  Do you really mean that? This is what CBM has thought up 'til now
|but they finally seem to understand that it doesn't work that way. People
|want new and better stuff all the time (and LOTS of it! :)

	Yes, I do.  Techno-dweebs want new and better stuff all the time.  Real
people want what works, and don't really care whether or not it's the latest
and greatest.  Power users don't buy A500's.

dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com   ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis     GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I don't understand why you make such a big deal out of everything...haven't
you learned; if it's not happenning to me it's not important?" -Murphy Brown

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: ggiles@cie.uoregon.edu (Gregg Giles)
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS differences-
Organization: University of Oregon Campus Information Exchange
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 16:00:00 GMT

In article <#zfz08@rpi.edu> danaf@rpi.edu writes:
>
>BTW: I know this is the wrong area, but is the A2000 fan "standard" equipment? 
>I'd assume Commodore didn't have a fan built Just For Them... so I **SHOULD**
>be able to get a replacement at some place like Radio Shack, if I know the 
>power requirements and approx. speed...

   You can find A2000 replacement fans at any Radio Shack. I replaced mine a
year or two ago with an off-the-shelf fan from RS. Cost a couple of dollars,
and took about five minutes to replace. Works like a champ. (Sorry, I don't
have a part number - just take in your old fan an look for similarities.)

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Giles (Dynamix, Inc.)                 BIX: ggiles 
All opinions expressed are my own.          Internet: ggiles@cie.uoregon.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: bill@snoopy (Bill Poitras)
Subject: Re: Its a sad sad day...
Reply-To: bill@msi.com
Organization: Molecular Simulations, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:30:48 GMT

David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au) wrote:
: In article <1992Sep28.200255.19512@msi.com> bill@msi.com writes:
: >The only disadvantage to 100ns RAM is its speed.  I
: >would never buy 100ns memory myself.
: 
: We were talking about upgrading, i.e. people keep their old ram.  What I'm
: saying is that it's all very well having upgradable cpu modules, but going
: to a faster cpu that way is less optimal than replacing the whole motherboard,
: which is what most IBMers end up doing.

I was talking about old RAM too.  My first SIMMs were 80ns.  These will
carry to my first 486 very well.  The performance hit will be small or
negligible.  

Going to a faster CPU via upgrade boards is not necessarily less
optimal than buying a whole new motherboard if the upgradable
motherboard was designed to handle a faster CPU.

--
+-----------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------+
| Bill Poitras    | Molecular Simulations Inc.    | Tel (408)522-9229       |
| (bill)          | Sunnyvale, CA USA             |                         | 
|                 | FAX (408)732-0831             | bill@msi.com            |
+-----------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------+

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.unix.amiga
From: rhealey@kas.helios.mn.org (Rob Healey)
Subject: Re: UNIX vs ADOS, aka lost income for C=
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:28:13 GMT
Organization: Rob's home system, Hopkins, MN

In article <35314@cbmvax.commodore.com> grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes:
>In article <1992Sep20.173347.2696@kas.helios.mn.org> rhealey@kas.helios.mn.org (Rob Healey) writes:
=> 
=> 	In my previous posting I commented on the UNIX market. I just did
=> 	some thumbnail sketches and found something interesting:
=> 
=> 	3,000,000 X $500.00(A600 system) = $1,500,000,000 sales
=> 	  150,000 X $10,000(A3000 UNIX)  = $1,500,000,000 sales
=> 
=> 	The US government alone buys more than 150,000 systems/year,
=> 	like this in an ELECTION year when political pork could
=> 	probably get them the 150,000 systems around the world not even
=> 	counting possible business sales.
=> 
=
=The validity of your argument seems to depend on the accuracy of your
=sales figures, which I suspect you would find diffucult to support...

	If C= is unable to sell 50k units per year world wide then no
	wonder they are so far behind... 3 * 50k = 150,000 units
	WORLDWIDE. It took 3 years to chalk up 3 million 500's ya know
	altough that was in spite of C= sales dept., not because of them.

	Then again, C= sales division isn't known for it's stellar
	performances, usually Amiga owners are the ones that actually
	sell computers for C=. B^(.

	My numbers over 3 years and world wide aren't outrageous but maybe
	the performace of C= sales division is if they can't do 50k
	business Amiga's WORLD WIDE per year... B^(.

		-Rob
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: das9674@usl.edu (Stephenson Daniel A)
Subject: Re: Its a sad sad day...
Organization: University of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 19:56:50 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.182711.9489@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@connection.prospect.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>>
>>And what if you wanted to go from 386 to 486? Throw away the entire
>>motherboard!  Gee.
>
  On a typical system, replace the motherboard.  On an "upgradeable" PC,
>replace the CPU daughtercard.

Have you seen those neat Zero Insertion Force gizmos in some PCs?
You just lift a lever, and the old CPU comes out!  You easily take out the
old CPU, and lightly drop in the new CPU in its pace.  Then lever the lever.
COOL.

This is for 486 variants....

On last week's Computer Chronicles, a macro of a lot of Windows things was
done - intesive things.  They ran it with the old 20mhz 486SX CPU, turned it
off, switched CPUs, and ZOOM! the new 40Mhz CPU was very much improving
performance!  It was cool.  
.
I guess you could make a key-ring widget fro the old CPU chip.  :)  

>--
>+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------------+
>| Jerry J. Shekhel  | Molecular Simulations | Time just fades the pages      |
>| Drummers do it... | Inc.  Waltham, MA USA | in my book of memories.        |
>|    ... In rhythm! |     (617) 890-2888    |              -- Guns N' Roses  |
>+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------------+
>|           ...! [ princeton mit-eddie bu sunne ] !polygen!jerry             |
>|                            jerry@polygen.com                               |
>+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


--
*Dan Stephenson   das9674@usl.edu  
*
* "To conquer death, you only have to die,..."                   
*                             -Jesus , from _Jesus Christ Superstar_
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: tevonian@dcl-nxt01 (Pete Tevonian)
Subject: Re: My next machine: Amiga or PC Clone? Help me out.
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 06:01:19 GMT

ggg@kepler.unh.edu (Gregory G Greene) writes:

>>My question is this: given that I'm going to be doing heavy scientific
>>computing, but I also really _love_ to play good games (particularly flight
>>sims), what computer should I buy?  Should I go with the OS I like and know,
>>in the Amiga, or should I go for the lower-priced, better supported PC clones?

>	I'd say get the Dell 66/486DX2, but add 4 more meg of ram so you can 
>  run OS2 2.0.  That way you can have it all, great OS, great support, and
>  great flight sims.  

>							G.Greene

Latest ad I have has a deal where Dell will throw in an additional 4M
of RAM if the system is purchased before Oct. 30. That would give a 
total of 8M for no more money. Nice touch if you're already buying one.


>>Nick Coult internet: coult@geom.umn.edu  or  coultn@carleton.edu

--Pete Tevonian
From: ai065@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Thomas Hill)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: TONY POOLE- Please read.
Date: 30 Sep 92 06:04:47 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


   I just checked back into the group for some quick reading, and just had to
write you a short note here. I find your constant need to knock others quite
disturbing. I would also kindly ask that you not distort the facts when using
other's names. Our "coversation", if you will remember, consisted of you
trying to play some form of God-like moderator role in past and present. I
seldom resort to names, but in this case I feel very justified in calling you
a complete snob- one who considers himself socially superior and condescends
to those he considers to be his inferiors. I would again kindly ask that you
stop looking down your nose at others. You do not own this group and thus you
should not constantly whine whenever your "high" standards are not met. Yes,
your shit stinks like the rest of us. Thank you for your time.
-- 
George Bush? He doesn't have a clue anymore. Bill Clinton? A slick smile and
a pandering style. Neither one is being realistic about what it is going to
take. The answer..........? ROSS FOR BOSS! VOTE FOR ROSS PEROT FOR PRESIDENT!
The Cryptozoology Information Network. Want on our Email mailing list? Amiga!
From: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Not: REAL FALCON 030 SPECS
Date: 25 Sep 92 18:17:18 GMT
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

In article <1992Sep23.152730.20565@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
> In article <1992Sep23.042424.16085@grebyn.com> richk@grebyn.com (Richard Krehbiel) writes:
> >I personally think AGA should have given us faster pixels, too.  ECS
> >and AGA both do 140, 70, and 35ns pixels.  This is great for video,
> >but I personally think the primary use of those custom chips should be
> >to support a user interface.  If we had gotten a fourfold increase in
> >dot clock, then you could have had a 1280x960 4 color (B/W)
> >non-interlaced 60Hz display, which is adequate for a low-end
> >workstation.
> 
>    I agree, but Dave Haynie already stated that since the color capability 
> was the biggest complain about the A3000, they only improved the color 
> capability.  Which means that all of Commodore's engineers apaprently believed
> that the entire computer industry would come to a standstill for over two
> years with respect to display resolutions while they improved the color 
> capabilities of the Amiga.

You really are stupid, aren't you?