From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 11:37:21 GMT

In article <C0o5oF.Iv3@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>That's just it, there is no SVGA standard.  There are so many different
>>chips that supporting all of them can be difficult.  VESA attempts to 
>>provide a standard, but it is usually very slow and isn't guaranteed to
>>work on all systems.  
>
>Who needs a standard?  That's what drivers are for.  As long as they
>all write to the driver standard, the actual hardware can be as bizarre
>(and powerful) as the electrical engineers can make it.

As long as you're running all Windows software, you're laughing.  All these
"SVGA" cards have drivers for OS/2, I suppose?

>>palette                     24 bit                   18/24 bit
>
>SVGA can have a 32 bit palette.  Not 32 bit actual colours on the
>screen but all that mask crap that Amiga users and other graphical
>types like to talk about.

OK, so amend the Amiga figure to 25, and lets go on.

>Or 32k, or 64k, or full 24 bit.  I was just reading a review of a board
>that goes up to 24 bit at 1024X768, does it relatively quickly too.  I
>guess the point is a little moot since AGA can't even go this high...

And neither can most (affordable) monitors.  Oh, they'll do it, but try
separating two single pixel lines, a pixel apart, on most 14" monitors at
anything above 800x600 some time...

>>           1280x512         256/HAM8                 ---
>
>Hmm, now there's an interesting mode...I'd like to see that some day.

It is.  You should meet its cousin, 1408x564.  Since it's interlaced, it's
exceptionally useful for video titling work.

>>graphics bus                16 bit direct            16 bit ISA
>
>Why only 16 bit ISA?  As you know, there are VESA spec, local,
>accelerated 32 bit, 33Mhz video boards.

I'm not sure where Skip came up with "16-bit direct" here.  CPU Access to
chip ram is 32-bit on the A3000, A4000, and A1200.

>>bandwidth                   ~7M/sec                  ~3M/sec
>
>Vesa spec bandwith is much higher then EITHER of these.  Byte says
>150Mps sec...that's 19M/sec.  They also say: "Few of today's
>applications require more then 100Mbs"...Vesa spec local bus has
>bandwith to spare.

Yes, that's like saying the SCSI standard allows for 4MB/sec, so therefore
my particular hard drive and SCSI interface go that fast.  You're basing an
argument on a theoretical spec.

>>bit-blitting                custom chip              CPU driven
>
>or custom chip.  This board I was looking at uses a 68008 CPU.  Is that
>a newer version of the chip that powers the A600?

Technically speaking, it _is_ newer.  It's also cut down - it's the 8-bit
external data bus version.  The Sinclair QL used to use it.  What's a QL?
Don't worry, it was before your time...

>>line-drawing                custom chip              CPU driven
>
>Or coprocessed.  Same deal...it depends on the board you buy.  And this
>one was $250.00.

Let's get this straight.  "SVGA" is *NOT* anything and everything.  It must
bear some passing relationship to VGA, which is strictly a dumb card.  If you
have hardware bit blitting and line drawing, you're talking TIGA or S3, etc.
Not SVGA.

Of course, that's just semantics.  The real problem is that the software
needs to know how to drive these coprocessed cards.  That means either being
Windows software, or a well-supported special case like AutoCAD, or you're
out of luck.

>And because
>>the Clones are such pieces of hacked together junk, you'll need that 
>>support line to get the damn thing running.  "Oh, just set this jumper to
>>R7 and then reboot, go into CMOS setup, select DF32 OFF, save it to CMOS
>>RAM and exit.  Edit the autoexec.bat file to include the line C:\DOS\KLUDGE
>>and the config.sys file to say KLUDGE=3.  Now, reboot again and then run
>>the MSD program to be sure that there are no memory conflicts.  When done,
>>go into Windows and edit the Kludge .pif file with ..."
>
>I've never had any of these problems...but then I dont' use windows.

It has nothing to do with Windows.  Try installing a simple little tape
controller card in a PC which already has a SCSI interface, a network card,
and a Targa board, then get back to me.  Until you've tried supporting dozens
of PCs in a range of hardware configurations, you really have no idea just how
cretinous they can be.

>>That's what I call total bullshit, yet Clone owners will often come across
>>things like that when installing new hardware or software.  It is truly a
>>pity that the world got suckered in by IBM and Microsoft's deceptions.
>>
>
>The world didn't get sucked in.  The world was smart...we said we
>wanted an open standard, an industry wide standard, and we wanted
>software compatibility across busses, video cards, sound cards,
>motherboards and even processors.  We wanted freedome from vendor
>dominance.
>
>If we all bought Amiga's we'd be at Commodore's mercy, and everything,
>from full systems, down to the smallest peripheral would be an order of
>magnitude more expensive.

But, what if some had Amigas, and some Macs, and some Unix boxes, and some
even had PCs.  We don't all need to own Amigas.  But, I object to the
stifling sameness of a PC-only world.  Alas, that seems to be the way we're
heading.  Maybe RISC workstations will save us yet.  I hope so.

-- 
David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...
Currently residing in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia