From: amipb@amipb.gna.org (Philippe Berard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: C - Amiga 1200 vs 80x86
Date: 11 Nov 92 17:12:45 GMT
Organization: IWANIMA
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16e (7/4/92) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith

In article <1992Nov3.191443.22857@news.cs.indiana.edu> sgberg@peach.ucs.indiana.edu (Stefan Berg) writes:
> Let me just add some of my own stuff to this discussion:
>
> It is a little weird to compare an A1200 with a 486-33. The 486-33
> will easily blow the 68EC020-15 away in raw processing speed. The
> 486 is two generations ahead of the 020. But I would think that the
> A1200 is a little cheaper than a 486-33, no? maybe not... :-) these
> IBMs are getting dawn cheap... But there is certainly a lot more to
> a computer than just the CPU.

    Yes, the 486-33Mhz blows the 68EC020-15Mhz, but the 68040-25Mhz blows
    the 486-33Mhz or even the 486-50Mhz :-(

> The A1200 is certainly not an A500 with an 020. The A1200 has all the
> new graphics chips of the A4000. So in terms of graphics you will have
> some really nice piece of equipment. Although if you get an IBM with a
> 1024x768 (256 colors) card, your IBM might even be a little nicer (but
> that adds to the cost...). As far as I know, the A1200 is fully 32bit,
> except for the address bus which can only handle a maximum of 16MB. The
> A500 is externally a 16bit computer.

    There is some things VGA cards lack : sprites, multiple screens (copper),
    blitter and then SPEED ! Having to blit with the internal cpu (a 486,
    though) takes some precious time that could be used to do some kind of
    calculations...

> I also believe that the A1200 is build a little like the A500. No slots
> and stuff... an IBM has generally space for expanding it internally.

    You're totally wrong, here. There are many expansions announced for
    the 1200 : 68040, DSP, SCSI-II and BridgeBoard.

> Personally I would still go with Amiga, because I have a hard time handling
> a computer which doesn`t do proper multitasking (there are ways out, but I
> have tried them all and am not too happy with them).

    There is a ?PROPER? way to multitask on PC : OS/2 + 16 Megs of RAM + 30
    Megs of VM. Of course, it doesn't compare well with the Exec/Intuition/Dos
    kernal of the Amiga.

> I don`t know too much about the C compilers themselves. I have found AmigaDOS
> to be more similar to UNIX than plain DOS. Since I work a lot with UNIX I
> kinda like this similarity in the environment. I run DICE on my Amiga and
> recently installed gcc. But I mainly do my programming on UNIX.
>
> Hope I didn`t screw up too badly with the A1200.

    You didn't screwed up, you were only misinformed.
    
    Sincerely,
                                   -- Philippe

/------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|    Philippe Berard  (French Amiga User)       |                              |
|    "They hold a cup of wisdom,                |  amipb@amipb.gna.org         |
|     But there is nothing within" (Kate Bush). |                              |
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer