From: Chris_Millar@lppl.mi.org (Chris Millar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Atari Falcon Discount Supermachine
Date: 29 Aug 92 02:48:54 GMT
Organization: Les's Place BBS

>Why are so many different sound generators needed?  The NeXT has really
nice

>sound and it only has the 56001 and a couple of DACs.  I'd imagine that
the

>Falcon could have been even less expensive had they just used one sound

>system instead of 3 (or is it 4?).  The old ST sound chip is about as
complex

>as the old SID chip in the C64 (or maybe even less so), so why not let the

>DSP emulate it?  There is a program for the Amiga that plays SID files and

>all the Amiga has is Paula, not a fancy DSP

Why indeed?  I think the main reason is so that something as 

powerful as a DSP doesn't have to be caught up doing something so 

rudimentary when it could be doing something far more practical.

Basically, the Falcon has audio capabilities that are aimed at the 

amateur to professional musician - the DSP can provide extra 

flexibility to sound sampling and recording that any 16 bit sound 

engine and it's DAC and ADC's couldn't handle - if you need it, 

it's there - kind of a "general purpose" workhorse chip.  I agree, 

the old ST chip was very poor, but it handles bells and beeps very 

well.....:), without taking up any other valuable chip time.



>I think that the Falcon's video is a big improvement over the STs and that

>it will probably have pretty good performance.  Although I'm no fan of the

>ST or Atari, I did think that the Falcon's specs sounded great.  It is

>unfortunate that the real thing has lost a bit since it has been
transformed

>from vapor into a solid.

I agree with you about the video - it IS a BIG improvement!  The 

"old" ST modes were "ok", and they did the job until VGA came out 

- as far as competing with the Amiga graphics modes - the main 

thing that turned me off was that it couldn't handle 640x400 non-

interlaced without an expensive add-on..........According to what 

I have been told, the interlaced modes on the Falcon are pretty 

bad on a monitor, but the flicker is almost imperceptible on a TV 

- or NOT perceptible.



The definition of True Color is exactly that, though - unlimited 

palette - or "no palette" - The 262,144 color palette is only for 

modes that show from 1 to 8 bitplanes - the true color modes have 

an unlimited palette - it SOUNDS weird, but perhaps it was more 

economical.



Funny that you mention that you wish C= had come out with a 

console version of the Amiga - there was a proliferation of rumors 

that Atari had an ST game system in the works - this was around 

1987 or 1988 - Then in 1991 Atari showed several game developers a 

new project they were working on, the "Panther" - supposed to have 

a 16Mhz 68000, and 640x400 256 color interlaced graphics with a 

256,000 color palette - Atari announced that they trashed the plan 

and moved on to the next level, the "Jaguar" - I'm sure you've 

heard about THAT one - all I can say is that the project's 

existence has been confirmed twice by Atari - once from Richard 

Miller (VP of Engineering) and again from Sam Tramiel - all within 

the last 3 months - it SOUNDS like a killer machine, but will have 

to wait 'til it hits the market (if it ever does) - rumor has it 

that it shares a great deal of Falcon technology, we'll see.



What do you mean by "resorting to third party hacks" in reference 

to TOS?  There have been no third party hacks to TOS - except for 

Warp 9.........otherwise, it's been original all the way through.  

I expect that you have never seen TOS 2 or TOS 3 - I doubt it, 

makes the old TOS's look like kid's stuff............



>You won't find an argument from me on that one.  I deleted the 1.3 crap

>from my hard drive over a year ago and have never looked back.



Ah, yes.......I upgraded to TOS 2.06 about a year ago, also.  

Actually, 1 year and 4 months ago.......never looked back, either.



The reason a IIsi runs so slow, (and YES, it is a DOG!) Is because 

of the enormous overhead that System 7 (and even System 6) has.  

It makes it run as though it was a 8 Mhz 68000 - REALLY. 



>Have you stopped to consider how ridiculous you look posting Falcon specs

>and propaganda in an Amiga newsgroup?

Newsgroup?  HAH!  This IS comp.sys.amiga.advocacy!  This is  

mainly for rumors and for "trying" to argue that the Amiga is 

better than any other computer platform - or had you forgotten 

that?



>BTW, I'm already in an institution, of higher learning that is.

Ah, I won't take a pot-shot at your school - I'm trying to be 

civil here.



I said LOW END DTP - Atari's main DTP platform is the TT - it has 

a VME bus and 1280x960 monochrome resolution.  Regardless, the 

processor direct slot can take just about anything it wants - in 

fact Jim Allen (maker of the Tiny Turbo and Turbo030 boards for 

ST's) is already done with the design of a board that will add a 

50Mhz 68030 and a driver for 1152x870 monochrome resolution - 

reason being, that "Mac" mono mode is supported by pretty 

inexpensive monitors - and is somewhat of a Mac standard.  BTW, 

this isn't rumor - it's fact.



Actually, max res is 768x480................




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