From: brett@visix.com (Brett Bourbin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: New hardware reference guide?
Date: 9 Nov 92 20:49:56 GMT
Reply-To: brett@visix.com
Organization: Visix Software, Reston, Virginia

In article <36661@cbmvax.commodore.com> peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter  
Cherna) writes:
> In article <1992Nov03.173522.27765@bmerh85.bnr.ca>  
Hamish.Macdonald@x400gate.bnr.ca (Hamish Macdonald) writes:
> >What about those wanting to write their own operating system?
> 
> Easy.  Build it on top of the lower-level primitives.  Instead of  
considering
> the hardware as the bottom level, consider the graphics view/viewport  
and
> rendering primitives to be the "bottom" level.  This stuff is very fast
> and flexible.

All well and nice, but totally missing the point. The question was a  
alternative OS, not UI. Big difference.

> People can build all kinds of alternative OS's and UI's
> on top of the Amiga.  X-Windows is one good example of an alternate UI.

Right, the X Window System (Not X-Windows  8^) ) is a UI, not an OS. You  
can not schedule jobs with X.

> While one can attempt an argument that games should bang the hardware
> (IMHO one which is greatly overstated), there's just no excuse for an
> alternate OS to bang the hardware.

One thing that every person from C= has always just glossed over is that  
with game development, publishers go with platforms they can sell on and  
make profits. Your hardware bangers are doing things that the OS just can  
not do on the stock machines making up the market. You can talk all you  
want about AGA, 68020/68040 machines, but until you get these machines in  
the hands of ALL the european Amiga owners, you are SOL.

The other reason for hitting the hardware is that you can use the machine  
like a game console. This is the programming model for such consoles. This  
means a publisher can get an Amiga port with much less custom work, than  
if they had to totally re-write the program for the Amiga OS.

This happens to be reality in the games enviornment. Now, if C= can sell  
millions of these AGA machines, things may change, but please don't expect  
game developers to change their ways before C= can prove what they are  
saying about their new machines. Too many people have been burned in the  
past.

> This is doubly true since I would hope that an OS designer would spend
> his time incorporating modern and novel OS features into his product,
> rather than spending time working out the details of the hardware
> (not to mention dealing himself out of proper functionality under RTG
> or potential future chipsets).

For the OS developer (running MACH, for example), the Amiga is not a  
feature, but hinderence. Does AmigaUNIX 2.1 SystemV run as a client of  
AmigaDOS? I would concider UNIX to be an OS. 8^)

> Peter Cherna, User Interface Development Group, Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
> {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!peter    peter@cbmvax.commodore.com
> My opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.
> "I believe it's bad luck to be superstitious."

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