From: kholland@hydra.unm.edu (Kiernan Holland)
Subject: Re: FACTS? (was: Re: REAL FALCON 030 SPECS)
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 92 18:33:08 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Keywords: n

In article <1992Sep22.055118.18571@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> rittle@supra (Loren James Rittle) writes:
>In article <u894776.717116148@bruny> u894776@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (James McCoull) writes:
>>FACT: The amiga4000 is not affordable.
>
>How on earth is this a fact?  It may be a fact of life that some
>people can't afford an A4000, but many people I know could walk
>into a computer store sometime next week (or next month depending upon
>when the A4000's get there), plunk down a VISA and say, ``charge it''.

Ya... And you wouldn't be able to charge another thing until 
that was payed off.

Actually I have he money to buy a 486-50 with a local bus, but 
why can't I get a Amiga 4000, becuase it costs much more 
than I am willing to shell out. What was it, 3600 dollars??
You can get a super super PC for that much, or you can get a NeXT
with a 25mhz 68040 and a DSP, etc. 
I don't see it as either affordable or a work of art. 
For all i know, it could be just another CBM machine.
I mean, one with some difference but probably not much 
technology.
>
>Hey, I might even do it, if I like what I see.  IMHO, the real meat
>of the matter is not whether or not the A4000 is affordable, but rather
>does it have a good price/functionality ratio (esp. compared to what
>one already has).

Well... I'll do some tests on it before I make my mind up. 
I know quite a lot about graphics capabilities and can just look 
at a machine and tell if it has superior graphics. I'd do some 
animations, try some of my 1280x1024 24-bit images on it, 
try all the graphics modes, compare, etc... 
Then I would check the sound, do some disk speed tests, 
CPU speed tests... Run some of my older and newer software 
on the system, check the specs to see how much memory it can address,
check to see who will support it, check to see how many users 
will be, who will buy it, pay attention to the market, 
look at the PC's to see what is going on there, etc.

>
>AGA sounds neat even though it doesn't really address the areas I'm
>most interested in (more res. and faster blitter).  Zorro III is leaps
>and bounds beyond the Zorro II bus in my A2000.  The '040 is leaps and
>bounds better than the '030 in my A2000.  The builtin IDE is far worse
>than the GVP Impact II SCSI card in my A2000.  Max. 16MB of fast RAM on
---------------
How do you figure that???
I could get you IDE drives for cheaper than SCIS, and I have read that 
IDE drives are as fast or faster than SCSI's for x to 200 megs, then 
the SCSI's come out on top. 

I know people look down on the PC's from the Amiga, but there 
is a heck of a lot more PC users and that says something for 
how prices are, very low and the quality is the same as 
you would expect.                                     
-----------------
>the motherboard seems a bit constrained to me.
>
>IMHO, I already need 4 cards to address A4000 short comings:
>1 DMA Ethernet card
>1 64MB RAM card
>1 DMA SCSI card
>1 mumble-1600 or similar hi-res video card
>[anti-flame alert: the above are all my opinions of what *I* would need
> to add to the A4000 to make it what I want to upgrade to from my souped
> up A2000.]
--------------
What the heck would you do with 64 megs of ram???
I have 6 megs on my 3000 and it is enough for what I do.
----------------
>
>There go all my slots!  What happens when I want to add the fabled
>DSP board? :-)
>
>Guess I'll be waiting for C= to come out with the tower version of the
>A4000 with sockets for 64MB+ on the motherboard and DMA SCSI (ala A3000)
>on the motherboard.  I *don't* expect C= to ever ship a machine with
>Ethernet on the motherboard.
-----------------
Are you kidding or do you just want a better machine, but don't 
plan to do anything super with it? I mean the PC users 
idea to get a 486-50 and use nothing but wordperfect. 
Sure I could impress my friends with 64 megs, but the only thing 
I could think to do with that much is run some sort of Xwindows 
based UNIX system that does animations, something like that.
-----------------------
>
>I guess we really need to wait until we can each see hardware for
>ourselves to determine the worth of the A4000.  Who knows, I
>may be so enchanted by the new AGA magic that I won't be able to
>resist the impulse buy! :-)
-----------
Ya, but I'd have a careful look becuase CBM has been always known to 
stick their biggest foot forward and make everything look 
super. I mean, you can always guess that the origianal 
system is about 25% of what people claim just before it arrives.
I mean, Amiga users on the BBS's were claiming that the 3000
would have super graphics and 256 colors in 1280x1024, some even 
saying 24-bit color... That is why I don't believe all these 
fools who talk about the latest and greatest thing before they 
have even seen anything. 


>
>Regards,
>Loren
>--
>"I really doubt it," he said, "it's far more likely he was bumped off by
> someone on the net." - The rumors of Mark's death are greatly exaggerated.