From: Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM P
X-Sender: newtout 0.05 Dec 30 1992
Date: 02 Jan 93  03:02:00

> Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
> From: speck@stsci.edu
> Message-ID: <1992Dec31.123632.1@stsci.edu>
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
>
> To all people who know about both IBM PC's/CLONES AND AMIGA COMPUTERS:
>
> I am a person who presently owns a PC clone (386SX machine, VGA, 120 HD).
> In the years to come, I plan to purchase another system, one with more
> expandibility, power, and features.  I decided early on to consider only
> PC clones, Macs, and Amigas.  First off, I decided that Macs are too
> expensive
> for me, so now the battle is between a PC clone and an Amiga.  I do a lot
> of writing and word processing, a little games playing, a lot of raw number
> crunching, and I'm now getting into (dabbling only) image processing and
> ray-traced computer art.
>
> I want a big hard drive (say at least 120 MB), a HD floppy drive, an onboard
> modem, a mouse, a keyboard, a nice monitor (at least 14", but if I had the
> money I'd like a larger one), and a powerful CPU.  I know IBM PC's fairly
> well, so here are my chief concerns:
>
> 1) How would, say, an Amiga with a 68040 compare in raw number crunching
> power
>   to the same speed (MHz) 486 DX system?

It  would  compare very well to, if not easily beat, a same-Mhz '486.  This
is  a  subject  of much "waring" - some say the 486 is better, some say the
040.   From  most  benchmarks I have seen, I'd say the 040 is significantly
faster than a 486 at the same Mhz.

> 2) Can Amigas take things like 20" monitors with video cards that permit
> very
>   large graphics modes (like 1200-or-so pixels square)?

There are several very powerfull graphics cards that allow resolutions like
that.   Unfortunately,  the  AmigaOS does not yet fully support such cards.
However,  a  future AmigaOS *will*; with RTG - they ARE actively working on
this.  So you will soon be able to use all software on those cards.  In the
mean  time, all of those cards have software programed specificly for them,
so they ARE usefull.

> 3) How easy is the Amiga to program yourself?  Are there REALLY GOOD
>   optimizing compilers available at reasonable cost, such as FORTRAN,
>   C, and BASIC?

Its  reasonably  easy  to  program.   There  are  very  good compilers both
commercial  and  public  domain.  SAS/C is *very* nice (commercial).  There
are  a few BASIC compilers; the "best" one would probably be AMOS.  I'm not
sure  I  could recomend AMOS, though, as it does a lot of system-unfreindly
things  -  but  it does let you easily access a lot of the Amiga's graphics
and sound abilities.

> 4) I've seen the wonderful graphics screens that Amigas can generate.  How
>   expensive are grahics packages to really use the Amiga to its advantage?
>   They are quite expensive for IBM clones (really GOOD software).

In  general,  under  $200.   Deluxe  Paint  4  is  around $120, ProPage and
Pagestream are around $170 - $190...

> 5) One BIG pain I've had with PC programming is in FORTRAN and BASIC, where
>   the amount of memory I can use is limited.  For example, the FORTRAN I
>   have only lets you access 640K of memory!  Even if you had 20 MB!  How
>   does this work with an Amiga, i.e., if you have 10MB of RAM, can you
>   trivially use all 10MB at once (minus the memory used for the operating
>   system, of course) for declaring arrays, etc?  This is very important to
>   me.

Absolutely.   You  never  have  to  deal with 640K limits, or 64K chunks or
anything  like  that.   You can create a 10MB array if you want, no problem
(other than needing a 10MB chunk of ram..).

> Thanks in advance,
>
> Scott in Baltimore,MD

 -Dances With Coyotes-EMAIL: dances@qed.cts.com-At the begining of the movie-
 --AKA Dances V2.0/Coyote/Critter/Magnet/Major--they know they  have to find-
 -Former Net-Lurker - A-M-I-G-A! NOT AMEOBA%#$!-each other.... but they ride-
 -World's slower programer and cursed with 1.3!-off in  opposite  directions-


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