From: mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Avoid the Amiga 4000
Date: 13 Oct 92 12:43:19 GMT
Reply-To: mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA

ridder@zso.dec.com (Hans Ridder) writes:
>In article <35767@cbmvax.commodore.com> mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz) writes:
>>
>> [Mike explains when we'll really get an interlaced display on the A4000.]
>>
>Ahhh, thanks Mike!  Finally someone explains it in plain English.
>
>>Go play with an A4000 and use programs with it.  Bring up DPaint III
>>(not IV) or ProPage or FinalCopy or most any other program.  Make sure
>>you have turned on the promotion mode and, if you want scan-doubling,
>>also the VGA-ONLY icon.
>
>I will.  I think I understand what "promotion" means.  I'm not clear on
>what "scan-doubling" is or how it relates to promotion.  Does
>scan-doubling here mean the same as it does for the Display Enhancer,
>that is 200 lines at 15kHz are displayed as 400 lines at 30kHz?  Are
>these the same as the DblNTSC/DblPAL modes?  What does "VGA-ONLY" do?
>(I could guess.)

You are right as to what scan-doubling is.  And you most likely got the
guess right too.  (VGA-Only tries to keep your scan rates up at the cost
of not getting you the right display in all cases.)

>If I currently use an ~400 line interlaced display and de-interlace with
>a Display Enhancer, how will that display on the A4000 and what do I
>have to set to get it?  (All I *want* is ~400 lines without flicker, can
>I get it and what is the scan frequency?)

Well, if you use default monitor modes with 400-line interlaced screen
it will be promoted.  If you really want to do it right, you would use
the display database to give the user a choice.  To make this easy, the
V38 asl.library has a screen-mode requester that lets the user select
the mode from a list of modes that you can filter.  (It looks very much
like the workbench screen mode preferences editor)  Using this will
make sure that you can pick what you want and get what you pick and
if any new modes show up you will have them available to you.

>>Notice that the PC market has 97% of the machines shipping with IDE as
>>the *only* hard drive interface.  Notice also that this has not
>>prevented much in the way of sales or usability.  Notice also that IDE
>>costs *much* less to have on the motherboard than DMA SCSI does.
>>
>>Now, for me, I need SCSI.  So do others.  However, it is not a reason
>>to call the machine useless.  In fact, if it were, most of the
>>computers in the world (IBM-PCs, 97.4% of them) would be useless too.
>>(I do want SCSI and so does the marketing department and so does Lou
>>who had stated that the SCSI board will be made and that highend
>>machines will be introduced with it on the motherboard in the future)
>
>Good points.  And I agree with them mostly.  I think your logic above
>ignores that the A4000 is supposed to be a "high-end" and a "multimedia"
>system, whatever that means.  To me it means buyers want will tape
>drives and CD-ROM, and the flexability of SCSI.

Remember, I said I want SCSI.  I was just stating the realities of the
market and why IDE is not as bad as it sounds.  Yes, SCSI has been the
standard on the Amiga.  However, ask yourself how many of the people
make use of SCSI?  How many have more than 2 hard drives connected?
How many with tape drives or other SCSI-only type of things?  Yes, SCSI
is better.  But is IDE completely useless?

>So a question to ask yourself is: "How many of the users buying an A4000
>will need to buy a SCSI board to satisfy their needs?"  If the answer is
>"most," or maybe even "very many," then I think IDE was a bad design
>choice.  If most A4000 buyers are happy without a tape drive and/or a
>CD-ROM drive, then it was a good choice.  The market will tell....

That is a marketing question.  But so is the base configuration of
the machine.  There are many here that would never have include IDE
in a machine at the level of the A4000.  But then, we don't make the
choices, we just make the machine.

/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
|      /// Michael Sinz  -  Senior Amiga Systems Engineer              |
|     ///                   Operating System Development Group         |
|    ///   BIX:  msinz      UUNET:  mks@cbmvax.commodore.com           |
|\\\///                                                                |
| \XX/                      Eloquence is vehement simplicity           |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/