Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!bucsb!bear
From: bear@bucsb.UUCP (Blair M. Burtan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Denise/Paula/Agnus/Gary/Portia
Message-ID: <3036@bucsb.UUCP>
Date: 8 Aug 89 18:25:42 GMT
References: <1388@bnr-fos.UUCP> <713@neptune.UUCP> <8566@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Reply-To: bear@bucsb.bu.edu (Blair M. Burtan)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 44

>list, or directly manipulate the blitter registers.  There are *legal* 
>system supported ways to do these things which are manifestly not hardware
>independent, and which would break if an "Amiga" were built with
>off-the-shelf parts instead of the custom ICs.  Clearly it's better to
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>use the system supplied routines whenever possible, but it just isn't
>always possible, and not just for games.  Your typical spreadsheet or
>wordprocessor should work on such an "Amiga", but some high-performance
>graphics applications certainly wouldn't without some rewriting.  This
>should become less common as more powerful CPUs become more common, since
>the blitter has a much smaller speed advantage over a '20 or '30 with a
>fast clock (as long as the manipulations can be done in 32-bit ram, and are
>complex enough to justify copying in and out of chip ram).

Think about this.  The original IBM-PC was and can be built with
off the shelf parts.  All one need do is buy a bare board and copy the
ROMS on to blank EPROMs.  The result, every fly-by-night computer
company is making PC clones.  It's easy, it's cheap, and obviously
profitable.  You can't do that with an Amiga.  Not only would you
have to raid CBM manufacturing facilities for PCB and the custom chips,
but you'd have to find someone to copy PALs for you.  And you'd
have to find DB-23 connectors (Blech!!).  Basically, CBM created
a monopoly for themselves.  Thus, they can do whatever they want
to the machine.  They don't have to keep improving themselves just
to stay ahead of the competition because there is none.

                              definitely IMHO,

                                                Bear




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Blair "Bear" Burtan, Boston University's Resident Amiga Expert
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