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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,rec.games.video
Subject: Re: The Lynx CPU (???)  (Was:Re: Developing for the Lynx)
Message-ID: <4960@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 19 Jan 90 03:35:54 GMT
References: <8581@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <759@cs.wmich.edu> <7243@lindy.Stanford.EDU> <4952@sugar.hackercorp.com> <19142@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Reply-To: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 48

In article <19142@bellcore.bellcore.com> sdh@flash.UUCP (Stephen D Hawley) writes:
>You have recognized this, but went swinging out into
>space in your fury.

Hardly fury.  

Hey, I could program an 1802 with toggle switches and get it to do something 
more or less useful.  That doesn't mean I want to.

I acheived a near maximum guhuri level on the 6502, IIMSSM.  At one point on 
the Apple ][+ I had hacked up a two-user Forth environment with a tree-
structured filesystem and multiple assembly tasks running under a realtime 
exec, and the code in that exec was damn near optimal.  Oh yeah, I wrote 
some massively hacked bit-blit routines, too.  (Yuck, this all keeps coming 
back)  a-and my own loop-while-speaker-toggling sound-playing routines that I 
tuned up with a strobotuner.

My point is that *I've been there.*

And I'm not going back.

I finally learned the futility of trying to reinvent the wheel without
massive resources.  On the Apple that was more like "invent the wheel,"
'cuz most of that stuff wasn't available.  But on the Amiga, I have all 
these guys at Commodore (and elsewhere) writing that stuff for me.

Tree-structured filesystem.  Realtime exec.  Bit-blit routines.

Yep, it's all there, plus groovy stuff like C compilers, sample-playing
hardware, audio.device, serial.device, BitBltMapRastPort or whatever it is,
the blitter, windows, screens, fonts, fish disks, IFF (!) &c &c &c

If you choose to develop for the Lynx, you are choosing to assume some
major burdens, to wit:  small developer community, little "garage" 
development (high entry price); you'll be insular (little free code) and poorly
supported.

Good luck, and this is *not* a flame.  It's just that *I* want more of an
environment and ever-higher performance, not less, so I see moving towards
(Indeed I am already there) protected-mode 32-bit systems adhering to
open systems standards (Unix) on the one hand, and realtime multitasking on
an affordable machine, hopefully on the same hand, but if not, as for now,
on the other hand, i.e. the Amiga.

-- 
-- uunet!sugar!karl	"It takes a smart man to know when he's stupid."
--			 -- Barney Rubble
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