Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ogicse!oregon!jmeissen
From: jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org ( Staff OACIS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FACTOID: Sega Genesis
Message-ID: <60@oregon.oacis.org>
Date: 8 Nov 90 17:58:44 GMT
References: <1990Oct30.173415.14243@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <77BXR3w163w@valnet> <736@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz>
Organization: Oregon Advanced Computing Institute (OACIS)
Lines: 33

In article <736@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> ifarqhar@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ian Farquhar) writes:
>............................................................  As
>for the old argument "the Amiga is the Lynx development system because
>no other computer had the power to do it", that is utter garbage.  The
>original Lynx was designed by Epyx, and the designers used
>the Amiga because they developed that system previously.

Actually, "no other computer had the power to do it" was our internal
justification, too. At least the power to do it the way we thought it
should be done. RJ and Dave had no qualms about using other machines.
They both used Macs for all their business-related work and documentation.
Epyx had a large investment in PC's, and wanted to build on that base,
but we wanted something that would allow more flexibility and power. (of
course, it didn't hurt that we were all Amiga fanatics :-)

>I can see no reason why the Lynx devsys could not be ported to any other
>computer, even (gasp!) MS-DOS.  The thing that has stopped Atari doing
>just that is the high cost of redesigning the devsys hardware, and
>rewriting the development software.  Both would be major jobs, and Atari
>- even if it wanted to spend that soft of money - could not afford the
>time delay involved.

True, it's money that keeps Atari from redoing the development system. But
it could never be ported to a non-multitasking machine. While the debugger
and miscellaneous utilities like the assembler could stand alone, many other
pieces would take significant rewriting. In order to achieve the development
environment we developed, you would need a workstation. The Amiga is much
more cost-effective and much nicer to work with.
-- 
John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute
jmeissen@oacis.org        (Internet) | "That's the remarkable thing about life;
..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP)     |  things are never so bad that they can't
jmeissen                  (BIX)      |  get worse." - Calvin & Hobbes