Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!yale!eagle.wesleyan.edu!jtreworgy
From: jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu (James Treworgy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: IBM a great game machine (an Amiga guy's perspective)
Message-ID: <1990Nov8.212538.35601@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 02:25:38 GMT
References: <9240@aggie.ucdavis.edu> <1990Nov8.215641.16149@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Lines: 46

In article <1990Nov8.215641.16149@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu>, smsmith@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M. Smith) writes:
> In article <9240@aggie.ucdavis.edu> kuan@iris.ucdavis.edu 
> (Frank Kuan) writes:
> I am an IBM guy (IBM *compatible* to be exact--there is a 
> difference :-) ).  But since I like to play games like all you
> people out there I have come to know the difference between an
> IBM and an Amiga system:  Amiga beats the socks off an IBM in
> terms of graphics and sound.  Surprised you, huh?  Yes, I'll
> be the first to admit that.  IBM machines were orginally designed
> for *business* (the "B" in the name) and now they are being
> stretched to do everything under the sun.  As far as I know the
> IBM will never catch up with the Amiga in those respects.

I hope I don't start a full blown war here, but if you look at the
architechture of the 8086/88 microprocessor you will wonder what the IBM was
really designed for, if anything. It's not meant to support more than 640K, and
can only access memory 64k at a time. Today's IBMs running in PC XT/AT mode are
still the same. The 80x86 processors suffer from similar poor organization; the
80386 and 80486 (when it is debugged completely) are decent processors but
sadly they will probably be used only rarely except as a fast 808x. The 68000,
on the other hand, was designed with expansion in mind from the beginning, has
a clean, well organized architecture, and suffers from no such problems. The
only reason you will find better business programs on the IBM (I'll be the
first to admit it :-)) is that it has been around for much longer than Amiga
and has a base of tens of millions of machines. It's more profitable so people
develop there. But any programmer will tell you it is much easier to program an
Amiga than a clone...

> But I also want to do other things with my computer.  And since
> I don't have enough money for both (yet!) I choose the IBM.
> I want to program, write a thesis that needs a word processor with
> a foreign character set (WYSIWYG), display fractals, print quality
> reports, and anything else I can find to do that is either fun
> or profitable. 

I'ts definitely a personal thing... if you must use particular software
packages that exist for IBM's but not for Amiga (i.e. DBASE), then there's no
point in fudging about with "work-alikes" on the Amiga. However there are some
applications, like video production, for which IBM's are not adequate. Myself,
I word process, do some desktop publishing, do a little graphics stuff... and
the Amiga meets my needs very well. I also play great games! :-)

> S. "Stevie" Smith \  +  /
-- 
James A. Treworgy    -- No quote here for insurance reasons --
jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu         jtreworgy%eagle@WESLEYAN.BITNET