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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX Seems Fated
Summary: Not misinformation
Message-ID: <1990Dec17.052316.19609@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 17 Dec 90 05:23:16 GMT
References: <39228@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 46

In article <39228@nigel.ee.udel.edu> ST402248@brownvm.brown.edu (F. Scott Porter) writes:
>Unfortunately you are missing out on how the current crop of PC's handle
>High throughput devices.  Most of the '386 and '486 machines have private
>memory buses which are not only 32 bits wide but extremely fast since
>they are very specialized.  Some of the newer machines also implement
	As someone who puts these things togather at least once a week, I
am not missing out on anything. I am quite aware that some *real* 386
systems have a seperate 32-bit memory bus. NO 386-SX (which are the most
common 386 computers you will find) do. And even on the systems that do,
there is seldom more than 8 megabytes provided for on the motherboard, and
the completely non-standard busses used for the memory (as in the WYSE PC
systems, etc.) means you can't take one mfgr.'s card and use it in another.
Even on the systems I have seen that support up to 16 meg on the motherboard
(remember the 3000 supports 18), there is seldom expansion provided beyond
16 megabytes. And I was not wrong when I said that OS-2 only supports 16 meg
of "real" RAM.
>SCSI devices in the same manner. Thus your argument about slow ISA
>and EISA buses doesn't apply to memory and sometimes doesn't
>apply to hard disk access.  These things then become very machine
>specific.  I'm not advocating any particular point of view about the
>relative speed/value of PC's versus Amiga's (grown out of that). Just
>trying to point out some mis-information.
	This is again true, but even less than the RAM. I have yet to see
ANY PC with SCSI built into the motherboard, although I am sure there
must be one somewhere. I HAVE seen 32-bit EISA HD controllers, so at least a
32-bit controller could be added. But the whole point I was making was that
the 16-bit bus on the Amiga 2000 series blows away (it's not even close) the
16-bit bus on ISA PC's, and the 32-bit bus on the Amiga 3000 series does beat
the EISA bus, even if only by a smaller margin in some speed areas (but by more
in others).
	And none of this stuff on the PC is truely "auto config". The
PS-2's will do a kind of "auto config", IF youcopy the special driver onto
your setup disk, and IF don't move your cards around, and IF the battery in
your system doesn't go out and take your CMOS settings with it. On the
Amiga your system is configured automatically every time you turn your
computer on. You can move cards around, add cards, remove cards, anything,
and it won't require you to run some kind of setup program.

	So setting up an Amiga-based system as a Unix box WOULD be faster,
and most certainly WOULD be easier than on a ISA based system (which was the
whole point of this thread). Everytime I have to hunt down which board is at
which address, and what interupt it uses, and where it's shared memory is I
have to cringe and wish I was working with an Amiga.


			Dave