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From: es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita)
Subject: Re: Computer Architecture question -- Daye Haynie
Message-ID: <1991May8.064220.13474@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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References: <48625@ut-emx.uucp> <#c4G!au$1@cs.psu.edu> <1991May8.042432.27636@NCoast.ORG>
Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 06:42:20 GMT

In article <1991May8.042432.27636@NCoast.ORG> davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright) writes:
>In article <#c4G!au$1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:
>>Of course it will be some work for NeXT.  However, for the software
>>developers it will be easy, so 99.99% of the current software will run
>>within days on the 88K machines.  While your finally hand-coded
>>assembly code on the Amiga will take quite a bit of effort.
>	I think you are overestimating the number of programs that were
>written in AL on the Amiga. I would not be too afraid to make a bet that
>only games and *maybe* less than 5 commercial packages (not big name ones
>at that) were written in AL at all, and that where they were, it was in well
>placed low-level functions such as time critical loops, which would be easy
>to replace with HL code immediately if the new machine was fast enough that
>AL was no longer needed, or fairly simply coded over in the new machines
>AL.

	I doubt that. PageStream, for example, is written
entirely in assembler. There is nothing necessarily WRONG with
that. It makes things run MUCH faster. I think that most programs
will have segments in assembler, critical sections that require
timing.
	True, these won't port easily to an 88000. But then
again, neither will AmigaDOS! I would expect that a reasonably
large portion of AmigaDOS was NOT written in C, but rather
assembler. CATS, is this true?
	At this point, porting the OS to another CPU platform is
not likely. There are so many things for CBM to do that that
can't be high on the priority list. I'm afraid what it would do
to the Zorro II/III standard. (Dave?)

>	I have never seen ANY commercial program actually "brag" about being
>written in AL (as you stated in an earlier message), and in fact, the only

	PageStream brags about it in every ad. They aren't the
only one.

	-- Ethan

"Brain! Brain! What is Brain?"