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From: csbrod@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Amiga is better then what???
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.192356.26253@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 26 Jun 91 19:23:56 GMT
References: <677913506.0@therip.FidoNet> <17330@chopin.udel.edu>
Organization: CSD., University of Erlangen, Germany
Lines: 144

don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes:

>	 I can get a 24-bit card for $299 (list).  It takes advantage of the Amiga's
>built-in coprocessors.  For about $100 more I can get one that also includes
>a slow-scan video digitizer.  This one (DCTV) has been demoed at shows paging
>full-motion, full-color video off a HD and displaying it through this advice in
>real time (Watched a few minutes of Back to the Future III...)

A 24-bit card with complete screen drivers for all the applications you have?
I doubt that.

>	 Besides, if you have a problem with your 500, you FedEx it back to
>Commodore (at CBM's expense) & it's promptly replaced or repaired & sent back.
>If your 2000, 2500, or 3000 go bad, and your warranty is still valid (1 year
>warranty on all models, w/option to purchase an extension), Commodore sends
>someone to your home to fix it there.

You must be kidding. At least here in Germany, nobody cares when your A2000
breaks down. Especially Commodore won't care.

>	 I've seen the so-called blitter on an ST.  I was not impressed.  The

You have probably seen the desktop build up windows with and without a
blitter, using TOS 1.02. This means you ain't seen nothing yet.
Blitter support in TOS is not as it could be, and in general one
is tempted to say that Blitters Are Not Important. You can speed up
graphics a lot more by software.

>Amiga's blitter performs most operations about as fast as a 14 MHz 68020
>(according to Dave Haynie, a CBM hardware guy who frequents c.s.amiga.*).

The ST blitter won't stand much behind in these terms. It's just that
the Amiga OS and architecture much more relies on the fact that there
is something like a blitter and therefore uses it much more than TOS.

>     Of course, for about $10 (probably less) you can pop a 68010 into your
>Amiga & make up for that difference.  Unless Atari has finally released a 
>non-TT TOS version that supports 680(1+)0 chips, ST owners don't have this 
>option.

TOS 1.06, TOS 2.05, TOS 3.01 and TOS 3.05 support the 68010. Nevertheless,
you won't gain much from a 68010, as experiments have shown.

>	 In what way are they more complete?  Do they include a shell environment
>as well as a GUI?  Do they support multiple simultaneous screens of different
>depths, resolutions, and pallettes?  (Can the ST even change resolutions yet
>without a reboot?)  Shared libraries & interprocess communication? (Oops!
>No need... no multitasking!  Sorry.)

Sigh. We've had cooperative multitasking from the start. Applications
and accessories can send messages to each other. And I don't think the
Workbench is much of a real GUI - not before Kick 2.0, at least.

>     Workbench is just as easy to use as any most other GUIs.  Double click 
>the icon & away you go...

Just try to view all files in a folder with the standard workbench.
You won't get them. Instead, you have to confine yourself to a command
shell. That's not the way GUIs were meant to work.

>CLI(1):artm        
>CLI(2):iprefs      
>CpuBlit V1.00      
>AssignX            
>FaccII             
>ForFacc            
>RexxMaster         
>CLI(4):c:snap      
>CygnusEd           
>CLI(3):loadwb
>jr-comm           
>DMouse            
>Virus_Checker     
>jrcomm-clock      
>SD                

If you look at this list closely, you'll realise that most of the
processes mentioned are equivalents of TSRs. CpuBlit is a text output
speeder (BTW, interesting to know that you're using CpuBlit while
you're claiming that your blitter is much faster than a ST blitter).
DMouse is a screen saver/mouse speeder package. Virus_Checker is also
of the TSR type. If you think about it, you'll see that the list
above was no good example for real multitasking. When working with
my ST/TT, I have at least that many processes and resident programs in
my computer.

Don't get me wrong: 
I don't question the usefulness of preemptive multitasking. It's just
that you gave a bad example of your usage of this feature.

>	 How is this superior to the Amiga's 4 channel 8 bit stereo sound?  (8 bit
>on all 4 channels, not just 2 of them).  There's even software (Octaplayer?)
>that supposedly pushes out 8 voices.  Of course, unlike the ST, the Amiga's
>sound is driven by yet another coprocessor, so it takes almost 0 CPU time to
>play a musical score or a digitized sound (as a background process in your
>multitasking environment, while you work on something else).

I couldn't care less if my computer has 3 or 4 digital voices. It just
doesn't matter. If you're making professional music, you can't make use
of the home-computer bleep-style digital channels the STe and Amiga
offer; instead, you will use MIDI devices (that's why the ST has a
MIDI port built-in). If you're running standard applications, you don't need 
sound except the occasional beep when you've done something wrong.

For your information: The STe/TT digital sound chip has an own DMA
channel, just like the Amiga.

>	 Applied Engineering and Commodore both make Ami HD drives.  The problem
>with HD drives on the Amiga is that the floppies are controlled by a coprocessor
>(yes, another one!) that allows me to do things like formatting a floppy (which
>I'm doing now via the SD process listed above) with little loss of CPU time.
>This coprocessor, though, cannot handle the throughput speeds of high density
>drives (twice that of the older drives), so workarounds have had to be found.

To my knowledge, there is no HD drive for the Amiga that handles standard
MFM disks. A real pain when shuffling data to a PC.

>     No?  Why not?  That .86 MHz doesn't make much of a difference... especially
>if the ST also has to use the CPU to do I/O and/or graphics stuff at the same
>time.  Oops!  Forgot again... no multitasking.  Never mind.

See above. The floppy controller and the ACSI bus have an own DMA channel.
In the TT, there is a second SCSI DMA channel.

>     On the subject of memory, what exactly is the difference between "ST
>memory" and "TT memory" on the TT?  Is ST mem 16 bits wide?

To the video chip, it is even 64 bits wide.

>	 If I remember the TT specs correctly, the only grahics mode the TT has
>that can outdo a stock Amiga 3000 (or any other model, if it weren't for the
>flicker in interlace mode on <3000 Amigas) is the 1024x960 mono mode which
>needs a special monitor.  With the CBM A2024 monitor or Moniterm Viking, any
>amiga can do 1008x800 (1008x1024 in PAL mode) mono.

1280x960. 72 Hz. Without a special graphic card. IMHO, a big advantage and
one of the reason why I bought a TT.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Claus Brod, Am Felsenkeller 2,			Things. Take. Time.
D-8772 Marktheidenfeld, Germany		 	(Piet Hein)
csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Claus_Brod@wue.maus.de
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