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From: ee163ahj@sdcc13.UUCP (PAUL VAN DE GRAAF)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: "Valid" AMIGA info.
Message-ID: <264@sdcc13.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 06:06:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcc13.264
Posted: Sun Jun 16 06:06:04 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 05:29:38 EDT
References: <1655@amdahl.UUCP> <1040030@acf4.UUCP>
Reply-To: ee163ahj@sdcc13.UUCP (PAUL VAN DE GRAAF)
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 73

In article <1040030@acf4.UUCP> israel@acf4.UUCP writes:
>If anything, it should be  thought  of
>as the  next-generation  Atari,  since
>Jay Minor (who designed  some  of  the
>original  Atari  chip  set)  was  also
>involved in the chip set design of the
>Amiga, and the design philosophies  of
>the machines are  similar.   Commodore
>had nothing to do with  this  machine.
>They left  it  up  to  Amiga  entirely
>(which was  wise,  because  nobody  at
>Commodore has the smarts to deal  with
>anything  elegant as Amiga).

This seems to add fuel to the fire of Atari's lawsuit against Amiga.
How is this going?  Is this the reason for Amiga's delay in reaching
market or is it just hardware/software development delays.  I'm sure
Tramiel could use both the money and the time delays this suit may
bring to consolidate his postion.

>   What about sprites   Amiga  has  4
>with  16  colors  per,  or  8  with  8
>colors. They are 16 bits wide, and  as
>tall as the screen.

This sounds curiously familiar... Player/Missile Graphics anyone?

Now for the HYPE deparment:

>Those  of  you   who   are
>starting to foam at  the  mouth  about
>the mouse should  stop  it  right  now
>(you look silly).

You look even sillier expecting people to foam at the mouth at the mention
of the rather mundane mouse.

>This  is   a
>TOTALLY OPEN architecture machine.   A
>planned expansion box will let you use
>all kinds of cards  from  third  party
>manufacturers ...

Great... I've got a connector coming out of my 800xl just waiting for
3rd party hardware to show up.  I say expansion ports are useless or at
least inconvient unless the slots are inside the machine, and the
machine has a power supply that's beefy enough to power an expanded
system.

> About the Operating System.
> The most amazing feature of Intuition
>is that it  is  a  full  MULTI-TASKING OS!!!
>My  friend saw the Amiga folks bring up 
>3  graphics  demo  programs,  a   text
>editor,  and  DOS  running  AT  ONCE!!
>What's  more  amazing,  he  said  that
>there was NO VISABLE SLOWDOWN  of  any
>of the programs.

A Multitasking Operating System on a 68000 is nothing spectacular.
Though Apple sure stumbled on the design of the finder which should
have had multitasking and a decent filesystem.  That op-sys benchmark
mentioned above is also more than a bit flakey.  How about doing 3 C 
compiles and an edit with no visable slowdown?  I think not, unless
there is some kind of retrograde time machine in the unit :-).

Not that I don't think that Amiga will eventually come to the market in some
form or another, but I think the project should be viewed with the same
sceptism levied on Tramiel and the ST family.  I also feel that Tramiel must
be considerably closer to market, since Commodore has never even showed a
prototype at any trade show.

Paul van de Graaf	sdcsvax!sdcc13!ee163ahj		U. C. San Diego