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From: gary@cirl.UUCP (Gary Girzon)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari,net.micro.amiga
Subject: re: Amiga and ST (important comparisons?)
Message-ID: <219@cirl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Oct-85 10:16:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: cirl.219
Posted: Tue Oct  8 10:16:09 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Oct-85 08:13:05 EDT
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Organization: Cochlear Implant Res. Lab, Boston, MA
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Xref: linus net.micro.atari:1239 net.micro.amiga:4213

In response to John Demar's comments,

*FLAME ON:
> 
> 	In the low res mode, those fantastic graphics chips
> steal almost 70% (yes!) of the possible CPU time that the 68000 could be
> using to do real computer things like calculate, move/sort data, and
> plot graphics on your screen. 

	How does one arrive at the magic 70% time figure? Also, the 68000
in the Amiga does not draw lines, polygons or fill areas. It is done by
one of the coprocessors. SO the 6800 can do "real" computer things.

>	Since the complicated screen data for the
> Amiga must come from the same ram on the same bus as the CPU, there are
> excessive wait-cycles imposed on the 68000.
	
	Unless the ST has some sort of dual-ported RAM, the screen data
must come from the same data bus in the ST as well.

>   Inside the ST, you will find MORE custom IC's than the Amiga and MORE
> powerful chips 'off the shelf' than the Amiga. This adds up to a real
> optimized, fast and versatile computer. 
	
		If you measure a computer's worth by the number of chips,
you might as well pick an IBM over a Mac. Perhaps the custom chips
in the AMIGA are  better integrated to perform several functions in one
chip. Thus you do not need MORE chips if three can do the job. 

> The ST brings in a 32K file
> in less than 4 seconds, including drive start up, directory search, etc.
> The Amiga takes almost 20 seconds!!

	That is just not true! The BYTE Basic benchmark for reading and
writting a 64k file takes 25 seconds. And this is in basic! Please check
or tell us how you arrived at these figures. The Atari may be faster in
disk accesses for some operations, but please do not misrepresent the
Amiga.

> The windows are poorly configured and move with flicker.

	They do? Not in my AMIGA. 

I feel that if one is to compare the AMIGA and the ST, at least one should
have used them both. I get a feeling from the previous article that you
have only used an ST and have ignored the AMIGA. While the ATARI hardware
is glorified, we do not hear much about the inner workings of the AMIGA.
I have not used an ST, so I cannot really compare the two architectures.
The ST, however, does not have any expansion slots. All that is
available is the DMA slot which is a byte wide interface. Thus to
expand the ST requires a hardware hack. The ST does not offer an
alternative to GEM for a "real" user environment. Icons may be more user
friendly for applications, but real software development is much more
efficient given a "shell" environment.

I think the Amiga speaks for itself (no pun intended). If there is a
problem with the AMIGA (I am surprised it was never mentioned) is the
non-interlace screen resolution. The ST wins hands down with a 640 by 400
text display. 

*FLAME OFF 

UUCP: ...{ihnp4,harvard}!think!cirl!gary