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From: G.DYER@SU-SCORE.ARPA (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Bouncin' balls ....
Message-ID: <12163429226.16.G.DYER@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 30-Nov-85 14:12:18 EST
Article-I.D.: SU-SCORE.12163429226.16.G.DYER
Posted: Sat Nov 30 14:12:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Dec-85 03:42:34 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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I do like the Amig*'s graphics; the Amig* is flashy and flexible, and is
everything I'd want in an Atari 800.

No doubt there will be demo wars.  Clearly the Amig* can blow the ST out
of the water with flashy graphics, and if the people at Amig* are going to
do incredible demos for the next two months, then we know where they're at.

The Amig* has traded flashy graphics for I/O bandwidth.  Remember what
people used to say about the Mac, before Hyperdrive?  How are you going to
attach a fast hard disk to the Amig* when it is doing all that video DMA?

The Atari bouncing ball demo was written in about a week by Jim Eisenstein.
He wrote a kind of "ball blit" in assembly.  He had to count cycles.  HORRORS!
He did all the development ON the ST, with a hard disk.  Where was the Amig*
bouncing ball written?

Note, also, that the consumer does not have to count cycles to watch the
bouncing ball.  I strongly suspect that the ST can at least /come close/ to
the Amig*'s graphics.  How close is "close enough" for an assembler, or a
database manager, or a C compiler?  Granted, the ST will probably lose big
when you play Hemmorhoids in Space.

How often do you do that?

I expect to have production OS ROMs under my christmas tree.  And
maybe a blit chip, soldered on top of my 68000 ....

-Landon

[The views expressed above do not reflect the views of Atari Corp.,
 do not consitute any form of advertisement, and are soley the
 opinions of the author.  In other words, this ain't comin' from
 the company....]
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