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From: fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: Query
Message-ID: <8608061704.AA23758@ames-nas.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Aug-86 13:04:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames-nas.8608061704.AA23758
Posted: Wed Aug  6 13:04:48 1986
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     Well, I won't point by point your point by point of my point by
point (:-) but I would like to comment on a couple of the places where
we disagree.

     You claim that the Amiga's system software is at LEAST an order of
magnitude more robust that the ST's.  Thinking of the blind men and the
elephant, I would like to comment that in four hours of playing with
a friend's AMIGA, I got about a dozen crashs.  My ST crashes about once
a month, unless I have to reboot because the software I'm debugging has
gone into an infinite loop.

     I suspect a more evenhanded evaluation would show that they are
roughly as 'competent', but the Amiga has more bugs in the multitasking
area, which is more complex code in the Amiga.  The sad thing here is
that the Amiga, being around longer SHOULD be more robust.

     I think Atari has been reasonable about bugs.  The ROM's didn't
come out until after much debugging had been done in RAM and make the
machine boot much faster.  Also, putting much of the OS in ROM is
becoming traditional.

     Atari has fixed (and distributed free) both of the default disk
accesories, as well as Basic and LOGO.  We'll just have to wait and see
on ROM upgrades.

     As far as 'Blessed by ATARI,' $300 gets you a lot of (not well
organized (:-) system documentation with a development system.  Also,
the 'official' documentation is due Real Soon Now (December, I'm told)
However, I do agree that the documentation I've seen is better for the
Amiga.  Again, spending more money should buy you more.

     I guess I don't know what OS choices the Amiga gives me (other
than multitasking) that the ST doesn't that I would want.  I would be
interested in hearing more about the advantages of all the extra code
the Amiga kernel carries along.

     I was suprised when you mentioned "card cages", since the last
time I talked to the local Amiga dealer, he said they were still
expecting that box Real Soon Now.  And without that, you can't upgrade
the RAM to 8 meg.  As far as the frame grabbers, digitizers, and
related, they can be had for any system, including the Amiga and the
ST, since most are available with RS232 or 'Centronix' interfaces.

     I'm not sure of the status of the coprocessor board for the Atari.
Does anyone know if there is currently a 68881 coprocessor?

     I guess I don't seen how the 8087/80287 can be viewed as an
advantage over the 68881.

     You disagree with me about the ST PD software, and I am again
reminded of the elephant.  Almost everything I've seen which is public
domain rather than ShareWare or "preview" is available with source
code.  This includes Uemacs, Xlisp, at least one forth, several ram
disks, numerous games and applications.  Much of which isn't
distributed freely is available from the author for cheap.

     There are some obvious exceptions.  The binaries for Megaroids are
PD, but the source can only be had as printout for 25$.  Dave Betz'
adventure writing system doesn't seem to be available in source.

     However, I suspect that I was a little enthusiastic in saying that
MOST of it is well written.  I guess I should say that most of what I
play with does what I expect it to.

     I doubt that Amiga programer's as a group are more experienced C
programmer's than ST programmers.

     Actually, expansion doesn't come from the initial cost difference
in the Amiga.  You still have to buy the expansion box (for many
dollars) before you can reasonably expand the system.

     I do agree that the DMA port is not the same as the Amiga BUS.
It allows fast devices to talk to each other and memory without
hassling the CPU.  This is a win in some applications and a lose in
others.

     I also like both the ST and the Amiga.  I could buy only one.
I've got an ST.

Marty

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