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From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: BYTE issue of September 86 focuses on the 68000
Message-ID: <8608292114.AA18102@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 29-Aug-86 17:14:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: cory.8608292114.AA18102
Posted: Fri Aug 29 17:14:03 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Aug-86 03:14:25 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 54


>I am very annoyed by this issue of BYTE.  First of all, remember
>the issue they had earlier this year that was ALL Intel/PC 
>stuff?  They said that a later issue would cover 68k stuff.  I 
>expected to see an entire issue of 68k stuff.  Instead we get a 
>regular issue whose theme is 68k.  Arrggghh!!  Unless we get a 
>full 68k issue to restore the balance of the universe, it will 
>wobble off its axis and destroy us all!!!!  :-) 

	"Originally planning for a separate issue of the magazine,
	we put together a series of articles exploring the MC68000
	and many of the machines it powers.  Those articles make up
	this month's theme section and the continuing coverage of the
	MC68000 that will appear in our Features section over the next
	several months."
					-G. Michael Vose, Sen. Tech editor
					 themes.
					 (BYTE september 86 v11-n9)

	Well, you can't have everything.  Seems strange that the Themes
	editor would say something like that (especially the last line)..
	Looks like the policy decision caused some disention at BYTE.

	The articles were geared more to the non-tech people... they didn't
	have very much deep rooted information in them.


>Next, many of the articles are badly done.  For example, the Mac vs
>Amiga article is full of errors ( e.g., nearly everything it says about
>DAs, and much of what it says about memory allocation ).

	I kinda liked that one.  I agree that Mr. Webber made some mistakes,
especially in the graphics section... I think he was talking about V1.1
rather than 1.2 . Also, I seem to get the idea that maybe he didn't have
a full manual when he wrote the article.  He shrugged off the blitter like
it was nothing special.  Jeeezzzuuss, Thomas Rockiki just posted a 'game of
life' program using the blitter.  Using (I think it was 9) blitter passes
on a 320x200 screen.  The entire screen going through 19 generations a second.
Pretty wild to look at (I played with it all night).  If you start doing some
calculations, you find that:

	320x200 bits * 9 passes * 19 updates/second
	-------------------------------------------
		16 bits/word

	is 6.8 Million accesses per second or a throughput of
	13.68 MegaBytes/second.

	That's a lot to shrug off.

	However, I rather liked his description of the hackintosh.


						-Matt