Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!pyrnj!mirror!xanth!kent From: kent@xanth.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Some thoughts and questions about the Ranger Message-ID: <692@xanth.UUCP> Date: Thu, 12-Mar-87 09:43:16 EST Article-I.D.: xanth.692 Posted: Thu Mar 12 09:43:16 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 14-Mar-87 01:16:47 EST References: <140@tahoma.UUCP> <543@dragon.tc.fluke.COM> Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR NOAA, Retired) Distribution: world Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va. Lines: 127 Keywords: clone antique mistake derivative hopeful "maybe next time" Summary: Wish they hadn't done another IBM clone. In article <543@dragon.tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: >All I want from the next Amiga is Virtual Memory and memory protection. [...] >An MMU doesn't have to be expensive. [...] Even if it were, it is crucial to the operation of a multitasking machine, as the experience with the guru hovering always over ones shoulder under workbench V1.1, and, less threatenly, under V1.2, proves daily. >I'd like a 68020, bigger screen, and all that, but I don't know if I would >pay more for it when it comes right down to it. I also bought an Amiga >because it was $1500 [...]. >I would spend $1-2K for a computer for myself. I wouldn't spend $5K. I wouldn't either, but I would spend an extra $500 for an MMU, a 68020 or, better, 68030 with a doubled clock speed, and a floating point accelerator, with the software to make it work. The current OS make the fallacious assumption that all "professional" software vendors are capable of writing software that does its own memory management. This violates the standard practice of doing a job that must be done everywhere, in one place instead, and doing it right. Memory is just another "device", and there should be one "driver" taking care of it, not one per program. The results of this one execrable design decision has done more to hurt the Amiga's sales than all other weak features put together. No business can live with a machine that drops dead hourly. Worse yet, memory management is so simple that most CS undergraduate programs include writing a memory management routine as a class project in the data structures class. Why wasn't it done right in AmigaDOS? With an MMU, perhaps the OS upgrade would be easy enough to tempt Commmodore to do the job properly next time. >An Amiga-as-a-UNIX-box will never sell. SUN already does that. Apple will >be there soon. I disagree. A UNIX (tm) system at Amiga 1000 prices would sell like hotcakes to universities, a huge market, and to all outside the university systems who have had the chance to fall in love with the power and flexibiity of UNIX. One university mandating the Amiga as the "school computer" can provide 15,000 or more sales - refer Dartmouth's experience; and there are hundreds of universities out there. Commodore had no choice but to do a quick and dirty OS release at the time, they came very near bankruptcy, and really needed the cash flow the Amiga 1000 has provided. The attempt to make a UNIX-like OS was 100% behind schedule, and AmigaDOS got the product out the door and gave Commodore some breathing room. However, AmigaDOS is the biggest sales weakness of an otherwise excellent product, and now is the time for it to be either drastically upgraded, or preferably replaced with an independently engineered UNIX clone. Not so much for the end user, but simply because 3rd party software development in a mixed BCPL and C/UNIX-clone environment is so much harder than a pure C/UNIX environment that product releases have been slow. As Apple proved long ago with the contrast in initial acceptance of the Apple II and the Macintosh, it is third party hardware and software that makes or breaks a home computer product, so anything Commodore can do to ease third party development is just money in the bank for Commodore. > One of the things that differentiates Amiga is that it is a >price leader. [...] It is inexpensive hardware and software >that give the Amiga it's advantages. Look for more ways to do fancy things >inexpensively. Look for new areas (the genlock, the answermate (remember >the answermate?)) in which to innovate. The Amiga will never survive in a >me-to market. Amen. As a Commodore stockholder, I weakly applaud the Amiga 2000's IBM compatibility features (just because there are a lot of people out there in business land unsophisticated or conservative enough to think a computer has to be an IBM clone to work at all, and they make buying decisions), although it was silly to aim at the PC level performance, which is pretty out of date in today's business community, where the XT is considered a minimum, and the AT a preferable level of performance, for today's office. As an Amiga _owner_, however, I let out a scream of frustration at the announcement. I had the money to buy any PC I wanted [well, almost ;-) ]. My opinion of the IBM PC(tm) has been and is that it has held back innovation in personal computers by five years or more, by luring most of the hardware and software talent into the PC and clone effort, running after a design that was three years behind the state of the art when it was released. I, and all the other current Amiga 1000 owners, bought our machines in part as a rebellion against the IBM domination of the marketplace. We made out like bandits on that decision, but I would sure rather see Commodore working to provide me an upgrade path through new machines that do what the Amiga does faster, better, with more reliability and more modern chip sets. I can always buy a clone for $500 if I am forced, at gunpoint, to run some IBM software to do something I can always do better with the Amiga and newer software that takes advantage of multitasking, windows, the blitter, copper, keyboard processor, voice output, and all the other wonderful, Amiga unique features. But I, and those like me, ARE the Amiga market. I've shown five friends in the market for a personal computer my Amiga, and they all bought (ta-da) Amigas. Any of them could have bought PC clones for 1/3 as much, but, for whatever reasons, they chose the "bold experiment" of NON-compatibility to the IBM "standard", and love their machines as much as I do. As fast as we who currently own Amigas show them to friends, the market for an innovative machine expands. Get out there and show the flag! Sigh. Maybe the A3000 will give me a machine to do ray-tracing in less than a day, to do near real time Mandelbrot and Julia set exploration, to do graph theory NP complete operations in reasonable time for small n [ ;-) ], to do flight simulator III (tm-to-be) with shaded polygons, fractal tree forests, and Chicago O'Hare traffic patterns with planes stacked 100 deep, to do screamingly fast massive relational database joins on a cheap 1 Gbyte hard disk, to do 19,200 baud file transfer while multitasking, and all the other outrageous stuff a true computer junkie wakes up in a hot sweat from dreaming about. Meanwhile, I love my present replacement for my good old Apple II+ (tm). I'm waiting on my add on memory, wishing for a second disk, and hoping for an AmigaBASIC that knows how to multiply big long integers and get the sign right. Keep those new computers coming Commodore! Wait 'til you see my multi-bit-plane, envelope-folded torus, 1280 by 800 cell all on screen Life display in 16 colors! Zowie, chillun! Puffer trains forever! Amiga lives! -- Kent Paul Dolan, "The Contradictor", 25 years as a programmer, CS MS Student at ODU, Norfolk, Virginia, to find out how I was supposed to be doing this stuff all these years. 3D dynamic motion graphics a specialty. Work wanted. Disclaimer hell! \ / I love my opinions, so I set them free. If they bring Eat red death, } { me friends, we'll share joy. If they bring me lawyers, shysters! / \ I'll keep right on sending them out ... excellent bait! UUCP : kent@xanth.UUCP or ...seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!kent CSNET : kent@odu.csnet ARPA : kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu Voice : (804) 587-7760 USnail: P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559 Wisdom: "Peace in mankind's lifetime. Why leave a whole universe unexplored?"