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From: farren@hoptoad.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The New IBM Wonder-Toys
Message-ID: <2004@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 03:56:21 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2004
Posted: Sat Apr 18 03:56:21 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 01:13:46 EST
References: <1177@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: farren@hoptoad.UUCP (Mike Farren)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 34
Keywords: PC AT XT PS/2 barf aggh ugh

In article <1177@spice.cs.cmu.edu> mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes:
>The expansion bus is proprietary and is also auto-config, if I understood
>the saleslady correctly (she was glowing about how the auto-config
>"intelligence is distributed across the machine.")

My understanding is that cards can now have a lot more intelligence, and the
resources will be there to support it.  The expansion bus ("microchannel") is
evidently set up to allow for independent communications between cards at will,
without requiring data to be routed through the processor.  This can be a BIG
advantage in terms of I/O speed if software allows for it.

>With the educational discounts they're giving here at CMU (and I
>suspect many other universities as well), a 386 PC with 1 floppy, 44
>meg hard drive and color display costs $5500.  A comparably equipped
>Mac II (1 floppy, 40 meg SCSI) costs $4000.  So IBM isn't even being
>competitive with Apple.  The system 30 (XT equivalent) can be had for
>less than $2000.

I suspect that the '386 machine will have greater computational capacity.  
Most benchmarks that I have seen have the '386 running slightly faster
than an equivalent 68020.  Also, the '386 has the MMU built in, whereas
the Mac II requires an add-on card (which isn't available yet).  Finally,
I/O on the IBM machine will likely be a lot faster, especially disk I/O.  
The ESDI interface used on the IBM is considerably quicker than the SCSI
the Mac uses.

Still an Amigan ---


-- 
----------------
                 "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
Mike Farren      that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
hoptoad!farren       Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"