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From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: owning an Amiga and an ST (really what A real PC is to me)
Message-ID: <5106@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 15-Sep-87 19:19:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.5106
Posted: Tue Sep 15 19:19:00 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Sep-87 06:38:44 EDT
References: <619@sugar.UUCP> <734@elmgate.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 74
Keywords: it's possible, you know.  preemptive censorship.

In article <734@elmgate.UUCP> jdg@aurora.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) writes:
<I took confort in the fact that the Amiga's Native Executive/Graphics
<software seemed well done but then......... Yup, all hell broke loose
<at work.  Someone plopped me in front of a Sun 2/120 (2 years ago).
<"So this is how a real personal computer works", I said to myself.

It looks like you got handed a Unix system and decided it was a *neat*
thing. I recognize the symptoms. Had them myself about a decade ago.

I've got an Amiga, and a Sun 3/50 on my desk at work. The Sun 3/50
makes a nice multi-screen terminal and news reading box. The Amiga is
the development machine when I want to work on things I'm interested
in. When I need to do Unix development, I move to a fast machine
(either an 8650 running 4.3, or a 8800 running Buglix - oops, Ultrix -
2.0).

The Amiga has a better windowing system than I can get on a Sun. The
Amiga exec is more flexible than the Unix kernel. Got Color. Got a
better C compiler. Got an editor with a better user interface (well,
almost true - I get a nearly identical interface running a hacked
vt100 on my Amiga talking to GNU on the Sun or the VUXen). Got better
games to play with. Don't gotta fight other people for disk space,
system maintenance, or budget.

<Of course the price was anything but personal.  Still, I hadn't
<had that much *FUN* with a computer since my father bought a 16k
<TRS-80 Level 1 machine in 1978!

Gee, that's the way I felt about my Amiga. Suddenly, I wasn't worrying
about OS internals anymore, I was fooling with things could *see*, and
*then*. Lots more fun than what I was doing on Unix, or the OS/9-68K
box I was working on.

<Now many of you recognize all the symptoms of UNIX-itis, RAM-a-toasus,
<virtual brain damage, and MMU-cancer.   I've got 'em all.

RAM-a-toasus can be had for the Amiga, too. The difference is that 4
Meg on a Sun means your windowing system is going to get paged a lot
if you do anything non-trivial, whereas 4 Meg on an Amiga means you've
got *lots* of room. If you took my Amiga back to 512K, it would be a
lousy system to work with. If you did the same to my Sun (huh?), it
probably wouldn't boot.

<My Amiga?  Patiently awaits the ASDG gods to deliver an A-2000 expansion
<chassis to stuff an 80meg Hard drive, 68020/68881 + {insert MMU here},
<plus {insert a UNIX name here}, into.

Yeah, I'm trying to decided between an ASDG SDP (when available) or an
Ameristar card to talk to the Sun 3/2?? that's supposed to go into the
house. But meanwhile, I've got a system that is *fun* to work on.

<Then again with the price of the Sun 3/50 at ~$5k.... maybe in a few
<years.......

Avoid the 3/50 like the plague!!!! No expandability. Go with a 3/60 if
at all possible. Either that, or try to find a 3/75 or something
similar (something with room for more memory).

<ST vs. Amiga?  Bull pucky!  I learned a hard (and expensive) lesson
<in the difference between 'consumer electronics' vs. 'personal computers 
<(workstations?)'.

I disagree. The Amiga does everything I expect a workstation to do.
Only problem is the lack of a really large screen. But morerows gives
me something I can live with. Of course, NeWS would breath new live
into Sun, except I'm having to much fun on the Amiga to play much with
NeWS.

	<mike
--
And then up spoke his own dear wife,			Mike Meyer
Never heard to speak so free.				mwm@berkeley.edu
"I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips,		ucbvax!mwm
Than you or your finery."				mwm@ucbjade.BITNET