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From: dave@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (David A Rasmussen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Another Amiga competitor?
Message-ID: <2901@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Sep-87 23:21:34 EDT
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Posted: Sat Sep 19 23:21:34 1987
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Reply-To: dave@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (David A Rasmussen)
Organization: Computing Services Division, UW Milwaukee
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Xref: mnetor comp.sys.misc:817 comp.sys.amiga:8568


I suppose I shouldn't really post an article comparing apples and oranges
but while paging through Byte the other day I felt much like when I first
caught a glimpse of the amiga in pre-amiga days. I'm refering to the preview
of the Acorn Archimedes series.

The Model 310 they reviewed had 1 meg of ram, 1 3.5" 800k disk, detached
keyboard, 512k rom (including a basic interpreter), 640*512 with 256 of 4096
colors, 8 channel stereo sound, par:, ser:, mouse, comp out, rgb analog out.
programable video can produce 1024*1024 monochrome.

Their 300 series will allow a 2 slot module to be added. The 400's have 4 slots
and allow coprocessors. Both machines come with a proprietary risc processor.
The os (arthur) is not multitasking, although the editor allows background
compiles.

Benchmarks from the article are as follows:

BYTE BASIC Benchmarks in seconds:
			write	read	sieve	calculations
A310			15.8	15.6	7.9	3.2
Compaq deskpro 386      25.0	24.0	21.0	6.8

BYTE C Benchmarks in seconds
			A310	386	MacSE with Hypercharger
Fib			52.4	53.1	71.6
Seive			5.7	6.0	14.9
Sort			10.0	5.6	20.6
Savage			91.2	21.5	8.8
Dhrystones per sec	4901	3748	2176

Acorn is owned by Olivetti, who is in cahoots with AT&T.

Yet another amiga-like machine possibly coming out... looks interesting to me.


Dave Rasmussen c/o Computing Services Division @ U of WI - Milwaukee
Internet: dave@csd1.milw.wisc.edu  Uucp: uwvax!uwmcsd1!dave    {o,o}
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