Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!umd5!pigpen!brett
From: brett@pigpen (Brett S Bourbin)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Amiga or PC-AT ?
Message-ID: <2962@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 88 17:23:26 GMT
References: <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA>
Sender: news@umd5.umd.edu
Reply-To: brett@pigpen.UMD.EDU (Brett S Bourbin)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 54

I have ALWAYS hated the computer wars on USENET, but I find it very disturbing
to read articles like the one I am referring to.  Please bear with me while
I clear up few points:
In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes:
>In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco
>Lesmeister) writes:
>>I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it,
>>or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could...
>I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got
>available.  I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because
>of three things:
>(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement.
It uses from 1 to 5 bitplanes for straight one-to-one bit graphics, which
can be located in any part of the CHIP memory (lower 512K now, to be expanded
to 1024K)
>(2) Very limited software availability.
I would not say "very limited". Not nearly the size of the PC software base,
but still there are many good titles available.
>(3) Unreliable operating system.
I don't think you can say that the OS is unreliable, when the only REAL
problems happen with software that does not follow the system rules, and
even these are down to a small number now.
>Please bear in mind,
>though, that if you were to go with an AT with a VGA, you would be buying
>a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible
>graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with
>probable future X-Windows on larger machines).
Hold on here! "very polished" and "OS/2" in the same sentence?  First of all,
OS/2 is not totally out yet.  I do not want to get into here, by OS/2 is FAR
from a polished product.  As for X-Windows, Dale Luck was just showing X11
on an Amiga 2000 and I have never heard of a working IBM PC version [besides
the RT, which I am running now  8^) ]
>...you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed --
>almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable
>graphics capability 
Well, you can always add a 68020 board to speed up your machine and as for
unexpandable graphics, there is a Fatter Agnus chip which DOES expand the
graphics capabilities, and cheaply built, you must have been referring to
your IBM clones, right?  8^)

I own both a Amiga and an IBM PS/2 Model 80, and yes the IBM is a lot faster
in some areas but that machine is about 4-5 times the price of my Amiga.
Both the IBM PS/2s and the Amigas have there strong and weak points, but I
wish people would not make these uneducated statements for which they know
very little about.
>||Jonathan E. Brickman

- Brett 
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