Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!uwslh!lishka From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Amiga or PC-AT ? Message-ID: <356@uwslh.UUCP> Date: 4 Aug 88 13:28:47 GMT References: <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> Reply-To: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab Lines: 209 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 >>not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. >> >>So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >>monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >>should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >>graphics capabillities. >> >>So to all you PC and amiga fans out there, I ask you which solution >>is better? I am replying for one purpose only: to give a bit more "balanced" picture of the Amiga. The comments made by Mr. Brickman seem to be those of a person who does not quite know the Amiga, although I could be wrong. Anyhow, I think he is a bit heavy-handed in his criticisms of the Amiga. Please note that I am not a graphics expert by any means, and these are only my humble opinions. >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. I am not sure what Mr. Brickman means by this. The strangest color-mapping strategy on the Amiga is HAM mode (Hold-And-Modify mode), which uses a "trick" to allow up to the full 4096 colors on the screen at once, using only 6 bit-planes. All other modes are "mapped" into ram by using from 1 to 5 bit-planes, using straightforward bit-maps. >(2) Very limited software availability. In some areas, this is certainly true. However, in the "Desktop Video" area, I think that the Amiga probably has as much *good* software as any other machine with decent graphics capabilities. I would look into the specific software you will be running, and check out what is available on *both* machines. >(3) Unreliable operating system. Funny, I am writing this message from a 1-meg Amiga 1000, and the OS seems to be running fine. Granted, the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine *without* inter-process memory protection, but it is not as bad as Mr. Brickman makes it out to be. The places where I get into trouble most (i.e. the machine crashes) is when I am writing C programs, and a pointer gets out of hand. However, this has happened on every micro I ever used, including MS-DOS machines. I have used DPaint II quite a bit in the past week. It did not crash the machine. I was also using a vt100 emulator and other software at the same time. The OS ran fine. I am not sure where Mr. Brickman is getting his information. >However, seeing that an Amiga would end up costing quite a bit less for >similar capability, you might want to consider it. 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 True. The IBM will offer you more support, because there are more IBM's and compatibles out there by far. This is not to be taken lightly, and should be seriously considered while choosing between the two machines. >graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with >probable future X-Windows on larger machines). Whereas if you were Two "popular" operating systems is somewhat of a misnomer. PC-DOS is a popular operating system; I don't think OS/2 can be called that yet, as it is not yet finished. Besides, a friend of mine who develops on 80386 IBM's for a Medical/Laboratory Software/Hardware house just got the "latest" version of OS/2, which (he claims) requires 6 *megabytes* of RAM to run. Even if it only requires half of that, there is something wrong. By the way, I saw a running X-Windows on the Amiga two weeks ago. As I understand it, X-Windows will run on my 1 megabyte Amiga right now. No need for "larger machines". >to buy and Amiga, you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- >almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable Hmmmmm...a Macintosh (*not* the Mac II) uses a 68000. One can buy accelerator boards for Amigas as well (68020, 68030 in the future). Plus one can replace the 68000 with a 68010, although the speedup is less than impressive (about 5% faster). Also, there is one point that Mr. Brickman failed to mention...the Amiga uses custom hardware chips to do most of the intensive graphics processing. In most micros this is done by the main CPU. The effect in the Amiga is that the 68000 CPU is freed from having to do the graphics processing, so it can do more of the "other" operations that a CPU normally does (i.e. running programs, OS related tasks, etc.). Therefore, even though the Amiga uses an 8mhz 68000 (well, 7.71mhz I believe), it is not tied up doing intensive graphics chores, resulting in a "faster" machine. >graphics capability (uses interlaced graphics -- hard on the eyes at >max resolution), an operating system which crashes roughly three times as >frequently as PC-DOS 2.0 (3.3 is much better yet) with corresponding loss >of data, work, temper, and possibly disk data, and very limited >expandability (limited simply because very few companies build the stuff). The graphics capabilities on the Amiga were designed to be NTSC compatible...somthing you can't get with a VGA board. Therefore, you can (with a GenLock device) do things such as merge standard NTSC video with the computer graphics (i.e. the NTSC video image becomes the "background" color). Granted, hardware probably exists to do this with a VGA, but I doubt if it is as inexpensive as with an Amiga. The interlaced display does flicker (and I also find it annoying), but you can get hardware to fix this so there will be no flickering, although it isn't cheap ($550 for a "Flicker-Fixer"). The OS does crash...I have never used an OS on a micro that didn't. It does probably crash more often if you do certain things, like write your own C code. However, an MS-DOS machine will do that too. There are commercial programs out for the Amiga that do crash the machine because they are poorly written; however, I have used poorly written software for the Macintosh and IBM that does the same thing. There is well written software available for the Amiga which doesn't crash the machine, just like with IBM's and Macintoshes. The amount of crashing an OS does is dependent on what you do on *any* micro (at this point). Personally, I do not have many crashes at all when I use normal, commercial software. I do get crashes when I am programming in C. I recommend using both OS's with the software you intend to buy to see whether or not each OS crashes. If you don't want crashes too often, get a machine with protected memory (like a Unix box). As for "expandibility," there are new versions of the graphics chips coming out RSN (real-soon-now...take it for what it is worth). These chips will expand the amount of graphics memory available to a maximum of 1 megabyte (hey, that's more than MS-DOS can address!). A new higher resolution graphics mode may also be introduced, although this is not certain. However, yet-another-thing which Mr. Brickman failed to mention is that the various graphics modes on the Amiga are all built into the machine...no need for different graphics cards (VGA, CGA, EGA, Hercules, etc.). The modes available are: 320x200, 320X400, 640x200, 640x400, HAM (Hold-and-Modify). Different modes have different maximum colors on screen at once, from a maximum of 32 colors in 320x200 to a maximum to 16 colors in 640x400 to 4096 colors in HAM mode (with limitations). [Graphics modes with vertical resolution of 400 or greater are in interlaced mode.] Granted, it isn't as good as the Mac II's 256 colors from a palette of 16 million, but I don't think a VGA is either (although I am not sure). Also, the Amiga's OS is written to accept 1024x1024 screens. I saw a 1024x800 resolution monitor two weeks ago running the standard OS. The monitor is due on the market "soon," according to Commodore. Also, Amiga's will work in "Overscan" modes (I am not sure if VGA cards do that; they might). This means that the graphics modes can be "larger" than the standard sizes, and the resulting display will *not* have a border (as with many machines); the picture will look like a TV's picture, with the actual image continuing off of the CRT. Typical resolutions are 700x250 instead of 640x200; overscan can be used in any of the graphics modes. A final point: the Amiga 2000 computer has a "video slot" inside it. Boy, I wonder what this is for! Yes, it is there to allow for expanded graphics capabilities in the future. Currently, I do not think anyone has made any products for this slot, but it *is* there (again, take this for what it is worth). >If I were you I would go for one of the newest 80386CX chips (CX I think -- >I'm talking about a new version of the 80386 chip put out by Intel which >is 1/4 the cost at half the speed, but all the compatibility). That way >you get all the future expandability and compatibility which exists short of >a pure IBM PS/2 or Sun 386i (a beautiful, extremely fast, but rather >expensive Unix->Windows->PC-DOS machine; runs faster than the Compaq >Deskpro, and that in PC-DOS running OVER Unix! $10,000 up), at minimum >price. If you are going to spend that kind of money, you could buy a Mac II. Or an IBM with a Targa board. There is always something better (yeah, I'll get a Pixar workstation, yeah, that's the ticket!). One other point which Mr. Brickman forgot to mention: MS-DOS machines are limited to 640k of accessible RAM (although more can be added as a RAM disk). Amigas are not. If you like, you can have an 8 megabyte Amiga. However, on the Amiga, the graphics chips can only access certain portions of the memory...currently the limit is 512k, but this will increase to 1 megabyte in the future (with the graphics chips upgrade. When MS-DOS is replaced by OS/2, the 640k restriction will be lifted. These are items to consider. If you have a limit on your budget, look closely at the Amiga and IBM. The Amiga is not all as bad as Mr. Brickman has made it out to be; I hope I have gotten that across in this article. However, there are a lot of IBM's out there, which is an important consideration. The Amiga will not be as expensive, though, and it has some pretty nice graphics, ray-tracing, and animation software available for it right now. Find a good dealer or user's group for *both* machines, and try each of them out. No matter which machine you go for, you are going to be paying a lot of money, so shop wisely! >||Jonathan E. Brickman -Chris -- Christopher Lishka ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu Immunology Section (608)262-1617 lishka@uwslh.uucp ---- "...Just because someone is shy and gets straight A's does not mean they won't put wads of gum in your arm pits." - Lynda Barry, "Ernie Pook's Commeek: Gum of Mystery"