Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Amiga or PC-AT ? Message-ID: <2402@sugar.uu.net> Date: 6 Aug 88 14:54:46 GMT References: <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> <356@uwslh.UUCP> <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX Lines: 175 Yow, more wrong stuff... In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.UUCP writes: > 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text. > You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage > glass TTY, but with color. 640 by 400 is much greater than TV resolution. Just add a flickerfixer. 1008 by 800 is even better. I've played with the Hedley monitor and it looks sharp. > 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the > early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most > disks seem to be bootable. While this used to be true for some programs, now only games are sold this way (and not all games are... Bards tale II isn't copy protected and runs just fine from a hard disk). > With a certain amount of pain and anguish, > disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. You mean putting the Commodore hard disk card in an Amiga 2000 and installing a hard disk? > I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new > (real soon now) release of AmigaDos. AmigaDOS has supported hard disks for some time now. Must be my imagination. > 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and > 500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The > general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three > won't work". You can put as many cards as you want in any of the expansion cabinets for either the 1000 or 500. > In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk > will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with > the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000, > which has slots. Or to the 1000 and 500, for which 2000-compatible expansion boxes are available. > 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the > available Amiga software is games. Reading from the July issue of AmigaWorld: Photon Paint (also the hottest new paint program for the Mac II, *ported from the Amiga*). Photon Video. DigiView. Rings (a game). ASDG ad (RAM card (up to 8 Megs!), FACC II (utility), Twin-X (IEEE-488 interface card), Card Cages (plug A2000 cards into 1000 and 500), CubeMaster (a game)). Professional Page. Excellence. Ganymed and Bomb Busters (games). Generic Taito ad, no products specified. X-specs 3d (hardware). (these people also sell an excellent multitasking spreadsheet) Pageflipper FX (animation program). Arkanoid and Zoom (games). Express Paint. IMPACT (A2000 SCSI/RAM multifunction card, A500 SCSI/RAM expansion box). Stellar Conflict (game). Supergen (hardware). ProGEN (hardware). MaxiPLAN Plus (speradsheet, multiple views in multiple windows). Turbo Print (utility). C-64 Emulator (game :->). Actionware (games). Aztec 'C'. Word Perfect (this isn't a serious program, right?). Xerox 4020 inkjet printer (xerox just makes toys, of course). Lionheart statistical and management software. BeckerText (word processor) DataRetrieve (relational database) AssemPro (fancy assembler). Lattice C++. GEnie. LIVE (real-time digitizer). SoundQuest (MIDI librarians) Forms in Flight II. FlickerFixer (gives you 704 by 470 non-interlaced display). The Director (animation program). Ameristar Internet package (TCP/IP, NFS, Socket interface). SlapShot (game). Power Windows (utility) InovaTools (utility). AC/BASIC, AC/Fortran (compilers). 3-tuple (3d animation and ray tracing). Computerware business software. APL.68000. Tracers, Faery Tale, Craps Academy (games). > There are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. See list above. > The major > networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes > involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.) See Ameristar ads above... I can't imagine any of the MS-DOS people supply a socket library. > The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga > now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all > Amiga material from the store window. Right. Retail salesfolks are a really technically competant and can be trusted in making purchasing decisions. > 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to > destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable > media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0 > argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!) So don't use software that does this. I have trashed disks on every machine I've used... including UNIX. Certainly MS-DOS is *not* immune to this sort of problem. > It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have > only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga. I have only one machine. It's an Amiga. I get VERY frustrated when working on anything else... if you only have one machine, it should at least be multitasking. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?