Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!arisia!sgi!shinobu!odin!odin.corp.sgi.com!portuesi From: portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A new Amiga from Japan? Message-ID: Date: 10 Jan 90 11:29:05 GMT References: <5337@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <25aa930b.37ff@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <5345@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM Reply-To: portuesi@sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mtn. View, CA Lines: 47 In-reply-to: waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM's message of 10 Jan 90 16:16:17 GMT >>>>> On 10 Jan 90 16:16:17 GMT, waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) said: wayne> In article <25aa930b.37ff@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>, cknight@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (King Claudius) writes: > > I'm sorry, but this FM Towns sounds just like another > PC clone to me...what's the big deal with it? wayne> At the lowest level it could be considered just a PC clone, however at the wayne> higher end from the stuff I saw, it breaks ground that Amiga can't even wayne> begin to tread in. From the things I saw I would have to say that the wayne> FM Towns is far more suited for Video/Animation/Sound Production/Multi- wayne> Tasking/Multi-Media applications than the Amiga is. The big deal is that wayne> I never realised just how far behind the Amiga is getting until I saw the wayne> FM Towns. Ummm, could you give us some examples of the sort of things that were running on the FM Towns that is beyond the current state of the art of Amiga technology? I'm not trying to challenge your claim -- rather, I am more interested in hearing about the things you saw that led you to this conclusion. From everything you've mentioned so far, it doesn't seem to me that the FM Town is much more than a PC clone with a nifty graphics card and a CD-ROM drive attached to it. That's certainly nothing to be excited about. What kind of software are these things running? What do they do? wayne> However, as an aside I should say that the Japanese computers have always wayne> been ahead in graphics at least in the small computer area. Japanese wayne> computer hardware seems to be really good stuff. I saw genlocking of wayne> computer graphics onto video in 1984 on cheap MSX computers, it must have wayne> been late 1986 before it was easy to get a genlock for the Amiga. The MSX standard was based on the same display chip used many years previously in the TI-99/4A. The Japanese certainly weren't breaking new ground in display technology there. The MSX machines competed with each other on the basis of the accessories they offered, such as built-in MIDI support or genlocks hardware. It sounds like the "FM Towns" are the same concept applied in PC/Clone arena instead of the 8-bit home computer arena. --M -- __ \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc. portuesi@SGI.COM Entry Systems Division -- Engineering