🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, there was an Amiga at our (somewhat sucessful) computerfest today,
sponsored by the University Personal Computing Assoc. (of which I am
an officer)  as well as 5 or 6 ST's and a lot of demos, so I'd like
to expand on some of this discussion. 
 
GG:	...Unless the ST has some sort of dual-ported RAM, the screen data
	must come from the same data bus in the ST as well.

JD:	..First, there are a pair of chips working together to optimize
	data bus and screen data access. The memory controller
	prefetches 16-bit data directly for the 68000 and also places
	screen data onto a separate bus for the screen refresh chip. This
	operation only steals 8-18% of the available true CPU time.

GG:	If you measure a computer's worth by the number of chips,
	you might as well pick an IBM over a Mac. Perhaps the custom chips
	in the AMIGA are  better integrated to perform several functions in one
	chip. Thus you do not need MORE chips if three can do the job. 

GF:	non sequatur (sp?)

myself: Regardless of the memory arrangement, I found the ST's graphics to
	appear intrinsically clearer.  Perhaps Atari uses a better monitor,
	or maybe they tighten up the dot edges, but the amiga's graphics
	had a fuzzier, blurrier, yet warmer appearance.  For data, I would
	have gone with the Atari's no-nonsense display, but the Amiga DOES
	do an impressive job on pre-drawn graphics, and the color text 
	display is less objectionable than Atari's.  As for the chips, well,
	maybe the IBM DOES have more chips than a Mac, or than the //e, but
	remember...all those PALs and semicustom gate arrays DO replace lots
	of so-called-glue.  Remember how Apple's MMU and IOU replace some
	140-odd chips?  And since when did manufacturers stop bragging about
	how many gates and transistors they've packed into the latest design?

JD:	The windows are poorly configured and move with flicker.

GG:	They do? Not in my AMIGA. 

GF:	Maybe they do in his AMIGA.

myself: They sure didn't in the Amiga at the 'fest.  In fact, I was very 
	impressed (in terms of graphics power) when, while running the
	'robo-city' demo (two characters and a dog walk across the
	screen behind an animated hydrant) the person at the Amiga 
	'grabbed' the entire page and slid it off the bottom of the screen
	while the demo was running.  No flicker.  No redrawing.  In fact,
	the demo kept running at the same pace while we ran its window
	all over the place.  Very nice, but there was severe flicker on 
	horizontal white lines in 640x400 mode, and while not apparent in
	solid areas, a violent flicker appeared in heavily colored/dithered
	spots on some screen captured shots.  No, I don't mean slightly grey
	edges.  The dots literally shook.  

caveats...the salesman tried to explain that the system unit had 512k in it,
	but he included the ram in the kickstart.  Unlike the Atari, when you
	get your system roms, you'll find yourself back to 256k.  Because they
	won't build the extra in after it's served its usefulness.  Also, the
	much-ballyhooed bouncing ball demo, although fun to look at, was not
	that impressive.  The 'thud' sound probably contributed to 60% of the
	effect, simply because it sounded massive.  But the shadow and ball
	both moved on the same path, at fixed velocity, and the only surface
	animation was a set of checkerboard bands rotating constantly on the
	ball.  Reminded me of a Mindset without flicker.  The Atari booth,
	on the other hand, showed some simpler, safer graphics, but then
	again, what do you use real-time graphics for?  I found the Atari
	to be adequate (and very cheap).

overrunning my expected line-limit,
-dave
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Hsu						hsu @ eneevax.umd.edu
Communications & Signal Processing Laboratory		hsu @ sphinx.ee.umd.edu
Department of Electrical Engineering			hsu @ mit-prep.arpa
University of Maryland					hsu @ umd2.arpa

"You see?  You SEE???"

> JD(cont):...the amiga has a non-standard disk configuration and does
> 	much of the disk support in software (ie. slow). The drives have
> 	slightly more capacity than the the ST's DS drives (880K to 720K) but
> 	this is at the expense of speed. The Amiga directory format (or
> 	lack of) is done much like a commodore-64. In fact, to get a
> 	directory, the Amiga goes out and finds a program called DIR,
> 	loads it and goes back searching!
> 
> I:	If that is true, I have lost all respect for AmigaDOS.

I think what he means to say is that "DIR" is an external program, like UNIX'
ls, not a built-in like MS-DOS' "dir". To get a directory in CLI it loads
a file called ":/c/Dir" and executes it. Since there are disks without CLI *or*
dir on them, and they do have directories, it's pretty obvious that they're
not hidden inside a program. Especially not one that's itself 2 levels deep
in the directory tree. I would like to suggest that Mr. Demar is less than
well acquainted with the machine...

And why wasn't net.micro.amiga included in the distribution of this message?
Maybe because some people who actually *have* an Amiga and understand it are
more likely to respond to it?

Anyway... you can regain your respect for AMIGAdos. It's not UNIX by any means,
but it is certainly an improvement over Crummy-Dos, Trash-Dos, Messy-Dos, or
any of the other little computer "operating systems".

In article <297@graffiti.UUCP> peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I think what he means to say is that "DIR" is an external program, like UNIX'
>ls, not a built-in like MS-DOS' "dir". To get a directory in CLI it loads
>a file called ":/c/Dir" and executes it. Since there are disks without CLI *or*
>dir on them, and they do have directories, it's pretty obvious that they're
>not hidden inside a program. Especially not one that's itself 2 levels deep
>in the directory tree. I would like to suggest that Mr. Demar is less than
>well acquainted with the machine...

     In this much I think I agree.  I've said before on other systems
that memory resident utilities aren't always a good idea.  It impinges
on user memory, whereas generally it's not critical to maximize their
speed (sorry, I meant to say 'they impinge').  Most of my day is taken
up using terminal emulators and word processing.  On my system directory
calls take a fair bit of time.  It's really not that important.

     If you want to razz somebody on this point you can say to them
"hey man, don't you ever do any *work* with your computer, what do you
do just copy and delete files all day?" -- then duck fast.

>
>And why wasn't net.micro.amiga included in the distribution of this message?
>Maybe because some people who actually *have* an Amiga and understand it are
>more likely to respond to it?
>
>Anyway... you can regain your respect for AMIGAdos. It's not UNIX by any means,
>but it is certainly an improvement over Crummy-Dos, Trash-Dos, Messy-Dos, or
>any of the other little computer "operating systems".

     But I have to disagree with this.  Have you ever worked on the
computers you've just slighted?  I don't like Commodore's DOS (I assume
that's the first one you meant), but the Shack's DOS is quite good.  In
fact, probably better than the Amiga DOS from what I've heard so far.
I'll reserve judgement.  MS-DOS isn't that bad either.  It could have
been better, but it's development was originally an outgrowth of CP/M.

     As for other 'little computer "operating systems"', ahem, like
Unix maybe?  Or OS-9?  I have heard *nothing* which indicates *any*
superiority of AMIGAdos as such over OS-9 in *any* way.  But, mainly
remember that even Unix *started* as a small OS.  It just grew a lot.


-- 
James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura
Byte Information eXchange: jimomura
Compuserve: 72205,541
MTS at WU: GKL6

> But, mainly
> remember that even Unix *started* as a small OS.  It just grew a lot.
> James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto

*sigh* -- I wonder if DMR still has one of the old punched tapes lying around?

-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU

> >Anyway... you can regain your respect for AMIGAdos. It's not UNIX by any means,
> >but it is certainly an improvement over Crummy-Dos, Trash-Dos, Messy-Dos, or
> >any of the other little computer "operating systems".
> 
>      But I have to disagree with this.  Have you ever worked on the
> computers you've just slighted?

Yes. All of them. As well as ATARI and APPLE. I just haven't thought of any
good slanderous names for theit operating systems yet.

> I don't like Commodore's DOS (I assume
> that's the first one you meant), but the Shack's DOS is quite good.  In
> fact, probably better than the Amiga DOS from what I've heard so far.

Not if it doesn't multitask it isn't. If it doesn't multitask it doesn't
qualify for the name "operating system". An operating system should have
a memory manager and a scheduler as well as a file server and device drivers.

> I'll reserve judgement.  MS-DOS isn't that bad either.  It could have
> been better, but it's development was originally an outgrowth of CP/M.

I rest my case (good thing, too. It was getting pretty heavy).

>      As for other 'little computer "operating systems"', ahem, like
> Unix maybe?  Or OS-9? I have heard *nothing* which indicates *any*
> superiority of AMIGAdos as such over OS-9 in *any* way.  But, mainly
> remember that even Unix *started* as a small OS.  It just grew a lot.

Both of them are real operating systems, instead of "DOS"es. And neither of
them are widely available on a home computer. I know you can get OS/9 on a
CoCo, but I still have yet to see one in action... and it's severely limited
on that little machine. I'd much prefer a 68000 with OS/9 or UNIX, but I'm
not likely to afford one on my budget.