🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8512062142.AA07057@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> nep.pgelhausen@ames-vmsb.ARPA writes:
>> 
>Nobody is denying that the bouncing ball demo is more impressive looking than
>difficult.  A recent message placed the Atari developement time at approx.
>one week also.  The basic thrust of Atari's marketing is not "we are better
>than Commodore" but "we can do much of the same stuff they can, cheaper".
>
>Before the Atari-duplicate demo, the Commodore people were so proud of
>themselves....now they are saying "it was nothing anyway".  Make up your
>minds!!!
>
>			-Richard Hartman

To me there are only a few important differences between the two machines:

   1a. The Amiga is NTSC compatible which allows easy use with VTR's, home
       tv cameras for digitizing/overlaying etc. at the expense of flicker
       at 640x400.

   1b. The Atari is virtually flicker-free at 640x400 at the expense of NTSC
       compatibility.

   2a. The Amiga supports up to 4 bit planes in the max resolution mode, 
       enough for decent grayscale digitizing/imaging, palette of 4096, and
       bit-blit & sprite hardware.

   2b. The Atari supports up to 2 bit planes in the max resolution mode, with
       palette of 512 and little or no hardware graphics assistance.

   3a. The Amiga supports a series of dedicated DMA channels that DO NOT 
       INTERFERE with the CPU speed for 4 sound channels that utilize a
       wavetable (up to max available of the internal 512k ram) and associated
       volume and pitch tables, which effectively constitute a 4 channel
       8-bit digital sampling synthesizer a-la Ensonique Mirage but with
       4 channels instead of however many the Mirage has.

   3b. The Atari uses a off-the-shelf 3 channel sound generator that's been
       around for awhile, and from all reports is not terribly sophisticated.

If, after all that, you still can't tell the difference between the machines
except price, then by all means buy yourself the 520ST.  Someone should, as I
am a firm believer in healthy competition.  But for me, I bought an Amiga,
the least expensive system that could do what *I* needed in a machine, 
because the 520ST couldn't do those things at all (imaging at 640x400, 
NTSC video compatibility, and digital sampling of sound).

Keith Doyle
#  {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
#  cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa

<>

   So, Keith Doyle bought an Amiga.  Thanks for letting us in on this fact,
Keith.  (* end sarcasm *)

   Can we have some *Atari* postings here?  Although I'm an 8-bit Atari owner,
I don't mind reading through the ST information; I *do* mind seeing mindless
bickering over which machine better suits someone's personal desires.  This is
an Atari forum, and should be kept that way.  Likewise, the Amiga group
shouldn't be inundated with this crap either.  How about a cease-fire
agreement?  That way, the ST owners could spend their time and net-space
reviewing the $1000 worth of software that they bought with the money they
have left because they didn't buy an Amiga :-).

 - Joel ({allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!oyster)

In article <977@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes:
>
>   3a. The Amiga supports a series of dedicated DMA channels that DO NOT 
>       INTERFERE with the CPU speed for 4 sound channels that utilize a
>       wavetable (up to max available of the internal 512k ram) and associated
>       volume and pitch tables, which effectively constitute a 4 channel
>       8-bit digital sampling synthesizer a-la Ensonique Mirage but with
>       4 channels instead of however many the Mirage has.
>
>But for me, I bought an Amiga, the least expensive system that could do what 
>*I* needed in a machine, because the 520ST couldn't do those things at all 
>(imaging at 640x400, NTSC video compatibility, and digital sampling of 
>sound).
>
>Keith Doyle
>#  {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
>#  cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa

How does the Amiga sample sound??  I have heard this many, many times, yet no-
one has ever mentioned an ADC in the machine, only an 8-bit DAC.  (By the way,
does this DAC have the proper anti-aliasing filters?)  

-- 
	thomas r. erbe
	{ucbvax,ihnp4,akgua,hplabs,sdcsvax}!sdcarl!tre

In article <977@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes:
>   1a. The Amiga is NTSC compatible which allows easy use with VTR's, home
>       tv cameras for digitizing/overlaying etc. at the expense of flicker
>       at 640x400.
>
>   1b. The Atari is virtually flicker-free at 640x400 at the expense of NTSC
>       compatibility.

Perhaps this explains why I found the atari machine I looked at yesterday
to have, in general, a much crisper and pleasing color desktop.  Perhaps
some readjustment of the default Amiga workbench colors would help.
As a new Amiga owner, I am still satisfied with my choice, since for *me*
it is the correct one for the things I want to do with the machine.

By the way, you didn't mention the command line interface on the amiga.
I would sorely miss this on the atari.

In all, I thing both are nice little machines, and I hope they both
do well in the marketplace.

-Fred

===========================================================================
Fred Fish    UniSoft Systems Inc, 739 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,dual}!unisoft!fnf	(415) 644 1230 		TWX 11 910 366-2145
===========================================================================

In article <267@sdcarl.UUCP> tre@sdcarl.UUCP (Tom Erbe) writes:
>
>How does the Amiga sample sound??  I have heard this many, many times, yet no-
>one has ever mentioned an ADC in the machine, only an 8-bit DAC.  (By the way,
>does this DAC have the proper anti-aliasing filters?)
>
>       thomas r. erbe

The Amiga can't sample an input sound given the basic machine, however it has
the ability to playback sampled sounds once you figure how to get the
sampled data into the machine.  Right now, I have to use a s-100 machine
that does know how to sample to do this.  I expect it won't be too long before
it can be done directly with the Amiga once a simple ADC board is available
for it.

Offhand, I don't know about what kind of output filtering the Amiga has,
though it certainly sounds better than the raw 8-bit DAC output I'm using
with my s-100 system.

Keith Doyle
#  {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
#  cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa

> 
> How does the Amiga sample sound??  I have heard this many, many times, yet no-
> one has ever mentioned an ADC in the machine, only an 8-bit DAC.  (By the way,
> does this DAC have the proper anti-aliasing filters?)  
> 
> 	thomas r. erbe
The Amiga does not have any built in analog to digital converter
for digitizing sound. It only has digital to analog converters - two
to give stereo capability, each is 8 bit linear with a 4 bit (I think)
scaling volume control. There are proper anti aliasing filters which
cut off starting at around 7 kHz. Sound samples stored in memory can
be played through the D/As using DMA completely transparent to and
without slowing down the 68000. The Amigas bus operates at 14.4 MHz
half of which is used by the 68000 (i.e. at 7.2 MHz) and half by the
coprocessors which do DMA for video, disk I.O, sound etc. If things
get really busy then the video coproccessors can steal extra time
and slow down the 68K.

As far as I know digitizing sound must be done by an external device.

Hope this helps.  Mike Gingell,  ....decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!mjg
> 	{ucbvax,ihnp4,akgua,hplabs,sdcsvax}!sdcarl!tre

......
> 
> By the way, you didn't mention the command line interface on the amiga.
> I would sorely miss this on the atari.
> 
> In all, I thing both are nice little machines, and I hope they both
> do well in the marketplace.
> 
> -Fred

There are three command line interfaces available right now for the ST
	- command.com : comes with the developers package. I have also
seen it on more than one bulletin board. Msdos like.
	- Micro C Shell : very nice includes history, history editing,
pipes, redirection, limited shell scripts, utilities like cc, pr, more
etc etc, from Beckemeyer Dev. Systems in Oakland, CA (for only 49.95).
The multitasking version is due in Jan. They are also putting out a
real time executive.
	- Hos : comes with Habba C. Again unix like, though not even
10% as nice as Micro C Shell.

BTW. your DBUG package is doing great on my ST.
					Jwahar R. Bammi
			       Usenet:  .....!decvax!cwruecmp!bammi
			        CSnet:  bammi@case
				 Arpa:  bammi%case@csnet-relay
			   CompuServe:  71515,155

-- 
					Jwahar R. Bammi
			       Usenet:  .....!decvax!cwruecmp!bammi
			        CSnet:  bammi@case
				 Arpa:  bammi%case@csnet-relay
			   CompuServe:  71515,155

>>But for me, I bought an Amiga, the least expensive system that could do what
>>*I* needed in a machine, because the 520ST couldn't do those things at all
>>(imaging at 640x400, NTSC video compatibility, and digital sampling of
>>sound).
>>
>>Keith Doyle
 
>How does the Amiga sample sound??  I have heard this many, many times, yet no-
>one has ever mentioned an ADC in the machine, only an 8-bit DAC.  (By the way,
>does this DAC have the proper anti-aliasing filters?)
>--
>       thomas r. erbe
 
I hope Mr. Doyle didn't buy an Amiga JUST for digital sampling of sound.
Although the Amiga can play pre-recorded or synthesized sound samples it
does not have built-in user sampling.

The Amiga has a 6-pole (36 decibel per octave) low pass filter for each
stereo channel.

I am the resident sound software person at Commodore/Amiga and I'll be happy
to answer any questions about producing sound with the Amiga.

                        {hplabs,decwr}!pyramid!amiga!sam

In article <399@amiga.amiga.UUCP> sam@snidely.UUCP (Samuel C. Dicker) writes:
>I hope Mr. Doyle didn't buy an Amiga JUST for digital sampling of sound.
>Although the Amiga can play pre-recorded or synthesized sound samples it
>does not have built-in user sampling.

No, but it was a factor.  By the way, I *was* aware that it couldn't input
sample sound but can output before I bought the Amiga.  Sorry if my
original article gave mis-impressions there.  I kinda felt being able to
play the samples back is a good 80% of the job.  After all, you can get
by only sampling the input at a fixed rate if you absolutely have to, and
don't have to do input so often that it even has to be done by every 
machine, but you need lots of controls and parameters etc. for the output
side usually.  (if you want to play Beethovens 9th in dog barks that is).

Keith Doyle
#  {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
#  cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa