mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amigas have keyboard garages) Meyer) (05/03/90)
In article <263ce0e8-1d41comp.sys.amiga@tronsbox.UUCP> tron1@tronsbox.UUCP (HIM) writes:
But now, it is possible that a software
item would run ONLY on the 3000 , using the features of that machine.
And I dont mean bad programming things like hard addresses and so on.
I mean all that chip ram, Amber , Buster Zorro III and the 200 pin cpu
slot. This signals a comming of age.
Right. Having incompatable software is a sign of "coming of age". No
wonder so many hackers refuse to grow up.
Any software that won't run on _any_ amiga is pretty badly broken, no
matter what the reason. On the other hand, software that gracefully
looses facitilies/features because resources are missing - that's
another thing entirely. The latter has been going on for a while.
Certain manipulations just run out of chip ram on 512K machines that
don't on 1Meg machines. Having 2Meg allows for just that much more of
the same.
Likewise for hardware things - wanna tell me where I can get a flicker
fixer for an A1000?
In other words, the incompatabilies between the A3000 & older machines
aren't really there - except you can't run things that have problems
with the '030 on an A3000, and other things that break the rules in a
like manner.
I SOLD Amigas (and was good at it) , it is very upsetting to
get asked "So what can the 2000 do for me over the 500?" and all you
can point to is that fact that it has slots. It is a psychology that
you can only sell HIGH-END customers when you can define what the
LOW-END is.
Why didn't you tell people that the A2000 comes with 1Meg of chip ram,
whereas the A500 didn't. That you can sell them one box with several
hundred meg of disks, multiple megabytes of RAM, a 680[23]0, and the
ability to run MS-DOS, whereas that takes multiple boxes or isn't
possible with the A500 (or the A1000, for that matter)?
One of the things that makes 2.0 so nice is that ,
(arguments notwithstanding) It should be possible to run
it on ANY Amiga provided the ECS and memory is there.
Why you think it needs an ECS? It can use any of the old screen
formats, so why should it stop working because things it's not being
asked to use aren't there? Like any well-written piece of software,
having hardware not be there merely means you lose some capabilities,
not that it won't run at all.
[AmigaVision] I usually get annoyed when someone says something
like "You have to see it to believe it" ..
I'm curious about this. I've seen multiple statements along the lines
of "it's going to change the world as we know it." So far, I haven't
seen anything to justify this. The demo you describe looks an awful
lot like a Mac demo I saw over a year ago. The language proper looks
like a standard visual language adopted to doing presentation work.
That combination is interesting, but it's not clear that it's new, or
that it will really be a major change.
<mike
P.S.: this note doesn't reflect a change in my beliefs that the A1000
is a tremendous advance over it's successors, with the A3000 still to
be evaluated (it looks like a winner, though). Nor is it meant to bash
AmigaVision. It's something the Amiga needed, and I'd like to have a
copy. I don't need it badly enough to spend the $150 they're asking me
to pay for it. I'm going to wait and hope it gets bundled into the 2.0
upgrade. Nor is this note meant to bash the A3000 - it really does
look like a winner.
--
But I'll survive, no you won't catch me, Mike Meyer
I'll resist the urge that is tempting me, mwm@relay.pa.dec.com
I'll avert my eyes, keep you off my knee, decwrl!mwm
But it feels so good when you talk to me.