karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) (09/02/87)
In article <1949@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> batcomputer!engst writes: > I'm really curious about something. A number of people who rave about > how wonderful the Amiga is particularly when compared to the ST also seem to > have an ST. This is strange enough - most people decide on one type of > computer, buy it, and then defend it. Yet these people are buying two > expensive computers, using one solely and letting the other "languish in the > closet." . . . Actually, it was pretty easy. I thought the ST was cool and the Amiga was vaporware. After the Amiga finally came out, I knew it was the one I wanted, so I bought it too. As for it costing a lot to do that, yeah, it does, but I get a multitasking, DMA audio, reasonably high res graphics with hardware to draw lines and blit and 4.5 meg of RAM...a windowing personal workstation. As for the ST, it broke shortly after I bought it, was fixed, used for a while, loaned to a friend (sugar!peter), broken, fixed, given up on by him (he bought an Amiga). I have, in fact, tried to sell it, in the want ads, at work and on local BBSes. I asked $800 for a 520 ST with two 720K drives and the RGB monitor, Lattice C, the Metacomco assembler, and some games. That's less than half what I paid about two years ago. And yes it is, in fact, in the closet at this very minute. Oh yeah, by the way, I don't think it's particularly fair of you to post such a lengthy detailed slam to the net and then piously say "send responses via email, don't start a war on the net." Thus, you broadcast your message implying that I'm a liar for claiming to own both machines to all who read this newsgroup but instruct me to respond via email only. -- ...!soma!uhnix1!sugar!karl "Life is wasted on the living." - Z.B. IV
jdg@elmgate.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) (09/13/87)
I too own both machines. I could not make up my mind which I wanted.
I had the money (plastic), so I went for the gusto. Anything *HAD*
to be better than the IBM-PC clone with MSDOS. Little did I know
at the time that GEMDOS was worse. Then AmigaDOS turned out to be a
dud. Sigh.......
I took confort in the fact that the Amiga's Native Executive/Graphics
software seemed well done but then......... Yup, all hell broke loose
at work. Someone plopped me in front of a Sun 2/120 (2 years ago).
"So this is how a real personal computer works", I said to myself.
Of course the price was anything but personal. Still, I hadn't
had that much *FUN* with a computer since my father bought a 16k
TRS-80 Level 1 machine in 1978!
Now many of you recognize all the symptoms of UNIX-itis, RAM-a-toasus,
virtual brain damage, and MMU-cancer. I've got 'em all. No doctor
was available to save me from the "Dark side of the PC". The
evil empire put a Sun 3/160m in front of me and I was finished. Doomed.
My ST? Sits by itself on it's table waiting for the Boston Computer
Society to call for a donation to it's archives...
My Amiga? Patiently awaits the ASDG gods to deliver an A-2000 expansion
chassis to stuff an 80meg Hard drive, 68020/68881 + {insert MMU here},
plus {insert a UNIX name here}, into.
Then again with the price of the Sun 3/50 at ~$5k.... maybe in a few
years.......
ST vs. Amiga? Bull pucky! I learned a hard (and expensive) lesson
in the difference between 'consumer electronics' vs. 'personal computers
(workstations?)'.
Commodore and/or Atari, if your out there..
if ((cpu == 68020 || (cpu == 68010 && clock >= 10)
&& mmu == TRUE &&
(displayX >= 764 && displayY >= 512) &&
(color == TRUE || color == FALSE) &&
(strcmp (os,"UNIX") == 0 || strcmp (os,"OS-68k") == 0) &&
price <= 3000)
{
sales += 1;
profits += PROFIT_PER_COMPUTER;
user_id[sales] = register_new_user ("J.","Gortatowsky");
}
else
{
exit (ENOREALCOMPUTER);
}
Umm ...... 8^) :^)
UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T.
Atari is registered trademark of Atari Corporation.
Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore Business Machines.
TRS-80 may be registered trademark of Tandy Corporation.
ASDG may be a registered trademark of ASDG Inc.
IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines, Inc.
GEMDOS may be registered trademark of Atari Corporation or Digital
Research Inc.
Sun 2/120 or Sun 3/160 may be a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems
Inc.
(One can't be too careful these days).
J.Gortatowsky is an unregistered trademark of a 28 year old male living
in Rochester New York, and therefore has no legal restrictions on it's
use.
Harriet... If your out there Ken and I say hello!
--
Jeff Gortatowsky {seismo,allegra}!rochester!kodak!elmgate!jdg
Eastman Kodak Company
These comments are mine alone and not Eastman Kodak's. How's that for a
simple and complete disclaimer? mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (09/16/87)
In article <734@elmgate.UUCP> jdg@aurora.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) writes:
<I took confort in the fact that the Amiga's Native Executive/Graphics
<software seemed well done but then......... Yup, all hell broke loose
<at work. Someone plopped me in front of a Sun 2/120 (2 years ago).
<"So this is how a real personal computer works", I said to myself.
It looks like you got handed a Unix system and decided it was a *neat*
thing. I recognize the symptoms. Had them myself about a decade ago.
I've got an Amiga, and a Sun 3/50 on my desk at work. The Sun 3/50
makes a nice multi-screen terminal and news reading box. The Amiga is
the development machine when I want to work on things I'm interested
in. When I need to do Unix development, I move to a fast machine
(either an 8650 running 4.3, or a 8800 running Buglix - oops, Ultrix -
2.0).
The Amiga has a better windowing system than I can get on a Sun. The
Amiga exec is more flexible than the Unix kernel. Got Color. Got a
better C compiler. Got an editor with a better user interface (well,
almost true - I get a nearly identical interface running a hacked
vt100 on my Amiga talking to GNU on the Sun or the VUXen). Got better
games to play with. Don't gotta fight other people for disk space,
system maintenance, or budget.
<Of course the price was anything but personal. Still, I hadn't
<had that much *FUN* with a computer since my father bought a 16k
<TRS-80 Level 1 machine in 1978!
Gee, that's the way I felt about my Amiga. Suddenly, I wasn't worrying
about OS internals anymore, I was fooling with things could *see*, and
*then*. Lots more fun than what I was doing on Unix, or the OS/9-68K
box I was working on.
<Now many of you recognize all the symptoms of UNIX-itis, RAM-a-toasus,
<virtual brain damage, and MMU-cancer. I've got 'em all.
RAM-a-toasus can be had for the Amiga, too. The difference is that 4
Meg on a Sun means your windowing system is going to get paged a lot
if you do anything non-trivial, whereas 4 Meg on an Amiga means you've
got *lots* of room. If you took my Amiga back to 512K, it would be a
lousy system to work with. If you did the same to my Sun (huh?), it
probably wouldn't boot.
<My Amiga? Patiently awaits the ASDG gods to deliver an A-2000 expansion
<chassis to stuff an 80meg Hard drive, 68020/68881 + {insert MMU here},
<plus {insert a UNIX name here}, into.
Yeah, I'm trying to decided between an ASDG SDP (when available) or an
Ameristar card to talk to the Sun 3/2?? that's supposed to go into the
house. But meanwhile, I've got a system that is *fun* to work on.
<Then again with the price of the Sun 3/50 at ~$5k.... maybe in a few
<years.......
Avoid the 3/50 like the plague!!!! No expandability. Go with a 3/60 if
at all possible. Either that, or try to find a 3/75 or something
similar (something with room for more memory).
<ST vs. Amiga? Bull pucky! I learned a hard (and expensive) lesson
<in the difference between 'consumer electronics' vs. 'personal computers
<(workstations?)'.
I disagree. The Amiga does everything I expect a workstation to do.
Only problem is the lack of a really large screen. But morerows gives
me something I can live with. Of course, NeWS would breath new live
into Sun, except I'm having to much fun on the Amiga to play much with
NeWS.
<mike
--
And then up spoke his own dear wife, Mike Meyer
Never heard to speak so free. mwm@berkeley.edu
"I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips, ucbvax!mwm
Than you or your finery." mwm@ucbjade.BITNETrogerh@arizona.edu (Roger Hayes) (09/16/87)
Yeah I agree; I get to use a Sun 2/50 (gack!) at work. It is not nearly as good a machine as my A500 -- the user interface is not as good, not *nearly* as flexible, and it swallows half a meg of disk space for every program it's linked with. And it's shockingly slow compared to the Amiga. When I grab a word with the mouse, I have to *wait* to see if I grabbed the right word -- the selection and repaint take perceptible time. The Sun has a bigger screen and NFS -- two important wins. But I find I'm more productive at home with my Amiga than at work with the Sun. I'm not too sure about the benefits of NeWS, either. It's a great concept, but will Sun follow through? The company has a sad history of dropping ideas in the half-baked stage. Is NeWS the third or fourth user interface they've released? And, although I've promised myself not to get a compiler for the Amiga until my dissertation is done, the Amiga operating system is much cleaner than SunOS. Only natural -- SunOS is the result of a process of accretion which started in 1976 (?). Roger Hayes rogerh@arizona.edu
hcm@hpclla.UUCP (09/17/87)
Another tangential comment: After seeing the AMIGA run with a hard disk and a 19" long-persistence monitor in interlace mode, it was real hard to go back to my 1080...sigh. Didn't have the resolution (or raw compute power) of a Sun-class machine, but otherwise was extremely appealing! Harry Muttart (Personal opinion strikes again.)
mike@ames.arpa (Mike Smithwick) (09/19/87)
[eat this!]
I have a Sun 3/160 I spend most of my days on. The non-flicker monitor
is nice, but I still can't get DropShadow to work on it :-).
Virtual memory is nice too, but a necessity with those beastly Sunviews programs
("Hello World" +lsunview > 1/2 meg, can you spell "S W A P"?).
Suns have their merits, but dammit, the Amiga is so much more fun!! And I
can have one at home too. There ain't no marble madness out for the Sun,
and if there was, it would probably be 1/10th the speed (jerk-roll-jerk-
roll-page-page-page-swappity-swap-swap), no music, and cost $495 plus $200 for
training.
(hey chuck, how 'bout an Amiga emulator to turn the Sun into a Real Computer)
*** mike ***
[the guy not in the cape]
--
*** mike (powered by M&Ms) smithwick ***
"ever felt like life was a game, and
someone gave you the wrong instruction book?"
[discalimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (09/19/87)
In article <5106@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes: >In article <734@elmgate.UUCP> jdg@aurora.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) writes: > ><My Amiga? Patiently awaits the ASDG gods to deliver an A-2000 expansion ><chassis to stuff an 80meg Hard drive, 68020/68881 + {insert MMU here}, ><plus {insert a UNIX name here}, into. I'm waiting for that rumoured $30 German 68020 board, and I have been told I can borrow a 155 MB drive from work. ><ST vs. Amiga? Bull pucky! I learned a hard (and expensive) lesson ><in the difference between 'consumer electronics' vs. 'personal computers ><(workstations?)'. > >I disagree. The Amiga does everything I expect a workstation to do. >Only problem is the lack of a really large screen. But morerows gives >me something I can live with. Of course, NeWS would breath new live >into Sun, except I'm having to much fun on the Amiga to play much with >NeWS. Yeah, A big screen would be nice, as would "true" color. NeWS would be kind of nice for the Amiga too. There are tradeoffs between the Apollo and the Amiga, each has its points, the Apollo has a nice distributed fie system, the Amiga has faster graphics than any Apollo I've used (I ran Matts Bouncing Beziers on various Apollos, none of them are as fast as Amy :-). Major difference seems to be that the Apollo doesnt GURU! You get "Access violation" instead. Ah, the joys of protected memory. > <mike (P.S. In case the original poster ticked anybody off, go into comp.sys.atari.st,he was much less kind, he, uhh, basically reamed Atari with a wire brush :-) -- Richard J. Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard "It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition..."