GU.KOPEC@SCIENCE (Mark Kopec) (09/14/87)
I'm currently trying to decide between the A500 and another micro, and would
appreciate your comments on this new product. As a former A1000 owner, I am
well familiar with the outstanding capabilities of the Amiga. In fact, I have
read nearly every book and manual available for it!
The machine will mainly be used for game development, along with some everyday
functions such as word processing. With this in mind:
1) I need a good machine that I can program EASILY in C and Assembly. How
good is Lattice C? Is it easy to use? As one whom has experience with KCC
and Lightspeed C, I must say that I found Manx C horribly difficult to use by
comparison. Will this experience be repeated if I purchase Lattice 4.0?
And which assembler is the preferred choice?
2) To afford the A500 I will have to buy it through mail order. Which mail
orders firms are offering a good price on the machine with speedy delivery?
3) Is any expansion box planned for the A500? I have a few hardware projects
in mind, such as an interface to temperature and humidity sensors. Though
this is of slightly lower priority, it would be nice to have this option.
Unfortunately I cannot afford the A2000.
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/ / /\/ \ Mark Kopec
/ / / \ \ GU.KOPEC@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU
-------daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (09/14/87)
in article <12334424939.21.GU.KOPEC@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU>, GU.KOPEC@SCIENCE (Mark Kopec) says: > > 1) I need a good machine that I can program EASILY in C and Assembly. How > good is Lattice C? Is it easy to use? As one whom has experience with KCC > and Lightspeed C, I must say that I found Manx C horribly difficult to use by > comparison. Will this experience be repeated if I purchase Lattice 4.0? > And which assembler is the preferred choice? Both Manx and Lattice adopt the more UN*X-ish mode of operation; basically an edit-compile-link loop, where compile (or make) is launched from a CLI. I've never used LightSpeed C, but I understand that uses the Borland-style method of compiling and linking from within an editor, which speeds things up considerably. While neither Manx nor Lattice is designed to do this, neither is PCC on UN*X machines, though if you've ever used Gosling's Emacs under UN*X, you get the same effect through editor commands. While I haven't seen a public domain editor that does exactly this yet for the Amiga (Maybe Lattice has added such features into its vi-like editor), I get pretty close just using standard tool. Basically, I fire up an Emacs process and a CLI process. Then I CC or Make, redirecting output to a pipe. Then I click over to the Emacs window, and load the pipe into a buffer. So I end up with errors in one Emacs window, source in another. I have to manually ^XG to the proper line numbers, but it's no big deal. A simple hack to the source of the uEmacs program, or perhaps a macro, could automate this process. The latest entry on the Amiga compiler market, OXXI Modula 2, has such a fully integrated interface, and claims a peak compilation speed of 30K or so, faster than current version of Manx or Lattice (don't know what they're claiming for Lattice 4.0). > > 3) Is any expansion box planned for the A500? I have a few hardware projects > in mind, such as an interface to temperature and humidity sensors. Though > this is of slightly lower priority, it would be nice to have this option. > Unfortunately I cannot afford the A2000. C-A's not making one, but third party companies will certainly be producing A2000-style expansion boxes for A500 machines. > / / /\/ \ Mark Kopec -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The A2000 Guy" PLINK : D-DAVE H BIX : hazy "God, I wish I was sailing again" -Jimmy Buffett