Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com (12/22/88)
A.J. Yarusso writes: >Most people who criticize Atari's don't have an Atari and are VERY >biased... oh well, such is life. I've found that generally people who criticize Atari machines who DON'T own an Atari machine are generally mis-informed, ill-informed, or just plain ignorant of the capabilities of the machines. Many times they just can't believe that a "game machine" can be capable of much more than playing "Pac-Man". When shown the true capabilities, many times they are quick to show an interest, especially when they find out just how inexpensive that kind of power can be. The problem comes when they don't want to be bothered learning what an Atari computer can do. A lot of times, they'll say that if it was any good, they would have heard about it before... and there's the true problem... the manufacturer of what is arguably the BEST value in low cost computers does NOT, for whatever reason, tell the world about their machines. It falls to "evangalists" to spread the word, and it's an uphill battle.. Among people who DO own Atari computers, you'll ALMOST NEVER hear them criticize the MACHINE itself... BobR
stephen@plx.UUCP (Stephen Heath ) (12/23/88)
In article <12835@cup.portal.com>, Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes: > A.J. Yarusso writes: > Among people who DO own Atari computers, you'll ALMOST NEVER hear them > criticize the MACHINE itself... > > BobR I agree. I DO own an Atari and IT did do most of the things I wanted it to do. I DID DO a lot of shopping before I bought it 2.5 years ago. But the promised additions to it and the sometimes BETTER THAN THOU SOAP BOX STYLE of the people at Atari and those who represent them on this net has ended this evangelist's support. I've owned Atari for 6 years and I doubt that I'll ever buy another one and will influence my associates to not buy one either! I'm tired of being the VERY LAST ONE, yes the VERY LAST ONE as a consumer to whom atari lends an ear and tries to satify. They are interested in if I'm satified only and only if it affects their bottom line to any major amount. And if it doesn't affect their bottom line they couldn't care less. SCH An X-evangelist and letting everyone know about it X-customer! stephen@plx.UUCP sun!plx!stephen Apply Standard Disclaimer. As in I'm responsible for this and not the company I work for!! ( Atari needs this or they threaten to sue your company!!!!! )
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/27/88)
In article <12835@cup.portal.com>, Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes: > A.J. Yarusso writes: > >Most people who criticize Atari's don't have an Atari and are VERY > >biased... oh well, such is life. Well, I own two Atari 800s and an Amiga 1000. I have had an Atari 520ST and an MS-DOS machine (Tandy 1000HD). By that logic I should be unbiased and have an evenly balanced viewpoint. I don't. My opinion of the Atari ST, due to my experience with mine, is that it is a poorly-thought-out hack, and the spiritual descendant of the Commodore-64. It's worse than teh C=64, because much of that machines limitations are the result of when and how it was produced. When the ST came out, there were at least two decent operating systems for the 68000 available: OS/9 and Tripos. Why they went with Gem-DOS I have no idea. Programming on the ST is exactly like programming on the IBM-PC, except that there are fewer tools available, and more bugs to work around. After a couple of months of struggling the ST went into storage and I financed an Amiga. > the true problem... the manufacturer of what is arguably the BEST value > in low cost computers does NOT, for whatever reason, tell the world about > their machines. It falls to "evangalists" to spread the word, and it's > an uphill battle.. That's true. Commodore has done a lousy job of advertising the Amiga. How nice of you to notice. (Yes, I know he's talking about the ST. I don't know why... Atari has done a very good job advertising the ST, with much more frequent and affective advertisements than Commodore) > Among people who DO own Atari computers, you'll ALMOST NEVER hear them > criticize the MACHINE itself... Well, you've heard it now. The hardware is unexceptional, and the operating system (if you can call it that) is only exceptional in its intellectual poverty. If it had been well designed in the first place, people wouldn't need to make the sorts of hacks that Allan Pratt so despises. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net
jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) (12/28/88)
Peter da Silva (peter@sugar.uu.net) writes: >Well, I own two Atari 800s and an Amiga 1000. I have had an Atari 520ST and >an MS-DOS machine (Tandy 1000HD). I own an 800 and a 520. I've programmed both machines extensively as well as machines from IBM (RT, PC), Apple (//e, Mac), DEC (VAX/VMS, Ultrix), Sun (SunOS/X11) and various others. > By that logic I should be unbiased and have >an evenly balanced viewpoint. I don't. My opinion of the Atari ST, due to >my experience with mine, is that it is a poorly-thought-out hack, and the >spiritual descendant of the Commodore-64. I think your statement is probably false. I totally agree with your assessment of the ST so I think that your viewpoint is evenly balanced and unbiased. "Fair" does not mean "without opinion." My 800 is a very useful game machine, a gem for its time. My 520ST is a terminal emulator/file storage device. To be fair, if I owned an IBM PC it would probably serve the same purpose. Actually to be really fair that's probably about the only thing I'd use anything for unless it ran some form of Berkeley Unix. :-) (Well, maybe I'd use an Amiga for a frame buffer :-) :-) ) Go ahead and flame me, this subject is now in my kill file (electronic asbestos).
mgh@ho4cad.ATT.COM (01/01/89)
> It's worse than teh C=64, because much of that machines limitations are the > result of when and how it was produced. When the ST came out, there were at > least two decent operating systems for the 68000 available: OS/9 and Tripos. > Why they went with Gem-DOS I have no idea. > Either you never owned a C-64 or have a very short memory. The C-64 is no comparison to the ST. If anything it has a tough time being considered the equal to the Atari 8bit line. > Programming on the ST is exactly like programming on the IBM-PC, except that > there are fewer tools available, and more bugs to work around. After a couple > of months of struggling the ST went into storage and I financed an Amiga. I can only guess that you do not have any good software stores avaiable to you that sell ST software. I find lots of programming utilities available for the ST. Far more than I can find for my Amiga. My main source for utilities for the Amiga is thru mail order and not local software houses. As far as comparing the two machines op sys, I find GEM totally superior to Workbench. It is much more friendly and easier to work with. As far as CLI is concerned, I find third party ST stuff far better than either Amiga 1.2 or 1.3. I also get far more Amiga GURU's tha ST bombs. There is no way ever I would mothball my ST, I am too happy with it and feel very comfortable using it. Matt Hetman
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/05/89)
I claimed that the Atari ST was worse than the C=64, because with benefit of more experience and they (The Tramiel Bunch, now called Atari) still went with a unique proprietary O/S (GEMdos, from Digital Research). In article <428@ho7cad.ATT.COM>, mgh@ho4cad.ATT.COM writes: > Either you never owned a C-64 or have a very short memory. The C-64 is no > comparison to the ST. If anything it has a tough time being considered the > equal to the Atari 8bit line. This is true, and I'll give you the Apple-II as well. But then this is also true of the Atari ST. The Jay Miner Bunch (Amiga) are still ahead of the Tramiell Bunch, and the Bad Apples (Apple) have less desirable hardware but make up for it in other areas. Now, I continue with: > > Programming on the ST is exactly like programming on the IBM-PC, except that > > there are fewer tools available, and more bugs to work around. After a couple > > of months of struggling the ST went into storage and I financed an Amiga. > I can only guess that you do not have any good software stores avaiable to you > that sell ST software. I don't know. Is the Floppy Wizard in Houston good? They seem to have plenty of titles. The ones I saw and tried out were almost all toys. Dave Beckmeyer's shell was the one exception. > I find lots of programming utilities available for the ST. As many as on the IBM-PC? (go back and read what I said, above). If you want to compare the Amiga to the ST, can you run PM while debugging a multitasking MIDI utility or a well-behaved videogame? Where's the source code debuggers? How about REXX? Or the midi.library? You couldn't *write* a program like the midi library on the ST. On the Amiga it's shareware. > Far more than I can find for my Amiga. What do you need? I'll be happy to help you find some. I find Fred Fish supplies most of my needs, though. Most of my software budget, such as it is, has gone to Manx. > My main source for utilities for the > Amiga is thru mail order and not local software houses. I don't buy anything but games from local software houses, even when they have the products I want. Simple economics, coupled with the fact that I know more about the product than they do... on any machine. > As far as comparing the two machines op sys, I find GEM totally superior to > Workbench. It is much more friendly and easier to work with. That's why I wrote Browser. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/05/89)
Oh yes, let's get some terms straight. In article <428@ho7cad.ATT.COM>, mgh@ho4cad.ATT.COM writes: > As far as comparing the two machines op sys, I find GEM totally superior to > Workbench.... Neither the GEM desktop on the ST nor the Workbench on the Amiga have anything to do with the operating system: Amiga ST Mac IBM User Workbench GEM Desktop Finder COMMAND.COM interface or (shell) CLI User Intuition GEM Toolbox none interface (library) File system AmigaDOS CP/M-68K MacOS MS-DOS Operating Amiga EXEC none none none system (kernel) Library Amiga EXEC none Resource none manager manager Operating Libraries D/As D/As TSRs system Drivers Resources extensions Handlers Multitasking Inherent Third party, Multifinder Windows partial. Switcher Third party, partial. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/06/89)
In article <3216@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Oh yes, let's get some terms straight. > > Amiga ST Mac IBM > >User Workbench GEM Desktop Finder COMMAND.COM >interface or >(shell) CLI Fair enough, though you don't list "third party" here for the ST. Gulam is very powerful, and there's also the CRAFT programming environment. > >User Intuition GEM Toolbox none >interface >(library) > >File system AmigaDOS CP/M-68K MacOS MS-DOS Actually, I'd say the ST filesystem looks identical to MS-DOS. I suppose we can let that slide, since MS-DOS evolved from CP/M anyway... > >Operating Amiga EXEC none none none >system >(kernel) You're being somewhat of a bigot here. An operating system manages system resources on behalf of a user, as a most basic definition. Since all of these machines have, at the very least, code to allocate memory, control access to physical devices, etc., then by definition they do have operating systems, however limited or primitive. The ST has somewhat more comprehensive a system than either the Mac or PC, since it also utilizes memory protection and tries to maintain a distinction between user and supervisor mode. I don't know enough about the Amiga to compare, though it obviously must also support these features or else the much-crowed-about inherent multitasking would be a crock. > >Library Amiga EXEC none Resource none >manager manager Please define library manager. I've seen the Mac resource manager. It's an interesting idea, but intolerably slow. I suppose it corresponds to the Apollo library manager, or MACH's shared libraries. Dynamic linking is definitely a nice thing. There's a "third party" PD package that implements this on the ST, which seems to do the trick very nicely. As such, I find this "none" entry for the ST to also be incorrect. > >Operating Libraries D/As D/As TSRs >system Drivers Resources >extensions Handlers You fail to mention MSDOS device drivers. Shame shame shame. TOS also allows for TSRs, which is basically what device drivers are. Just because the folks at Atari aren't pointing things out to your attention doesn't mean they don't exist. In this case, I think your own words are somewhat appropriate - "programming an ST is like programming a PC." The same techniques, or ideas at least, apply. I suppose, before going much further, you should also define your terms some more - what do you mean by "libraries, drivers, and handlers"? I'm assuming you're using terms specific to Amiga parlance, and not just the usual meanings of "device driver," in which case I would say "driver" and "handler" were synonymous. > >Multitasking Inherent Third party, Multifinder Windows > partial. Switcher Third party, > partial. This would follow, given your assertion that the Amiga has an operating system and none of the other machines do, since multi-tasking is a feature of an operating system. However, your entries here would tend to conflict with the previous entry. Too bad. Also, the ST operating system is really more than you would lead others to believe. It's called GEMDOS, after all, to imply that the graphics environment aspect is really intrinsic to the system as a whole. And though the GEM desktop is simply a user interface, the Graphics Envuironment Manager is really a part of the operating system, and performs ("partial") multitasking management. Inherently. I grant you that it's very limited, but it provides most of the features one would expect from a full multi-user multitasking system, including IPC primitives and job control. Not to say that things are all perfect or wonderful in the ST world, but they're certainly as crippled as you make things sound. There's a lot of delay loops in TOS that would have to be rewritten before it could handle multitasking more flexibly. There are lots of things I'd like it to do that it doesn't, but it's not impossible to implement these by oneself. Finally, much of this is only of great import to a hacker. An application user doesn't care if GEM is the operating system or if a mouse click will generate an asynchronous interrupt to resume a suspended task. And for programming, there are few systems I've seen that provide a more powerful and flexible environment. Sure, it irks me that I can't pop up Uniterm while I'm compiling something. Big deal, it doesn't take very long to compile stuff anyway. Fast filesystems are nice that way. That's also an interesting point you fail to summarize in your table - the ST and PC disk I/O are probably the fastest around. I'd venture to say the Amigas comes in next, and the Mac last, though the Mac may very well be faster for all I know. (I *know*, for a fact that the ST disk I/O is faster than the Amigas. Even with identical devices, like a freshly formatted Quantum 80S.) Even my Sun 3-260 with SMD disk controller is hard pressed to deliver the same kind of performance. (On second thought, no, it zips along pretty well too.) Speed is something that's more commonly talked about, true? I mean, speed is noticed by anyone, hacker or application user. And while an ST may not be faster than an AT clone with 20MHz 80286 installed, it's easily the fastest of the three (ST, Mac, Amiga). I suppose I could spend the bucks for an Amiga 2000 with 68020, but I'd still be stuck with a machine with slow disks... (And when you're compiling code, it's disk speed that matters, unless you happen to be using Turbo C or something...) >-- >Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. >...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U` Sorry for the length... -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/06/89)
In article <538@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> I write: >Not to say that things are all perfect or wonderful in the ST world, but they're >certainly as crippled as you make things sound. There's a lot of delay loops in Just in case people get the wrong idea... Yes, I accidentally omitted the word "not" up there... Brain got ahead of the fingers and they dropped a packet, I guess... >TOS that would have to be rewritten before it could handle multitasking more >flexibly. There are lots of things I'd like it to do that it doesn't, but it's >not impossible to implement these by oneself. -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems
david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) (01/07/89)
In article <3213@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Now, I continue with: >> > Programming on the ST is exactly like programming on the IBM-PC, except that >> > there are fewer tools available, and more bugs to work around. After a couple >> > of months of struggling the ST went into storage and I financed an Amiga. I don't want to start a long debate becuase this has a lot to do with personal prefereneces, but in this case I have to stick up for the ST. I find I like developing on the ST *much* more than ugly IBM-PC's. The PC is a royal pain what with it's segments and 640K limitations and DOS memory management problems etc. etc. The ST has the nice 68000 CPU architecture, lot's of RAM if you want, and a pretty good bunch of UNIX(tm)-like development tools and reasonable C compilers and debuggers. Many of the fancy PC debuggers I've used (e.g. CodeView) are such memory hogs that you can't use them to debug large applications on a 640K machine. And credit Atari becuase I think you get more done on the ST using "legitimate" techniques (especially BIOS/XBIOS) system calls than on the PC where you find you have to "cheat" a lot (although the PC has a lot "legitimate" ways to "cheat", if that makes any sense). Not to mention all the PC C compiler bugs... -- David Beckemeyer (david@bdt.UUCP) | "Lester Moore - Four slugs from a .44 Beckemeyer Development Tools | no Les, no more." 478 Santa Clara Ave. Oakland, CA 94610 | - Headstone at Boot Hill UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax}!unisoft!bdt!david | Tombstone, AZ
walkerb@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Brian Walker) (01/07/89)
In article <3216@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Oh yes, let's get some terms straight. >[...] Please guys, don't start a flame war here. If you have to reply to this topic please do so directly. Use the mail. Brian Walker, University of Colorado at Boulder walkerb@tramp.colorado.edu ...!{ncar,nbires}!boulder!tramp!walkerb A person who claims that absolute zero is impossible to obtain has not taken a quiz in thermo yet.
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/08/89)
In article <538@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>, hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: > In article <3216@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > >Oh yes, let's get some terms straight. [ and then I went a bit off the deep end ] [shells] > Fair enough, though you don't list "third party" here for the ST. Gulam is > very powerful, and there's also the CRAFT programming environment. I tend not to include third party stuff. I haven't found any third-party shells worth the hassles (incompatibilities with batch files, and stuff). Are all ST shells batch-file compatible? [filesystem] > Actually, I'd say the ST filesystem looks identical to MS-DOS. I suppose > we can let that slide, since MS-DOS evolved from CP/M anyway... You're right. It is an MS-DOS derivitive. CP/M-68K was too slow, and rather than tune it to make it faster they re-did it from scratch. I don't know if that was a good idea, but it may have been the only option. [O/S] > You're being somewhat of a bigot here. An operating system manages system > resources on behalf of a user, as a most basic definition. My basic definition of an O/S is that it manages all the resources available to the user. If it doesn't have a scheduler (i.e., doesn't manage CPU time) it's not what I'd call an O/S. I waited 6 years for a computer with an O/S, though I expected that it'd be running UNIX. > The ST has somewhat more comprehensive a system > than either the Mac or PC, since it also utilizes memory protection and tries > to maintain a distinction between user and supervisor mode. I used to think so, too, but according to people who've done O/S work on the ST it doesn't have any useful memory protection for multitasking. > I don't know enough > about the Amiga to compare, though it obviously must also support these > features or else the much-crowed-about inherent multitasking would be a crock. Which features? Amiga programs run in user mode. There is no way, on a bare 68000, to protect programs from each other. Like the ST, the Amiga does protect the operating system itself. > Please define library manager. I've seen the Mac resource manager. It's an > interesting idea, but intolerably slow. OK. On the Amiga everything is handled by libraries and intertask communication. All "os calls" are made by calling libraries and sending messages to tasks (using the message-passing routines in exec.library). To open a library (say, graphics.library), you call the routine in the exec.library "OpenLibrary". It returns the base of a jump-table for that library. Exec.library itself has a jump table with a known address. If the library you want to use is on disk, it loads it in. When everyone using a library finally closes it, it's marked as unused and may be purged if its memory is needed. > There's a "third party" PD package that implements this on the ST, > which seems to do the trick very nicely. As such, I find this "none" entry for > the ST to also be incorrect. I'm sure you can find third-party PD packages for all these things... but a developer can't depend on the user having them available... so they have to keep on duplicating the code. > You fail to mention MSDOS device drivers. Shame shame shame. Sorry. > TOS also allows for TSRs, which is basically what device drivers are. Not really. On the Amiga a device driver is just another program... but one that accepts and handles a certain set of packets. > what do you mean by "libraries, drivers, and handlers"? Libraries: see above. Drivers: These handle physical devices, and are accessed by the dos library. Handlers: These handle virtual devices, such as the timer or windows (each console window is a virtual terminal). > This would follow, given your assertion that the Amiga has an operating system > and none of the other machines do, since multi-tasking is a feature of an > operating system. However, your entries here would tend to conflict with the > previous entry. Too bad. Yeh. Well, like I said, I kind of went off the deep end. I was just pissed at the people who were using the term "operating system" to refer to anything from a user interface (GEM Desktop, or the Amiga Workbench or CLI), to a file system (MS-DOS, AmigaDOS), to a programming interface. > Also, the ST operating system is really more than you would lead others to > believe. It's called GEMDOS, after all, to imply that the graphics environment > aspect is really intrinsic to the system as a whole. This is one of the really amazing things about the ST and the Mac. They started with what's really an incidental part of an operating system (the user interface) and made it central to the whole machine. The amount of twisted logic you send up with is amazing... witness the recent Mac engineer on comp.sys.next who couldn't understand how UNIX windowing systems (and the Amiga windowing system, for that matter) handled refresh without involving the program. > And though the GEM desktop > Finally, much of this is only of great import to a hacker. An application user > doesn't care if GEM is the operating system or if a mouse click will generate > an asynchronous interrupt to resume a suspended task. It does make a difference. Like the computer novice, with an Amiga, who didn't comprehend why someone would *want* a desk acessory... "Can't you just run your print in the background and click up something else while it's going on?" > Speed is something that's more commonly talked about, true? Perceived speed. People don't mind a database taking 10% longer to look something up if you can still use the computer while it's doing it. WHen you talk about speed, you're really talking about responsiveness. And the Amiga is the most responsive machine I have ever used. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (01/08/89)
Peter's comments prefaced by } Howard's by > In article <538@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> (Howard Chu) writes: } }Operating Amiga EXEC none none none }system }(kernel) > You're being somewhat of a bigot here. An operating system manages system > resources on behalf of a user, as a most basic definition. Since all of these > machines have, at the very least, code to allocate memory, control access to > physical devices, etc., then by definition they do have operating systems, > however limited or primitive. My advice is not to get going on this subject, you lose. Under an operating system you ask for something then you use it, one PC's, Mac's and ST's you just use it. For instance, if you want to write write track 0, sector 10 on "non-OS" machine you call the BIOS entry point with some parameters like "Disk in Drive A, Track 0, Sector 10, Data." For the Amiga you have to call OpenDevice() first which will arbitrate your access to the device among other tasks, and then you send your request to the task that is managing the disks. There is a big difference in philosophy. Like memory allocation for instance, you don't have to bother after you know how much is available because no one else is using it. It isn't "bad" that you don't have an OS it just is. It is more like running one big program, parts of it are in ROM and parts of it are in RAM, that is the Mac/ST/PC model. }Multitasking Inherent Third party, Multifinder Windows } partial. Switcher Third party, } partial. >This would follow, given your assertion that the Amiga has an operating system >and none of the other machines do, since multi-tasking is a feature of an >operating system. However, your entries here would tend to conflict with the >previous entry. Too bad. They don't conflict, you just aren't familiar with the terms. Devices and Handlers are separate tasks, each piece of hardware has a device driver associated with it handlers provide the access method. A filesystem is a handler, trackdisk is the floppy disk driver. So in your parlance GemDOS is like the handler and BIOS is like the device driver. The difference being that these are just tasks on the Amiga, currently there are two Handlers for filesystems, the original one and a newer one that hasn't been moved to ROM yet. > Sure, it irks me that I can't pop up Uniterm while I'm compiling > something. Big deal, it doesn't take very long to compile stuff anyway. > Fast filesystems are nice that way. That's also an interesting point > you fail to summarize in your table - the ST and PC disk I/O are > probably the fastest around. And this is where is all breaks down. That second sentence is called a rationalization. When I program I often start up a paint program to design icons, start other compiles, and pass data back and forth between my compiler envrionment and editing environment. Multitasking is a lever that is quite powerful, if it weren't Bill Gates and John Scully wouldn't be trying so damned hard to get it on their systems no? Finally, if you get a chance try the Amiga Fastfilesystem on a Quantum 80S. Try on a freshly formatted one and one that is 80% full. We'll even let you use 16Meg partitions and the Amiga will smoke your eyes. We're talking 800 - 900K bytes/sec transfer rates bud. >Sorry for the length... me too, software wise the Amiga is ways out front. You can also buy a 68020 Amiga today at a dealer near you. Faster than a Mac II and cheaper too. Ask for the 2500. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/09/89)
In article <84396@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >> Sure, it irks me that I can't pop up Uniterm while I'm compiling >> something. Big deal, it doesn't take very long to compile stuff anyway. >> Fast filesystems are nice that way. That's also an interesting point >> you fail to summarize in your table - the ST and PC disk I/O are >> probably the fastest around. > >And this is where is all breaks down. That second sentence is called a >rationalization. When I program I often start up a paint program to design >icons, start other compiles, and pass data back and forth between my compiler >envrionment and editing environment. Multitasking is a lever that is quite >powerful, if it weren't Bill Gates and John Scully wouldn't be trying so >damned hard to get it on their systems no? Finally, if you get a chance True 'nuff. I guess I shouldn't be harping on this point, particularly since I use Minix anyway. (Hey, anyone interested in a port of TOS to a Sun 3-280? Just kidding, really. I think... }-) >try the Amiga Fastfilesystem on a Quantum 80S. Try on a freshly formatted >one and one that is 80% full. We'll even let you use 16Meg partitions >and the Amiga will smoke your eyes. We're talking 800 - 900K bytes/sec >transfer rates bud. Well, we're talking pretty nice, I guess. I've got a Quantum 80S on my machine. I've compared it to an Amiga with the same drive. (At the local computer store, of course.) Copying 1 megabyte files around on a freshly formatted (yes, 16 MB, oh well...) partition. My ST was faster. (Did I say "was?" Still is, too, I think...) Given a sequential read, figure that having to read 1 meg ought to be enough to defeat any speedups due to track caching and such. Though since they were two identical drives, you wouldn't expect any of that to be an issue at all. The Amiga guy at the store suggested that the ST gained from a 1:1 sector interleave. Since the ST DMA controller is supposed to max out at 1MB/sec, you can see that the difference wasn't all that great. But, we clocked the Amiga around 500-600K per second, and the ST at around 700-800K. I suppose this can't really be all that conclusive. After all, it's a mechanical device, prone to inconsistencies from imperfections. (I mean, a couple times the ST clocked at 1 MB per second. Many times it timed in a lot slower, like 500K or so. What can you tell from that? Seek delays? That should only be a couple milliseconds difference, right?) -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems
ecs40hw036@minnie.ucdavis.edu (0000;0000047834;3200;250;205;ecs40hw) (01/18/89)
Every computer user will put up with its quirks eventually, and users are usually loyal to the brand that appeals to them. There are more than adequete software titles and programs for the Atari and the Amiga. But, Atari ST is more of a solid, computer aimed for the user because GEM has less quirks than Workbench and it uses more reliable chips. The Amiga, on the other hand, is more well suited for specialized uses less MIDI, which is the ST's strong suit. However, I like the ST because of certain personal reasons... Ever since Pong came out, Atari developed a unique personality. The 2600 represented a elegant stroke of ingenuity, more so than Coleco in its day. Other machines had more power, but the 2600 sold. Atari users knew their game systems were inferior, but they remained loyal. Then came the opinion of the masses... When the 400 and 800 came out, and the loyal Atarians or would-be hackers picked it up, others would say, why not Apple? Or why not IBM? You mean you bought a $1000 game machine? From the beginning, Atarians had to defend themselves to death wherever they tread, unless of course, it was safe Atari territory. A sort of brotherhood developed amongst Atarians that stood together through the failed Morgan stint, the 7800, the Marie, the invincible days of '82, the days when it seemed Atari would meet an early grave in 83, the 1400XL, and finally, the somewhat rebirth of Atari with the ST. Of course, some Atari users are unaware of this, but there is a core of truly loyal Atari users who give Atari so much personality. That is why I am an Atarian. -Andy