marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco Lesmeister) (08/01/88)
Hello from Holland, One year ago I started my work on a ray-tracing program. This was done on an IBM-AT with a PGC (Professional Graphics Controller?) card in it. This card provided me with a resolution of 640X480 and 4096 colors. This gave me 16 shades of each color Red, Green and Blue. This was really on the edge for nice ray-tracing pictures. Since I graduated and could no longer use this AT, my work kind of stopped and now is the time for me to continue this really exciting work, so I am looking for a computer which is good enough for this kind of work. I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the graphics capabillities. So to all you PC and amiga fans out there, I ask you which solution is better? Greetings, Marco Lesmeister, HP Holland.
jwilson@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM (08/03/88)
The Amiga is an inherently better graphics machine than an IBM. Although you can get graphics cards for an IBM that will give you very good graphics, the Amiga has its capabilites built in. The Amiga also has the advantage of having three coprocessor chips built in designed to speed up and otherwise improve its graphics capabilities. And, the Amiga graphics are not as unexpandable as you think. The 2000 has a special slot designed for video cards (like genlocks, higher-resolution displays, etc.) and Commodore is working on upgraded chip sets for the Amiga that will give it even better graphics. I could write volumes explaining the advantages of the Amiga, but my statements would probably not sway you much, and there are many others who know more than I do. Remember, the Amiga's 704 X 480 ( overscan, interlaced) 4096 (HAM mode) color picture quality graphics are done on a regular RGBI monitor that only costs about $250, instead of a special PGA, VGA, multisync, whatever you need for the IBM high res modes. I'm sure mine is not the only response you'll get. Hope I've helped. Jeff Wilson sometimes of the University of Illinois, sometimes of Gould CSD Software development center-Urbana, always of the Amiga community, always presenting my own and no one else's opionions (but you knew that already, didn't you.)
brickman@cme-durer.ARPA (Jonathan E. Brickman) (08/03/88)
In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco Lesmeister) writes: >I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could >not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. > >So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >graphics capabillities. > >So to all you PC and amiga fans out there, I ask you which solution >is better? I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got available. I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because of three things: (1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. (2) Very limited software availability. (3) Unreliable operating system. However, seeing that an Amiga would end up costing quite a bit less for similar capability, you might want to consider it. Please bear in mind, though, that if you were to go with an AT with a VGA, you would be buying a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with probable future X-Windows on larger machines). Whereas if you were to buy and Amiga, you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable graphics capability (uses interlaced graphics -- hard on the eyes at max resolution), an operating system which crashes roughly three times as frequently as PC-DOS 2.0 (3.3 is much better yet) with corresponding loss of data, work, temper, and possibly disk data, and very limited expandability (limited simply because very few companies build the stuff). If I were you I would go for one of the newest 80386CX chips (CX I think -- I'm talking about a new version of the 80386 chip put out by Intel which is 1/4 the cost at half the speed, but all the compatibility). That way you get all the future expandability and compatibility which exists short of a pure IBM PS/2 or Sun 386i (a beautiful, extremely fast, but rather expensive Unix->Windows->PC-DOS machine; runs faster than the Compaq Deskpro, and that in PC-DOS running OVER Unix! $10,000 up), at minimum price. ||Jonathan E. Brickman
Gary_D_Walborn@cup.portal.com (08/03/88)
BUY AN AMIGA 2000! In addition to HAM mode (at least 640x400 @ 4096 colors) you can get complete PC compatibility with the BridgeCard. I know... I have one. There are a number of ray-trace and fractal generating programs available for the Amiga and processor accelerators abound. I think the choice is an easy one if you are well informed. (I have a PC/AT at work and will take my Amiga any day). Gary Walborn cup.portal.com Phone (work): (216) 758-8323 Plink: GWalborn CIS: 71171,216
ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (08/03/88)
In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco Lesmeister) writes: >I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could >not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. >So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >graphics capabillities. Go with the Amiga. The machine comes with lots of great graphics support that you'll pay oodles for on other machines. For instance, the HAM mode allows you to have 352x512, 4096 color pictures that can be animated at upto 30 frames/second. Try that on an AT graphics card! Hardware is considerably cheaper for the Amiga than for IBMs (or even Macs). Toys such as genlocks, digitizers start at under $150, and with the addition of a cheap VCR and a cheap camera you can have a full desktop video station in addition. Thus you can create home videos while ray tracing in the background (using Amiga's multitasking). And, don't worry about software; Amiga software is reasonably priced, and a lot of good stuff is available in freeware form (on "Fish" disks and other public domain collections, available in Europe as well). You might want to spend $200 on Sculpt 3d + Animate 3d combo for a good ray-tracing/animations package, and that might be all you need to spend. Or you can go crazy and delve into the dozens of other paint/animation/graphics programs... The software is all there, and you won't go broke. Ali Ozer, aozer@next.com
brett@pigpen (Brett S Bourbin) (08/04/88)
I have ALWAYS hated the computer wars on USENET, but I find it very disturbing to read articles like the one I am referring to. Please bear with me while I clear up few points: In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: >In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco >Lesmeister) writes: >>I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >>or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could... >I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got >available. I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because >of three things: >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. It uses from 1 to 5 bitplanes for straight one-to-one bit graphics, which can be located in any part of the CHIP memory (lower 512K now, to be expanded to 1024K) >(2) Very limited software availability. I would not say "very limited". Not nearly the size of the PC software base, but still there are many good titles available. >(3) Unreliable operating system. I don't think you can say that the OS is unreliable, when the only REAL problems happen with software that does not follow the system rules, and even these are down to a small number now. >Please bear in mind, >though, that if you were to go with an AT with a VGA, you would be buying >a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible >graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with >probable future X-Windows on larger machines). Hold on here! "very polished" and "OS/2" in the same sentence? First of all, OS/2 is not totally out yet. I do not want to get into here, by OS/2 is FAR from a polished product. As for X-Windows, Dale Luck was just showing X11 on an Amiga 2000 and I have never heard of a working IBM PC version [besides the RT, which I am running now 8^) ] >...you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- >almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable >graphics capability Well, you can always add a 68020 board to speed up your machine and as for unexpandable graphics, there is a Fatter Agnus chip which DOES expand the graphics capabilities, and cheaply built, you must have been referring to your IBM clones, right? 8^) I own both a Amiga and an IBM PS/2 Model 80, and yes the IBM is a lot faster in some areas but that machine is about 4-5 times the price of my Amiga. Both the IBM PS/2s and the Amigas have there strong and weak points, but I wish people would not make these uneducated statements for which they know very little about. >||Jonathan E. Brickman - Brett __ __ _ __ _ | || | / || || \ Brett S Bourbin | || || || || | INTERNET: brett@PIGPEN.UMD.EDU | || || || || | \_||_/ |__||__||__| Instructional Computing Programs College Park
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (08/04/88)
In article ... brickman@cme-durer.ARPA (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: > (1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. For heavy graphics use, yes. But it gives you more gradations of color in one screen than an 8-bit card. AND you can record your images directly to videotape. > (2) Very limited software availability. Hundreds of packages, particularly in the graphics feild. > (3) Unreliable operating system. Where have you been for the past couple of years? > a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible > graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with An obsolete operating system and a vaporware one. > to buy and Amiga, you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- > almost nothing uses those things anymore), 68020 and 68030 expansion is cheaper than the graphics card for the AT. > a cheaply built and unexpandable > graphics capability (uses interlaced graphics -- hard on the eyes at Graphics expansion cards exist and more are on the way. Interlaced graphics is *necessary* for some applications, such as video. > max resolution), an operating system which crashes roughly three times as > frequently as PC-DOS 2.0 (3.3 is much better yet) with corresponding loss I have never crashed AmigaDOS 1.2 except while developing software. I used to crash PC-DOS all the time, mainly due to trying to run multitasker enhancers to try to get around its limitations. > of data, work, temper, and possibly disk data, and very limited > expandability (limited simply because very few companies build the stuff). You can stick all the PC and AT cards you want in a 2000. And run them concurrently with the 68000 (or even 68030). > If I were you I would go for one of the newest 80386CX chips (CX I think -- If you can afford an 80386 you can afford a CSA 68030 (yes, 030) card. The 68000 is slightly faster than an 80286. The 68020 is 80386 class. The 68030 is beyond anything intel has to offer. The 80286 is *not* in a class with the 68000, though, because of the overhead involved in dealing with objects greater than 64K. As an extreme example, Byte demonstrated that the seive benchmark slowed down by a factor of 11 when the array passed the 64K mark. Ray traced images are typically much larger than 64K. If you're going to use an 80386 in 80386 mode, you're going to have to run UNIX... it's the only real 80386 operating system out. You won't want to use any of your PC-DOS software in that environment. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?
ltf@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Lance Franklin) (08/04/88)
In article <2962@umd5.umd.edu> brett@pigpen.UMD.EDU (Brett S Bourbin) writes: >In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: >>In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco >>Lesmeister) writes: >>>I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >>>or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could... >>I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got >>available. I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because >>of three things: ... >>(2) Very limited software availability. >I would not say "very limited". Not nearly the size of the PC software base, >but still there are many good titles available. And I would guess that the software base in the area that Marco is looking for (computer graphics, animation, etc.) is probably larger, more versatile and less expensive for the Amiga than the AT...try and find animation programs, ray tracers, paint programs for the VGA...nowhere near as much available, and what is available costs an arm and a leg. And once you get it on a VGA screen, what do you do with it? You certainly can't put it on videotape without some expensive equipment. No, if you want desktop video for the IBM, the only answer right now is the AT&T Targa board, and we're talking big bucks for both hardware and software (although I must admit, if you can afford it, the Targa is worth it...very nice!) Lance -- +-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+ | Lance T Franklin | | I never said that! It must be some kind of a | | ltf@killer.DALLAS.TX.US | | forgery...I gotta change that password again. | +-------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (08/04/88)
In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes:
A lot of stuff that is just plain wrong. Email me if you want details.
--
AI is a shell game.
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone}!gryphon!richardrichard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (08/04/88)
Another consideration is that software for the Amiga is about 1/4 - 1/5
the price of PC or Mac ][ software.
Go figure.
--
AI is a shell game.
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone}!gryphon!richardlishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) (08/04/88)
In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: >In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco >Lesmeister) writes: >>I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >>or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could >>not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. >> >>So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >>monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >>should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >>graphics capabillities. >> >>So to all you PC and amiga fans out there, I ask you which solution >>is better? I am replying for one purpose only: to give a bit more "balanced" picture of the Amiga. The comments made by Mr. Brickman seem to be those of a person who does not quite know the Amiga, although I could be wrong. Anyhow, I think he is a bit heavy-handed in his criticisms of the Amiga. Please note that I am not a graphics expert by any means, and these are only my humble opinions. >I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got >available. I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because >of three things: >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. I am not sure what Mr. Brickman means by this. The strangest color-mapping strategy on the Amiga is HAM mode (Hold-And-Modify mode), which uses a "trick" to allow up to the full 4096 colors on the screen at once, using only 6 bit-planes. All other modes are "mapped" into ram by using from 1 to 5 bit-planes, using straightforward bit-maps. >(2) Very limited software availability. In some areas, this is certainly true. However, in the "Desktop Video" area, I think that the Amiga probably has as much *good* software as any other machine with decent graphics capabilities. I would look into the specific software you will be running, and check out what is available on *both* machines. >(3) Unreliable operating system. Funny, I am writing this message from a 1-meg Amiga 1000, and the OS seems to be running fine. Granted, the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine *without* inter-process memory protection, but it is not as bad as Mr. Brickman makes it out to be. The places where I get into trouble most (i.e. the machine crashes) is when I am writing C programs, and a pointer gets out of hand. However, this has happened on every micro I ever used, including MS-DOS machines. I have used DPaint II quite a bit in the past week. It did not crash the machine. I was also using a vt100 emulator and other software at the same time. The OS ran fine. I am not sure where Mr. Brickman is getting his information. >However, seeing that an Amiga would end up costing quite a bit less for >similar capability, you might want to consider it. Please bear in mind, >though, that if you were to go with an AT with a VGA, you would be buying >a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible True. The IBM will offer you more support, because there are more IBM's and compatibles out there by far. This is not to be taken lightly, and should be seriously considered while choosing between the two machines. >graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with >probable future X-Windows on larger machines). Whereas if you were Two "popular" operating systems is somewhat of a misnomer. PC-DOS is a popular operating system; I don't think OS/2 can be called that yet, as it is not yet finished. Besides, a friend of mine who develops on 80386 IBM's for a Medical/Laboratory Software/Hardware house just got the "latest" version of OS/2, which (he claims) requires 6 *megabytes* of RAM to run. Even if it only requires half of that, there is something wrong. By the way, I saw a running X-Windows on the Amiga two weeks ago. As I understand it, X-Windows will run on my 1 megabyte Amiga right now. No need for "larger machines". >to buy and Amiga, you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- >almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable Hmmmmm...a Macintosh (*not* the Mac II) uses a 68000. One can buy accelerator boards for Amigas as well (68020, 68030 in the future). Plus one can replace the 68000 with a 68010, although the speedup is less than impressive (about 5% faster). Also, there is one point that Mr. Brickman failed to mention...the Amiga uses custom hardware chips to do most of the intensive graphics processing. In most micros this is done by the main CPU. The effect in the Amiga is that the 68000 CPU is freed from having to do the graphics processing, so it can do more of the "other" operations that a CPU normally does (i.e. running programs, OS related tasks, etc.). Therefore, even though the Amiga uses an 8mhz 68000 (well, 7.71mhz I believe), it is not tied up doing intensive graphics chores, resulting in a "faster" machine. >graphics capability (uses interlaced graphics -- hard on the eyes at >max resolution), an operating system which crashes roughly three times as >frequently as PC-DOS 2.0 (3.3 is much better yet) with corresponding loss >of data, work, temper, and possibly disk data, and very limited >expandability (limited simply because very few companies build the stuff). The graphics capabilities on the Amiga were designed to be NTSC compatible...somthing you can't get with a VGA board. Therefore, you can (with a GenLock device) do things such as merge standard NTSC video with the computer graphics (i.e. the NTSC video image becomes the "background" color). Granted, hardware probably exists to do this with a VGA, but I doubt if it is as inexpensive as with an Amiga. The interlaced display does flicker (and I also find it annoying), but you can get hardware to fix this so there will be no flickering, although it isn't cheap ($550 for a "Flicker-Fixer"). The OS does crash...I have never used an OS on a micro that didn't. It does probably crash more often if you do certain things, like write your own C code. However, an MS-DOS machine will do that too. There are commercial programs out for the Amiga that do crash the machine because they are poorly written; however, I have used poorly written software for the Macintosh and IBM that does the same thing. There is well written software available for the Amiga which doesn't crash the machine, just like with IBM's and Macintoshes. The amount of crashing an OS does is dependent on what you do on *any* micro (at this point). Personally, I do not have many crashes at all when I use normal, commercial software. I do get crashes when I am programming in C. I recommend using both OS's with the software you intend to buy to see whether or not each OS crashes. If you don't want crashes too often, get a machine with protected memory (like a Unix box). As for "expandibility," there are new versions of the graphics chips coming out RSN (real-soon-now...take it for what it is worth). These chips will expand the amount of graphics memory available to a maximum of 1 megabyte (hey, that's more than MS-DOS can address!). A new higher resolution graphics mode may also be introduced, although this is not certain. However, yet-another-thing which Mr. Brickman failed to mention is that the various graphics modes on the Amiga are all built into the machine...no need for different graphics cards (VGA, CGA, EGA, Hercules, etc.). The modes available are: 320x200, 320X400, 640x200, 640x400, HAM (Hold-and-Modify). Different modes have different maximum colors on screen at once, from a maximum of 32 colors in 320x200 to a maximum to 16 colors in 640x400 to 4096 colors in HAM mode (with limitations). [Graphics modes with vertical resolution of 400 or greater are in interlaced mode.] Granted, it isn't as good as the Mac II's 256 colors from a palette of 16 million, but I don't think a VGA is either (although I am not sure). Also, the Amiga's OS is written to accept 1024x1024 screens. I saw a 1024x800 resolution monitor two weeks ago running the standard OS. The monitor is due on the market "soon," according to Commodore. Also, Amiga's will work in "Overscan" modes (I am not sure if VGA cards do that; they might). This means that the graphics modes can be "larger" than the standard sizes, and the resulting display will *not* have a border (as with many machines); the picture will look like a TV's picture, with the actual image continuing off of the CRT. Typical resolutions are 700x250 instead of 640x200; overscan can be used in any of the graphics modes. A final point: the Amiga 2000 computer has a "video slot" inside it. Boy, I wonder what this is for! Yes, it is there to allow for expanded graphics capabilities in the future. Currently, I do not think anyone has made any products for this slot, but it *is* there (again, take this for what it is worth). >If I were you I would go for one of the newest 80386CX chips (CX I think -- >I'm talking about a new version of the 80386 chip put out by Intel which >is 1/4 the cost at half the speed, but all the compatibility). That way >you get all the future expandability and compatibility which exists short of >a pure IBM PS/2 or Sun 386i (a beautiful, extremely fast, but rather >expensive Unix->Windows->PC-DOS machine; runs faster than the Compaq >Deskpro, and that in PC-DOS running OVER Unix! $10,000 up), at minimum >price. If you are going to spend that kind of money, you could buy a Mac II. Or an IBM with a Targa board. There is always something better (yeah, I'll get a Pixar workstation, yeah, that's the ticket!). One other point which Mr. Brickman forgot to mention: MS-DOS machines are limited to 640k of accessible RAM (although more can be added as a RAM disk). Amigas are not. If you like, you can have an 8 megabyte Amiga. However, on the Amiga, the graphics chips can only access certain portions of the memory...currently the limit is 512k, but this will increase to 1 megabyte in the future (with the graphics chips upgrade. When MS-DOS is replaced by OS/2, the 640k restriction will be lifted. These are items to consider. If you have a limit on your budget, look closely at the Amiga and IBM. The Amiga is not all as bad as Mr. Brickman has made it out to be; I hope I have gotten that across in this article. However, there are a lot of IBM's out there, which is an important consideration. The Amiga will not be as expensive, though, and it has some pretty nice graphics, ray-tracing, and animation software available for it right now. Find a good dealer or user's group for *both* machines, and try each of them out. No matter which machine you go for, you are going to be paying a lot of money, so shop wisely! >||Jonathan E. Brickman -Chris -- Christopher Lishka ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu Immunology Section (608)262-1617 lishka@uwslh.uucp ---- "...Just because someone is shy and gets straight A's does not mean they won't put wads of gum in your arm pits." - Lynda Barry, "Ernie Pook's Commeek: Gum of Mystery"
jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) (08/05/88)
In article <7826@cup.portal.com> Gary_D_Walborn@cup.portal.com writes:
)BUY AN AMIGA 2000! In addition to HAM mode (at least 640x400 @ 4096 colors)
)you can get complete PC compatibility with the BridgeCard. I know... I have
)one. There are a number of ray-trace and fractal generating programs available
)for the Amiga and processor accelerators abound. I think the choice is an easy
)one if you are well informed. (I have a PC/AT at work and will take my Amiga
)any day).
)
)Gary Walborn
Correction: HAM mode doesn't work in hires mode. It is nominal 320 pixels
wide, typically overscanned to over 350.
Buy an Amiga anyway. If you are going to develop graphics programs, it
can't be beat. Once you sit at a nice multitasking machine with all
of todays PD enhancements and the emerging uses of inter-process
communication, you'll never go back. Many programs are now spitting
out 12 bits of RGB, which gets dithered down for Amiga display, but
can be sent to other machines or add-on amiga frame buffers if you
have a need for more colors. None of that going on in PC land that
I've seen.
You can make your compiler, linker, editor, ls, make, and what have you
resident and (typically) shared code with PD a utility. You can keep your
frequently used libraries in a ram disk that survives reboot. You can
even boot off of a RAM disk. You can rapidly cycle between windows and
tasks via a function key. I've never used a better development environment
for standard C programming, and that includes this Sun.
The new filing system is incredibly fast (as fast as the RAM disk used
to be), CBM has active upgrade work always in progress, and you
can get direct support from the system programmers and hardware team
on BIX or usenet. Oh, yeah, that RAM disk isn't off in pig-slow vudu
memory, nor eating away at your 640K of normal RAM.
Most important for graphics programming is that you can use large amounts
of RAM, without jumping through hoops. 'Huge model' is the default, and
doesn't penalize you all of the time.
And as one graphics programmer who believes that "if it's not real-time,
it's slime" I submit that for those projects where you have to get
data in and out and around the display buffers, an EGA or similar
approach of secret ram and read latches is prehistoric. You can't, for
example, write a dashed line on an EGA in your choice of foreground and
background colors in one pass.
As I see it, the only advantage of the PC is that it has a better vi clone.
And the guy who made points 1, 2, and 3 about the amiga was indeed full of
sh*t. That's another problem about the PC world.
Glad I had the opportunity to make this correction.
jimm
--
Jim Mackraz, I and I Computing
amiga!jimm BIX:jmackraz
Opinions are my own. Comments regarding the Amiga operating system, and
all others, are not to be taken as Commodore official policy.Doug_B_Erdely@cup.portal.com (08/05/88)
Thanks Brett for setting Jonathon straight!!! I love it when someone TRIES
to talk about a computer they know NOTHING about!! :>
- Doug -
Doug_B_Erdely@Portal.Cup.Comjbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (08/05/88)
The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer.
Fundamental problems:
1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text.
You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage
glass TTY, but with color.
2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the
early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most
disks seem to be bootable. With a certain amount of pain and anguish,
disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. This works
about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk.
I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new
(real soon now) release of AmigaDos.
3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and
500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The
general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three
won't work". In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk
will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with
the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000,
which has slots.
4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the
available Amiga software is games. On the other hand, there
are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. The major
networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes
involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.)
The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga
now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all
Amiga material from the store window.
5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to
destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable
media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0
argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!)
It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have
only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga.
John Nagleroot@becker.UUCP (Root Boy) (08/05/88)
In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco Lesmeister) writes: >Hello from Holland, > [...] >So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >graphics capabillities. > >So to all you PC and amiga fans out there, I ask you which solution >is better? > >Greetings, > >Marco Lesmeister, HP Holland. Perhaps you should go with the amiga. Look at the new 2500AT which has a 68020/68881 card and a 80286 bridge-card. Also Commodore will (someday soon they say) open up the graphics resolution/# of colors... The software and the hardware base for graphics & sound are far advanced from AT-based systems, plus the AT bus in the amiga gives access to a great deal of hardware which is visible thru the bridge-card interface to the amiga, and vice-versa. I imagine lots of discussion will flow from your query - I hope it is helpful to your decision... Cheers, -- Bruce Becker Toronto, Ont. UUCP: ...!lsuc!becker!bdb, ...!lsuc!humvax!becker, ...!ncrcan!ziebmef!becker BitNet: BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET "Money is the root of all money..."
lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) (08/05/88)
OOOOOHHHHH! This article really busted my buns! There is a lot
of worthless misinformation here. Look everyone, I *do* own an Amiga
1000, but I do not believe it is the end-all-be-all computer. It has
problems. IBM's *are* good for a great many business applications.
Mac's *are* much easier to use than other computers. Amiga's *are*
good for graphics and "DeskTop Video," and much more affordable for
some of us who do not have mega-bucks. I find that putting down
Amigas because of second-hand information is as bad as bashing IBM's
because the Amiga is "the best computer ever built" (which it isn't in
my opinion).
Please, also remember that the original poster asked about
graphics capabilites in a computer, not whether it ran the latest
whiz-bang spreadsheet or super-duper thought-organization software.
In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
> The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer.
>
> Fundamental problems:
>
> 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text.
> You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage
> glass TTY, but with color.
Hey, Bozo, "TV resolution" screens do help in the desktop video
market. NTSC compatibility allows one to do many things which would
be more difficult without it. Plus, with additional hardware, you can
have displays greater than TV resolution. BTW, there is due out a
1024x800 >32 gray level monitor, if you want your text to look nice.
Oh yeah, and it was being shown two weeks ago running X-Windows, which
looked real nice. The Amiga is not limited to "TV resolution,"
although in Desktop Video it really helps because the additional
hardware to do stuff like digitizing, frame grabbing, and genlock'ing
is inexpensive.
> 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the
> early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most
> disks seem to be bootable. With a certain amount of pain and anguish,
> disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. This works
> about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk.
> I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new
> (real soon now) release of AmigaDos.
Why then does Commodore market a hard-disk controller? Why then
does my friend have an internal hard disk in his Amiga 2000? Why then
was it real easy to setup? Why then is the next OS by Commodore being
written to optimize hard disk transfer rates? Probably because
"Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks." ;-) Yeah, right,
that's the ticket.
Things have changed since the days of "bolting" hard disks onto
the side of an Amiga 1000 (which was a real pain). Now, all one needs
to do is slip a controller into an Amiga 2000, slip a hard-disk in as
well and PRESTO! you have a hard disk. No harder than adding one to
an IBM.
> 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and
> 500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The
> general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three
> won't work". In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk
> will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with
> the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000,
> which has slots.
This is true of the Amiga 500, which requires an expansion
interface to add more stuff (although one can easily expand to 1
megabyte memory without the expansion interface). After one adds the
expansion box to the a500, expansion is easy. The Amiga 1000 (not
produced anymore) can handle extra expansion hardware, although not
too elegantly, without an interface. The Amiga 2000 has several
internal expansion slots (greater than 7) which can be used for IBM
cards or Amiga Zorro II cards. Plus it also has CPU and *VIDEO*
expansion slots. Expanding an Amiga 2000 is as easy as expanding a
Macintosh or an IBM, and in some cases is much more flexible than
either of the former machines.
> 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the
> available Amiga software is games. On the other hand, there
> are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. The major
> networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes
> involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.)
> The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga
> now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all
> Amiga material from the store window.
Look Bozo, the original poster was asking about graphics
software, not spreadsheets. Granted, the Amiga does not have a
whiz-bang spreadsheet (although basic ones are available), and the
business software is not as sophisticated as with IBM business
software (that's why one buys an IBM, right?). However, the reverse
is true concerning graphics software. The Amiga has a lot of good
graphics software at good prices...I can think of three commercial
ray-tracers (as well as a PD one) and three nicely written and very
impressive paint programs right off of the top of my head. If you
really want the business software, buy an Amiga 2000, pop in a
Bridgecard (full IBM compatibility that runs simultaneously in a
resizable window), and run the IBM stuff. And run all the fun
graphics and Desktop Video stuff *at*the*same*time*, without having to
lay down a mint in special graphics cards (i.e. VGA, CGA, EGA,
Hercules monochrome, etc.). Geez.
> 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to
> destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable
> media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0
> argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!)
It is easy to destroy a disk if you pop the disk out while the
drive light is still on. But that is a no-no with every computer.
The only good fix to this is the Macintosh solution, which does not
have an easily-pressed button to eject the disk. However, if you wait
until the drive light is off, then eject the disk, you won't have any
problems. Granted, I do not own a hard disk, although my friend
(mentioned above) has never had a crash with his. I have *never* lost
a single file due to my Amiga. NEVER!
>It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have
>only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga.
This *is* true of the Amiga 1000 (if you aren't a programmer,
like myself). It is not true of the Amiga 2000. It looks to me like
you gave up on the Amiga back in the days of only the a1000. A lot
has changed since then...you may be surprised.
Sorry to be so heated. I usually don't write replies like this.
However, it really sounds like you've been out of touch with the Amiga
market lately. Commodore wasn't very good during the early days of
the Amiga. However, they have cleaned up their act considerably
during the recent past. Which is one reason why the number of
machines has out there has finally climbed to 800,000 (pale in
comparison to the millions of PC's and Macs, but getting up there).
There are still problems with Commodore, but they seem to be making an
attempt to solve them, and there are also problems with IBM and Apple
too. I don't think that changes the fact that the Amiga still has
some pretty impressive graphics capabilities for any machine under
$5000, and is very well suited to Desktop Video applications. For
over $5000, you can by yourself a small workstation, a Mac II, or an
IBM with a Targa board.
The above are my opinions only, although they may be shared by my
cockatiels, and maybe even my cat.
> John Nagle
-Chris
--
Christopher Lishka ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu
Immunology Section (608)262-1617 lishka@uwslh.uucp
----
"...Just because someone is shy and gets straight A's does not mean they won't
put wads of gum in your arm pits."
- Lynda Barry, "Ernie Pook's Commeek: Gum of Mystery"richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (08/05/88)
Clearing up yet more misinformation) In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes: > > The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer. No it's not. A Sun 4 is. > Fundamental problems: > > 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text. > You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage > glass TTY, but with color. Uhh, you might try using an RGB monitor instead of a TV set. Granted a TV set will work (a real plus for displaying pictures or animations etc.) but yes, 80 col text is hard to read on a color TV (B&W is fine). I hav a Sony KV1311CR which is both a TV and an analog RGB monitor. By setting the thing into interlace mode, I get 48 80 col lines, and by choosing appropriate colors, i get no flicker. Yet to see a PC that would do that. > 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the > early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most > disks seem to be bootable. With a certain amount of pain and anguish, > disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. This works > about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk. This man is obviously a plant form apple or atari. You go to the store, you plonk down a couple hundred bucks, you plug in the hard disk, connect the cable, boot it up and it works. Pain and anguish ? Try not buying stuff from the Marquis de Sade peripheral supply co. > I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new > (real soon now) release of AmigaDos. Hard disks have been supported in the OS for about a year and a half. > 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and > 500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The > general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three > won't work". In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk > will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with > the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000, > which has slots. There is *some* truth to this. The A500 and A1000 have no internal slots (like early mac's). They do have a connector on the side where the 68000 bus is brought out to. You can connect an expansion chassis to it, or connect peripherals to it directly. Yes, if you're going to hand 4 of them on there, sometimes you find one that doesnt pass the buss through correctly. this is the fault of the peripheral manufacturor, not Commodore. > 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the > available Amiga software is games. On the other hand, there > are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. The major > networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes > involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.) There is more ray tracing, 3d rendering and animation software for the amiga than any other computer short of a Convex. Yes there are lots of game. I dont think I've ever played a game on my amiga however so I really cant comment on them. There are even a couple on 1-2-3 clones for those who insist on torturing themselves. > The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga > now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all > Amiga material from the store window. There you go folks. You should all make your decision based on what one vendor in Palo Alto does. > 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to > destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable > media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0 > argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!) I've had 3 disks trashed in 3 years. There is a utility, which reconstructs disks from the redundent information in every sector. When I was using a PC I trached one a week and there was no way to get them back. I've been able to recover every byte of every Amiga disk I've ever trashed. I have to admit I was amazed. >It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have >only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga. Sound like you *really* like it, eh ? > > John Nagle If you only listen to one person it shouldnt be John Nagle. -- Bad sunburn. Real bad. richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone}!gryphon!richard
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) (08/06/88)
In article <356@uwslh.UUCP>, lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) writes: > In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: > >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. (On Amiga) . . I am not sure what Mr. Brickman means by this. The strangest . color-mapping strategy on the Amiga is HAM mode (Hold-And-Modify . mode), which uses a "trick" to allow up to the full 4096 colors on the . screen at once, using only 6 bit-planes. All other modes are "mapped" . into ram by using from 1 to 5 bit-planes, using straightforward . bit-maps. > I think the real problem is that you can only get 4 bit control over each color. That is if you are working with prue blue, red, or green you can only get 16 shades of each. That is a bit on the low side if you want to do true to life shading and avoid banding in your shading. A lot of VGA cards give you better color control. Wayne Knapp
darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) (08/06/88)
In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John Nagle) > > The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer. > > Fundamental problems: > > 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text. > You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage > glass TTY, but with color. Hmmn, never noticed the problem. Perhaps you are used to expensive 1Kx1K displays? I notice the dots on IBM graphics displays (but not on the text-only displays). > 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the > early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most > disks seem to be bootable. With a certain amount of pain and anguish, > disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. This works > about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk. > I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new > (real soon now) release of AmigaDos. I've used hard-disks with my 1000 and then later with my 2000 with no problems. Granted, there are a few programs out there that won't run on hard disks because of copy-protection, etc. but the same problem exists on IBM's. Perhaps this problem you see is the lack of auto-booting from a hard-disk, but this is indeed due in the next version (which a lot of people have, and it does work). Personally, I don't find this a drawback. Again, I don't see what the problem is. Perhaps you bought your Amiga when it first came out and then never checked back up on it? > 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and > 500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The > general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three > won't work". In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk > will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with > the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000, > which has slots. The 500 is really intended as a lower-end machine, and isn't as readily-expandable as the 2000. It is surprising to see how much you can expand it though... I never found any problems with the 1000 add-ons, other than having to stack them together. Of course, the reasons the 2000 and 500 came out were to improve on the 1000, with the 2000 being expandable, and the 500 being less-expensive and smaller. (I do admit that the 500 power-supply is a screw up..) Of course, you can only get used 1000's now. > 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the > available Amiga software is games. Ditto for IBM's. Also, software vendors don't have to write multiple versions of programs to support the numerous "standards" in graphics, memory expansion, etc. > On the other hand, there > are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. There are excellent spreadsheets out there. Some are even closely compatible with Lotus (does Lotus have mouse support yet?). Better yet, you can run these spreadsheets at the same time as you do something else. Of course, the Amiga wasn't designed to be a business computer (it would have to be less powerful for that). > The major > networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes > involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.) (what does MS-DOS compatability have to do with networking?) There is an ethernet card for the 1000 and 2000 that comes with TCP and NFS. Appletalk won't work, but then you don't see many IBM's talking appletalk either. > The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga > now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all > Amiga material from the store window. I have a sneeky suspicion that this vendor (who I shall leave unnamed) did this because they weren't pushing enough Apple IIgs's. Probably too many people saw the Amiga in the front of the store and never made it to the back where the Mac II's were :-) I never recall seeing any Amiga materials in the store window - although I did see the IIgs running a souped-down version of Deluxe-PaintII. They always seemed to be doing good Amiga business (hardware and software) though. > 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to > destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable > media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0 > argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!) This is being fixed (real soon now, I hear). This is not unique to the Amiga at all. The Norton utilities weren't written because the MS-Dos file systems were reliable... I had many disk problems with IBM's when I had to use them. > It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have > only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga. > > John Nagle It's the only one I have. Kinda makes me glad that I didn't buy a Clone, Mac, ST, etc. Since I am a CS person, I notice the extra things. Of course, if I ever have a breakdown and need to have PC compatability, I can get a PC card for my 2000 and still have spent less than a real IBM. Darin Johnson (...pyramid.arpa!leadsv!laic!darin) (...ucbvax!sun!sunncal!leadsv!laic!darin) "All aboard the DOOMED express!"
root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) (08/06/88)
In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes: > I don't want to get into a rebuttal of John Nagle's comments on the Amiga; let me just say that his information is dated in some cases and incorrect in others. I would suggest that for a clearer picture of the Amiga, the original poster should ask the same questions of comp.sys.amiga. Let's get back to graphics here! Rick Spanbauer SUNY/Stony Brook
MJB@cup.portal.com (08/06/88)
In response to Mr. Brickman's allegations regarding the Amiga's tendency to
crash, I offer the following: I run a 2.5meg A1000. I leave it on 24hrs a day,
running UEdit ("text processor") on its own screen, the Workbench screen with
CLI (DOS prompt command line interface and DU-VI ( two panel dir utility
similiar to Norton Commander), plus Amic 56a telcomm program also running on
its own screen. I frequently go months without crashing or hanging. I believe
that I'm at about 6 weeks on this run. I usually don't have a problem unless
I start screwing around programming in "C" (I'm a novice programmer) or get
some new pd program that's not quite upto snuff. Of those programs I mentioned
above, only the Workbench and CLI are commercial (CBM) programs (come with).
Once again, I leave these programs running at the same time, all the time,
ready at my beck and call -- to me that's what it's all about.
P.S. My Toshiba 1100+, running DOS 3.2, and "standard" DOS programs (Sidekick,
Tornado Notes, etc.) hung on me 3 times today.
- Martin Brown -peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (08/06/88)
Yow, more wrong stuff... In article <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.UUCP writes: > 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text. > You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage > glass TTY, but with color. 640 by 400 is much greater than TV resolution. Just add a flickerfixer. 1008 by 800 is even better. I've played with the Hedley monitor and it looks sharp. > 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the > early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most > disks seem to be bootable. While this used to be true for some programs, now only games are sold this way (and not all games are... Bards tale II isn't copy protected and runs just fine from a hard disk). > With a certain amount of pain and anguish, > disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. You mean putting the Commodore hard disk card in an Amiga 2000 and installing a hard disk? > I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new > (real soon now) release of AmigaDos. AmigaDOS has supported hard disks for some time now. Must be my imagination. > 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and > 500 are terrible. In theory, one can add on peripherals. The > general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three > won't work". You can put as many cards as you want in any of the expansion cabinets for either the 1000 or 500. > In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk > will probably be flakey. Some add-ons only work right with > the covers removed. This does not apply to the Amiga 2000, > which has slots. Or to the 1000 and 500, for which 2000-compatible expansion boxes are available. > 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the > available Amiga software is games. Reading from the July issue of AmigaWorld: Photon Paint (also the hottest new paint program for the Mac II, *ported from the Amiga*). Photon Video. DigiView. Rings (a game). ASDG ad (RAM card (up to 8 Megs!), FACC II (utility), Twin-X (IEEE-488 interface card), Card Cages (plug A2000 cards into 1000 and 500), CubeMaster (a game)). Professional Page. Excellence. Ganymed and Bomb Busters (games). Generic Taito ad, no products specified. X-specs 3d (hardware). (these people also sell an excellent multitasking spreadsheet) Pageflipper FX (animation program). Arkanoid and Zoom (games). Express Paint. IMPACT (A2000 SCSI/RAM multifunction card, A500 SCSI/RAM expansion box). Stellar Conflict (game). Supergen (hardware). ProGEN (hardware). MaxiPLAN Plus (speradsheet, multiple views in multiple windows). Turbo Print (utility). C-64 Emulator (game :->). Actionware (games). Aztec 'C'. Word Perfect (this isn't a serious program, right?). Xerox 4020 inkjet printer (xerox just makes toys, of course). Lionheart statistical and management software. BeckerText (word processor) DataRetrieve (relational database) AssemPro (fancy assembler). Lattice C++. GEnie. LIVE (real-time digitizer). SoundQuest (MIDI librarians) Forms in Flight II. FlickerFixer (gives you 704 by 470 non-interlaced display). The Director (animation program). Ameristar Internet package (TCP/IP, NFS, Socket interface). SlapShot (game). Power Windows (utility) InovaTools (utility). AC/BASIC, AC/Fortran (compilers). 3-tuple (3d animation and ray tracing). Computerware business software. APL.68000. Tracers, Faery Tale, Craps Academy (games). > There are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. See list above. > The major > networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes > involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.) See Ameristar ads above... I can't imagine any of the MS-DOS people supply a socket library. > The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga > now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all > Amiga material from the store window. Right. Retail salesfolks are a really technically competant and can be trusted in making purchasing decisions. > 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to > destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable > media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0 > argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!) So don't use software that does this. I have trashed disks on every machine I've used... including UNIX. Certainly MS-DOS is *not* immune to this sort of problem. > It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have > only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga. I have only one machine. It's an Amiga. I get VERY frustrated when working on anything else... if you only have one machine, it should at least be multitasking. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?
u-jmolse%sunset.utah.edu@utah-cs.UUCP (John M. Olsen) (08/07/88)
In article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. (On Amiga) >In article <356@uwslh.UUCP>, lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts) writes: > I am not sure what Mr. Brickman means by this. The strangest > color-mapping strategy on the Amiga is HAM mode (Hold-And-Modify mode)... In article <3109@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) writes: >I think the real problem is that you can only get 4 bit control over >each color. That is if you are working with prue blue, red, or green >you can only get 16 shades of each. That is a bit on the low side if >you want to do true to life shading and avoid banding in your shading. >A lot of VGA cards give you better color control. > Wayne Knapp No matter which machine you choose, there are a couple of ways to improve the situation. You can get another 16 "nearly correct" shades by incrimenting one of the other color values. I do this to get 32 gray shades that look like they have alternating hints of green and purple. They work great as long as I stay away from large areas of a single color. I use this technique to draw 3D views of fractal landscape. The best thing to do is to dither the stuff. You can fake really high numbers of colors if you do your dithering right. By using some of the dithering techniques recently discussed here you could probably get some really nice looking pictures out of 32 properly optimized colors. I'll let Leo Schwab or some other Amiga nut who's tinkered with it elaborate if they feel like it. If you want to get photo quality, the Amiga is probably not the machine for you, but if you only need to be near photo quality, you may want to check it out and see if it really does fit your needs. Don't ever plunk down cash for a system without using both it and the alternate choices in the presence of someone who knows a lot about the system and software. (You usually can't do this in a computer store. :^) /| | /||| /\| | John M. Olsen, 1547 Jamestown Drive \|()|\|\_ |||. \/|/)@|\_ | Salt Lake City, UT 84121-2051 | u-jmolse%ug@cs.utah.edu or ...!utah-cs!utah-ug!u-jmolse "A preposition is not the kind of thing to end a sentence with."
elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) (08/07/88)
In message <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP>, marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco Lesmeister) says: >Hello from Holland, > >card in it. This card provided me with a resolution of 640X480 and >4096 colors. This gave me 16 shades of each color Red, Green and Blue. >This was really on the edge for nice ray-tracing pictures. > >I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could >not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. There is not a mountain of Amiga applications, but there is no shortage either. For all usual tasks, there are applications available (often ported PD Unix software, but...). >So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >graphics capabillities. I hate to say this, since I'm typing this from an Amiga, but since you say you need 16 shades each of red, green, and blue, on-screen at the same time in a 640x400 display, I'd have to recommend the PC platform. While it is true that there are Amiga products in prototype stage that will do that kind of resultion, they are all currently "vaporboards" (much to my chagrin, since that's what I need). Software and hardware that is available "Real Soon Now" doesn't do me a bit of good. Really a shame, because with the 68020 and 68881, in conjunction with the blitter, I can do graphics manipulation much faster than on AT clones -- alas, I have no way of displaying them! (although we are currently looking at using the PC-compatible side of the Amiga 2000, when Commodore ever releases the 80286 Bridgeboard and their 68020 co-processor, the two of which supposedly can co-exist in the same box -- again, a board in hand, is worth two Real Soon Now....). You may be able to get by simply with VGA on an ATclone. Some vendors supply "extended VGA" cards that have up to 256 shades on-screen at one time in 640x400. Which is not ideal for what you plan to do, but may be servicable, and is reasonably priced. If you really want to get back up to PGA resolutions, expect to pay megabucks for the monitor/display card combo, and expect to have to write all the software to do the ray tracing etc.... -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) (08/07/88)
In message <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA>, brickman@cme-durer.ARPA (Jonathan E. Brickman) says: >I suspect the answer hinges on just exactly how much $$$ you've got >available. I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because >of three things: >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. >(2) Very limited software availability. >(3) Unreliable operating system. part 1) may partially apply (HAM mode certainly is awkward enough). But software availability and the reliability of the operating system have been non-issues for at least the last year (as you'd expect, from a machine released over 3 years ago). This is not 1985, when there were only two Amiga programs on the market and the Amiga crashed if you touched the mouse :-}. The main vote against the Amiga is simply that it will not do what he wants to do (4096 colors on-screen at one time, in 640x400 resolution). >similar capability, you might want to consider it. Please bear in mind, >though, that if you were to go with an AT with a VGA, you would be buying >a _very_ well-supported machine with a very polished and multiply-compatible >graphics card running two popular operating systems (PC-DOS and OS/2, with >probable future X-Windows on larger machines). Whereas if you were >to buy and Amiga, you are buying outdated hardware (68000 at low speed -- >almost nothing uses those things anymore), a cheaply built and unexpandable >graphics capability (uses interlaced graphics -- hard on the eyes at >max resolution), an operating system which crashes roughly three times as >frequently as PC-DOS 2.0 (3.3 is much better yet) with corresponding loss >of data, work, temper, and possibly disk data, and very limited >expandability (limited simply because very few companies build the stuff). Well, at work I am using an Amiga with 5 megabytes of memory, a 68020 with 68881, and a fairly reliable operating system (release 1.2 of the OS). I could run Unix if I wanted to (but I don't have the hard drive capacity -- the machine has only a 30 meg Miniscribe right now). It has a FlickerFixer expansion in it with a Multisync monitor to eliminate interlace. We are currently doing image processing on 768K image files (8-bit RGB). I have been running it, using a BETA TEST version of 1.3 system software, for over 4 months of heavy development use, and have not lost a single bit of data off of either hard drive or floppy. I crash it fairly regularly, mostly by passing bad pointers within my programs and getting an address exception, or by running buggy public domain software. But under those conditions, an IBM compatible would crash just as badly. Your arguments would have been valid 2 years ago, in 1986, for the Amiga. But they would have also been valid in 1983 for the IBM PC. Time moves on. If you do not need higher resolutions than currently available, the Amiga makes a fine little graphics box, expandable to a degree you'll never find with any MS-DOS machine (quick -- how many users of MS-DOS have machines with 5 megabytes of memory, FULLY ACCESSIBLE BY ALL PROGRAMS?). -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) (08/07/88)
In message <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>, jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) says: > The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer. True... although I don't have any Amiga games, I hear that it plays darn good ones. > Fundamental problems: > > 1. The screen is TV resolution. This is not good enough for text. > You can see the dots all too well. It's like using a 1975-vintage > glass TTY, but with color. The screen is NTSC-compatible, you mean, not TV resolution (which chops off the top of NTSC monochrome for the audio signal and the chroma information). Yes, it's like using a 1975-vintage glass TTY, insofar as text display goes, and I'd love a better screen. Commodore has displayed one, 1008x800 or so, monochrome paper-white... I want one, if they ever release it! The problem is that hardware due "Real Soon Now" does not solve my current problems (the limited display capabilities of the Amiga). > 2. Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks. It's like the > early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most > disks seem to be bootable. With a certain amount of pain and anguish, > disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks. This works > about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk. There was pain and anguish with the Amiga 1000. With the Amiga 2000, you plug in a hard drive and an SCSI controller, format the drive, put the SCSI driver on the bootdisk, and fire it up. It takes about 5 minutes to do, except for the low-level formatting of the drive. I've done it myself. No problem. The C Ltd. SCSI controller has only four chips on it -- wow, musta been a lotta pain and anguish went into designing that baby, huh?! The upcoming release (1.3) supports the hard drive better than 1.2, in that it is much faster and can finally boot off of hard drives. Other than that... > 3. The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and > 500r are terrible. The problem is with venders who created cheap "slap-on-the-side" products instead of going with Zorro expansion slots. Commodore has explicitely warned, over and over again, that they do NOT recommend slapping products straight onto the CPU bus, like C Ltd., amongst others, did in their quest to reduce costs (said one disgruntled developer: "They build their stuff like they were building it for the Commodore 64, and they wonder why it doesn't work half the time?"). Note, however, that this is getting fairly moot, with the wide availability of Zorro ][ bus expanders for Amiga 2000 cards. > 4. The product is positioned as a high-end toy. Most of the > available Amiga software is games. On the other hand, there > are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga. Are you serious? Have you used Maxiplan? Have you used (uh...) the Lotus 1-2-3 clone? Have you used Superbase Professional? Have you used WordPerfect? Have you used... oh heck, I could go on and on. The point is, while your local dealer apparently only carries game, that's a problem with your local dealer, not with the Amiga software base. Especially in video and graphics applications, where the Amiga has a much larger software base than any other available personal computer. Quick, want to do image processing? (PixMate, whose author was invited to SigGraph to give a presentation, or Butcher). Want to do ray tracing and animations? (Sculpt 3-d, etc.). Want to run a complete television studio and do video production work? (here... The Director, and at least 2 other products whose names I can't recall). Want to do computer art? (Deluxe Paint, Photon Paint, and a dozen others). > The major networking vendors do not support the Amiga Not true. While you are not going to hook an Amiga up to non-standard IBM PC networks, Ameristar's Ethernet works just fine with the industry-standard Network File System, and TCP-IP stuff like ftp and rlogin, and they also have a low-cost Arcnet card. > The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga > now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all > Amiga material from the store window. A definite problem. There are very few good Amiga dealers. It looks like you got the worst of one of the bad ones. You have my condolences. > 5. The file system is on the fragile side. It is all too easy to > destroy a disk. This applies to both fixed and removable > media. (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0 > argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!) >It's a fascinating machine. I have an Amiga 1000 myself. But if you have >only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga. I can see where you would say that, since you obviously were burned by a bad dealer and early (buggy) hardware and software. I don't agree, but hey, that's life... -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
hutch@net1.ucsd.edu (Jim Hutchison) (08/08/88)
article <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rosie (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes: >In article <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> marco@hpuamsa.UUCP (Marco >Lesmeister) writes: >>I am thinking of buying an AT-clone with some graphics card in it, >>or maybe a commodore amiga would suit me just fine, but then I could >>not make use of the mountain of DOS applications currently available. >> >>So, what should I do, should I buy a cheap AT with an expensive >>monitor and an expensive graphics card (which one should I buy?), or >>should I buy an amiga with the disadvantage that I can't expand the >>graphics capabillities. >[...] I would ordinarily vote heavily against the Amiga, because >of three things: >(1) Awkward and rigid color mapping arrangement. Well, it's got LUT's and it has HAM (12bits encoded into 6bits). Yes, this is more rigid than a Pepper or a Targa. Also note that you can buy several A500's or a couple A2000's at the same prices. >(2) Very limited software availability. Very? Yes, orders of magnitude in comparison to the raw PC software. How much of that mountain did you want? There are toolkits like MKS, and file tools like PCTOOLS. There are a couple of data base packages which speak SQL (I may have the acronym wrong, "the new standard database query language"). There are great paint packages. Midi software is also quite available (the adapters are around $49). There are music editors. There are several animation packages (something you won't find much of for the PC). >(3) Unreliable operating system. Less reliable than MS/DOS? I shoot the interrupts out on the AT/IT/XT/PC at work about twice a week. Resident programs are incredibly hard to keep in place. Device drivers are forced to have all sorts of weird behavior to remain synchronous. If you talk Xenix, well get a big fast disk and have fun! No less the Amiga that I am working on now. If I accidently stomp across a device driver (like doing a nice area fill on a wild pointer), it dies. Logical. Note: the amiga is multi-tasking. You can do multiple tasks much more cleanly. end of rebut It's pretty much a question of what you want to do. A Targa-32 is a very nice combination of RGB scanner and 24 bit frame buffer. You can get one for about $5k. A Targa-16 is a nice Video scanner and 12 bit frame buffer $?2k. The extra bits on both are for an alpha channel for the external signal (Video or RGB). The Pepper board is a 256 entry 24 bit lookup table frame buffer (?1kx768?). You can roll your own, or use something like Lumena, TIPS, RIO, Lightspeed, etc.. I visited a group of people doing color comps with a Targa-32 and a Sony camera, makes for an interesting combination (with Lumena, TIPS, and a scodl package whose name escapes me). Or you can go with an Amiga. There is a high-res frame buffer for the A2000 which is in the 1kx768 range, I do not recall whether it is grey scale or monochrome. The guts of the beast is that graphics frames are memory mapped. Albeit from special memory (1 Meg on the 500 & 2000, previously 512k). This means you can select the depth that you want, from 1 to 6 bits deep. There is a animation chip which handles objects which you wish to animate (sort of a choreographer). There are sprites with there own LUT's. There is a blitter to blast polygons and text. There is a 4 channel 16bit sound system (stereo), which is handled by it's own chip. There is a co-processor to handle all these little demonesses so that they don't annoy the central processor. The Amiga was used in the Max Headroom Series, tele-frames, that really cute face finder, and many other places. It's a very usable system. Currently a friend and I are generating some graphics for a budget space opera. So very convenient to have that video plug on the back (and yes, it is color, NTSC!). Most of the GenLocs allow you to have Black as the chroma key (See the incoming video signal through it). Run it through your VCR and play Sal U. Loyd. Whoa, frothing at the mouth. I work with PC's on a regular basis, but I don't recommend it. /* Jim Hutchison UUCP: {dcdwest,ucbvax}!cs!net1!hutch ARPA: JHutchison@ucsd.edu */
mcripps@mtuxo.att.com (XMP12-M.CRIPPS) (08/31/88)
> > In terms of this hogwash that the Amiga has bad electronics components a > recent incident should be enlightening for some readers. In a recent > thunderstorm at night I happened to get caught working on my Amiga. One > of bolts hit some part of the power delivery system and we had a short > blackout. By blackout I mean my screen went completely blank, and so > did the lights in the room. It lasted less than a tenth of a second, > but when the power came back, my Amiga was still there! No whirring of > disks and a prompt for the KickStart disk, nothing! Oh yeah? Well, I had an IBM-PC that experienced a complete blackout (no screen, etc) while in the midst of saving a file to the hard disk. Not only did the machine not crash, but the file was saved OK. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't particularly *like* IBM products, but they can certainly build power supplies (or, at least their 3rd pary manufacturer can)! Mike Cripps mtuxo!mcripps
elf@dgp.toronto.edu (Eugene Fiume) (08/31/88)
Please take this discussion elsewhere. -- Eugene Fiume Dynamic Graphics Project University of Toronto elf@dgp.utoronto (BITNET); elf@dgp.toronto.edu (CSNET/UUCP)
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (09/05/88)
In article <1874@iscuva.ISCS.COM> jimc@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Cathey) writes: >>If one puts up five windows up on a Sun/3, and then removes the first, >>the bank of RAM allocated for the first window will not be accessable >>until the second, third, fourth, and fifth windows are removed. > >I thought that was what MMU's were for. (You know, bunches of teeny >little page-sized 'segments' that come and go as they please?) Or am I >missing the point? Most graphics hardware expects bitplanes to be in contiguous memory. This is because most graphics hardware refreshes by DMA or dual-ported memory, bypassing the MMU for speed. If a process on a Sun isn't reclaiming memory, it's probably just a feature of the way that Unix allocates memory. Although a Unix user space process can be physically spread all over the place, to the user, and for most purposes it's a contiguous set of memory locations, zero through n. You get more memory through a call to something like brk(2) or sbrk(2). The memory is added to the end of the process space. Likewise, you can only free memory from the end of the process space. Thus if a window is in the middle of the process space (and I'm assuming it's implemented as a user mode page) then unmallocing the storage will not reduce the process size, and thus not cause any memory to be freed. If your Unix implementation is sensible, it will realize sooner or later that the page isn't being used and swap it out. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet *** (Looking for his towel) {backbone|rutgers|uunet}!ukma!sean *** U of K, Lexington Kentucky, USA Internet site? "talk sean@g.ms.uky.edu" *** ``With a name like Renderman, you know it's good jam.''