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Offline rzookol

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #14 on: February 13, 2014, 10:26:53 AM »
Quote from: gertsy;758779
He did mention accelerators in the expansion bay.
16 bit data pipe on a 32 bit 68030. Sounds like something Sinclair would do. On a machine with 8 channel 16 bit sound, a midi interface and DSP.  Crazy hobbling for what was at the time a dream spec machine.



Not only sinclair:
https://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_performa/specs/mac_performa_400.html
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #15 on: February 13, 2014, 12:17:00 PM »
Quote from: mrknight;758819
Althought 32 bit chips would probably have been more expensive that 16 bit chips, at least as cent/bit is concerned, the total amount of RAM would affect the price more that width of the chips.

I can't find a hires picture of an Atari falcon motherboard, but the schematic suggests they use 4bit ram (which is likely for the time). You put 4 next to each other for 16bit, 8 next to each other for 32bit. If you use the same size ram then for 32bit you either have double the ram, or you halve the size of each chip. Either way having 16bit access to ram is considerably cheaper than 32 bit access.
 
Quote from: mrknight;758819
However, you need a more sofisticated RAM controller and custom chips for 32 bit memory access. Maybe the design decision was made because they had 16 bits designs for custom chips etc. that could easily be added to the Falcon (reuse=lower development cost)? I would call that a lazy approach;)

They could have kept 16 bit custom chips (pretty much like AGA did), but the memory controller would need to be changed. It's no more complex, just more lines. They would need to do another spin of the hardware and relayout the motherboard. If they had changed to 32bit after development began then it's unlikely that they'd have ever shipped anything.
 
Quote from: mrknight;758819
I found this development document for AAA. It looks pretty neat on paper and much, much better than AGA. It was cancelled in 1993 in favour of more advanced architectures. Probably a good thing by -93. But imagine an Amiga with this architeture in 89-91. Awesome!
http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/nyx/docs/AAA.pdf

It would have been too expensive. They weren't considering selling it in A500/A1200 type systems. It was when someone finally remembered that commodore was supposed to be selling high volume of cheap hardware that it got cancelled.
 
I'd take AGA with 16 bit chunky and a texture mapper in the blitter over AAA any day (texture mapping is not much more complex than line drawing). The problem was that nobody at commodore had the vision that cheap crappy 3d rendering would be such a big deal.
 

Offline haywirepc

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #16 on: February 13, 2014, 04:25:10 PM »
8 16 bit sound channels is what the a1200/a4000 SHOULD have had...
 
Falcon would have made a very nice early daw. at that time 8 channel
recording solutions were pretty expensive.
 

Offline slaapliedje

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #17 on: February 13, 2014, 05:51:33 PM »
Speaking of sound chips and how the AGA machines should have had an upgraded one, I find it hilarious that in comparing The Chaos Engine 'remake' that it sounds better on the Amiga.  Almost like there is one of the sound channels were missing.  

It's amazing that after all this time, they still can't quite get the sound working the same via emulation.  

They also haven't been able to emulate the DSP of the Falcon, from what I understand.

slaapliedje
A4000D: Mediator 4000Di; Voodoo 3, ZorRAM 128MB, 10/100mb Ethernet, Spider 2. Cyberstorm PPC 060/50 604e/420.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2014, 06:14:59 PM »
Quote from: haywirepc;758849
8 16 bit sound channels is what the a1200/a4000 SHOULD have had...

More channels would definitely have been good. I'm not sure 8 would be enough, but having a left/right volume for each channel rather than 2 left and 2 right channels would have been a huge improvement.
 
I'm not sure that moving to 16bit would have helped the games market, which is the only one that really ever generated commodore any money.
 
Quote from: slaapliedje;758852
They also haven't been able to emulate the DSP of the Falcon, from what I understand.

The falcon DSP should be relatively trivial to emulate these days, I guess nobody has tried very hard (which could be true).
 

Offline slaapliedje

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2014, 06:38:33 PM »
Quote from: psxphill;758854
The falcon DSP should be relatively trivial to emulate these days, I guess nobody has tried very hard (which could be true).

I'm just going by Hatari, which is the only emulator I've seen that has attempted to add Falcon support.  And I know that (last I used it was a few versions ago) it said the DSP support was very minimal.  I'll have to check it again to see if they fixed it.

Sadly, there isn't a whole lot of Falcon specific software out there, whereas AGA actually had a fairly decent library.

slaapliedje
A4000D: Mediator 4000Di; Voodoo 3, ZorRAM 128MB, 10/100mb Ethernet, Spider 2. Cyberstorm PPC 060/50 604e/420.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2014, 06:50:04 PM »
Quote from: slaapliedje;758856
Sadly, there isn't a whole lot of Falcon specific software out there, whereas AGA actually had a fairly decent library.

I suspect that is the real reason they haven't tried too hard to emulate the DSP (and why nobody else has bothered either).
 
Although obscure systems can be more interesting.
 

Offline slaapliedje

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2014, 07:31:21 PM »
Ah, looks like they've added full DSP support to it.  The last time I'd played around with Hatari, it was marked as Experimental.

slaapliedje
A4000D: Mediator 4000Di; Voodoo 3, ZorRAM 128MB, 10/100mb Ethernet, Spider 2. Cyberstorm PPC 060/50 604e/420.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2014, 09:50:36 PM »
Frankly, I wouldn't mind owning a blitter equipped Atari, but they sell for a fairly high price (particularly the '30 models).
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

"You, got to stem the evil tide, and keep it on the the inside" - Rogers Waters

"God was never on your side" - Lemmy

Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"
 

Offline slaapliedje

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #23 on: February 13, 2014, 09:53:26 PM »
I currently have an Atari 1040ST (I think there is a capacitor broken in it, last I used it the video display had random lines all over it), a Mega STe (not sure if it's still working, need a monitor to connect it to) and an Atari TT030, again, haven't connected it in a long time.  

My A4000D is funner :D  Couldn't ever get a hold of a video card, or connect them to the network.

slaapliedje
A4000D: Mediator 4000Di; Voodoo 3, ZorRAM 128MB, 10/100mb Ethernet, Spider 2. Cyberstorm PPC 060/50 604e/420.
 

Offline mrknight

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #24 on: February 14, 2014, 01:14:33 AM »
Quote from: psxphill;758842
Either way having 16bit access to ram is considerably cheaper than 32 bit access.
I agree with that. I'm just questioning if that saving would be worth it due to the decrease in performance. But anyway, I'm not here to argue so I'll be quite regarding this from now on :D

Quote from: psxphill;758842
The problem was that nobody at commodore had the vision that cheap crappy 3d rendering would be such a big deal.
You can say that again. Mid-ninties had heaps of horrible looking 3D games. Suddenly when 3D became possible, everything should be 3D. I still think Castlevania - Symphony of the Night was the best game on Playstation. Why? Because is was 2D, something the console did really well.
 

Offline amoskodare

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #25 on: February 14, 2014, 02:30:52 AM »
@Oldsmobile_Mike

Thanks for the link :hat:
C128 + Action Replay, A500+ (KS1.3/KS2.0), A1200, A1200/040, Amiga Forever 2008+09+2016, Amiga Future subscriber, Nokia N900 (Maemo 5), 5 x86/x64 boxes
AmigaOS 4.1 FEu1 on Sam440ep-flex/800MHz/1GB RAM/Radeon 9250 :afro:
AOS4.1 FE Update 1 for Classic (on WinUAE PPC)
m4rko.com/AMIGA
 

Offline Linde

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #26 on: February 14, 2014, 10:37:39 AM »
Quote from: mrknight;758872
You can say that again. Mid-ninties had heaps of horrible looking 3D games. Suddenly when 3D became possible, everything should be 3D. I still think Castlevania - Symphony of the Night was the best game on Playstation. Why? Because is was 2D, something the console did really well.


Well, if the only quality of these games was the graphics I would agree with you, but 3D literally enables another dimension of gameplay. Good looking or not, it afforded these consoles a new type of gaming experience at the time, and that proved to be extremely popular and interesting to the market. Really crude looking 3D titles have left lasting impressions in the gaming world. Wolfenstein 3D, Elite, Sentinel... You name it, the graphics obviously weren't as important as the interaction with a 3D space was.
 

Offline mrknight

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #27 on: February 14, 2014, 11:06:36 AM »
I wasn't just talking about graphics, 3D games did revolutionize gaming. I'm not questioning that. But to move a game to the third dimention doesn't nessesary make for a better game. It still have to be a good game. PSX did have some really good 3D games but there were also a lot of bad 3D games. Games that seems to be sold for the only reason that is was 3D. But 3D was hot at this time and everyone wanted to jump on the train without having a good grasp how to design a 3D game (I'm talking about a game that plays better in 3D). Personally, I'm not too picky about graphics as long as I enjoy the game.

2D or 3D, I still consider SotN to be one of the best game on Playstation. Gameplay, music, plot and puzzle solving. Epic! It is a true classic game.

Seems like I'm starting an argument with everyone in this thread...
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2014, 12:19:08 PM »
Quote from: Linde;758883
Wolfenstein 3D
How is that 3D? It's a flat world. If this is 3D then so is Dungeon Master.
 

Offline mrknight

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Re: Atari vs Amiga article
« Reply #29 from previous page: February 14, 2014, 12:59:32 PM »
Quote from: Thorham;758889
How is that 3D? It's a flat world. If this is 3D then so is Dungeon Master.
DM is 3D. It is 3D because you can only see what the camera is pointing at. Enemies etc. can hide behind object you are seeing, thus being ínvisible' from you. This is not the case with 2D games where you can see anything on the screen.
Think of a football game. The field is flat but it doesn't make it less 3D. If you are a player, you might still not be able to see an opposing player because they are behind you or behind another player.