Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: KingTutt on March 27, 2003, 01:01:32 AM
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Now when I refer to PeeCee gamers nowadays, I speak of the many computer owners who never owned Amigas, or worse never even heard of Amiga. In the past, it was impossible to be a PeeCee owner and not know about the dreaded and fearsome Amigas, lol! There was always this rivalry between systems, altho not quite on the same level (at least not for a very long time) This was because many PeeCee owners were very well aware of the marvels of Amiga computing - the superior stereo sound and full color gfx, but somehow remained in loser denial wishing that PeeCees would one day catch up. And shoot! guess what happened, they actually got their wish!
Of course many of us Amigans crossed over to PeeCeeworld in the mid 90s, some of you more recently. I myself felt physically sick when seeing how far behind PeeCees were in 96 to Amigas. But having no alternatives and a job depending on Win95 familiarity, I made the switch anyway. I always viewed it as a downgrade rather than a switch. And for many years resented Commodore for allowing the greatest travesty in computing to happen in such a way.
But out of all of this, my biggest gripe remained to be the PeeCee gamers resistance to cold hard facts. This being, that PeeCees were cumbersome and inferior machines for gaming. PC speaker? Give me a break! CGA gfx? lol! For the recent gamer, bred on PSX and PS2, it is probably impossible to imagine a world were a superior platform like the Amiga, could fail to capture a larger market when going against the humbe 286/386. And one might say it was comparable to a PS2 competing with a PeeCee running windows 3.11. But yes this was exactly how it was like.
Amiga reigned supreme since 1985 to 1993. And during this time, I had heated debates with PeeCee users and their lofty claims that PeeCee games, despite their shortcomings were still superior to their Amiga counterparts. Some even went to the extremes of saying that games didn't matter were computing was concerned. But one didn't have to be Einstein to know that these PC advocates were just overprotective and insecure individuals, who couldn't admit reality even if it slammed right in front of them.
The curious thing was that despite their Pro-PC resolve, many of these PeeCee gamers were completely oblivious and ignorant to what good gfx were. Many of them had skewed notions of what cutting edge gfx were at the time. And for many years, things remained this way. I even recall pointing out the horrible zoomed in look, to a friend running a PC port of Lemmings 2. The sounds were appaling (PC speaker? hello!) And the chunky sprites were distracting to say the least. I remember telling him "Dude, sorry to say this, but that thing just plain sux ass... man. Seriously it does" He would quickly snap and say "Oh so, it looks and plays better on your Amoeba, does it? huh does it? ahh schoolkids back then. lol! I guess being spoilt on Amiga gfx had its problems too, yeah like arguements with PC diehards and being generally perceived as being too fussy of gfx.
Suffice to say, growing up with Amigas in the 80s, was like stumbling across a conspiracy in keeping the world ignorant to sublime computing, heh the bgates conspiracy. It was like discovering some Pentagon files proving there was intelligent life on Mars, but not being able to tell anyone, without risking ridicule. Of course it was a relief when discovering other Amigans, and being able to share the experience together.
It wasn't until 3D games and more sophisticated h/w came out, that PC gamers finally became aware of the deficiencies to their software rendered low res gfx. Now PC gamers pride themselves on how THEIR games outshine the competition. PeeCee gamers are the new spoilt kids, were gfx are concerned. lol! And now these same people are the ones crying out why they should adopt AmigaOnes, if their h/w outclasses AmigaOne on every level.
Its ironic isn't it? That these very same people couldn't think this way when Amigas outclassed their POS x86 on every level back in 1985, not only that but it kept the lead for almost a decade. Yet now they would have you know who has the higher specced machine and make it their quest to point out OUR deficiencies. lol!
PeeCee gamer geeks lol! You gotta love 'em. They really are a funny bunch!
I bet us Amigans have a million experiences of this (what i like to call) PeeCee gamers conundrum, I'm sure they would make for many an interesting post
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PC gamers are funny, because they always speak like this:
HELLO WAS UP LOL!!!!!11 w00t WTF !!!!!
They even speak like that in real life (I've heard it myself).
This is why we should taunt them at all times ;^)
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I happened to have a few friends over a while ago, and all the talked about was how fast there pee cee,s were and how good the games were how fast they surfed the net Etc.
One of them said your still in the dark ages in computing arnt you, and i replied what are you on about he said you still use an A1200 they died years ago .
So i asked him did he ever use one he laught out loud not a chance in hell he said how can you even call it a computer !so i didnt say too much and briskly said ow well not worth aruing over .
After a while i said to the guys how about we have a look around on the net
so off we went into the comp room (now my A1200 is in a tower and is a 603e+210/060/50 grex voodoo3/3000 128 meg ram has usual pc speakers and diamond view monitor) i promptly went on the net using ib 2.3 and after a while the same person who was bagging out my 1200 .
Asked what version of windows are you running i looked at him and was lost for words ,i ignored him and just carried on all of the guys were commenting how fast it was displaying the pages and that it was way faster than their pee cee,s .
then the amiga bagger asked me what pentium speed was it i said what do you think ? he said ive got a p3 @ 900mhz and its not as quick as yours on the net .
I burst out laughing and blerted out this is one of those A1200,s you recon isnt a computer he called me a liar and stated thats not possible !
so i showed him the work bench as i run in dopus magellan .
But still he completely dimissed that there was any chance it could be an Amiga .
sSo i pulled the tower appart and showed him that it was but he still wouldent beleive me he just kept saying where have you got the pc hidden theres no way the amiga could ever be that good .
So after many hours trying to prove it was the 1200 he still called my a liar and just walked out on me and so did the other guys
now they wont even talk to me as they recon i set it all up and i used a pc embedded somwhere in the house ,They told me if i admit that i set them up they woul talk to me again
I now realize that they must be so pee cee brain washed they cant even see reality
I lost 5 friends and all i did was show them how my 1200 worked
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@carls
Man that was the funniest post in a while, that I've seen.
L M A O!
@poweramiga2002
Yeah, I know how overbearing PeeCee nerds can be. I had to deal with them on a daily basis in Amiga's heyday! And they were still as stubborn then as they are now. Except now they have less to feel protective about. Still, doesn't stop them from seeing an opportunity to deride a once proud system. (what am i saying, a still proud system!)
PS: Apparently John Carmack (Doom 3 creator) is the biggest anti-Amiga bigot around. hehe. RexxMast makes an excellent case in this thread (http://amiga.org/forums/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6285&forum=1)[/url]. I hadn't laughed that loud in ages, man o man! RexxMast REALLY is one funny bugger.
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ME, I use a DOS/WIN 3.1 computer for most of games nowadays.... mostly DOS. DOS is a decent OS, very limited but pretty flexible (/me loves the *.bat and wildcards) . Considering most fo the games I play are DOS games, I wonder if getting an old Amiga would be a good move, I mean, could I get the same (mostly) games for it? Like Fury of the Furries, or Lemmings? ( I think I heard Lemmings mentioned on this thread) or mmm.... Monkey Treasure Island? I'm typing on a windows Xp machine, as its whats set up to use the net (text only DOS browsing? yuck) I could always put DOS on my PalmPilot (I heard it exists somewhere). Or how about, dum dee dee dum!, can it play Keen4? Still, theres things like wordperfect for DOS... or WordPerfect...
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And for many years resented Commodore for allowing the greatest travesty in computing to happen in such a way.
One should also blame Motorola's part in dumping 68k as their leading edge CPU.
As a CPU partner, Motorola doesn’t seems to have the same level of support as with Intel (or with AMD) in regards to legacy support and speed upgrade pace.….
What IF the original creators of Amiga had selected Intel (or AMD) as it’s CPU partner?
HW setup of i386 + 32bit OS + auto-config (plug and play) + custom chip (custom co-processors**) powered platform should sound familiar to the modern PC setups.
**chips which reduces the CPU’s burden.
Running on AROS on i386 (with similar level gfx and audio add-on card) box is closest to this “What IF” scenario.
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Hello poweramiga2002,
If only, imagine that story with a 68060 @ 1 GHz, or 1.8 GHz!!!!
What could have been?
After using a winbux for 8 months (w98se, never used windows before then (regularly/owned), but bad mouthed it at every opportunity. Now I know I was right to do so.) It only occurred to me about 2 months ago, that the BOGUS registry is just COPY PROTECTION, which is what grinds it to a halt and hinders it's use. Not to mention the myriad of "incompatable standards" (there's an oxymoron for you.)
Thanks for relaying that experience.
AmigaOne! poweramiga2002 Rulleezzz!
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In the early 90's I upgraded my computer to a 2000 with an 030 - 8m of ram (IIRC) and 60meg HD.
I got this for around 2,000 aus.
Comparitively this isn't terribly unreasonable compared to buying the latest PC and accessories at the time.
You couldn't even compare games at the time - platformers on the PC were jerky and chunky (Duke Nukem 1). In the 3d arena you had Flight Sim, which you could put up against F18A flight interceptor, which was getting dated even then, and compare them very favorably.
With Wolfenstein I watched people throw money hand over fist for 486 dx 100's, and again to upgrade when DOOM came out.
You think the fervor for OS4 is high -- nothing compared to the slavering masses upgrading their PC's to play DOOM.
Again later - the onslaught of upgrades to play QUAKE, and the quest for max screen rate for Duke Nukem 3D.
My belwilderment was that people had upgraded two to three times - spent many thousands of dollars - to essentially play the same game three times. It continues to this day.
My 2000 lasted me till 97-98 (when leaving the country also meant leaving the platform - and all things computer for a while). 2000 bucks well spent. Never broke down - never needed an upgrade - and it filled my every need.
The upgrade syndrome continues - I put together an edit suit for commecial quality video production. It has cost a pretty penny to put together, and yet when I'm asked the specs on it by gamers, I get:
"uR b0x3n SuX0Rz!!!!"
Apparently I'm not up to standard to play the latest FPS game in it's full glory.... We may have waited nearly a decade for a new OS, but these guys have been playing the same game for as long!
I don't get it.....
Siggy.
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Haha, Siggy.
Good story mate. So the irony continues for PeeCee gamer geeks abound, yes?
I await more funny stories at the hands of my Amigan brothers, can I get an Alleluyah!
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Not so much a gaming story per se, and will probably date me... but it's amusing, and does show how even the humble 1000 was ahead of it's time.
When the Amiga had it's first showing at the Austrialian PC Show in Sydney I took the day off my work from my first job and went down... At the beginning of that day I didn't know what an Amiga was - and nor did many other people.
Thanks to the values instilled from my dear Mum, I had been made my first steps into the adult world with a savings account and a sound budget. I'd given myself the kingly sum of $20 to go to the show, have lunch, and see a movie (and still have some change).
I watched the 'boing ball' bounce in it's window, along with the 'lines' being drawn and the 'boxes' filling and was mesmerized.
I RAN (not walked - RAN) to the nearest bank and plundered my bank account. That day I pre-ordered my first Ami.
On returning home I was asked if I had a good day I replied 'Yes' - I was asked 'did you spend all your money' - my best friend started busting up... I had to smack him upside the head to shut him up.
Set the clock forward a bit - Same city - same show.. several years and a stint of military service later. I see a demonstration of Windows (3.1?) going on. Amoungst the 'oohs' and 'ahhhhs' of the crowd there is a single unimpressed ex-soldier sitting there... 'That ain't no big deal' He says.
'What?'
'That ain't no big deal - Does it multi task?'
Man clicks open Word and a clock - 'There, need any more proof?' (crowd nods it's approval)
'Did the clock stop when you clicked in word?'
'Ahm ahhh'
'Can you run word, unpack a disk, connect to a bbs, run a paint program, and assemble 300k of assem code at the same time?'
In a flurry of mouse clicks the demonstrator tries to open everything he possibly can, before being met with a 'general protection fault'
He then waves over to a few security guys who kindly ask the ex-soldier to leave.
I've had to use Win3.1 to 95 at work through differing jobs, I never had a problem with the x86 per se - but I never liked the Win interface.. it was never a joy to use.
Even now when I *have* to have Windows running at home, it's never that 'fun' experience that I used to look forward too. That machine is a tool, it's not 'my computer' nor will it ever be.
If programming assem on the Ami was like whittling (where you enjoy passing the time and then look on in wonderment afterwards at what you've created), then assem on the x86 is like masturbating with a cheesegrater.
Siggy
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Siggy wrote:
If programming assem on the Ami was like whittling (where you enjoy passing the time and then look on in wonderment afterwards at what you've created), then assem on the x86 is like masturbating with a cheesegrater.
Siggy
I couldn't of put it more succinctly myself. Good to see you have the objectiveness that many people lack these days. Although being a past Amiga user would denote that in the eyes of Winblows diehards.
Although alot of Linux and mac zealots would probably argue that Amiga faithfuls would say just about anything to promote their beloved system. I like to think that we really had something special and lost a major contributer to the computing scene, when C= went under. Hell I still consider Atari going under, a detriment to computer users everywhere, despite the fierce rivalry we once shared.
Being an avid Amigan, I'm saying alot when I say this: I would prefer an Atari user anyday than 1000 winblows users. At least their platform was more akin to Amiga's dream of multimedia/games/entertainment powerhouse. And both systems were less prone to inferior programming and bloatware than what we see today on our intel or amd workstations. Ugh.
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Hi KingTutt,
Gfx, sound, joystick+mouse, screens and multitasking.
I used to show these functions to pc followers back then.
I remember showing to a friend big animation demos. Starting the first one, going back to the workbench with lamiga+m, starting the next 2 or so.
After this I pulled the workbench screen down and of the animations running I pulled their screens halfway down so that my friend could see al animations still running!
Everybody knows what a pain it was to use pc-joysticks. So I showed those friends Sensible Soccer, Lotus and other games.
Yes, those were very nice times, but if I look at the present. I bought a Peg and showed it to again a pc friend and he was immediately impressed by the speed (and especially when I told him it was only 600 MHz). Ofcourse hopefully this will be also true for OS4 when it finishes.
The pc's are dominating the pc market. There's only one other major computer for general public, the Mac.
But because of the supremacy of the pc, Mac has to adjust to pc world.
People of now don't know anything about efficiency anymore. They only see the pc world (and Mac, ofcourse more efficient than a pc).
I really think that OS4 and MorphOS will be an eyeopener in the world of today if the companies behind these 2 OS's will make them compatible with the standard of what we are used now (like everything related to internet - plug-ins, etc, main office standards, etc).
Spidey
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@Siggy
Set the clock forward a bit - Same city - same show.. several years and a stint of military service later. I see a demonstration of Windows (3.1?) going on. Amoungst the 'oohs' and 'ahhhhs' of the crowd there is a single unimpressed ex-soldier sitting there... 'That ain't no big deal' He says.
'What?'
'That ain't no big deal - Does it multi task?'
Man clicks open Word and a clock - 'There, need any more proof?' (crowd nods it's approval)
'Did the clock stop when you clicked in word?'
'Ahm ahhh'
'Can you run word, unpack a disk, connect to a bbs, run a paint program, and assemble 300k of assem code at the same time?'
In a flurry of mouse clicks the demonstrator tries to open everything he possibly can, before being met with a 'general protection fault'
He then waves over to a few security guys who kindly ask the ex-soldier to leave.
The one I used to like was starting a floppy formatting, then drop a few files onto it while amusing myself with other parts of Workbench. The PC (l)users would stand agape!
What's more, formatting a floppy under Win2kPro these days still kills everything else.
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Hello Desmon,
What's more, formatting a floppy under Win2kPro these days still kills everything else.
True!
This whole multitasking of the pc's wouldn't be possible with 386 40 MHz. Pc's need cpu speed to let the user believe it has multitasking capabillities.
(my opinion)
Hence my remark about efficiency :-)
Spidey
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Hoya!
@KingTutt
I DO agree with you dude!
Those were the time when micro-computing WAS fun AND efficient!
And sorry, but I do not think raw power means efficiency...
/me is looking for a good time machine to go back in time...
Be funky
M A D
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@Desmon:
To be fair, I have actually seen one motherboard which had drivers where you could format a floppy in the background under Windows. If it's implemented right, with interrupts and whatnots, it shouldn't be that damn hard. The problem with Windows (IMHO) is that it has 1: a fairness scheduler (tries to give more CPU to low priority processes that hasn't had cpu for a while) and 2: makes the assumption that hardware banging needs higher priority.
These two tends to make multitasking freak out from time to time. For instance, a high-pri task might have to wait for seconds while a low-pri task is fetched from swap, all because the swap-daemon has a high priority and only takes into account free CPU time, not whether there's actually time to fetch something before the CPU isn't free again (medium high pri task idles out for half a millisecond, but isn't rescheduled until low pri task has been fetched from disk). Result == complete loss of multitasking for seconds at a time. Of course, this won't happen if you install more memory, but then you'll most likely just run more programs, won't you? Also, there's no really sure way of stopping Windows from swapping to disk, afaik...
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One should also blame Motorola's part in dumping 68k as their leading edge CPU.
I never did find out why they dropped the 68k. Seemed like a good and popular CPU to me? :-?
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ottomobiehl wrote:
I never did find out why they dropped the 68k. Seemed like a good and popular CPU to me? :-?
I think it was too hard to push the clock frequency higher. Besides, RISC was a very popular word at the time...
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@Desmon
What's more, formatting a floppy under Win2kPro these days still kills everything else.
There are a lot of things that do this.. it's amazing. One of the edit systems I use at work (when I can't get on the Avid) runs on WinNT (one day they will fess up and reveal that this in fact stands for 'nearly there').
When I digitize video the clock stops.
I work in News - which is time critical.. everytime I use that machine I'm getting burned thinking I have '5 more minutes' to get a story done.
I think the strength of the Amiga is not just pre-emptive multi tasking at the OS level -- it was doing it at the hardware level, and the OS was designed to take advantage of this.
The proof is there for anyone that used a WAITBLIT macro in assembly - where you stop your program and wait for the blitter to finish it's work.
I also believe things like this made the code smaller - a handfull of registered passed to blitter and it's happily processing your graphics while your program continues.
Same goes for copperlists - set and forget.
Note on the copper - I've yet to use any system that was so flexible in it's video formatting or the ability to smoothscroll so effortlessly (and with such a tiny impact on the hardware).
If they're out there - I've not programmed one. It was things like that where with but a tiny fraction of knowledge you could throw up something that was (compared to the competition of the day) incredible.
oh, and 68k assem was a thing of beauty and joy..
Ok - enough reminiscing - I'm firing up Devpac :-P
Siggy
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Unfortunately I'll be repeating myself, but here goes;
Siggy, you beat me to it, FLEXIBLE, that's the key. AOS is so damn flexible. I could be wrong, but I heard game guys could easily not use ANY of the OS if it suited their needs. The machine wouldn't cry bloody murder! It makes me say, never mind "amiga anywhere", I say "ANYTHING to ANYONE"!
But wait, that's only a part of it, with everything else that was said by others here.
In fact, everyone saw something different. For me, and few people seem to have lived my vision, I freaked after desperately saving and finally buying an 8 meg ram board for my A2000, I loaded the ENTIRE OS into ram: or usually a rad: ALMOST every session. I remember playing "Black Crypt" (five disks) in ram. I still remember playing one of the Ultimas on a SNES, with LOAD TIME DELAY!
Atari and Mac aren't flexible enough, and windows, FORGET IT!!!!
Notepad on w98se is 43,000 bytes, and it's USELESS!!! IT HAS NO FEATURES!!!! It's limit is 64K files!! then you have to use wordpad, which I didn't install.
Multiple screens, at different resolutions; once you SEE that, YOU'RE ADDICTED!
I HAD a program called x-ray??, that could cycle through the screens below it, over the section you were on, or pan and scroll around it, HOW COOL IS THAT??? 1990!!!!! and you SAW the program underneath RUNNING!
AmigaOne! "Anything to anyone".
P.S. Isn't that why you bought a computer?
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PC gamers are a funny bunch - I used to be one.
My parents decided to get a PC to help with their home-run business. That was in 1994. (Before this we had an Amstrad PCW)
When they weren't using it, I would play games like Settlers, Doom, Cannon Fodder, Tomb Raider and a few others. A while later I got Quake for my birthday. Then we needed to upgrade to play it. Thankfully it was only the ram we needed to upgrade. Everything was great after that. I could play Quake and There was a slight increase in the general speed of Windows (95).
I kept playing games on the PC and enjoying them. Then I had to start a Training Scheme or get my unemployment money cut off. I made a few friends there (one of which is now living with me :-D). Some of them lived on a not-too-far-out-of-the-way-home place, so I decided I would stop by there before going home. That was one of the greatest choices I made.
This was the first time I had seen an expanded A1200 (I had seen Amigas years before - I wanted an A500 when they came out, but I could never afford one). I was amazed at what it could do. A few weeks later, I decided I was going to get one. The local Tandy shop had one (the last one to be sold in a shop in Dundee). I promptly went to the bank, got my £200 and bought it. I then spent money upgrading it (accel, ram, HD, CD-ROM and just a month or two ago a tower and SD/FF - we had a spare monitor)
Playing the games on an Amiga (Skidmarks, Hired Guns, Breathless, Alien Breed (all of them), Gloom, Cannon Fodder, Dune II, Syndicate, the list goes on...) is far better than on the PCs. I remember playing Cannon Fodder on the PC and thinking it was great. I then saw it on an Amiga and saw how smoothly it scrolled. I was surprised at how graphically different these two games were.
I still play the occasional games on my PC, but I get so much more fun playing them on my Amiga. And the specs of my Amiga haven't changed in 6 years. Since getting my Amiga, my parents have upgraded twice just to run things more smoothly.
I'm glad I'm an ex-PC gamer :-D
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It's all true, sorry to hear you lost some friends there power! you should havemade them follow the monitor cable or something!
What i can say is that i AM a PC gamer (and CS-rival coder) but only since the days of wolfenstein, so i suppose i crossed over when the gauntlet did :-) And it is true that in real life i try to pronounce things like LOL, w00t and the most diffucult to say: rotfl .... oh dear.
at any rate i'm happy now that i can play DOOM on my miggy, it's all that matters to me!
interesting a firend of mine who owns EVERY gaming console recently got a PC (this means he loves goldeneye but thinks Half life sucks and, of course, thinks HAlo rocks)(which it does) ... i introduced him to Quake ... and it blew him away! the speed of the gameplay especially.
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Great thread guys and oh so true...
I was quite late getting a PC in life, i would never touch one in the past as i never had the urge/need to get one , to them my friends it was all tweaking this, teaking that, mine is faster than yours, windows is so coool, we can multitask, yada yada yada.
Back then in the mid to late 90s they really didnt believe me i could go online with my Amiga, play Doom on an old 030, play quake on a 60mhz Amiga computer and be able to have dual CPU's and 24 bit gfx cards, there of course like nah you cant do that, same old crap as they live in the PC world that if you didnt have something way above 400mhz (this was a few years ago) and 3d card then its gonna be crap and not do anything, i gladly show them the demo scene that was and is Amiga and point out that these our running on a 7mhz original Amiga 500 that was released around '85, had stereo sound, and could multitask better than your machine could ever dream of.
When they did eventually see my PPC setup they didnt believe me either it was an Amiga, all i got was no no way and eventually, wow!
Also worth a note was when i brought up how bloated Windows really is and showing them, fine examples our the memory requirements compared to Amiga and showing the size of alot of my Amiga internet programs for an example, stricq/amirc//IB/Yam etc etc that most of which fall below 1MB !
The sad fact is, they didnt know what is was like to enjoy a computer experience, something noone ever seem to have with a Windows machine, i guess for me the Amiga has soul and its a very enjoyable experience, and its not all down to mhz as is clearly showing in the PC world.
When i got my first PC which was a 450 mhz P3 running windows 98, it felt slow, cumbersome, the feel that you don't know whats really going on under the bonnet, and is this CPU really faster than my old 200mhz 603e or my 040/25mhz for that matter? It for sure didnt respond as quickly and after time i could really start to see why i enjoyed my Amiga so much.
Anyway im sure for some you may start to see the trend all over again, you have a G4 @ 800mhz? but i have an Athlon running over 2 ghz, you machine must suck! the windows rules of computing comes back again, but when that comes around, show them what it can do :-)
Anyway enough ranting...but before i go, i dunno about you guys but when i first seen my friend shutting down windows and windows replying "It's now safe to turn of your computer" i buckled with laughter. does it also tell you when your allowed to switch it back on again? ;-)
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I'm currently a PeeCee gamer, but I haven't always been so. I had an Amiga 500 from 1992 - 1997 and it was only the fact that I didn't know whether the Amiga was going to still be around as a gaming platform that made me switch to other formats.
I've owned several machines since my Amiga, including Atari Jaguar, Panasonic 3DO, Playstation, Playstation 2 (crap) and numerous PC's.
My Amiga was most definately the best computer I ever owned though...
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Bottom line, PC's are only good for 1st person games (which all seem to be the same to me) and those over complicated flight sims that need a load of buttons.
I used to spend hours playing games on my Amiga and now I hardly touch any of the PC games I have. I leave that to my PS2.
Which makes me wonder why I bother trying to have a decent graphics card in my PC. :-?
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What's more, formatting a floppy under Win2kPro these days still kills everything else.
Formatting a floppy disk doesn’t seem to be a burden on my Athlon XP/nForce 2/WinXP-Pro-SP1 box…
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Bottom line, PC's are only good for 1st person games (which all seem to be the same to me) and those over complicated flight sims that need a load of buttons.
What about RTS (e.g. Command Conquer - Generals)? I don’t think those consoles can effectively pump at +1600x1200 resolution with a TV.
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Hammer wrote:
What's more, formatting a floppy under Win2kPro these days still kills everything else.
Formatting a floppy disk doesn’t seem to be a burden on my Athlon XP/nForce 2/WinXP-Pro-SP1 box…
Hush now! Don't go spoiling classic mythology. :)
Just as those "PeeCee gamers" aren't very clued in on the capabilities of Amigas, neither do a whole bunch of Amiga users seem to have ever used an even moderately modern PC with a recent Windows version.
"ISA and IRQs, waah, waah! Can't do anything else while formatting floppies, waah waah! Hardware being fast and cheap is not ELEGANT, it's SUPPOSED to be slow and expensive, waah waah!" ;)
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I was quite late getting a PC in life, i would never touch one in the past as i never had the urge/need to get one , to them my friends it was all tweaking this, teaking that, mine is faster than yours,
I don’t find tweaking a problem, i.e. the Amiga does have its share of hardware and OS tweaking e.g. over-clocking my A3000’s 68882 FPU, 68010 drop in replacement/512kb bogo ram to chip ram hack for A500, direct FPU math library replacements and ‘etc’.
Back then in the mid to late 90s they really didnt believe me i could go online with my Amiga, play Doom on an old 030, play quake on a 60mhz Amiga computer and be able to have dual CPU's and 24 bit gfx cards, there of course like nah you cant do that, same old crap as they live in the PC world that if you didnt have something way above 400mhz (this was a few years ago) and 3d card then its gonna be crap and not do anything,
With sufficient ram (e.g. 20MB ram), the right core logic chipsets (e.g. OPTi), the right UART chip and Cirrus 542x SVGA addon-card; one could surf the net, play DOOM @33Mhz 386DX.
i gladly show them the demo scene that was and is Amiga and point out that these our running on a 7mhz original Amiga 500 that was released around '85, had stereo sound, and could multitask better than your machine could ever dream of.
Largely thanks to Amiga’s custom co-processors chips which reduces the CPU burden, thus the 7Mhz 68000 machines can-do most of the mentioned task.
play quake on a 60mhz Amiga computer
But how large is the resolution?
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But how large is the resolution?
Not very big, it couldnt handle it at decent frames rates, but it was running on a 68k Amiga under AGA, something that was touted as impossible not long before and a great achievement since the Amiga was not designed to handle these types of games, but hey..that was what programmers done best on Amiga, pushing every single last drop of power out of it. Nows it all mhz mhz mhz, yes i know, i've heard why bother since x86 h/w is so cheap etc etc.
I dare say if they optimized half of todays games, the h/w requirements for the games would be much lower..so in that respert i wouldnt be suprised to see some fine Games running at fantastic speeds on the new Amiga OS with alot less system requirements than the windows versions.
We may be getting well below 1 GHZ CPU'S and not the very top of the range gfx card 3d support straight of the bat but this will be under Amiga OS, not the overhead that is windows, in that respect we could run anything that is out there today and Faast!. if only it can get the support.
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DOOM on a 486? why yes, thats bad graphic's especially zoomed in. Sadly that is not really because of DOS (it isn't a windows game really, if I recall correctly) . Another game was released about the same time by Citadel (Games Workshop) which was DOOM like but it had very much improved graphics, and I have heard the AI is supposed to be smarter too. DOS doesn't have bad overhead, but yes windows definitely does. :D My school uses an Amiga 2000 (2500?) to do the scrolling text on its local TV channel, with Video Toaster. which goes to show how far ahead the Amiga was, the channel doesn't look dated at all. though since I sometimes saw a mouse icon I had always thought it was windows NT or something, like most school computers. X86 stuff isn't so bad as really windows bloatware is. Although X86 is getting up in the limits (2ghz Pentium Zeons in the best school computers, look like they're on life support.) . I was doing my homework in the library today, then I look over and I'm like WTF?!?! theres two Amigas sitting there, a 2000 and 2500. they were out of the production room for the moment, had never seem them before so I went and asked the TV production teacher if he still used them.
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There are a lot of things that do this.. it's amazing. One of the edit systems I use at work (when I can't get on the Avid) runs on WinNT (one day they will fess up and reveal that this in fact stands for 'nearly there').
What version of WinNT?
I think the strength of the Amiga is not just pre-emptive multi tasking at the OS level -- it was doing it at the hardware level,
With OS shared memory architecture, AmigaOS's main strength was its task switching speed.
An Amiga with just chipram; i.e. this bus has to be shared with customs co-processors chips and CPU.
This should sound familiar to the modern PC.
In a modern PC, bandwidth has to shared with the following co-processors
1. GPU (a.k.a VPU),
2. APU (a.k.a DSP),
3. SPP, (nForce’s case) nForce 2’s SPP (Northbridge chip) is short for "Signal Platform Processor".
Thus the case for 128bit wide bus (via dual RAM channel controllers).
Of course one could plug-in dumb video and sound cards on a modern PC.
PS; An Amiga with Fast RAM and Chip RAM is effectively has dual RAM controllers (minus the “cross-bar” technology).
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DOOM on a 486? why yes, thats bad graphic's especially zoomed in. Sadly that is not really because of DOS (it isn't a windows game really, if I recall correctly).
Both DOS and WinDOOM exist btw...
My school uses an Amiga 2000 (2500?) to do the scrolling text on its local TV channel, with Video Toaster. which goes to show how far ahead the Amiga was.
Note that the Video Toaster's does have it's own video processor...
Video Toaster's is not just a dumb add-on card...
Although X86 is getting up in the limits (2ghz Pentium Zeons in the best school computers, look like they're on life support.)
To go beyond (Northwood core) 3.06/3.2Ghz, the Pentium 4 will just get yet another core upgrade.
1. Prescott
2. Nocona
Refer to http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2003_03_26_Prescott_clues_for_Yamhill.html
Prescott core was stated to have 1Mb L2 cache, which is practically Pentium 4 Xeon in regards L2 cache size.
I would say "X86 is getting up in the limits" is somewhat false .
For "Slimming down Microsoft Windows ObeseWare(TM)" projects;
Refer to http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8470
The problem (or strength i.e. depending on how you look at it) with X86’s CPU manufactures they seem to skip around the claimed limitations by issuing new cores.
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I see alot of people more recently complaining about the prices of the high end AmigaOne XE's. I'd just like to say that I payed about $700AUD for the Amiga 500 back in 1990 (for a then revolutionary system). Fast forward to 1996 and I was paying $3000AUD for a supposed superior system (Pentiium 100). Mind you I did mention in an earlier post that It felt more like a downgrade for a very looong time. Windows 95 was hardly as groundbreaking as it was hyped up to be.
You might say I got swept up into the whole commotion of Win95 being the be all and end all of OSes. Man! wasn't I duped or what! together with a few million other people at the time.
So I guess what I am saying is that I have no qualms about paying top dollar for something which will be undoubtly superior to windows 95. And since I payed through the nose for a POS x86 back in 96, I could do worse than going back to my system of choice(Amiga) in 2003 (yeah.. like upgrading to windows Longhorn+spyware and a souped up P4 reconditioned typewriter that still can't multi-task without a lag, even if you packed in 4gb DDR ram). That is all.
PS: I heard that m$ marketed win95 so well, that on its release many people ended up buying a copy win95 despite not owning a computer.. some even 2 copies for no reason at all!!! L M A O! Talk about effective marketing techniques... I think it was around this time that bgates knew he was onto something good.
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What version of WinNT?
Be more than happy to get back to you with that - I've sent an Email off to our IT staff for relevant details.
(This is a machine at my work - they'd know what's been done to it and what hasn't far better than I)
An Amiga with just chipram; i.e. this bus has to be shared with customs co-processors chips and CPU.
This should sound familiar to the modern PC.
Which was my point - That it was ahead of it's time.
- Note in my post I spoke of what the Amigas strengths were... I don't recall saying 'unlike modern PC's' in that post.
The only point I made on the PC side of things is that the clock stops when I'm digitizing video -- something that shouldn't happen be it an OS problem or a programming problem.
(I don't have this problem on my home system -- which is a PC that I built for the purpose - running XP -- Although I don't use the same editing software at home).
Siggy.
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KingTutt wrote:
I see alot of people more recently complaining about the prices of the high end AmigaOne XE's. I'd just like to say that I payed about $700AUD for the Amiga 500 back in 1990 (for a then revolutionary system). Fast forward to 1996 and I was paying $3000AUD for a supposed superior system (Pentiium 100).
I’ll just say that you got ripped off… I only paid Pentium Classic 150Mhz white box system for around $1000 AUD in around the same time period as you.
Mind you I did mention in an earlier post that It felt more like a downgrade for a very looong time. Windows 95 was hardly as groundbreaking as it was hyped up to be.
In business (i.e. office type environment), legacy support is important. In another words, X86 PC main strength has funded its weakness.
OS/2 Warp has support for Win16/DOS legacy**, but people was not interested with non-official upgrade path.
**There are major issues when running Win16/DOS legacy within OS/2 at that time. I’ll leave that for another time.
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Hammer wrote:
KingTutt wrote:
I see alot of people more recently complaining about the prices of the high end AmigaOne XE's. I'd just like to say that I payed about $700AUD for the Amiga 500 back in 1990 (for a then revolutionary system). Fast forward to 1996 and I was paying $3000AUD for a supposed superior system (Pentiium 100).
I’ll just say that you got ripped off… I only paid Pentium Classic 150Mhz white box system for around $1000 AUD in around the same time period as you.
I highly doubt you we are referring to the same period (Jan 96) mate. At the time the highest specced Pentium was a 133Mhz, and they were way more expensive. 150Mhz was a few months away. So I was hardly ripped off. I didn't buy from a retail giant like Grace Bros or Harvey Norman, if you know what I mean. However I did buy the Amiga from Kmart (so maybe i was ripped off then - mind you I would gladly of payed any premium price if I was to do that again) Remember that this was a time when the difference between 8mb and 16mb was a few hundred dollars. BTW I chose to go with 16mb EDO RAM at the time. My bad?
Otherwise it was a very sound purchase... I still get the cheapest PC prices from that same guy today. Just upgraded a whole system from there for under $400AUD for a mate of mine!
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@ Hammer
Hi,
Last good RTS game that I was playing was Dune II on Amiga. ;) Two days ago I purchased CC: Generals and nothing, I finished game after 10 hours of playing, 3 campaigns, 7 missions each... That is not a good game, at least for me. ;) It's a particle effects show time and nothing else. Like I said, only good RTS is Dune II, and it was ways better on Amiga than PC version. Also, there is only a few good strategy games for windows platform and that is Total Annihilation, Civ2 and Dungeon Keeper, no more, no less. Too bad that now a days trend is D3D (or OpenGL) strategy games, which is very uncomfortable way to see things across the screen and camera movement is usualy useless. And something about 1600x1200 in OpenGL. There is no difference about gameplay if you are able to play games in 1024x768, 1600x1200, or 800x600. That doesn't makes you a better player, right? :))) I'm able to play lets say Q3 in 1600 but I'm not, I want to have all that FPS and make some more frags, that only counts, so I'm usually playing at 1024. And to just say something at the end... Right now, I'm playing UFO: Enemy Unknown (again) and there is no fun in new windows platorm games like in old ones on Amiga. That's only matters, no awesome gfx, no cool 3d hw sound, only gameplay, at least for me.
Regards
levelLORD
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Be more than happy to get back to you with that - I've sent an Email off to our IT staff for relevant details.
You could press Windows key + Pause button (at same time) for obtaining WinNT's release version...
The only point I made on the PC side of things is that the clock stops when I'm digitizing video -- something that shouldn't happen be it an OS problem or a programming problem.
I recall, NT drivers is at kernel level, thus a badly written driver may play havoc with user level programs (like your clock applet).
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I highly doubt you we are referring to the same period (Jan 96) mate. At the time the highest specced Pentium was a 133Mhz, and they were way more expensive. 150Mhz was a few months away
Around March 1994 was release date for Intel Pentium @100mhz.
Around March 1995 was release date for Pentium Classic @ 120Mhz.
Around January 1996 was release date for Pentium Class @150Mhz.
Refer to http://www.redhill.net.au/c-4.html
Depending where you purchased your PC, the final price for your PC may be different to mine.
Just upgraded a whole system from there for under $400AUD for a mate of mine!
Depending on the spec btw. What was the spec?
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levelLORD wrote:
@ Hammer
Hi,
Last good RTS game that I was playing was Dune II on Amiga. ;)
Mine would be Starcraft due to the story plot. Warcraft III comes close due added RPG elements.
Two days ago I purchased CC: Generals and nothing, I finished game after 10 hours of playing, 3 campaigns, 7 missions each... That is not a good game, at least for me. ;)
What about multi-player?
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Hammer wrote:
levelLORD wrote:
@ Hammer
Hi,
Last good RTS game that I was playing was Dune II on Amiga. ;)
Mine would be Starcraft due to the story plot. Warcraft III comes close due added RPG elements.
Two days ago I purchased CC: Generals and nothing, I finished game after 10 hours of playing, 3 campaigns, 7 missions each... That is not a good game, at least for me. ;)
What about multi-player?
I don't want to sound biased or anything. But I have to agree with levelLORD. Altho Starcraft was the best PC offering to the genre, if thats saying anything.
Hammer, believe me you don't want to waste your time with C&C Generals, its a one day wonder at best. Pretty particle systems, nice little vertex/pixel shading effects etc. If you must have nice and pretty, try Hegemonia (Nov 2002), its a Space RTS, but at least its playable, and at least you can marvel at the zoom ins of the wonderfully 3d rendered planets and advanced pixel shaded explosion... oh and those ring worlds... oh those immaculately rendered ringworlds! Did I mention the explosions?
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Starcraft was fine, much more fun in multiplayer then in campaigns, but WC3 was a real disappoint, except beautiful movies, but sloppy camera... Characters are fat, horses even more :))) I finished the game, but at the end I wanted to be over as soon as possible. The same feeling with the CC Generals. Even more, like you said, story is weak, and when I finished the first part of campaign, with Chinese, I didn't know that it is the last Chinese campaign. Really weird. Too bad that I spent my two days off playing it... :((( I purchased it because of a good score in PC gamer and because there is nothing better coming out soon.
OK, later Hammer
levelLORD
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You could press Windows key + Pause button (at same time) for obtaining WinNT's release version...
Have to have a look see later when that machine is available (I'm not afforded the luxury of having a dedicated edit bay - not yet anyways ;-)
@KingTutt & Hammer
Component prices have dropped rapidly over the the past 10 years - and I find myself sometimes trying to recall the prices I bought things for -- what was heinously expensive today is tomorrows junk.
The 400 I have in my clunker was once in my brother in laws 'super game box'.
But if you ever think you're getting ripped off - consider these purchases (in Oz at the time too):
1982 - C64 - $300
1983 - 1541 drive $344.50 (I remember that one exactly)
1983 - 300 baud modem - $250
Amber monitor $150
1984 - 300/1200 baud modem (auto answer) $350
1984 - Pet 1001 drive (x2) $400 each
1985 - Pet HD 5mhz (canna remember model) $500
So even 'bargain hunting' I spent a couple of grand all
up on a C64 system (I ran a bbs on it - probably still listed in some old 64 mags somewhere)..
Feel better now?
Siggy
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Hammer: StarCraft is one of my favorites. That and Age of Mythology (much better than WarCraft3). StarCraft has alot of feeling (very rare thing in PeeCee gaming). AOM is the only game that made me abandon Age of Empires 1 (AOE2 included).
Command & Conquer, code red and all that stuff is just hype. Dated on release, no fun in the long run (compared with the alternatives).
Apart from x86 gaming and some raytracing under RH, I'm a hardcore A1200 user (typing this on my A1200).
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I played Dune 2 on the Amiga after seeing it
on my friend's PC...I actually thought that
the PC version had better graphics (VGA compared
to OCS?), and I think it had speech through
the 16bit sound card which the Amiga
didn't have. It was an excellent Amiga
game though...kept me up many nights. The
only thing I didn't like was the inability
to select more than one unit at once...and I
didn't have a HD so it was all - about swapping
disks.
That same friend also had Doom on his 386...I
recall it as being very fun and playable, but
that was long ago I can't fully remember.
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@poweramiga2002
who needs friends like that anyway?
losers - ur better of without them.
Rude
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You are right, I forgot about those. I suppose there is those point and click adventures also.
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@KingTutt
Can't have been very good friends, NOT KNOWING WHAT AN AMIGA IS? I'M OUTRAGED! :-x
Your better off without the sort of friends who'll dump you for what they think is a practical joke. DUMB-ASSES! :-D
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Mike_Amiga wrote:
@KingTutt
Can't have been very good friends, NOT KNOWING WHAT AN AMIGA IS? I'M OUTRAGED! :-x
Your better off without the sort of friends who'll dump you for what they think is a practical joke. DUMB-ASSES! :-D
Don't worry dude. I've set them straight since, I'm basically professing Amiga 101, to most of my peers anyways, correcting history as set by the victors... cough*m$*cough.
And yeah... being amiga-ignorant, is no way to get on my good side.
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But if you ever think you're getting ripped off - consider these purchases (in Oz at the time too):
1982 - C64 - $300
1983 - 1541 drive $344.50 (I remember that one exactly)
1983 - 300 baud modem - $250
Amber monitor $150
1984 - 300/1200 baud modem (auto answer) $350
1984 - Pet 1001 drive (x2) $400 each
1985 - Pet HD 5mhz (canna remember model) $500
Was there a strong commodity market (relative to X86 PC) for PET/C64?
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@KingTutt
Can't have been very good friends, NOT KNOWING WHAT AN AMIGA IS? I'M OUTRAGED!
Your better off without the sort of friends who'll dump you for what they think is a practical joke. DUMB-ASSES!
Looks like ive embarrased them too much ,i tried to talk to them again now they bag the crap out of me about miggy and ibook ,imac.
They told me dont bother talking to them about computors untill i get a real one ( pc) so thats it for me i couldent give a rats ass about em any more .
Both my Amiga and ibook would kick there systems asses my mac friends dont have prob with Amiga and my Amiga freinds dont have prob with my macs i wonder if its just a typical pc attitude?
well they miss out not me ill see my A1 run they wont !!!
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poweramiga2002 wrote:
@KingTutt
i wonder if its just a typical pc attitude?
Unfortunately, I've found this to be a typical ressponse from the pc people :-(
But who cares about them anyway :-P
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@poweramiga2002
Dude, back in the day I had heaps of Amiga friends. I actually only had one friend who was PC only. And he was very impressed with what he saw on my A500. He used to come around for hours at a time to play games such as Pro Tennis Tour 2, GODS, RBI Baseball, Lemmings 2, WINGS and Panza Kickboxing.
Suffice to say, the dumbass, purchased the PC ports of all the above games, instead of getting an Amiga to play them in their true glory. I used to bag the crap out of him for that. He was in serious loser denial and used to say they were good enough on PC, despite the PC speaker sounds and chunky oversized sprites and lower resolutions, urrrghh!
Anyway, he later confessed that he couldn't afford an Amiga, and on 2 occassions tried to get a 2nd hand one, but unfortunately never quite got one. I guess he at least admitted his real stance on Amigas, which is more than what I could say about his friends. He was the first PC owner I knew, who actually conceded how much more advanced Amiga was at the time, despite his snobby exterior and general condesending attitude towards anything non-PC when with his Pro-PC peers.
Nowadays, many of those friends have long since departed and we have gone our seperate ways. I only keep in contact with the one guy who originally introduced me to the amiga 500 in '87. Him and his dad are still hardcore advocates of the miggy. And I love talking to them at length about the shortcomings of x86 computing, this day and age.