Difference between Amiga and Atari 520?

[chsedge]

win95 is an hybrid 16bit/32bit system, win98 is not but it has compatibility with the dos stuff. winxp is based on a different kernel (derived from the NT family). If many people still use Win9X is because it has a lot of software and still good hw support even if is a discontinued product.

[chsedge]

Marco, fully pre-emptive multi-tasking existed since the 70's, and even GUI. Amiga has GUI later than the MAC, and at that time multi-tasking was a feature needed mainly on big machines. The TripOS project was a nice research, but it has many flaws that Amiga suffered for years.

What I find really good in it, was the microkernel approach, but MACH is just a more modern one. MAC OSX use a microkernel from MACH.

[Kronos]

The differences between ST and Amiga may be rather subtle, but not how they were perceived by the general public.

The ST was seen as a cheaper Mac, with a simple professional looking OS running at a suitable resulotion, which could also be used for games.

The Amiga was a fancy game-machine with all bells&whistles, which featured an underdeveloped OS looking crap and to be used on the telly.

Take for example the file-requester in early TOSes, simple but functional. AmigaOS1.x only offered a primitiv string gadget, and later tons of 3rd-party lib offering filerequster that worked in a ton of different ways.


Thats why we never really got good desktop-SW.

[KThunder]

much of the original st hardware seems to be very pcish, except for the processor. it had an ega style video chip, very simple sound chip and pc style floppies (only the boot block was different iirc)
management at atari was about as bad as at commodore, or the st series might still be around. the 030 added better graphics, processor (of course), and audio dsp. it didnt have much expansion though. that was really the problem with most st series computers. you could add tons of stuff to almost any amiga but the st's were all kludges.

[KThunder]

chsedge wrote:
Marco, fully pre-emptive multi-tasking existed since the 70's, and even GUI. Amiga has GUI later than the MAC, and at that time multi-tasking was a feature needed mainly on big machines. The TripOS project was a nice research, but it has many flaws that Amiga suffered for years.

i think what marco meant was a personal computer os not mainframe or whatever. if you look at the way the amiga os was designed (threads mainly but arexx later) multitasking worked much better than on other machines.
which flaws that amiga suffered with are you talking about?

[chsedge]

well unix existed in flavours available to the personal computer market. since 85-86 a personal computer was just as powerful as a minicomputer from the 70's. UNIX was multiuser and based on a highly successful language.

The first flaw Amiga suffered for me is that was another set of formats (filesystems, os, libraries, hardware) in a world that had in 1986-87 (when Commodore started to push it seriously) already highly solid standards (and many in the software world.). You can then and today how is difficult to port an application from the open source world to Amiga. It was a nice OS but too much linked to the hardware (this was an old background scheme). I can't remember of any app in the Amiga World that also the other users (pc users, mac users, unix users) widely know. Yes there were good apps but no one of them became a standard that's for sure...(like Lotus, Photoshop, Word, Excel, Borland DB, emacs...)

can't take away the fact AmigaOS was a nice original OS...

[Floid]

Kronos wrote:
The differences between ST and Amiga may be rather subtle, but not how they were perceived by the general public.

The ST was seen as a cheaper Mac, with a simple professional looking OS running at a suitable resulotion, which could also be used for games.

The Amiga was a fancy game-machine with all bells&whistles, which featured an underdeveloped OS looking crap and to be used on the telly.

I'll actually concur there, though this was certainly more pronounced in Europe -- in the US, anything not a clone was pretty much weird by default.

Atari made an early and serious effort to pitch the ST as a "color Mac."  Commodore... well, we know Commodore's marketing.

Of course, AFAIK, Atari had to shut up about the time Apple successfully sued Digital Research.  I assume they might've even had plans to cobble together some actual Macintosh compatibility at some point otherwise.

Take for example the file-requester in early TOSes, simple but functional. AmigaOS1.x only offered a primitiv string gadget, and later tons of 3rd-party lib offering filerequster that worked in a ton of different ways.

Thats why we never really got good desktop-SW.

GEM was a toolkit in need of an OS.  AmigaDOS was an OS in search of a toolkit.  (Or seriously, Atari focused on having a relatively primitive MS-DOS-like loader with an environment of choice to load atop it; the Amiga team focused on the CAOS concept -- and then the Tripos-based reality -- then had to scramble to get Intuition and Workbench together, whether to demo the fact that they had something viable or actually get it to market.)

That said, obviously RJ and everyone did a pretty good job in terms of providing the framework that could be cleaned up by OS2.x.

[JimS]

Difference between an Atari 520ST and an Amiga 500?


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[Erol]

@Amiduffer

I think the Atari ST and the Spectrum128 had more in common, bad sound!

I remember playing Xenon on the Atari ST and then playing the Amiga version,  then i laughed as the Atari version was awful.

[Amiduffer]

Erol wrote:
@Amiduffer

I think the Atari ST and the Spectrum128 had more in common, bad sound!

I remember playing Xenon on the Atari ST and then playing the Amiga version,  then i laughed as the Atari version was awful.

 :lol:

I wonder what kind of response I would get if I asked the same question on the Atari forum?  :popcorn:

[JimS]

Amiduffer wrote:
I wonder what kind of response I would get if I asked the same question on the Atari forum?  :popcorn:

Probably what you'd expect. :-)

I was the president of an Atari user group about the time of the "feud", an 800/800XL guy who switched to Amiga instead of the ST. I think most of the members thought the Amiga was better, but not better enough to justify the extra cost.

[Tenacious]

@ Floyd

I think Amiga's history might have been much better if Commodore could have evolved and released OS2.1 a few years earlier than it did.  

[stopthegop]

it didnt have much expansion though. that was really the problem with most st series computers. you could add tons of stuff to almost any amiga but the st's were all kludges.

That was somewhat true with the low end STs, but not so with its cousin, the TT030.  The concept there was a computer so loaded with hardware features already built-in that you wouldn't need to expand it.  Vintage late 1988, Mine has:

68030/MMU @ 32Mhz
6882 FPU @ 32Mhz
64bit memory (32 address,32 data) -- 28MB!
Aftermarket memory expansion possible to 152MB!  In 1988!
External ROM port
Internal 512K ROM OS.  You can ALWAYS boot to a gui
Independent keyboard processor
3x asynchronous RS232 serial ports
1 DMA rs422 port
VGA Graphics built in
VME slot for expansion
external DMA "ASCSI" port
external floppy port
external standard printer port
Game cartridge port
2 mouse/joystick ports
rj11 keyboard port

Granted, the TT was expensive.  But you can't tell me that it wasn't state-of-the-art for its time and, imho, for many, many years after.  

[stopthegop]

I forgot..

DSP processor
MIDI in and Out
16 bit Stereo w/ high quality RCA jacks

[Marco]

Tenacious wrote:
@ Floyd

I think Amiga's history might have been much better if Commodore could have evolved and released OS2.1 a few years earlier than it did.  

Not really, Workbench 2 was nice, but the hardware development was always the core problem with C=. I mean they started work on AAA in what '88 or '89? And only by about '92-'93 did they actually have vaguely workable prototype boards still with major showstoppers that needed a lot of work to 'iron out'.

AAA and the 'acutiator' architecture that went with it should have been completed and put into Amigas by at the latest 1991, at that point it just might have been enough to stop C= from haemorrhaging money. But of course Gould could still have found a way to screw it up somehow.

@ chsedge: yes, those things existed before that, I'm well aware of the Mac's crummy GUI and several other already existed. Also, I was aware of at least the multi-tasking version of CP/M called MP/M. But were the 'modern' concepts used in AOS actually all implemented in an OS 'whole-cloth' before AOS?

[clemenza]

IMHO, and despite what everyone says, the TOS/GEM combination was much more useful than WB 1.x. Of course, when WB 2.x came out, things changed dramatically. Hardwarewise, the Amiga was years ahead of it's time (and it's competitors...)