Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: KingTutt on March 19, 2003, 12:48:12 AM
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If you ever owned an Amiga 500, you will probably recall buying that 512K memory expansion card, to play some real treats like most of the Cinemaware (http://www.cinemaware.com)[/url] range of games (It came from the Desert, Wings!) and some others like the original and venerable SimCity.
It was probably more noticable when playing SimCity. I could never run the 512K version. It was aweful compared to the full color 1024K version. Of course both were shipped in the same box.
But my question is why did the 512K upgrade prove to be more worthwhile, than say upgrading the same RAM on the x86 series? Sure PeeCees back then were appalingly crude and horrible inefficient machines... much like today! lol! But really how did Amiga make use of every little bit of RAM that was thrown on it? It was like it squeezed out every last kilobyte it was handed. A truly efficient beast. This of course allowed for games to be run off 1 floppy disk, a true marvel of its time.
Will the same hold true with the next generation of Amigas? These days you can throw on 1gb of RAM and not see any difference from 256mb (Not unless you scan images with photoshop or do heavy video editing/capturing) Windows XP is a real resource hog. And it does absolutely nothing new or different than can't already be achieved on Windows 98. So whats going on there?
I think and hope, AOS4 will work on 64mb or 128mb the way XP works on 1gb ram. There's really no need for so much ram - or at least the inefficient use of it. The future shouldn't be about slapping on more memory, to hide inherent programming incompetencies.
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Early PCs were massively disadvantaged because of the wide range of hardware their software had to support. The Amiga only had one architecture and so supporting them didn't take much RAM or CPU power. Now things have changed and custom hardware is stone dead, this had turned to an advantage for PCs and a massive disadvantage for Amigas.
It didn't change one thing though: PC software didn't have to be efficient because most people had the hardware. That had been totally blown out of proportion now, and the Windows (and Linux) coding ethic is, "Who cares if it's slow and big? Just buy new hardware."
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Didn't IBM have closed systems to begin with too?
Anyway I think bloated coding is not going to do much for x86 machines in the long run. Sooner or later there is going to be a point were all this bloatware will bite x86 computers in the ass. I think it may be sooner than later, as 64bit machines are just around the corner. As for whether m$ will try to make backwards compatibility native or emulated is another question altogether.
One thing is certain, all that sloppy coding will haunt bgates the day x86 users move forward to 64bit machines. I hear 64bit h/w is less forgiving to inefficient programming. You only need look at the woeful problems encountered by Intel with their 64bit desktop prototype chips, which is why a desktop solution seems far away. Microsoft are also holding off on a 64bit desktop OS for as long as they can.
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I don´t know about AOS4 but the MOS users have made comments about not needing all their ram. 128MB is as much as will ever be needed when running MOS it seems.
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Custom chips and hardware-banging assembly language?(http:// http://home.hawaii.rr.com/kihoalu/images/yinyang.gif)
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@KingTutt
The real reason for the 512 k upgrade was to play the Newtek demo and the walker demo. No matter what OS4 does or don't do, There willnot be a huge performance gap between the A1 and a Wintel box. And thats the real shame.
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A 600Mhz G3-SE from Eyetech should be fine for doing anything. Sheesh my old Penitum 166Mhz I still run, and its fine doing everything. I had a 16Mhz Machine (or was it 66) a 486 chip, ran Windows 95 okey-dokey... considering I have windows 3.1 on the pentium, and even better running DR DOS... its very fast in actuality, only problems are slow CD and floppy drives. Anyone know if the Amiga Forever CD comes with a version for DOS? If it does I wanna buy it.
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Sooner or later there is going to be a point were all this bloatware will bite x86 computers in the ass. I think it may be sooner than later, as 64bit machines are just around the corner.
On what basis did you obtained this POV?
As for whether m$ will try to make backwards compatibility native or emulated is another question altogether.
On AMD64, the status quo will be extended to 64 bits i.e. yet another WOW (Windows on Windows) layer.
Beta edition of MS Windows 2003 Server AMD64 Edition will run existing MS Windows applications at (except for applications who breaks MS’s API guidelines) without compromising the performance (unlike IA-64 Edition).
Note that the current Athlon K7 family decodes X86-32 instructions in to smaller RISC style instructions (i.e. modern X86 CPUs are just post-RISC chips with a fix function hardware emulator.)
Transmeta's X86 decoder is a combination of software and hardware.
Based on http://www.amdboard.com/hn03130301.html
1.8Ghz Athlon 64** was rated at 3200+
(refers to Athlon Thunderbird Rating)
1.8Ghz Athlon XP(Thoroughbred-A core) was rated at 2200+.
1.8Ghz Athlon XP(Barton core)was rated at 2500+.
PS; The last Athlon XP core would be Thorton core(FSB 400Mhz DDR).
Reference
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http://www.dinoxpc.com/Guide/Processori/AMD_PR/pr.ASP
Notes:
============
**Athlon 64 comes in either 1MB L2 cache or 256Kb L2 cache (targeted for Celeron/Value type markets)
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpc.watch.impress.co.jp%2Fdocs%2F2003%2F0318%2Fkaigai01.htm
I hear 64bit h/w is less forgiving to inefficient programming.
On what basis did you obtained this information?
Unlike Intel's IA-64, the AMD64 platform is just the extension of K7 family.
You only need look at the woeful problems encountered by Intel with their 64bit desktop prototype chips,
IA-64 was designed differently to X86-32 CPUs i.e. more work on programmer side.
which is why a desktop solution seems far away. Microsoft are also holding off on a 64bit desktop OS for as long as they can.
How could you conclude that i.e. when both AMD64 edition and IA-64 edition is currently in beta edition?
In this year’s CeBIT, an AMD64 system was shown to run a beta version AMD64 Windows and a Direct3D game.
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But my question is why did the 512K upgrade prove to be more worthwhile, than say upgrading the same RAM on the x86 series? Sure PeeCees back then were appalingly crude and horrible inefficient machines... much like today! lol! But really how did Amiga make use of every little bit of RAM that was thrown on it? It was like it squeezed out every last kilobyte it was handed. A truly efficient beast. This of course allowed for games to be run off 1 floppy disk, a true marvel of its time.
Since the standard cloned X86 BIOS doesn’t have OS components (unlike the Amiga’s Kickstart ROM), part of first 1MB space (Upper memory and 640Kb region) would be allocated for Himem.sys, EMM386, CD-ROM drivers, MS serial mouse drivers, soundblaster variables (or soundblaser emulators on certain sound cards), Plug and Play DOS manager, setver command, Command.com and etc.
Ever since the IBM XT, hard disk comes in as standard, even on X86 based X-BOX. The existence of a hard disk may promote some sloppy programming during the early life of X86 PCs.
This of course allowed for games to be run off 1 floppy disk, a true marvel of its time.
Note that X86 version of Lotus3 game comes in 1 disk (1.44MB).
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Ok, thanks guys. I never took into account how early x86s poor performance was due to an OS that had to account for many configurations (thanks Kenny R), and the necessity of preloading memory resident tasks into RAM. (thanks Hammer)
I had an inkling of this being the reason. Just needed someone to reassert this.
Ok so its clear now to me that Amiga's tighly integrated architecture (OCS, ECS & AGA) gave it a tremendous edge over PCs since 85 and onwards. I guess you could liken Amiga to a highly specialised console with an OS and computer peripherals. But man what a machine eh!
Still I see it a real shame that we couldn't continue with Amiga's legacy of efficient coding. But is it really good practise to be resource wasteful with sloppy code?!?! I personally think it should be a crime punishable by death if that same approach is adopted for the Amiga OS4 platform. hehe.
BTW can't AOS4 boost say an A1@G4 800Mhz to feel like a A1@1600Mhz. I mean an Athlon 1800+ is really just running at 1533Mhz yet is comparable to a P4 1800Mhz. Can't the same hold true for the G4 running Altivec(sp?) specialised instructions sets and OS4 taking advantage of that?
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Well, back in the classic Amiga days, games (and software) didn't need much memory and the Amiga's OS was on a 512K rom chip (or two 256k chips). This means that very little RAM memory was required for the Operating system, Thus Games (and apps) had nearly the full 1meg to themselves.
Going back to games, the graphics were all 2D, low res and only 5bit planes deep, not much memory required for that!! Sound samples were 8bit and usually at about 8Khz, again not much memory needed for that...
Modern games are 3D, generally run at 1026*768 and 32bits deep, this requres a huge amount of memory (Mipmaps, bumpmaps, textures, the list is endless). Sound is at least Stereo, 16bit at 44.1KHz, which requres about 10meg for 1 minute!!! Some games have surround sound, at 24bit and 96Khz!!!!!
If you run AROS on a normal x86 PC, aside from the Memory required for the Kernel (AROS has to use RAM as the PC has no Kickstart ROM chip), it doesn't need any more memory than AmigaOS. The Whole AROS OS fits on a single floppy disk with room for some software too!!!!
Which shows that most of the inefficency with the Modern PC is due almost completely to Micro$oft, and their bloated OS (Linux is no dream either).
Also IA64, has nothing to do with x86. It is an EPIC (VLWI to normal people) CPU, it was designed when chip desigeners thought the CPU couldn't perform optimisation in hardware, and so it has to be done in software increasing code bloat. The P4 and Athlon have proven that Hardware is much more efficent than software at producing small and fast code.
The Athlon64 is a much more modern design than the IA64, and basicly gives the x86 an optimised 64 bit mode. The Long Mode (64bit) on the Athlon is like a new CPU, but keeps all the good points of the x86 (as Linus put it), best of all it can still run legacy code which makes it far more economically viable (thus cheaper CPU, with more proccessing power).
I hope that helps
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I am not sure if you guys missed the point or me?
The A500 came as standard with 512K of RAM. But, and this is the crux of the matter, it was CHIP ram. This memory was used both by the applications (i.e. the CPU) AND by the graphics and sound chips (Blitter etc). This meant that each had to wait for the other to finish before it could access memory.
However, if you added another 512K, this was FAST memory and was only available by the CPU. If you look at the difference in something like F/A18 Interceptor (anyone manage to sink the submarine?), you will see that with 512K fast ram, the game is much faster/smoother as the cpu doesnt have to wait any more as it has direct access to a WHOLE 512k (FAST) memory, rather than having to SHARE 512K (CHIP) memory with all the other custom chips.
If you want a better explanation of this architecture and how it works, gimme a shout because there is better explanation in the "Amiga Hardware" book (blue Abacus book).
:-)
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PhatBoiCollier wrote:
I am not sure if you guys missed the point or me?
The A500 came as standard with 512K of RAM. But, and this is the crux of the matter, it was CHIP ram. This memory was used both by the applications (i.e. the CPU) AND by the graphics and sound chips (Blitter etc). This meant that each had to wait for the other to finish before it could access memory.
However, if you added another 512K, this was FAST memory and was only available by the CPU. If you look at the difference in something like F/A18 Interceptor (anyone manage to sink the submarine?), you will see that with 512K fast ram, the game is much faster/smoother as the cpu doesnt have to wait any more as it has direct access to a WHOLE 512k (FAST) memory, rather than having to SHARE 512K (CHIP) memory with all the other custom chips.
If you want a better explanation of this architecture and how it works, gimme a shout because there is better explanation in the "Amiga Hardware" book (blue Abacus book).
:-)
The A500... Hmmm IIRC that extra memory was bogo memory (or some such name), and actually fitted into the custom chip address space... um... maybe it did configure as fast ram, I wish I still had an A500 to test it with :-(
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The A500... Hmmm IIRC that extra memory was bogo memory (or some such name), and actually fitted into the custom chip address space... um... maybe it did configure as fast ram, I wish I still had an A500 to test it with :-(
From what I can remember it was known as pseudo fast RAM. In that it ran the same speed as chip memory. I can't remember what memory range it sat in though but;
I remember doing a small HW hack with cutting and soldering a few lines on the motherboard which then converted the 512k expansion into an extra 512k of Chip (giving you a total of 1meg Chip) which was great if you had a HD attached to the side of the machine.
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KingTutt wrote:
Anyway I think bloated coding is not going to do much for x86 machines in the long run. Sooner or later there is going to be a point were all this bloatware will bite x86 computers in the ass. I think it may be sooner than later, as 64bit machines are just around the corner. As for whether m$ will try to make backwards compatibility native or emulated is another question altogether.
One thing is certain, all that sloppy coding will haunt bgates the day x86 users move forward to 64bit machines.
In Amiga OS Development
I posted
CPU Instructions Q.
in which I share the same sentiments.
AmigaOne! Irrisistable!
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@PhatBoiCollier:
You missed the point :-)
The first half meg was CHIP mem, the second half was SLOW mem (neither chip nor fast) accessed through the same timing on the motherboard, but outside the rather low address window the graphics and sound chips could DMA to. Cutting a trace in a jumper near the CPU and soldering in a small wire, so that two address lines from the CPU to Agnus swapped places, moved the SLOW mem into the CHIP mem range (late A500 motherboards with proper Agnus version only). I had 1M chip and 2M fast in my A500. Wasn't half bad then.
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Still I see it a real shame that we couldn't continue with Amiga's legacy of efficient coding.
What about X86 QNX? (it has games such as Unreal Tournament and QuakeIII) OR AROS?
But is it really good practise to be resource wasteful with sloppy code?!?!
Ultimately it promotes hardware sales…
There are some parts of Windows that are optimized for maximum speed e.g. 3D drivers..
There are some X86 applications (most related to encoding and decoding video/audio streams) that are optimized for maximum speed (e.g. MMX, 3DNow, 3DNow Pro, SSE, SSE2).
The bloated part is for the support for application services (too many to list down).
I personally think it should be a crime punishable by death if that same approach is adopted for the Amiga OS4 platform. hehe.
What happens if Quake III/Unreal Tournament/MS Office XP/Star Office 6.0/Netscape 7 gets ported over to AmigaOS 4.0?
BTW can't AOS4 boost say an A1@G4 800Mhz to feel like a A1@1600Mhz. I mean an Athlon 1800+ is really just running at 1533Mhz yet is comparable to a P4 1800Mhz.
Athlon XP’s rating is based on Athlon Model 4 (a.k.a Thunderbird core). It’s rating was obtained mostly from MS Windows applications and benchmarks(refer to AMD’s web site for disclosure).
IF the PowerPC has MS Windows 2K/XP a rating could be created. The closest desktop application set to MS Windows is the MacOS X platform.
It’s just too bad that PPC MacOS platform is not an alternative clone market.
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I remember doing a small HW hack with cutting and soldering a few lines on the motherboard which then converted the 512k expansion into an extra 512k of Chip (giving you a total of 1meg Chip) which was great if you had a HD attached to the side of the machine.
I still remember that hack (modifying A500 6A motherboard to the level of A500 Plus (also plugged in new ECS chips and ROMs) .
The best hack I did was the 50Mhz clock source hack on the A3000’s 68882 FPU (getting something for nothing (well almost i.e. one has to install a small heat sink) :) ).
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Hammer wrote:
What happens if Quake III/Unreal Tournament/MS Office XP/Star Office 6.0/Netscape 7 gets ported over to AmigaOS 4.0?
I'm sure Hyperion or whichever Amiga software company that does the port will be wary of the strong code efficient ethics of amiga programming. I trust they will not follow in the same path as m$. Most of these apps have redundant code anyway, since we don't use MMX/SSE/3Dnow code, nor do we have a few dozen different mainboards to support.
I think we are still safe from bloatware whichever way you look at it. The only hitch is, how many programmers nowadays have gotten to complacent to care... i sure hope not any who are serious about Amiga coding.
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I trust they will not follow in the same path as m$.
In a desktop business environment, legacy software support is important. MS couldn’t afford to alienate its (cashed up) business customers. One of the main strength of MS Window’s marketing ideology is its legacy software support.
IF required, MS can deliver a cut down MS Windows 2K with little legacy software support (i.e. refer to X-BOX's OS package).
since we don't use MMX/SSE/3Dnow code, nor do
PPC G4 (and soon to be released(H2 2003) PPC 970) does have it’s own streaming instructions btw…
==========================================
Some minimal configurations:
LynxOS: 150kb
BlueCat Linux: 260kb
Windows XP Embedded: 5Mb
Some typical configurations:
LynxOS: 250kb
Linux: 500kb
Windows XP Embedded: 15Mb
==========================================
Reference (http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au/internetdevices/embedded/embedded_os.html)
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Hammer wrote:
I trust they will not follow in the same path as m$.
In a desktop business environment, legacy software support is important. MS couldn’t afford to alienate its (cashed up) business customers. One of the main strength of MS Window’s marketing ideology is its legacy software support.
IF required, MS can deliver a cut down MS Windows 2K with little legacy software support (i.e. refer to X-BOX's OS package).
since we don't use MMX/SSE/3Dnow code, nor do
PPC G4 (and soon to be released(H2 2003) PPC 970) does have it’s own streaming instructions btw…
==========================================
Some minimal configurations:
LynxOS: 150kb
BlueCat Linux: 260kb
Windows XP Embedded: 5Mb
Some typical configurations:
LynxOS: 250kb
Linux: 500kb
Windows XP Embedded: 15Mb
==========================================
Reference (http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au/internetdevices/embedded/embedded_os.html)
Agreed. But with only 3 mainboards to support, the bloatware is potentially less. Not the hundreds of motherboards and CPUs spanning almost 3 decades for the x86 series.
Anyway my greatest concern for OS4 is that the methodologies of good efficient coding of the once great classic systems, may be lost with this newer generation of windozzze programmers. Think about it for a second. A whole generation has grown up with windows 95/98/2000/XP, probably never of having heard of the amiga or any commodore machines for that matter. None of them will have the slightest clue on what assembly language is, and probably scoff at the mention of it anyways.
Hopefully us true amigans are plentiful enough to show them young 'uns the way to true programming enlightenment, lol!
Sloppy coding and bloatware could become the greatest travesty to the amiga platform. Jay Miner would certainly roll in his grave on that one.
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Most of it comes down to sloppy code, usually caused by strict deadlines. These days simple things like vertical text-scrollers are put into animations, since rendering such an animation is easier and quicker then actually coding such a thing (which looks better and uses much less resources).
Companies want to push out products and make money on them as quickly as possible and they don't care if that means you need a couple of megabytes of extra memory/harddisk space.
I also dislike the fact that each game on the PC needs installing to the harddisk, which takes hundreds of megabytes of harddisk space and then the game still needs the CD's to start up. Most games can easily be run straight from CD... I hope that'll happen on Amiga.... it would be great if they even make the CD's bootable, so you can start up your Amiga, insert the CD and it will run the game without having to install it... or boot from harddisk first.
Regards,
Onno
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Well, considering a harddrive might be able to sustain 20MB/s, and a CDROM might be able to sustain 5MB/s, I know which medium I would like to play a full CD texture-rich 3D game off of. Even worse is the difference in seek time (7ms vs 150ms...)
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Any game I can, I load into a Ram: disk, on my Amiga.
Man, "King's Quest: Perils of Rosella" was a nightmare, loading from disk. Many others, as well.
AmigaOne! 2 Gigs of ram, you can actully USE it!!!!
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@Atheist
AmigaOne! 2 Gigs of ram, you can actully USE it!!!!
In a RAM disk context, ~2.0 GB may not be enough for UT2003 or Unreal2 level games.
1. "Unreal 2" has installed size of 2.10 Gb (2,257,989,274bytes). It was shiped with 2 CDs.
2. "Unreal Tournament 2003" has installed size of 2.88Gb (3,101,392,896bytes). It was shiped with 3 CDs.
This tread will continue at foreseeable future.
"Unreal 2" has practically killed the “Geforce 2” as a gaming 3D card.
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@ KapitanKlystron
Quote: No matter what OS4 does or don't do, There willnot be a huge performance gap between the A1 and a Wintel box. And thats the real shame.
So why is my old&slow A1200T 040/25+603e 240 Mhz ppc+bvision,128 MB fast&lot's more still outprefroming a vast majority of th pc's ?
Amiga OS is very efficient!
I am playing an mp3,running Q2 in window mode, typing this message,mailing,online on icq and irc and downloading files with 85 Kb/sec (my ADSL connection is pretty slow only 768 k/bit bandwidth)
My WB has a very graphical config (1152*900*16) i use visual pref's,MUI,Magic menu,birdie,Caboom,reqattack and whatever i installed to let my wb look and work great.
I skinned every part i could with jpeg's,gif's etc.. and everything is still running smooth, even better i hardly notice all these app's&progs running :-D And still more then enough free mem (about 50 MB) with all this stuff running at the same time.
PC using Friends are always totally stunned when they see my miggy in action.
And then i give em a load of my CSPPC A4000 and then they are silent and totally confused how such an old machine can be so fast with so little hardware (it boots in 5.5 sec's on pfs 3 :-D )
The only time my Amiga's has to give in to modern pc's is when it comes down to raw cpu power.
So if hyperion does a real good job i think an Next gen Amiga will blow a pc out of the water only due to the fact that Amiga OS extremely efficient also coz multiprocessing is very sucky on the x86 platform.
What i also notice is that lot's of Amiga users never seen/used a well configured PPC Amiga.
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I agree, PPC.
The myth that AmigaOne will be some horribly under-resourced, underpowered and unenviable platform is just pure and unadulterated crap. Its small footprint OS will show the world AGAIN, that alot can be achieved with so little. Amigas legacy of efficient coding should and WILL be resurrected by OS4. We can only pray that others will follow suite with their own OS4 programs and say no, to overbloated s/w.
We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the Amiga platform... Hell! we OWE it to Jay Miner and his dream of fun computing. Competition be damned, we don't care how big and unmoving M$ is. And we sure as hell don't care about the standards of today, the promotion of sloppy coding by big companies, to drive the development of h/w further. What we do care about is a solid platform which works and is enjoyable and not lifeless or uninspiring like certain cumbersome and overbloated OSes of today. We care about a certain joy in computing that was lost a while ago, and we care enough to resurrect it by whichever means possible. We care enough to stick by it after 10yrs of no development and no Commodore. And if it takes another 10 years I will still be here, because as long as I remain unsatisfied with the alternatives I will remain Amigan.
My resolve is unchanged since '87 and my resolve will likely remain so till 2087 (that is if I'm still around and tucked away in a flask with electrodes running from my brain. lol!)
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The Xbox has a many bit processor, I though it was 128 like other consoles out there... you'd have to do a lot of really heavy work to port windows. Or are the processors stil 64 bti like the N64? Which doesn't seem right to me...
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Hello jeffimix,
X-BUX=
733 MHz Intel Custom Pentium III
250 MHz Custom-Designed NV2X
rest of their huffing and puffing (http://www.xbreporter.com/xbox_system_specifications.php)
(not)OS takes less then 3 MB in RAM
Doesn't brag about boot-up time, though. Anybody know that?
Here's an interesting stat: Total Internal Components 800
800? Seems high to me? Are they including screws and dust-bunnies? Read elsewhere, 300 people worked on it about 2 to 3 years.
Here's another bogus semi-fact. THEY wrote IE, so how come it took about a YEAR to get the networking, working????? Loouuuuggggeeerrrrrssss!!!!
NO DIRECT PORTS PLEEASE!!! Look at the features of mozilla, opera, netscape, and (gasp) IE, and Amigafy(TM) it. (Just try not to take as long as AOS4.0 to release it.)
AmigaOne! I ADORE my CD (970-)64!!!!! :-D :-D
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@ Kin Tutt
Yeah gogogogo I'm totally with you on this.
Will be in Amiga til the end of time
even though I'm mostly a gamer and only uses my Amiga sporadicly these days (mainly coz I never upgraded it past a 030 and been waiting for my friend to find his broken A4000 so I can have his PPC card for free ;-) ).
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Revener wrote:
@ Kin Tutt
Yeah gogogogo I'm totally with you on this.
Will be in Amiga til the end of time
even though I'm mostly a gamer and only uses my Amiga sporadicly these days (mainly coz I never upgraded it past a 030 and been waiting for my friend to find his broken A4000 so I can have his PPC card for free ;-) ).
Good to see I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness. I am not asking for much. Just a return to my beloved OS with a solid and proper PPC port. Everything else will fall into place after that. Sure, Hyperion will be doing the hard yards to get us to point A, but really... once the platform is launched it will be the community who will take on the marathon torch.
I just want to see those Courier letters
Amiga inc 1985-2003 at the load up screen with the sky or royal blue blue background and I am sold!
Bring back the red amiga mouse pointer I say!
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jeffimix wrote:
The Xbox has a many bit processor, I though it was 128 like other consoles out there... you'd have to do a lot of really heavy work to port windows. Or are the processors stil 64 bti like the N64? Which doesn't seem right to me...
XBOX's has the following;
+ Pentium III/Celeron variant has 128Kb L2 cache. It has 32bit(or 36bit extended) memory address capability with 64 bit data I/O. (Recalling) Pentium III/Celeron’s L1 to L2 cache interface is 256bit wide (for internal I/O operations).
+ The 250 MHz Custom-Designed NV2X is a variant of a low end Geforce 3 (NV20, DirectX 8 class GPU). The GPU itself is a 256bit part i.e. post-Geforce 256(NV10). This includes texture compression.
+ XBOX’s chipset is a variant of nVidia’s nForce IGP chipset. e.g. http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=apu
One could kitbash a similar performing box with AMD Duron @800Mhz, nForce 1, Geforce 3-200, 64MB DDR SDRAM.