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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Amiduffer on October 20, 2006, 02:54:11 AM
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Hey all. I was at Weirdstuff warehouse today, and next to the C=128, was some old Atari stuff, an 800 with external floppy drive, Atari monitor, and a somewhat beat up looking 520. I haven't really thought about it too much, nobody I hung around with had them, and the "rivalry" so-called between C= and Atari as far as their computer systems went, was a topic in the magazines in the early days.
How does the 520 and Ami size up, processor wise, use, and stuff made for it? If I remember, it was marketed as a game machine to counter the A500.
Just curious.
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Summary (from a 1985 perspective):
Atari ST: cobbled together from mostly off-the-shelf parts, limited graphics-related capabilities, very limited inbuilt audio, nasty keyboard, nastier operating system (GUI provided by Digital Research's GEM, other OS parts via "TOS" which was a CP/M clone) with no multi-tasking.
Amiga: designed over a period of years, highly configurable video capabilities / graphics modes, highly advanced audio capabilities, fully pre-emptive multitasking operating system designed from scratch to suit the hardware (e.g. use of multiple draggable screens, etc).
The ST gained acceptance in music studios as a MIDI controller, thanks to its inbuilt MIDI interface, and also as a cheap DTP system, thanks to a dedicated monochrome 640x480 monitor (which gave a rock-solid display) and a cheap laser printer. Its 68000 was also clocked slightly faster than the Amiga's. For the early years of both machines, the ST was significantly cheaper than the Amiga.
And the Amiga story I guess we all know!
Just my 2c worth! I'm sure my description of the ST will be savaged! :-D
- Ali
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All amigans should watch this episode of "The Computer Chronicles" from 1985:
http://www.archive.org/details/Amigaand1985
Two really great machines.
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The Atari ST had built in midi apparently which meant it had quite a following in the audio industry, this and its cheaper price point were its only redeeming factors when compared with the mighty Amiga 500.
I nearly bought one back in the early ninties, im really glad i went for the A500+, its a much more refined piece of kit
From a games perspective, the A500 had 32 (64) colours and the ST had 16. The ST's 68000 was clocked at 8 Mhz, whereas the Amigas was clocked at 7.12 ish. You could emulate an ST on an amiga 500 but you couldnt do visa versa on an ST, says it all really!
i could go on all day, :)
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it was not the builtin midi only but the fact on the ST you had cubase which wasn't available on the amiga. cubase dominated the music world for the subsequent years on st and on the mac then.
again at the end the software is maybe more important than the hardware...
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Gee, a simple change of oscillators and you've pretty much blown the dreaded ST out of the water with an A500... How sad is THAT?!
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"fully pre-emptive multitasking operating system designed from scratch to suit the hardware (e.g. use of multiple draggable screens, etc)"
Workbench 1.3 is a great piece of software, but it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore. They used an already made os calle pios or so, and the Amiga team only did the final touches.
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Workbench 1.3 is a great piece of software, but it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore. They used an already made os calle pios or so, and the Amiga team only did the final touches.
Urgh. I hate it when people say that.
Pure and utter blasphemy! :madashell: :pissed:
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Tripos, actually. Most of it was implemented in a programming language know as BCPL (precedor of B which is a precedor of C), which AmigaOS 4 finally have got rid of. There were never many BCPL-fans (Amiga Guru Book says that there were two)... TRIPOS is actually still developed.
Tripos was actually a backup plan. Here is a very good article by Andy Finkle about CAOS: The original project, not based on Tripos:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
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_ThEcRoW wrote:it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore.
Doesn't take away from the fact that it was a fully pre-emptive multi-tasking multi-threaded OS and AtariTOS wasn't. Nor was anything else for quite some time afterwards. Took Microsoft until Win95 to actually have a GUI OS that wasn't just a graphical shell for DOS.
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Marco wrote:
Took Microsoft until Win95 to actually have a GUI OS that wasn't just a graphical shell for DOS.
I remember Mac users at the time saying Windows 95 = Macintosh '89!
And then the Amiga users hit back with Windows 95 = Macintosh '89 = Amiga '85!
And don't forget it took Microsoft until Windows XP to have a consumer OS that finally dumped the underlying DOS-based stuff!! Though at the time, Win95 with purely 32-bit applications was good enough (and still seems to be for some! - I still find people here using Win9x-based PCs for everyday use!)
- Ali
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InTheSand wrote:...I still find people here using Win9x-based PCs for everyday use!)- Ali
A continuing trend.
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The Atari 520ST was Atari's answer to the Commodore's Amiga 1000. They actually beat CBM to the punch by releasing it first! Sold fairly well, especially in Europe. The Atari 1040STf mostly competed with the Amiga 500 with 1MB for a few years until the Mega series continued to compete with the A2000. Then the MegaSTE/TT030 competed with the A3000/4000! I own all these machines btw :P
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For completeness Tj we can say that the 030 lines featured new video modes at 32k or 256 colours (320x200, 640x480) and a sound chip better than the amiga one. I think prices of the Atari were always a bit lower then the Amiga couterparts, am I right?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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...
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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.
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Difference between an Atari 520ST and an Amiga 500?
[color=ff0000]20[/color][/b]
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@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.
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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:
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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.
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@ 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.
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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.
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I forgot..
DSP processor
MIDI in and Out
16 bit Stereo w/ high quality RCA jacks
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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?
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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...)
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Stopthegop,
No offence, but I don't think you have the facts right.
>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:
Afaik, the TT was released 1990-91, not 1988.
>64bit memory (32 address,32 data) -- 28MB!
Yes, it's organized as 64-bits wide memory to allow the TT-shifter to access the memory fast enough. From a software perspective, it's 32-bit.
>Aftermarket memory expansion possible to 152MB! In 1988!
Again, I don't think it was 1988. Google around.
>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
It did. A TT with a VME graphics card is pretty nice.
>external DMA "ASCSI" port
It also features a standard SCSI connector.
>Game cartridge port
No. It has a ROM cartridge port, but it definitely has no game cartridge 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.
I would agree if it had been released in '88, but it wasn't.
> forgot..
>DSP processor
>MIDI in and Out
>16 bit Stereo w/ high quality RCA jacks
This is just not true at all. The TT had the same 8-bit DMA sound as the STE, and it didn't have a DSP. There was a VME soundcard which had a 56k on it, but it didn't arrive until 5-6 years later afaik. You're confusing it with the F030, which is a completely different machine.
-- Peter
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Something to note about the 520ST - the actual 520ST is a very limited machine - it had 512KB of RAM but not only no blitter and custom chips, but the AY-8912 sound chip as used in 8-bits of the time and it didn't come with a disk drive! The 520 was originally designed without a TV modulator too so you had to use a monitor with it. The monitor of course could be PAL/NTSC resolution in 16 colours or VGA resolution in black and white.... so if you wanted to run serious software and games you had to have two monitors! Most music software would balk at the medium-res monitor, IIRC.
I have such a 520ST from 1984 (serial number 5000-odd I think) at home - except it's been upgraded to 1MB of RAM. How was the upgrade done? The only way was to solder new RAM chips on top of the old ones, taking the high address line via a wire connected somewhere else on the motherboard. No slot expansions here!
Of course the STf came soon with a floppy built in, along with the STm with the TV modulator, and the most common the STfm. Then the STe which even had a blitter which most software never used, and then the TT and Falcon and things came along, which are a different story. The Falcon is a really nice machine, with a pre-emptive MultiTOS and stuff on it, along with SCSI and IDE onboard. More powerful than an A1200, but no software for it practically at all.
Here endeth AtariSTs 101. :)
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spirantho wrote:
Something to note about the 520ST - the actual 520ST is a very limited machine - it had 512KB of RAM but not only no blitter and custom chips, but the AY-8912 sound chip as used in 8-bits of the time and it didn't come with a disk drive!
It did come with a disk drive, it just wasn't built-in. The AY-8912 was an 8-bit circuit, but that's sort of irrellevant since it has nothing to do with the sound itself, just the number of data signals on the actual chip. Nevertheless, the sound sucked.
The Falcon is a really nice machine, with a pre-emptive MultiTOS and stuff on it, along with SCSI and IDE onboard. More powerful than an A1200, but no software for it practically at all.
MultiTOS wasn't falcon-only. It just shipped with it (MultiTOS was disk-based, unlike TOS).
It's hard to say if the Falcon was more powerful than the A1200, it all depends on what features you compare I guess. The falcon had a DSP and real 16-bit hicolour modes, but... the A1200 had (afaik) a real 32-bit bus. The falcon blitter sucked, in many cases it was faster to use the CPU. On the other hand, it was 030-based and features on-board PMMU. Both machines suffered from planar graphics in 256 colour modes.
The falcon had Cubase Audio, Logic Audio and some other heavyweights, but allmost no games at all. Some STE-games ran, but generally ST/STE games compatibility was pretty low.
-- Peter
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You could emulate an ST on an amiga 500 but you couldnt do visa versa on an ST, says it all really!
The term "emulate" in this case isn't really 100% accurate. Afaik this was a matter of patching TOS/GEM to enable the Amiga to run GEM programs. Anything that touches the hardware directly (which was the case with 90% of all games and lots of other software) is likely to fail horribly, however.
Technically, I don't think there is anything that prevents the ST from "emulating" AmigaOS, but the patching (more like porting in this case) would need a considerable effort, and again, any application which touch the hardware directly will fail.
-- Peter
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@Shoggorth
You're right, 1988 was a mistake, I meant 1989. But we're both off by a year because it was in fact released in 1989. This I know for a fact because 1989 was the year I graduated High School and I used my Dad's new TT030 for both semesters of my first year of college, starting around Aug, 1989. The memory expansion I mentioned was available around that time as well, no more than a year after the TT was released. It was a 128M expansion and I remember it being hugely expensive. Believe it or not, there was actually one on ebay just a few weeks ago.. I mean the 128M RAM cage. Sold for around $200. As for the ROM port, that was a mistake on my part mentioning the same thing twice. For sure though, the TT030 was released in the 1980s, and it was most definately a better machine than any crapintosh of the day (sorry, I'm just really allergic to mac/os in general -- the software, that is), light years ahead of anything from microsoft, and in my estimation, about equal with Amiga at that moment in time. But again, the TT cost around 3 grand when it came out, 4 grand if you wanted memory. So I guess it all came down to price? I suppose thats why the PC "won": price. God knows it wasn't the product.
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I have such a 520ST from 1984 (serial number 5000-odd I think) at home - except it's been upgraded to 1MB of RAM. How was the upgrade done? The only way was to solder new RAM chips on top of the old ones, taking the high address line via a wire connected somewhere else on the motherboard. No slot expansions here!
But for comparison, what kind of upgrades were made available to A1000 at that time? There was no Amiga 500 until 1987. At that time Atari had upgraded their machines to better specs (1040, STM and STFM). Gfx and sound options were not great but ST had higher resolution without flickery (with B/W monitor only).
Cant think of any other good points for ST :-)
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Ok. The gui of the ST is nicely built-in; but also hard to expand/modify. That's why Commodore has chosen otherwise (they could have put it all in ROM)
Also, hardware multitasking is STILL not a feature of todays hardware (unless you got a hyperthreading proc, though I haven't yet take a look at that).
Maybe the ST is clocked faster, productivity-wise the Amiga is way way faster because one can multitask in every way; formatting (multiple) floppies, printing documents and writing at the same time is of little concern.
The Amiga is designed from the beginning to multitask. And thus it can multitask like no other computer/os. Every programmer knows when he/she just 'glues' functionality to it's original software, it's not going to function very well.
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itix wrote:
But for comparison, what kind of upgrades were made available to A1000 at that time? There was no Amiga 500 until 1987. At that time Atari had upgraded their machines to better specs (1040, STM and STFM). Gfx and sound options were not great but ST had higher resolution without flickery (with B/W monitor only).
Cant think of any other good points for ST :-)
Yes but it also didn't have HAM, and that's a functionality less, because it can't view photo's in
reasonable quality.
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Also, hardware multitasking is STILL not a feature of todays hardware (unless you got a hyperthreading proc, though I haven't yet take a look at that).
What do you mean by "hardware multitasking"?
-- Peter
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shoggoth wrote:
Also, hardware multitasking is STILL not a feature of todays hardware (unless you got a hyperthreading proc, though I haven't yet take a look at that).
What do you mean by "hardware multitasking"?
-- Peter
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
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The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
Using copper is not multitasking. Modern GPUs are more complex than copper while using GPU still is not considered as multitasking.
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
Erm... that's not quite accurate. The Copper is another processor, it doesn't affect the OS in any way to do with multitasking whatsoever.
Otherwise you could say that any PC with a WinTV card supports hardware multitasking because it's got a seperate RISC processor on-board which can wait for stuff without tying up the CPU.
Incidentally, the original 520ST may have been bundled with a disk drive but it didn't come out of the box with a disk drive. I know because my disk drive wouldn't fit in my 520ST's box. :)
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[/quote]The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting. [/quote]
You'll have to explain that further. I'm fairly familiar with the Copper, but I can't see how this relates to multitasking. It's a coprocessor. It's not like it makes context-switching in the CPU any faster.
-- Peter
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itix wrote:
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
Using copper is not multitasking. Modern GPUs are more complex than copper while using GPU still is not considered as multitasking.
The copper isn't just a gpu.
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shoggoth wrote:
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting. [/quote]
You'll have to explain that further. I'm fairly familiar with the Copper, but I can't see how this relates to multitasking. It's a coprocessor. It's not like it makes context-switching in the CPU any faster.
-- Peter[/quote]It has the 'wait' instruction.
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
shoggoth wrote:
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
You'll have to explain that further. I'm fairly familiar with the Copper, but I can't see how this relates to multitasking. It's a coprocessor. It's not like it makes context-switching in the CPU any faster.
[/quote]It has the 'wait' instruction.[/quote]
And exactly how does that help when switching contexts in a multitasking OS?
-- Peter
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One can program a very quick scheduler when one can use already a wait commando (without making the cpu wait).
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Windows users think that just having two programs loaded in memory constitutes multitasking. I've always said that unless you've used an Amiga, you've probably never seen, much less experienced, true pre-emtive multitasking. That still holds true today. Just recently I formatted 10 SFS disk partitions on three separate scsi drives on my A4000...at the same time. Try that on a PC!
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One can program a very quick scheduler when one can use already a wait commando (without making the cpu wait).
You can't because copper cannot control CPU.
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itix wrote:
One can program a very quick scheduler when one can use already a wait commando (without making the cpu wait).
You can't because copper cannot control CPU.
Since when?
It can generate interrupts.
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You can't because copper cannot control CPU.[/quote]Since when?
It can generate interrupts.[/quote]
Dude, lots of stuff can generate interrupts. Still has nothing to do with multitasking. You're confusing apples with oranges.
-- Peter
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"Dude" I know. But it's one way to control the CPU.
Well then, do your own research about this subject then. I got an old Dutch manual wich states that the copper can be used for multitasking.
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
"Dude" I know.
Well then, do your own research about this subject then. I got an old Dutch manual wich states that the copper can be used for multitasking.
The Copper is a nice gadget, but either you've got it wrong or we're discussing two completely different topics. According to that philosophy, triggering a few routs based on external timer interrupts would also be multitasking, which it certantly is not.
Sorry for going off topic, btw.
-- Peter
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Interrupt handling on itself indeed isn't multitasking.
But 68k on itself isn't multitasking. Yet the Amiga can do multitasking. On a low level. At 7 mHz. Go figure.
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True, but there are other machines that'd be even better, hardware-wise. From what I recall the WAIT instruction waits for a vertical position of the electron beam, which is obviously nowhere near enough resolution to help with kernel level multitasking.
For instance, the scan rate of a PAL signal is 50Hz, yes? This means that given a vertical resolution of about 1,000 rows (including the blanking signal), that's an ability to raise an interrupt 50,000 times per second, i.e. 50KHz. Now we're using CPUs with a resolution of 50MHz, not KHz. If the multitasking resolution was limited to a signal from the copper, the CPU would be sitting around waiting most of the time we did a context switch.
As I see it, the copper has nothing to do with multi-tasking in the OS. It IS very useful in generating display lists because it takes the load off the CPU, but that's because it's a processor itself.
And if you want proof that AmigaOS doesn't use the copper, ask any Draco owner if his machine a) has a copper and b) runs AmigaOS. :)
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InTheSand wrote:
And don't forget it took Microsoft until Windows XP to have a consumer OS that finally dumped the underlying DOS-based stuff!!
I hate to be a knitpick, but that's just not true! The first true 32-bit version of Windows was Windows NT 3.1. IIRC, it was released in 1993.
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I would say the biggest difference is the OS. AmigaDOS 3.x is like eons ahead of TOS 4.x, even with OS enhancements like MagiC and MiNT, etc. But never the less, the Atari computers are fun to play around with. I remember the great Atari vs Commodore wars, ah the memories!!!
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
Interrupt handling on itself indeed isn't multitasking.
But 68k on itself isn't multitasking. Yet the Amiga can do multitasking.
No, the 68k on itself isn't multitasking. It's a CPU, for god sake.
So you mean multitasking on 7Mhz is some kind of "proof" for your so called "hardware multitasking" theory? There is no such thing. There are hardware solutions which enables you to do several things simultaneously in a smooth manner. That's not necessarily the same as executing multiple tasks concurrently. It's unrelated.
On a low level. At 7 mHz. Go figure.
You're mixing apples and oranges. Are you familiar with low level 68k programming, btw?
-- Peter
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TjLaZer wrote:
I would say the biggest difference is the OS. AmigaDOS 3.x is like eons ahead of TOS 4.x, even with OS enhancements like MagiC and MiNT, etc. But never the less, the Atari computers are fun to play around with.
TOS4.x was basically just a more colourful 030-compatible version of TOS2.x. It really didn't add anything at all, except some new calls to handle new hardware. The MultiTOS that was shipped with TOS4 machines sucked. It was (sort of) Posix compliant, though.
Later incarnations of MiNT (known as FreeMiNT) has come a long way, but that's some 15 years too late :)
Atari never saw the point of having good OS functionality, not even when they released the Falcon. At the time of the release of the ST, I can understand this. The Amiga wasn't known for it's pioneering OS, but rather how many colours that could be displayed on screen. This changed during the years, and the Amiga was ready for it, the ST range wasn't.
I remember the great Atari vs Commodore wars, ah the memories!!!
Yeah. Some psycho professor somewhere must have written a book about it. There must be some medical explanation for this :)
-- Peter
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Two fantastic machines !!!
I still have both.
Atari is more simply made, poor architecture, no custom chips so overall graphics and sounds capabilities are not as good as the Amiga(s). Simpler to code too (on first approach ...). And true first demos, first stunning gfx effects were coded on Atari first coz the challlenge was big : how to push the limit of this little machine ...
On the other hand, during the early good old days, games development on Amiga were often badly done : simply a kind of cross compiling with no true use of the custom chips, so games were slightly identical. But this didn't last too long, and "specific" games appeared : I remember a great change from the first release of Shadow of the Beast. I was 13 and and it was like a nuke fell down on our heads.
Well, this is my point of view ...
Giana
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whabang wrote:
InTheSand wrote:
And don't forget it took Microsoft until Windows XP to have a consumer OS that finally dumped the underlying DOS-based stuff!!
I hate to be a knitpick, but that's just not true! The first true 32-bit version of Windows was Windows NT 3.1. IIRC, it was released in 1993.
True, WinNT 3.x was fully 32-bit, but it was certainly not a consumer OS - these were still stuck on the Win9x line until XP Home was released, with the NT-based line not even getting true plug 'n' play, USB and other goodies until Windows 2000.
Erol wrote:
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.
Hehe! I remember when I upgraded from a Spectrum 128 to the ST - I must say I was a bit disappointed with the sound and the initial lack of smooth vertical scrolling, until Goldrunner came along!!! I only had the ST for a year, then saw the light and got an A500 - seeing Shadow Of The Beast running in a computer store with the glorious parallax scrolling was what swung it for me!
When the time came to upgrade the Spectrum 128, it just wasn't the done thing for a Speccy user to buy a computer from "the enemy" that was Commodore!!! :-D Plus the Amiga was initially quite a bit more money than the ST.
- Ali
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spirantho wrote:
Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
The copper co-processor makes it possible to use multithreading natively. No extra software needed. No cpu cycles spilled waiting.
Erm... that's not quite accurate. The Copper is another processor, it doesn't affect the OS in any way to do with multitasking whatsoever.
Otherwise you could say that any PC with a WinTV card supports hardware multitasking because it's got a seperate RISC processor on-board which can wait for stuff without tying up the CPU.
Incidentally, the original 520ST may have been bundled with a disk drive but it didn't come out of the box with a disk drive. I know because my disk drive wouldn't fit in my 520ST's box. :)
...and you da man where TV cards are concerned ! got anywhere with AmiTV, incidentally ?
on first experiences as a spotty little speccy user, the ST looked better for me, as it had a nicer looking box, and had a GUI - this was in '85, before I saw a Spec128, so the sound seemed pretty good to me. then I saw an Amiga - I absolutely HATED the horrid blue and orange colours on me mates' telly, but that was the only argument, once I'd seen a few demos, and played shuffle puck cafe a few times!! of course, I've grown to respect the WB1 colour scheme - looks a tonne better on a proper display device!!
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When the time came to upgrade the Spectrum 128, it just wasn't the done thing for a Speccy user to buy a computer from "the enemy" that was Commodore!!! :-D Plus the Amiga was initially quite a bit more money than the ST.
- Ali
there was probably a little of the 'Auld Enemy' in there for me too!!
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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.
I assume that by awful, you mean that the sound was awful in the Atari ST version.
Graphically, the Bitari Brothers' games always looked the same on the Amiga and the ST.
It is a shame that they could never be arsed to use the hardware features of the Amiga, to achieve for example smooth scrolling.
/Patrik
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patrik wrote:
I assume that by awful, you mean that the sound was awful in the Atari ST version.
/Patrik
That is correct. ;)
I did like time bandit though on the AtariST. ;-)