Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: TjLaZer on December 23, 2007, 05:31:47 AM
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Check out this cool video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=XASnGpemk_M)!
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Amiga wins! :banana:
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SWEET video... though when I tried to show my g/f, she rolled her eyes, walked away and said it was "lame"... WTF?? :lol:
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Your girlfriend must be an Atari fan. Time to get a new girlfriend!
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ferrellsl wrote:
Your girlfriend must be an Atari fan. Time to get a new girlfriend!
At least she's not a Windows fan!
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Windows has no fans, it only has hostages :lol:
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Very lame, all still pictures of games with well known differences.
Lets see in-game and see if you still notice the differences?
Most of the Thalion title screens use Spectrum512 images, as did the later games by good ST coders.
Count the colours in the title screen of Leavin'Teramis on the ST.
We all know technically the Amiga was better, but the fact that ST games can be coded to be comparable, (those that were not ST->Amiga ports) is a testament to the ingenuity of their programmers.
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what was the atari amiga connection? i know little of the history...
i personnaly felt it was atari who did all the ground work and the amiga came out later and tried to userp them by adding later just slightly better hardware? anyway when they didn't have atari to compete with the amiga dwindled. but i can see my user experience causing the flames of hell down the telephone lines!!! better get me some marshmallows! :crazy:
was that video uploaded by an amiga user? on the other hand of user experience i never met a nice atari st user... and even got sold a dodgy modem by an atari user group. :roll:
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Ignore the ST -v- Amiga stuff. The amazing thing is how good the programers did with the limited hardware. Very cool to see...
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Ignore Atari vs ST games. Turrican 2 in color on ZX-Spectrums pwns all wars.
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Neat video, but it misses other aspects that made the Amiga clearly superior: The sound and the animation capabilities. The title screens are a very tiny aspect of the game. The Amiga also had a much more sophisticated and superior operating system.
We need to bear in mind that, when the Atari 520ST first came out, Commodore only had the Amiga 1000. An Amiga 1000 system would cost almost three times what a similar Atari ST system would cost in 1985! It wasn't until two years later did we see a price-competitive Amiga 500, and it still cost more than a comparable ST system (though not by a whole lot; maybe $100 or so).
The Amiga and the Atari ST came out at almost the same time; the ST may have beat the Amiga by a month or two. Don't forget that the Amiga used to be the Lorraine owned by Hi-Torro, and was almost bought by Atari! I wonder how much of the Amiga's design concepts Atari "Stole" to complete their ST?
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Music is crap...
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Nice video! Never used an Atari ST, but it looks pretty good! I still think the Amiga wins though.
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i personnaly felt it was atari who did all the ground work and the amiga came out later and tried to userp them by adding later just slightly better hardware?
Then you have your history completely wrong. The atari was not even interested in jumping up to the 16bit platform back when the original amiga was being developed. When the a1000 was nearly finished the atari team quickly started woring on tha Atari ST. So no, it was completely opposite to what you said.
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AFAIK Atari never used anything present on the Amiga exept the processor.
When Commodore bought Amiga, Atari had to faced 2 problems: they lost the successor to their 8bit line of computer and they couldn't compete with one of their main competitor.
So they had to go fast, very fast: bringing a completely new computer in months, this is one of the reason why Atari used off-the shelf compoment for the ST. When the A1000 came out, the Amiga team was working for 2-3 years on the project.
As you: the demo is neat but misses many other things that made the Amiga the best computer of it's time.
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@monami:
Amigahistory.co.uk (http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/amigahistory.html) has a rather nice write-up of the whole history of Commodore. In short the boss of C=, Jack Tramiel, was booted out of C= just before C= bought Amiga. Jack Tramiel became head honcho of Atari and tried to acquire Amiga. He became somewhat pissed off when C= managed to snatch up Amiga and he created an 'Amiga killer' from off the shelf parts which became the Atari ST. So you see why there was somewhat animosity between the two camps =).
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@tomas
according to the history the amiga... i am concerned with the mainstream machine the amiga 500 not the others. the direction was to follow atari's lead and get computers in the home market and compete on that playing feild not with mac or pc which didn't seem successful as the cost was too high. the history says atari st was out in 1985. the a500 was out in 1987. a deliberate attemp to usurp the success of the st. and basically seemed to copy it's format. even the all in one style. unlike the a1000 or a2000. and add just a touch more to it. ie. the 800k floppy etc.
"1987: "We sell to the masses, not the classes"
This year saw the first major system upgrade with the release of the high-end Amiga 2000 and the low-end Amiga 500."
it was the a500 that is compaired to the st... like i say the hardware is 2 years later. it doesn't seem a fair playing feild for comparison. thats the way i remember it. :-)
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monami:
In actual fact, the Amiga 500 was, essentially, an Amiga 1000 with a full 512k of RAM and Kickstart 1.2 burned into a ROM. Technically speaking, it didn't offer anything that you couldn't do with an Amiga 1000. It was put in a case that very much resembled the Commodore 128; so much so that, at a glance, it can be difficult to tell the two machines apart. It was the utilization of 2 year old technology and design concepts already in place with the Commodore 128 that made it price-competitive in the low-end 16 bit market.
In this picture, we can see clear similarities between the 64c, the Commodore 128, and the Amiga 500:
(http://99.253.2.30/100_6537.jpg)
The Commodore 128, the inspiration behind the Amiga 500's design, predates the Atari ST by a full year.
The Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 were both released at about the same time, and they addressed the demands of customers. The Amiga 500 was for those demanding a low-cost, "Affordable" Amiga; while the Amiga 2000 was for those demanding an Amiga with better expandability. The A2000 broadened the appeal of the Amiga to a whole new market for Commodore (you know, the Mac and PC one you claimed they didn't think was successful); while the A500 was a logical upgrade path from the 8 bit Commodores. Atari should have seen this coming and made a better, more competitive ST during those two years.
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mdivancic wrote:
Ignore the ST -v- Amiga stuff. The amazing thing is how good the programers did with the limited hardware. Very cool to see...
They were both wonderful computers and the war, while fun at the time, is silly. Let's just enjoy them for what they were. :)
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from the history:
"The Atari continued to beat the Amiga in the market for several years, in part, due to Commodore's focus upon the high-end market. It is only when the Amiga 500 was launched that Commodore were able to beat Atari in the home computer market." mmm...
also from the history:
"The Commodore Amiga was officially launched in September 1985 for £1,500. The world's first Amiga magazine - Amiga World - was launched soon after. At the time this price was a major detractor that placed it in the high-end region occupied by the Apple Macintosh. In comparison, the Atari ST was selling for less than half the price. It was later recognized that this was Commodores' first mistake. Rather than promoting the Amiga as a professional machine, they sought to replicate the success of the Atari ST. However, the Atari ST had built a steady market since its launch that made it a difficult adversary, with the Amiga playing second fiddle to the ST regarding game releases."
you say the amiga 500 is comparable to the st as the 1000 is basically an a500 and it was released at the same time... i take that point. but what about any other bits of hardware added. ie. any kind of custom chips to the a500 in that 2 years?
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I have owned both an ST and an multiple Amigas.. The Amiga was always more expandable for memory had more colors/voices/more denser color palettes and resolutions.. A true Multi-tasking OS thru the majority of it's existance.
The ST was a Macintosh clone based on GEM with good DTP, but sucky word processing (yeah the Amiga wasn't much better for that).
As far as better, who went out of business first? I would say that would be Atari...
They both hit different audiences but the Atari folks always had Amiga envy, not the other way around.. Piracy was a bigger problem on the ST.. Again different audience, and no video toaster crowd buying high end applications.
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The first 500 has the same custom chipset as the 1000; OCS. Later came ECS but that didn't add any spectacular differences.
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monami,
The source you cite is the opinion of the writer.
I think we need to put a little perspective on this. When the Amiga was first introduced in 1985, it could do things that nothing under $10,000 could do at the time. You would have to spend upwards of $20,000 to get the same functionality as the Amiga 1000. Because of this, the Amiga 1000 was a great success and made a huge impact on the computer industry. It was so advanced, comparisons to the Atari ST seemed absurd.
At the time of the release of the Amiga 500, CBM's general manager, Alfred Duncan, was quoted as saying, the Amiga 500 represents "a computer that retails for about half as much as the Amiga 1000 yet retains all of the performance capabilities - including advanced graphics and video, four-channel sound, built-in speech synthesis, and multi-tasking -- in a lower priced unit." With the exception of the ROM-resident kernel (the Amiga 1000 used a kickstart disk, but I believe ROM solutions were made available), it was, for all intents and purposes, an Amiga 1000 computer system stuffed into a Commodore 128 case. It had the exact same chipset and capabilities. Just as the Amiga 2000 was an Amiga 1000 with the ROM-resident kickstart and an open archetecture with seven internal slots.
Fact is, the Amiga outclassed everything in its day, including the Atari ST. Fact is, the Amiga 500 would have happened regardless of the existence of the Atari ST, as it follows the same evolutionary path as Commodore's 8 bits (Commodore PET > Vic 20 = Amiga 1000 > Amiga 500). Technology trickles down, and all-in-one computer designs were mainstaples of the home computer industry since the 1970's when we had the Apple II, Vic 20, and Atari 400.
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DonnyEMU wrote:
As far as better, who went out of business first? I would say that would be Atari...
You would be wrong.
Commodore went out of business and filed for bankruptcy in April 1994
Atari Corporation effectively went out of business in February 1998 when it sold off it's IP and name to Hasbro.
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well some of it comes to personal preference. ie. i liked the look of the st over the amiga 500. grey over beige. those diamond style keys were at least unique and stylish to my eye where the a500 was just a keyboard. and of course built in midi. although i do like the a500. but on paper at least I have to say the computer came out 2 years later. are you sure nothing was added to it? i must be the only one out there that liked gem...
as far as who went bankrupt first is no argument. i would offer who was more successful in terms of product. or financial gain. i'm sure they must have generated more profit in their time. i don't know the figures but atari vs amiga not commadore is atari hands down? they had a longevity in the market well exceeding the amiga. founded in 1972. and in terms of product... well how many products can you name? from pong up to neverwinter nights. i remember those arcade machines with the name atari on fondly.
and without atari amiga couldn't have happened? from the history it seems the experience at atari was the springboard for the amiga. and most of the employees have had past dealings with the company one way or another... it seems to me amiga va atari was their best publicity vehicle using their name. very much like the sega takes ages one?
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You're comparing Atari to Amiga not Commodore? And then you say that Atari have been there longer? You're not seriously saying that 8 bit Ataris have anything in common with their ST successors, are you? Just because they were called Atari doesn't make them one family.
In your logic all predecessors to the Amiga from Commodore should also count; the C64, Vic20, PET etc. They're from the same company. Heck, Commodore was founded in 1954. Does that make them the winner?
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Lemmink wrote:
Windows has no fans, it only has hostages :lol:
Windows has fans!!!! I've got *TWO* of them in my box, as we speak, to help run all that bloated code!!! :lol:
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-D- wrote:
SWEET video... though when I tried to show my g/f, she rolled her eyes, walked away and said it was "lame"... WTF?? :lol:
You know, D....my ex-fiancee was the exact, same way....
Until she saw Super Frog. *THEN*, I couldn't get her *OFF* my A1200. :evil:
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I said the Amiga 500 would have happened without the Atari ST. Clearly, Atari as a company played a big role in the early days of 8 bit computers and game consoles and did their part to shape the industry that was to come. However, the impact of the Atari ST computer was really only noticed in the music industry, where the ST found its niche. The Amiga, on the other hand, had a dramatic effect on the entire computer industry.
As for who died first; we're talking about platforms here, not companies. The Atari ST platform died around 1990 or so after the release of the Mega STE and the ST Book. Amiga was still a viable platform for four years after that up until when Commodore went bankrupt, and still sees development and sales to this day.
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i can't name a cbm product from 1954 can you? i'd have to look it up. i felt we were talking brands and home computing. if you are going to chain companies together you may as well say amiga is atari as their employees and funding for the amiga came from atari and without them it would have not happened. i am only following the history as written: from the year 1984.
"Only Atari Inc. (managed by Warner at the time) made a serious offer for the Amiga custom chips, loaning $500,000 to keep the company alive while a license agreement was constructed. In a 1992 interview, Miner indicated the deal was a last ditch attempt:
"Atari gave us $500,000 with the stipulation that we had one month to come to a deal with them about the future of the Amiga chipset or pay them back, or they got the rights. This was a dumb thing to agree to but there was no choice.""
hasbro bought out atari and they are still selling?
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Tramiel bought Atari when he got kicked out of C=. He knew about Amiga and wanted to buy it; it's just that C= made a better offer in the last minute. We'd call that sniping nowadays I guess!
Anyway that is where the link lies between Atari and Commodore.
Tramiel was the founder of C= in 1954. In the 60's they started to make calculators and in the 70's they started with home computers.
Atari was sold in 1996 by Tramiel and has been nothing but a brand ever since and changed hands more than one time. It has nothing to do with the old Atari. Even Commodore still exist as a company selling PC's.
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Again, this isn't about Commodore vs. Atari companies; but rather the Amiga vs. the Atari ST computers. While Atari as a company played a relatively minor role in the history of the Amiga, the Amiga 500 computer would have happened whether or not the Atari ST computer line ever existed. There was market demand for an Amiga 1000 in a Commodore 128 case, which Atari had no control over.
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would it have happened without jay miner?
atari and amiga are strange bedfellows indeed!
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@DigitalQ
Exactly.
On this topic I believe that the ST may have had more units in the market in the beginning it lost the race around 1990/1991 when Amiga took over the market.
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from amiga history: 1991.
"1991: Standing still
The deep cracks in Commodore turn to huge tidal waves as many people loose faith in the market. Commodore launch a low-end upgrade to the A500 - the Amiga 500 plus - without informing anyone that they were shipping the product and the CDTV was canceled."
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Yes, and the point being?
They had already beat the ST by then. Now the race was against PC and we all know how that ended.
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beat st? they had 2 years in the market before the a500 if thats what we are discussing was released. then came their best ever the falcon. alot of amigas were sold on word of mouth that was just hype in my opinion. i remember asking people after being critised for having an st. "i bought my st for music it has an interface and good music support. why should i buy an amiga, i don't think i had much of a reply."
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Here we go again:
Introduction Atari ST: 1985
Introduction Amiga 500: 1987
There are your two years difference. In 1990/1991 Atari had lost its lead. In the Netherlands you couldn't buy Ataris anymore in these days in mainstream retail shops. Around 1994 Amigas got the same fate.
I'm not here telling you what was better; just what happened. If you still crave your Atari feelings and ignore history, that's not my problem.
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did you have any sales figures to go with it?
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No, I don't have exact figures but main retail presence should tell you something. Also what you say is hype does sell machines; look at the Wii.
In my youth in my neighbourhood there was one ST kid and dozens of Amiga kids. This scenario is for the Netherlands around 1990 till 1992. I have no reason to think it was very different in the rest of Europe.
Because you insisted I looked up some numbers:
Around 4 million STs sold worldwide. Amigas around 6 million. Source is the dutch Wikipedia. I don't know how reliable that is. I haven't written the article in case you wonder. I guess my neighbourhood wasn't very Atari minded.
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it was. the amiga was a late comer as far as i was concerned. and was a gamble. atari had established itself very well.
in 1993 atari gave up supporting the falcon and moved on to the jaguar console. they got beat out by all the others. as we know. it happened to amiga too? but at least they were in the right direction...
i mentioned atari history as you see from what i read first computer game/ console. handheld, employees and half a million clams! i don't know how much commadore did for amiga seems to me atari was always somewhere in their history. even if it was only influence. they were a force to be reckoned with. and thats why i see their a500 as a direct assult on what was established and successful. usurping if it is such a word. i always felt it was clever marketing did get kids saying oh do you know how many colours you get on the screen? at the time amiga users were very annoying!if the atari wasn't such an authority why was it always compaired to the amiga?
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You're of course entitled to your opinion but I think you have weird way to interpret history.
Also you want to keep comparing Amiga to Atari and again you talk about the history of Atari which has nothing to do the ST itself. That makes no sense. Atari was a different comapny then (remember the buy out of Tramiel). And oh Neverwinter Nights has even less to with Atari history than the ST. It seems to me that the marketing people at the different Ataris have at least done a good job to convince you.
It seems to me that you don't know very much about Commodore (spelling the name correctly for starters) and what they have done in computing history. If you insist that Amiga is a copy of the ST and not the other way around then fine but don't expect me to agree.
To end this pointless discussion; here is another mention of the "war" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Amiga_vs._Atari_ST).
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Again, the confusion. Amiga, as a computer platform, was not a late comer. However, in the low end 16 bit home computer market, the Atari ST had a head start over the Amiga 500. With the Amiga 500, it was simply state-of-the-art, cutting edge, high-technology from 1985 trickling down as it ought to over a period of two years. The Atari ST was never state-of-the-art or cutting edge; it was dated the day it was released, but it was priced as such and was a good value in 1985. Superior Amiga technology trickled down, but the Atari ST never really improved until it was too late.
The A500 was not a gamble; it came out to meet market demand. Many people, including myself, were not all that impressed with the Atari ST and decided to wait for the cheap Amiga to trickle down and arrive. Others opted for a Commodore 128 instead of an Atari ST, to take advantage of the established software and hardware base.
As for the hype; the Amiga was the wonder computer of the 1980's. It was capable of doing things nothing under $10,000 could. You could call it hype or marketing. I call it genius.
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and even so was made by ex atari employees. and backed by atari at one point...
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And the point being?
Noone denies that here. Noone denies Atari for what they did in computing history. You seem to be an Atari fan boy two decades too late.
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The people who worked for Atari are people who worked for Atari. They are not Atari, nor are they the Atari ST, nor does bringing them up support the argument that the Amiga 500 was a "Copy" of the Atari ST.
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why didn't they stick with their original design of the a1000? atari were the competition and as far as i can see they did everything to become what atari was and did...
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They did: 2000, 3000 and 4000 were big box Amigas like the original 1000.
And for the 500, 600 and 1200 models. C= has a big history of all in one home computers BEFORE the ST models. Look at the post earlier in this topic comparing the 500 to the C64 and 128 models with picture.
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well i can only say reguardless while i do like the a500 my thoughts about it remain unchanged. i would still by an st over an amiga if the time had come back. even with all the bells and whistles. and it was right for my purpose and i had my st in 1985 not 1987... i didn't like the nature of amiga owners at the time. very in yer face "i've got namiga. i've got n800k floppy."
while the platform had it's dissapointments for me. i still have some fond memories of atari who did nothing but innovate since conception and succeed as far as i'm concerned and all they touched turned to gold for a while. good luck big old atari in the sky! shame it had to be marred by those wanting a foot up just to get the recognition. i have my amigas yes and am fond of them but i always carried that in my heart...
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Flashlab is spot on. Also, the purpose of the all-in-one computer design was intended to keep manufacturing costs low, and was something Commodore, Atari, Apple, and many other manufacturers did long before anyone ever heard of the Atari ST.
The A500 has more in common, design-wise, with the Commodore 128 than it does with the Atari ST.
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monami wrote:
from amiga history: 1991.
"1991: Standing still
The deep cracks in Commodore turn to huge tidal waves as many people loose faith in the market. Commodore launch a low-end upgrade to the A500 - the Amiga 500 plus - without informing anyone that they were shipping the product and the CDTV was canceled."
Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Mach
ATI's timeline for Mach GPU series. Starting with ATI's Mach8 in 1991, Mach32 in 1992 and Mach64 in 1994.
Overlay that with AGA and AAA timelines.
The Amiga 500 Plus (AmigaOS 2.0x, 2MB Fat Agnus, Super Denise) is just revised version Amiga 500 Rev6A(my first Amiga, AmigaOS 1.3.2, 1MB Fat Agnus). Amiga 500 Rev6A is revised version Amiga 500 Rev5(my second Amiga for null serial multi-player, AmigaOS 1.2, 512KB Agnus).
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I knew it; classic fan boy behaviour! Even when presented with logic and factual history you just get the "but I feel it's different" answer.
I give up talking sense into you. This gives me the same annoyance like talking to Jehova's witnesses that want to convert me.
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i'm a fan of many platforms...
what sence have you to talk? talk it.
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@hammer
those are not my words they are from the online amiga history!
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monami wrote:
...atari who did nothing but innovate since conception and succeed as far as i'm concerned...
As far as you're concerned... Exactly.
Meanwhile, back in reality, Atari innovated in the 1970s with the 2600 and the 400/800 series, but it's a bit of a push to consider the likes of the ST as "innovative". Cheap, yes, but not innovative.
As history shows and others in this thread have stated, it was hastily cobbled together from mostly off-the-shelf parts, using someone else's GUI (GEM) and someone else's base OS (CP/M 68K). Innovation? Where?
- Ali
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i'm sure the amiga was the same. surface mounting and all...
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Interestingly, what made the Atari ST special didn't even come from Atari. It ran an operating system that was made by Digital Research, which was, for all intents and purposes, a rip-off from the Mac's interface. It used a 68000 CPU made by Motorola, which it relied on very HEAVILY for every little task it performed. The rest of it was made of cut-rate parts from whoever the lowest bidder was. I think that maybe Atari made the case, however. ;)
That's what I really liked about the Amiga 500. It was something refreshingly different. It had its own custom co-processors, making very efficient use of the 68000. Its operating system was very unique and powerful, unlike anything ever seen before.
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DigitalQ wrote:
The rest of it was made of cut-rate parts from whoever the lowest bidder was. I think that maybe Atari made the case, however. ;)
Yes!!! The experience of typing on that squishy keyboard is certainly unique!
If you can get hold of it, the "Byte" magazine ST review and interview (circa 1986) makes interesting reading. In particular, the ST was never originally intended to be shipped with that awful YM/AY clone soundchip...
- Ali
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Brilliant! Amiga wins!! :-D
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monami wrote:
@hammer
those are not my words they are from the online amiga history!
In 1991, PC was in ascending as a gaming platform e.g. Wing Commander series reveals classic Amiga’s architectural weakness for certain type of games.
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My 2 cents.
I have alot of retro computers not just Amiga's. Microbee's, Trs80's, C64, C128, Dragon, Apple IIE-GS, and a few retro consol's (MegaDrive - CD32).. Point is that i would never get a Atari ST (and there was chances too for free), because to me and alot of people they don't represent any mild stone in computing history (and i was around back then as well, I can still remember the TRS-80/Apple Days) whereas the Amiga's did make mild stones. I know that you don't agree which is fine, but as a retro computer enthusiast they just don't do anything for me.
Also around my area you had to go very very far to find at least 1 ST user (Sydney, Australia).
Anyway as people have said before your point seems to be comparing the Amiga COMPUTER to the Atari COMPANY...
Anyways Merry Christmas. :cheers:
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well i'm here again and i'll wait for the superiority of amiga to convince the world again... but i'm not convinced about the a500's absolute power in the 80's i don't remember it blowing the cobwebs away! seemed very much like everyting the st could do.
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Retro_71 wrote:
i would never get a Atari ST (and there was chances too for free)
Aww... I'd *NEVER* turn down a free computer (well, unless it was an old generic PC). STs weren't necessarily bad - just not anything particularly special, and without them, the A500 would probably have stayed at a higher price for longer...
I progressed from a ZX Spectrum to an ST, and the change at the time was spectacular in terms of what could be done in comparison (though the sound chip was curiously familiar!), but the Amiga was always the one to aim for, which I then upgraded to a year or so later.
- Ali
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monami wrote:
i'm sure the amiga was the same. surface mounting and all...
Not at all, the original Atari ST was essentially built around the same design ideas as Atari's old 8bit machines... except that it used a very powerful and modern CPU and a lot of RAM... for the time.
The Amiga brought a whole new set of rules to the table...
Stereo PMC Audio
CoProcessors
Dedicated hardware acceleration
DMA
etc...
the list is endless...
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@retro 71
being as you are a retro gamer and own all these systems and are master of them. could you offer your technical opinion of each of them interms of the market aimed at and the cost effectiveness of the hardware for the time? i'm just curious...
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thanks bloodline you proved my point! earlier in the thread you will see why i said the amiga 500 should not be compaired to the st. as it was 2 years later. the amiga 1000 is the only fair comparison. goodnight folks. :-)
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Atari and Commodore are very close companies. They even swaped their chairmans (Bushnell was at Commodore when Tramiel was at Atari)
If you guys have read On The Edge, there is a part where it says the ST's design started inside Commodore. Amiga's creators were ex-Atari people.
Amiga's hardware is closer to the Atari 800 than to the C64. It uses a list to feed the video chip for graphics and sprites, as Miner did for the 800. It has DMA to obtain this data, and lots of similarities.
The ST is closer to the 64, in the way it has a number of fixed modes, and they work in a simpler way. It has a single video chip that shares RAM just like the VIC did. It is a simple machine. Shivji was part of the Commodore 8 bit team.
What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...
(crappy world ! :-? )
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Watched the vid, only minor differences between most of the screens, but as others have said showing intro screens isn't a truly accurate representation of the differences between the two machines.
@monami
Please clarify this one point for me (and please leave out the Atari almost buying Amiga history stuff, most of us know this already). Are you trying to say that the Atari ST's existence is the only reason the A500 was created?
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It seems to me there wasn't anything the Atari ST could do that the Commodore 128 could do. :-D
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InTheSand wrote:
Retro_71 wrote:
i would never get a Atari ST (and there was chances too for free)
Aww... I'd *NEVER* turn down a free computer (well, unless it was an old generic PC). STs weren't necessarily bad - just not anything particularly special, and without them, the A500 would probably have stayed at a higher price for longer...
I progressed from a ZX Spectrum to an ST, and the change at the time was spectacular in terms of what could be done in comparison (though the sound chip was curiously familiar!), but the Amiga was always the one to aim for, which I then upgraded to a year or so later.
- Ali
:-D Well I have a few computers and room is getting pretty had to come by (the wife is always on my case), so i can only get computer that i feel made a big impact on history. And as i have said although the ST wasn't a bad computer it just didn't really make a big splash in computing history hence why i won't get one.
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monami wrote:
@retro 71
being as you are a retro gamer and own all these systems and are master of them. could you offer your technical opinion of each of them interms of the market aimed at and the cost effectiveness of the hardware for the time? i'm just curious...
No i won't as THAT would take a whole book and quote frankly i hate typing if i don't need to. WOW your sarcasm overwhelms me, gee i wish i was smart enough to be sarcastic.
Anyway enough wasting my time on someone that doesn't want to see the true world (u can stay in your little world).
Anywayt again Merry Christmas to all
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monami wrote:
thanks bloodline you proved my point! earlier in the thread you will see why i said the amiga 500 should not be compaired to the st. as it was 2 years later. the amiga 1000 is the only fair comparison. goodnight folks. :-)
The ST can be compared with the A500 for three reasons:
The ST was built in response to the Amiga (later renamed the A1000).
The ST was actively marketed against the A500.
The ST was upgraded (though not significantly) over the course of it's life cycle during it's competition with the A500.
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well i'm here again and i'll wait for the superiority of amiga to convince the world again
Ok, Amiga's Stardust (OCS/ECS, smooth multi-level scaling objects like Wing Commander), Brian The Lion (OCS/ECS, SNES style Mode 7(TM) effects), Shadow Fighter (OCS/ECS, CapCom System 2 style effects) and Elf Mania (OCS/ECS, CapCom System 2 style effects), Links (OCS/ECS, HAM mode game not just title screen) vs select an Atari ST/STE game with similar gfx quality.
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@henrycase.
no i suspected that miner was in on the atari next gen computer and tried to cut their throat. and that using a reasonable ability of phycology "mines bigger than yours." he would win with a slighter improved computer that to be honest was his only want to get up the nose of atari corp or who ever. amiga didn't seem a happy platform it was always "i've got an amiga, it's more powerful..." like i say i didn't see it. maybe my g/f should have been here. "that's lame." "thanks babe."
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@all
Sigh, this is just a troll that missed 20 years. All "points" he tries to make have been answered. About comparing companies with platforms, units sold, the difference in design and even the fact about the chipset that was in the A1000 being similar to the one in the A500 two years later. He doesn't want to hear it.
Maybe this one is a candidate for a life time membership on the Retrogeek Computers forum.
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What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...
The X86 PC has a superior distribution model i.e. unified PC clones compared to fragmented 68K PC world.
Starting from 1991, PC world has ATI Mach series GPUs. In 1992, ATI Mach32 already beats CBM's AGA.
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i'm no troll my friend. thanks you.
"jay miner, one of the original designers for the custom chips found in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit of machines, tried to convince Atari management to invest big money into creating a new chipset and console/computer idea. When his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and set about designing this new chipset. The company which was later renamed Amiga started selling various video game controllers and games while it developed its "Lorraine" computer system."
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@monami
I'm going to quote myself (how sad) so that my later comments make more sense:
HenryCase wrote:
Are you trying to say that the Atari ST's existence is the only reason the A500 was created?
In response...
monami wrote:
no i suspected that miner was in on the atari next gen computer and tried to cut their throat. and that using a reasonable ability of phycology "mines bigger than yours." he would win with a slighter improved computer that to be honest was his only want to get up the nose of atari corp or who ever.
You started so well with the "no" part, but the rest of your statement was certainly implying "yes". So to clarify again, you think the A500 was only created because Jay Miner wanted a computer that would compete with the Atari ST? It's a simple yes or no question.
(I'm leaving out the fact that the A500's existence was probably more due to Thomas Rattigan than Jay Miner, but the question is still valid if you replace 'Jay Miner' with 'Commodore').
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AeroMan wrote:
If you guys have read On The Edge, there is a part where it says the ST's design started inside Commodore. Amiga's creators were ex-Atari people.
Amiga's hardware is closer to the Atari 800 than to the C64. It uses a list to feed the video chip for graphics and sprites, as Miner did for the 800. It has DMA to obtain this data, and lots of similarities.
The ST is closer to the 64, in the way it has a number of fixed modes, and they work in a simpler way. It has a single video chip that shares RAM just like the VIC did. It is a simple machine. Shivji was part of the Commodore 8 bit team.
What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...
(crappy world ! :-? )
To be perfectly honest, I never thought of Amiga as being closely related to either Commodore or Atari. To me, it made use of the best engineering concepts in computer design of the time to create a whole new computer platform.
A lot of these arguments can be related to automobiles. If someone worked for Ford then left to work for a small company to develop a new Hydrogen engine that set new standards in the automobile industry, which was later bought up by General Motors and used in cars built by General Motors, would we still call it a Ford?
Clearly, we have: A) Computer engineers, B) Computer platforms, and C) Computer companies. We also have D) Investors, who may or may not be C) Computer companies. It's A) Computer engineers that design B) Computer platforms, which are then marketed by C) computer companies. Sometimes they need D) investors to get their ideas off the ground; but that money must be paid back. Far too often, computer companies are credited with the creation of a computer platform. They are not. They simply market the products of the engineers who happen to be in their employ. Thus, neither Commodore nor Atari are responsible for the creation of the Amiga.
As for the state of modern PC's, I'd say they've incorporated a lot of the good qualities of the Amiga. At least the world is using a Windows that's based on OS/2 now, which is closer to the Amiga.
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Hammer wrote:
What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...
The X86 PC has a superior distribution model i.e. unified PC clones compared to fragmented 68K PC world.
Starting from 1991, PC world has ATI Mach series GPUs. In 1992, ATI Mach32 already beats CBM's AGA.
And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...
@AeroMan: As for crappy processor... yes, but it's now fast enough for that not to be an issue... And crappy OS? Err.. you must be using Windows!
- Ali
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InTheSand wrote:
And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...
What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted. What made them fail is when they tried to dictate to the market what people wanted. Case in point: The Commodore PET created a desire. The Commodore Vic 20, then the C64, delivered what the market demanded. The Plus/4 and C16 were attempts by Commodore to control the market, and as such failed. The Commodore 128 and 64c are examples of Commodore once again giving the market what they demanded, and the move barely saved them.
The Amiga 1000 was much like that Commodore PET; an original idea that created desire. The A500 and A2000 gave the market what it demanded. After that, Commodore tried to control the market and dictate it with products like the A500+, too many variations of the A2000, then the A600 and A3000. However, this time, by the time they started delivering what people wanted (the 1200 and the 4000), it was too little, too late, too overpriced.
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And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...
Can CSG/MOS compete against Intel's 487 FP co-processor?
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@DigitalQ
Forgive my ignorance, but in what ways is OS/2 more similar to the Amiga than DOS-based Windows?
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@henrycase. i know you all know i'm not close to 50% history of what you know. but all i can see is a guy with dollar signs in his eyes and a little more. the whole thing is a buisiness yes and i can see their are those that had a love of electronics. but how much of it is ego and self recognition? undercut backstab. i know it's a cut throat buisiness. so many didn't succeed. but i personally didn't like the amigas entrance to my world. as you say my history is different to what you consider to be true. to me it was like a sex pistols song "god save the queen." on jubilee day. even though i'm a fan i didn't like that approach. yes commodore were having to find a nitch. but even i can see that was a mistake to put up what were £1000 computers when they had home computers before. so then i saw it like oh lets get in at the low end. and undercut and cut out atari. any kind of revenge it didn't wash with me thats all. yes you give a donkey a carrot and it follows you. you promise the earth and people will beleive you. thats what i call hype. i'm sure if i had an amiga at the time i would have said... don't like the colour! but someone else would woot woot woot.
i think the a500 was meant to usurp the st. make of that what you will.
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"What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted."
i bought 3 vic 20's that all went wrong and were returned to radio rental before i decided on a zx spectrum.
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monami wrote:
"What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted."
i bought 3 vic 20's that all went wrong and were returned to radio rental before i decided on a zx spectrum.
My family's old VIC-20 works fine.
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HenryCase wrote:
@DigitalQ
Forgive my ignorance, but in what ways is OS/2 more similar to the Amiga than DOS-based Windows?
The way in which OS/2 Multitasks is very similar to the Amiga; in that it worked very well without crashing the system. Also, the High Performance File System (HPFS) of OS/2 was similar with respect that you could natively use long file names instead of the hack that Fat32 offered. OS/2 used REXX, which was very similar to Amiga's AREXX. Unlike DOS-based Windows, and much like AmigaDOS and Workbench 2.x and over, OS/2 was very stable and rarely crashed. Like in Amiga WB 2.x and over, one could customize their desktop to no end in OS/2. In all honesty, when I made the switch to PC from Amiga, I felt much more at home with OS/2 than I did with Windows.
A well-known fact is that modern Windows is based on NT. A little-known fact is that NT is based on OS/2. :-D
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monami wrote:
i know it's a cut throat buisiness. so many didn't succeed. but i personally didn't like the amigas entrance to my world. as you say my history is different to what you consider to be true. to me it was like a sex pistols song "god save the queen." on jubilee day. even though i'm a fan i didn't like that approach. yes commodore were having to find a nitch. but even i can see that was a mistake to put up what were £1000 computers when they had home computers before. so then i saw it like oh lets get in at the low end. and undercut and cut out atari. any kind of revenge it didn't wash with me thats all.
Honestly, what business was it of Atari's to even make home computers in the first place? They had their Atari 2600 videogame console, and Commodore had the PET. Then Atari decided to undercut and cut out Commodore with the Atari 400. They could have stuck with videogame consoles like Nintendo did, but instead they decided to go on the attack against Commodore.
See, you got your history all wrong again. It's Atari that were the agressors; Commodore was merely trying to protect itself. ;-)
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Hammer wrote:
Can CSG/MOS compete against Intel's 487 FP co-processor?
68K's had FP coprocessors too. The problem was how to compete against clones. That made hardware cheap, and not dependant on one company's finances like Amiga and Atari were.
There were no reasons for Amiga not to go in the 3d accelerator field, and chunky modes were in AAA. It was a matter of time, but C= died first.
Intel processors are fast now, but they have the burden of a 30 years old 8086 to carry as compatibility. They are also faster because they are produced in big volume. I would love to see what would happen if a better architeture like ARM or PPC had dominated the PC industry. We would be way ahead of our time.
@DigitalQ:
Engineering is a form of art. We take our signatures in our projects. If you analyse the design of the VCS, 8 bit Ataris and the Amiga, you can clearly see Miner's style.
This becomes a dilluted in automobiles as they are designed by big teams, but they reuse the company's resources leaving the cars with the company's signature. (have a nice example, PM you later...) :-)
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Ok, So if you took all the products of all the dead computer companies, Amiga would be the best. The video is lame.
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persia wrote:
Ok, So if you took all the products of all the dead computer companies, Amiga would be the best. The video is lame.
That's a rather nice summary...
I thought the video was quite good hopefully it will inspire someone to make a version with split-screen game Amiga/ST gameplay :-)
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@monami
monami wrote:
i think the a500 was meant to usurp the st. make of that what you will.
Thank you for answering my question. I don't see it as being quite as straightforward as you propose. Take a look at this article on the history of the Amiga:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-5.ars/4
As you can see, the A1000 wasn't selling all too well, so Thomas Rattigan decided to split the Amiga line with a high end and a low end model, hence A500/A2000.
I'm not going to pretend that Commodore were making their decisions without considering what their competitors were up to, but I really think you're overselling the importance of the ST. Just my opinion.
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DigitalQ wrote:
A well-known fact is that modern Windows is based on NT. A little-known fact is that NT is based on OS/2. :-D
Errm... Windows NT was originally going to be based on OS/2, but this fell apart when Microsoft continued to develop its DOS-based Windows GUI instead of putting its resources into OS/2. IBM and M$ fell out, with IBM going the OS/2 route and Microsoft with Windows. The rest is history!
- Ali
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InTheSand wrote:
Errm... Windows NT was originally going to be based on OS/2, but this fell apart when Microsoft continued to develop its DOS-based Windows GUI instead of putting its resources into OS/2. IBM and M$ fell out, with IBM going the OS/2 route and Microsoft with Windows. The rest is history!
- Ali
As I mentioned, it's a little-known fact. When IBM and Microsoft parted ways, both parties owned OS/2 (as it was a joint project) and continued to develop it in their own way. Microsoft slapped its Windows interface on it and called it Windows NT 3.0, while IBM proceeded with Warp.
This is further demonstrated when one discovers they can run older OS/2 programs under Windows NT. Microsoft has an article on this at TechNet:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/reskit/os2comp.mspx?mfr=true
The compatibility existed because, for all intents and purposes, Windows NT was built on OS/2.
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is a date specified anywhere when the custom chips were made?
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Not that long before the Amiga 1000 was frist demostrated
you should really check out these articles
Here (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-1.ars/4)
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@monami
I'm confused, you seem to be saying that you didn't like amigans and amigas at the time because the low end model came out after the atari ST and was better than it...and that it was unfair to compare the two because the a500 came out 2 years later.
Does this about sum up your point?
Should I bother pointing out that if the two were in actual market competition then comparing the two does in fact make perfect sense, and that if you want to squabble about who deserves credit for what you should remember that NEITHER Atari nor Commodore invented the majority of technology in either the Atari ST or the OCS Amiga lines?
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hi,
i will check out the articles. thanks.
some points seem hard to grasp thats all. if the amiga was as quoted a computer that could do things a 10000 couldn't do(earlier in the thread.) why couldn't they shift it for 1000?
atari "off the shelf chips"? they were industry standard. yam sound chip? used in their keyboards?
if the amiga was so revelutionary why did 3 companies turn them down?
my original point was amiga was failing as they entered the market. their price point was incorrect and so they tried to cut in on ataris market. if their hardware was so good why wasn't the a500 sold for £500 not the same price as atari? surely they would have been recognised for the genius they were?
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Basically bad management, its al there in the 5 articles so far
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by the time i came around (early 90's) the question came down to upgradeability. the atari had midi and seemed to be a neat machine but a 2000 and later 3000 and 4000 could easily upgrade video, processor, and audio. ataris didnt have anything like that.
it is possible to put an 060 accelerator with what 128megs ram, multigig hd, high res true color video card, sound card, and many other goodies into a 2000 with os3.9 ataris always seemed much sleaker but more limited to me. and the later versions (falcon etc) that corrected some of those problems were far too rare.
nowadays it comes down to availability. you can get amigas in many places for reasonable prices. were can you get ataris?
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@monami:
If you really knew your history, you would know that Commodore CEO Tom Rattigan was responsible for the A500 and A2000 duo, as well as bringing Commodore back to profitability. He was not around when Commodore bought Amiga, and it's a well-known fact that Commodore was horribly mis-managed back in those days.
Rattigan was interviewed by Dan Gutman back in 1987, and I have an excerpt from that interview which you will find enlightening:
Guttman: (What is your reaction about) Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore and now head of your biggest competitor?
Rattign: None. None whatsoever. If he were sitting here, it would be the first time I ever met him. He smokes cigars, so he can't be all bad.
Clearly, as indicated by this interview which occurred just months prior to the demonstration of the Amiga 500 and 2000 for the first time ever, there was no "Bad Blood" between the man responsible for the Atari ST and the man responsible for the Amiga 500. Just business as usual.
I do like this quote from the interview, the only time the Atari ST was mentioned during the interview:
Q: What would you do if your granddaughter brought home an Atari ST?
A: I'd probably send her off to have her IQ tested.
:lol:
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i've just found a midi interface for amiga. where can i find a legal copy of cubase? thanks.
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monami wrote:
i've just found a midi interface for amiga. where can i find a legal copy of cubase? thanks.
Your point being?
It would be like me saying, I just bought an Atari Mega4, now where do I stick my Video Toaster?
It's funny to see though, that after all these years there is still so much bashing going on between these 2 followers. Why not Apple Mac? Why not PC's?
I am a fan of Atari's, be it 8 bit. The ST never did anything for me. Not am I saying one is better then the other, but in history I would agree that Amiga's have had a bigger impact. On the console front that has to be the Atari 2600.
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No competition, Amiga wins every time.
The Amiga rests its case.
Mike.
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monami wrote:
i've just found a midi interface for amiga. where can i find a legal copy of cubase? thanks.
I always hated cubase, still do (all here know I'm a Logic Pro guy now)... For the Amiga, I always loved OctaMED for MIDI and sampling.
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DigitalQ wrote:
InTheSand wrote:
Errm... Windows NT was originally going to be based on OS/2, but this fell apart when Microsoft continued to develop its DOS-based Windows GUI instead of putting its resources into OS/2. IBM and M$ fell out, with IBM going the OS/2 route and Microsoft with Windows. The rest is history!
- Ali
As I mentioned, it's a little-known fact. When IBM and Microsoft parted ways, both parties owned OS/2 (as it was a joint project) and continued to develop it in their own way. Microsoft slapped its Windows interface on it and called it Windows NT 3.0, while IBM proceeded with Warp.
This is further demonstrated when one discovers they can run older OS/2 programs under Windows NT. Microsoft has an article on this at TechNet:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/reskit/os2comp.mspx?mfr=true
The compatibility existed because, for all intents and purposes, Windows NT was built on OS/2.
You are just looking at the surface.
OS/2 layer ranks the same as Win32 layer.
(OS/2)(Win32)(Posix)
( NT Executive )
Windows XP/2003/Vista removed OS/2 layer.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308259
Windows NT kernel has it’s origins from VMS.
http://osdir.com/ml/os.reactos.kernel/2004-07/msg00034.html
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1509990
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monami wrote:
hi,
i will check out the articles. thanks.
some points seem hard to grasp thats all. if the amiga was as quoted a computer that could do things a 10000 couldn't do(earlier in the thread.) why couldn't they shift it for 1000?
atari "off the shelf chips"? they were industry standard. yam sound chip? used in their keyboards?
if the amiga was so revelutionary why did 3 companies turn them down?
Amiga brought the "GPU" concept to the mainstream.
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I dont think those screens look so much better on the amiga after looking at the video .. I would enjoy the game regardless if on atari or amiga .,..'
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68K's had FP coprocessors too
That was Motorola's products.
There were no reasons for Amiga not to go in the 3d accelerator field, and chunky modes were in AAA
CSG/MOS would require some talent in building a fast RISC processors. During late 80s, SGI uses Intel 860 RISC/3D hybrid as its 3D accelerator.
Today’s 3D accelerators are FP processor arrays. Both ATI and NVIDIA have engineers from SGI.
Intel processors are fast now, but they have the burden of a 30 years old 8086 to carry as compatibility
Only a minor burden since X86 ISA occurs at the front-end of the CPU i.e. hardware/micro-code emulation/translation from variable length instruction (CISC) to fix-length RISCy ISA.
This burden didn’t stop AMD and Intel adding SIMD, Out-Of-Order, super-pipelining (includes FP), Fused FMUL/FADD(C2D), RISC-core, quad-instruction issue(C2D), speculative instruction(C2D) and data prediction and any other DEC Alpha EV6 features.
The actual CPU implementation is a customised RISC core.
The variable length instruction (CISC) has an added benefit of instruction compression.
A modern X86 processor operates in modes. AMD64 (aka X64, Intel64, EMT64) killed 'Real Mode' 8086 compatibility.
They are also faster because they are produced in big volume
Unit sale numbers doesn’t inherently equals faster CPU cores e.g. ARM and MIPS.
What’s important are the people who designs these CPUs.
I would love to see what would happen if a better architeture like ARM or PPC had dominated the PC industry. We would be way ahead of our time.
Won’t change much since the people who designing today’s X86 would be still building MIPS or Alpha or PA-RISC.
Industry players would be the same minus the X86 ISA front-end.
For example;
"The cache design of the AMD Athlon is very similar to that of the Digital Alpha 21264(EV6). The repeated use of Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC) techniques which have been licensed by AMD can be explained by the fact that the development of the Athlon was led by Dirk Meyer who was head of development of the DEC 21264 at theDigital Equipment Corporation labs."
Since AMD’s K7 Athlon shares the [d]similar[/d] same infrastructure as with DEC’s Alpha EV6, just replace Athlon core with Alpha core and run Windows NT.
The last known Windows NT build for DEC’s Alpha was Windows 2000 (NT5.0). This version was used internally by Microsoft to build Windows NT 64bit editions.
In late 90's 1Ghz race, both Intel's Pentium III and AMD's K7 Athlon has a similar high clocking nature (when compared to PowerPC group) as DEC's Alpha EV6. One of the major reasons was the break-up of DEC and subsequent spread of talent to Intel and AMD.
In the alternative timeline, PowerPC gets beaten up again in early 90's 1Ghz race, via DEC’s Alpha (or any neo-DEC teams).
IF CBM was alive, we might be using HP's PA-RISC and ultimately Intel’s Itanium (includes X86 compatibility).
Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DO_Interactive_Multiplayer
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=575
Lets put
1. 3DO vs ATI (Mach32) in 1993 context....
2. 3DO's M2 vs 3DFX(Voodoo2)/NVIDIA(TNT)/ATI(Rage 128 GL) in 1998 context.
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Hammer wrote:
CSG/MOS would require some talent in building a fast RISC processors. During late 80s, SGI uses Intel 860 RISC/3D hybrid as its 3D accelerator.
Today’s 3D accelerators are FP processor arrays. Both ATI and NVIDIA have engineers from SGI.
Agree, but they could use 3rd parties chips, like the Intel you said, or TMS3XX. Besides this, Hombre was expected to have a PA RISC. As this thing turned into industry standard, They would probably follw the others and use off the shelf chips
This burden didn’t stop AMD and Intel adding SIMD, Out-Of-Order, super-pipelining (includes FP), Fused FMUL/FADD(C2D), RISC-core, quad-instruction issue(C2D), speculative instruction(C2D) and data prediction and any other DEC Alpha EV6 features.
Those features are also in other chips like PPC and even ARM. It is a natural way to go, but the base stuff still the 386 architecture
Unit sale numbers doesn’t inherently equals faster CPU cores e.g. ARM and MIPS.
What’s important are the people who designs these CPUs.
Yes, it counts. Selling more chips measn you have more money, and this means you can hire the hot shots to design your stuff, and they can have bigger teams.
It also means you can pay better research, which is where the new technologies come from, and production lines capable of state of the art silicon manufacturing.
This also leads to competition. I can think about 4 companies doing x86 chips, and this means different people working on the same thing (more innovation).
ARM or MIPS could be faster if they find someone willing to pay for faster chips
In the alternative timeline, PowerPC gets beaten up again in early 90's 1Ghz race, via DEC’s Alpha (or any neo-DEC teams).
GigaHertz are very relative stuff. Apple had the fastest desktop some time ago with a PPC at the same clock that x86 ran. I see it is quite interesting what is happening with consoles, where compatibility is not a huge problem like desktops, but massive processing power is a must. Everybody is going PPC. Even Microsoft.
They could stand with x86, but Sony, M$ and Nintendo went PPC. The fastest computer in earth is a PPC array (http://www.top500.org/system/8968). It seems a good sign to me :-D
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Those features are also in other chips like PPC and even ARM. It is a natural way to go, but the base stuff still the 386 architecture
Emm, AMD’s K5 can still execute some AMD29000 RISC code....
Google AMD's K5 and AMD's 29000 RISC. You'll notice that there's nothing new with Transmeta's solution.
Ever since Intel’s Pentium Pro and AMD’s K5, all modern X86 micro-architectures are not 80386 micro-architecture based.
Yes, it counts. Selling more chips measn you have more money,
During the 90s, DEC’s Alpha didn't require the same sales unit numbers as X86.
and this means you can hire the hot shots to design your stuff, and they can have bigger teams.
NextGen (breakaway neo-DEC Alpha team) didn't start with large sales volume.
and production lines capable of state of the art silicon manufacturing
TSMC's 55nm fab almost rivals Intel's 45nm fabs and has beaten AMD's own 65nm fabs. TSMC's 55nm fabs are being used for non-X86 AMD RV670 (Radeon HD38x0 ) stream processor manufacturing.
Apple had the fastest desktop some time ago with a PPC at the same clock that x86 ran
The claims was debanked with a K8 Athlon 64/Opteron e.g. Cinebench 2003 benchmark.
Care to restart PPC G5 vs K8 debates? Time dig out http://www.barefeats.com/ again...
Everybody is going PPC. Even Microsoft
IBM is willing to licence its PPE core IP to Microsoft.
There's very little chance that Intel and AMD will licence its "Post-RISC" X86 designs to Microsoft. Both do not want uber-Microsoft corp in the PC market place.
but massive processing power is a must
PPE (front-end) can issue two instruction issue per cycle with in-order processing while PowerPC 970 (front-end) can issue 4 instructions + 1 branch per cycle with out-of-order processing. In terms micro-architecture PPE is like PPC 601 (G1) with VMX, SMT and clocked at 3.2Ghz.
Most CELL's power comes SPUs. For X86 world, it has DX10 GpGPUs for stream array IEEE754 Single Precision Floating computation. AMD’s Radeon HD38x0 (RV670) can handle IEEE754 Double Precision Floating computation.
XBox360's Xenon PPE's shared L2 cache is clocked at 1.6Ghz i.e. half of 3.2Ghz core clock. Like CELL's PPE, this PPE core (front-end) can issue two instruction per cycle with in-order processing.
Quoting HPC numbers is a bit useless in SOHO scenarios. But, since you quoted it...
It would take about 958 AMD RV670s to reach "478.2 trillion floating operations per second". AMD and HP is targeting HPC FP math market with RV670 i.e. directly competing with CELL.
If we use Fold@Home as an indication, the non-IEEE754 RV570/R580 killed CELL twice over. Fold@Home has stated R600 is about 43 percent faster than the old R580.
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Hmmmmm, I guess this thread wandered a bit off topic!
Anyway, I hope everyone had a great day today (or yesterday).
I think the comparison video was very well made and informative.
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monami wrote:
i've just found a midi interface for amiga. where can i find a legal copy of cubase? thanks.
You could dig out and run an old copy of Emulator's, Inc. Gemulator on a bone stock Amiga 500 and run the Atari ST version; but as others have pointed out, similar software native to the Amiga is so much nicer to use; why restrict yourself?
I had a copy at one time, but I think I erased that disk to use for something else since there really wasn't anything for the Atari ST that I couldn't do better in the native Amiga world. :-D
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Thanks for the link! Very nice comparison video and very well made and also informative!... and it brings a lot of discussion also :-)
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adonay wrote:
I dont think those screens look so much better on the amiga after looking at the video .. I would enjoy the game regardless if on atari or amiga .,..'
No you won't enjoy most of the games on the Atari which you like on the Amiga. Will you play The Great Giana Sisters on Atari ST without scroll? Come on - it scrolls even on 8 bit C64 but not on 16 Atari ST. And that's only a single example from many. :lol:
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I saw this picture, and thought of this thread:
(http://99.253.2.30/ataricommodore.jpg)
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great pic!!! I'll make it my wallpaper on my iPhone!
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>No you won't enjoy most of the games on the Atari which you like on the Amiga. Will you play The Great Giana Sisters on Atari ST without scroll? Come on - it scrolls even on 8 bit C64 but not on 16 Atari ST. And that's only a single example from many.
Probably works better on Atari 8-bit than on Atari ST as I have noticed with some software that does not require hi-res.
I don't think a video clip does justice to either computer. You can easily trick the Atari 8-bit hardware to show 32 apparent shades of a color and make a video which shows the Amiga with it's 16-shades and Atari ST with it's 8 shades per color, but that would not prove the Atari 8-bit was better than both Atari ST and Amiga. Atari ST makers should have relied more on coprocessors rather than trying to mimic the Mac which was overburdening the 68000 CPU with the tasks the Atari 8-bit and Amiga did with coprocessors.