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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => General Internet News => Topic started by: arcticandyb on July 04, 2002, 07:56:26 PM

Title: We're also on the BBC?!?
Post by: arcticandyb on July 04, 2002, 07:56:26 PM
You know it never ceases to amaze me how widespread the Amiga's fame got.. and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I stumbled onto this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A622540).  I was looking for Spanish radio stations for my wife!

It's great to see that the Amiga will forever be immortalised by the Beeb, or something like that..

Title: Re: We
Post by: carls on July 04, 2002, 10:37:39 PM
Quite a funny remark about BeOS :-)

"The BeOS is a 'next-generation' multimedia operating system. This means that it doesn't work with your existing applications or hardware but it looks pretty."
Title: Re: We
Post by: redrumloa on July 04, 2002, 10:42:01 PM
Looks like this was from 2001 and a few of the facts are a little skewed from then even. A good positive read though.
Title: Re: We
Post by: jj on July 05, 2002, 07:59:19 AM
Yeah, seemeed a bit old, but seem to be written by  an Amigan or ex-amigan. Had alot of facts peeps in the mainstream don't normally know about, unless the wirter of the article was a good researcher, but I can't see that level of research going into that small an article.
Title: Re: We
Post by: JetRacer on July 05, 2002, 01:27:22 PM
Amazing, I agree. Amazing number of factual errors.

Among others: the 68000 is 32-bit, not 16-bit. And before you all start screaming: it has a 16-bit BUS. Specified as a 16/32-bit CPU by Motorola. And is code compatible with the rest of the 680X0 serie which are all 32-bit processors. Try finding a 32-bit CPU which is code compatible with a 64-bit one. Not gonna happen.

And the hype that the Atari was such an incredible music wonder is just nonsense. It all originates from that built-in MIDI interface, which is just a fancy way of saying it's serial interface had the $10 adapter built-in. Which ofcourse was widely available for the Amiga.

Intel - the worlds greatest manufacturer of it's own products :-D
Title: Re: We
Post by: whabang on July 05, 2002, 04:20:18 PM
Quote
the 68000 is 32-bit, not 16-bit.

Indeed! That's why the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis was the first 32-bit games console. :-P
Title: Re: We
Post by: DaveP on July 05, 2002, 07:08:24 PM
The midi port converters at the time were quite expensive. Plus
at made Atari the great wunderkind for music was a
musc package - wasnt it Notator something?
Title: Re: We
Post by: arcticandyb on July 05, 2002, 11:42:46 PM
Actually two things.. sound on the Atari was actually crap compared to the Amiga's own sound capabilities (after I hooked my first A500 thru a decent Amp and kicked off Falcon, many ST friends were extremely jealous).

Secondly the midi port on the ST was also not that great.  All a midi port is, is a serial port with a couple of ICs added to it, so it was no wonder that a few years later decent enough midi adapters were cheaply available for the Amiga.

In regard to the "famous" Atari music package.  Yes it was the dogs gonnads, but by 1993 was superceded by a PC version, which pretty much left the Falcon (with it's famed DSP sound system) dead in the water.

Also by that time, Bar & Pipes was a far more superior package, which never got the attention it deserved from the music industry (they were also convinced by the midi propeganda that the Atari was the only machine for music, and after their software was moved to the PC, they also moved on).