Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Kesa on December 27, 2010, 12:05:48 PM
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There's been a lot of talk on A.org in the last few days about AGA. I was just wondering how did the Atari Falcon stand up against the Amiga 1200?
I know quite well that the A500 was superior to the Atari ST (mainly in sound) but what about the Falcon and the A1200? Until today i knew virtually nothing about the Falcon except maybe it was a wedge case computer! Maybe...
A quick comparison seems to put the Falcon in the lead with a 16mhz cpu. What else can it do above the AGA chipset?
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I remember back when they first were announced/released, there was a comparison on Games Master (I think) between the Amiga A1200, Atari Falcon and Acorn A3010.
From what I remember, they had a representative for each company answering the questions.
If you can find it on YouTube, it might be an interesting insight.
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A quick comparison seems to put the Falcon in the lead with a 16mhz cpu.
...on a 16 bits bus. Which severely cripples performance.
Overall, in a standard configuration, they were more or less comparable. Falcon was better on some parts, A1200 better on other parts.
Because of the 16 bit databus, the Falcon was much harder to expand, though, something which was not made better by the rather short time it was available in shops and the therefore rather small amount of machines sold.
I find the Atari Mega STe to be a better deal overall compared to the Falcon. Slower, sure, but a more balanced design in its day.
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Atari Falcon compared to Amiga 1200 has also:
- processor with MMU
- chunky 16bit truecolor mode,
- Multitos - Unix based operating system with memory protection.
The graphics capabilities of the Atari Falcon, classic Amiga reached only with an additional graphics card.
Atari Falcon was a much better computer than the Amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the Amiga 4000.
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http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/falcon030/falcon030.html
The Falcon had a SCSI II built in, and some sort of network thingy, don't know what type though.
But 16 bit, and far from as easily expandable as the A1200 and I guess not as sold either.
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I remember back when they first were announced/released, there was a comparison on Games Master (I think) between the Amiga A1200, Atari Falcon and Acorn A3010.
From what I remember, they had a representative for each company answering the questions.
If you can find it on YouTube, it might be an interesting insight.
There are only two episodes of Games Master from all 7 series still missing and those are from Season 2 so I should have it somewhere. Who has the time to watch 140 episodes of Games Master though...most of it was console based games played by little kids or reviews of rubbish console games like Mario (*puke*). Got bored VERY quickly :)
Anyway...Falcon had a DSP and superior sound playback via 16bit DACs, that was about it really as far as what was better. The Falcon 16mhz 030 is barely faster than the 14mhz 020 in AGA (because 030 is only to be used if you need MMU or FPU) when you add fast ram and certainly slower than 16mhz 030 in Amiga 3000. Memory access on Falcon is identical speed to an ST on the Falcon for compatibility reasons and so it is crippled design overall. Look at most Falcon games and they look nowhere near as good as the whole DSP hype would have you believe. Also Silk Cut by The Black Lotus is on 060 AGA and 060 Falcon and looks and sounds very much the same, but better palette on AGA helps a bit.
Falcon was quite expensive compared to an A1200. I think base 1mb model was £600 on launch day and 4mb upgrade cost a lot as did their internal 2.5" hard drives too.
Now the Jaguar chipset inside a home computer....that would be something special. Just look at Doom on a Jaguar, using a 14mhz 68000 and custom chips, it runs as fast as a Pentium 66/75mhz PC in true colour.
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Atari Falcon compared to Amiga 1200 has also:
- processor with MMU
- chunky 16bit truecolor mode,
- Multitos - Unix based operating system with memory protection.
The graphics capabilities of the Atari Falcon, classic Amiga reached only with an additional graphics card.
Atari Falcon was a much better computer than the Amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the Amiga 4000.
And yet the memory access to RAM was slower than the Amiga A1200 so the CPU was crippled even more because on the A1200 you can choose to buy Fast ram and get full speed 32bit performance....Falcon was stuck forever in 16bit unless you spent £800 on an 040 or 060 upgrade card.
Falcon games look worse than the best AGA had to offer (like Super Stardust) so technically means nothing, only musicians bought it for the 16bit direct to disk sampling and running Cubase in colour :)
I'm pretty sure max resolution was 800x600 certainly nowhere near super hi-res lace overscan of 1400x576 possible on a lowly 2mb A1200 either. And in this mode HAM8 was untouchable in 92, even on Mac and PCs costing £2000.
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atari falcon was a much better computer than the amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the amiga 4000.
lol
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1400x576
Yeah... and what did you do with this resolution since it was so slow it couldn't be usable... Not to mention about the fact there's no monitor to handle it, and it sucks as a resolution... much like 640x200 2:1 aspect. It's true AGA offered higher resolutions but most of them were completely unusable because too slow or of a bad aspect ratio... And if you want VGA display, it's even slower.
The Falcon had truecolor (yeah, not blurry ham8, but true thousand of colors mode) chunky modes.
The DSP blows away the 7 years old Paula. You could easily play MP3 with it... which required a 040 or even 060 with the A1200.
Plus it had a MMU and FPU socket which isn't present on the A1200.
If you add memory and/or accelerator, some kind of graphics card, a sound card,... you end up with something very expensive when compared with the Falcon.
And yes, even the A4000 can't compete with the 16bit truecolor mode and the DSP. It is has of course much more horsepower, is expandable... but out of the box, it's quite unusable too.
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Jiffy = Falcon was better on some parts, A1200 better on other parts.
Yeah, not the least of which: the massive difference in available software! lol
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The DSP blows away the 7 years old Paula. You could easily play MP3 with it... which required a 040 or even 060 with the A1200.
One could argue the point of playing mp3's at all though. So to many of us, that's quite a useless feature to expect of a computer right there. Any old computer with a CD-ROM can play music. With much better quality of course AND you can truly multi-task while listening :)
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@qwerty40001
Lol, Clown.
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1993 called...It wants it's Amiga -vs- Atari thread back. :)
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Huh? Atari Failcon?
;)
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Have you been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past to bring up those more than 15 years old question? :D :D
My advice is the Falcon is better than the plain A1200, but the OS is crap, it has no software, it was too expensive, and it is beated by any expended A1200 except for the sound.
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You guy can think of some dumb things to get so worked up over. The Falcon was a nice computer with a few dumb design decisions (then again remember our recent AGA dicussions). But if I was picking one to program on it would be the falcon. And 800x 600 in truecolor is better than an overscanned HAM display.
Besides, what's the point of all this? You're all stilll arguing the merits of 256 color (or less) displays while I'm using 32 bit color (as are many RTG users). In comparison both systems can't compete.
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Besides, what's the point of all this?
Comparing system A to system B.
In comparison both systems can't compete.
Sure they can, either one is worth more than yours. ;)
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They both had advantages and disadvantages, they both had poor design decisions, and they were both the final products in the 'all-in-keyboard' style of computers popular since the late 70s.
The Falcon was crippled by the memory bus. The A1200 was crippled by the lack of Fast RAM. One of these was fixable for little cost (£100 for a 2MB RAM expansion in 1993) - and hence the A1200 was better at the time considering it cost a lot less than the Falcon when purchased).
The Falcon might have had better vertical resolution than the video-optimised Amiga chipset, but you would need a dedicated monitor to make use of that. But if you had that, it was better than the poor interlaced modes the A1200 offered - how many people ended up using 800x300 Super72 mode on their Multisync monitors? Productivity mode didn't seem to fill the screen - not for me anyway. Let's not talk about higher colour depths either...
Let's face it, at launch the A1200 needed an A1400 for £599 as the 'sell-up' option, with a 28MHz 68020, 4MB RAM (2+2) and a HD floppy.
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Now the Jaguar chipset inside a home computer....that would be something special. Just look at Doom on a Jaguar, using a 14mhz 68000 and custom chips, it runs as fast as a Pentium 66/75mhz PC in true colour.
You must also specify the fact that the 68000 is only a system controller, and that the jaguar is a 64bit console.
Atari Jaguar wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar)
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Comparing system A to system B.
Sure they can, either one is worth more than yours. ;)
That's what I love about this forum, so many objective opinions. Personally, I'd love to have a Falcon to play around with. Its graphics modes don't require some of the intensely bizzarre and convoluted programing coding required by the Amiga.
As far as any comparison between NG and retro machines, thetre isn't any. Even a SAM run circles around any Amiga. And if you think a 256 color display can compare to a 16,777,216 color display you're deluded.
I worked with companies designing and sell 68K based computer in the late 80's and 90's. Great times, fantastic hardware - FOR THAT TIME.
But get over it dude. Those systems can't compare (to something new) and your comments are not only ludicrious but they make it easy to completely dismiss you.
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But get over it dude. Those systems can't compare (to something new) and your comments are not only ludicrious but they make it easy to completely dismiss you.
Apparently you didn't understand me. The A1200 and the Falcon are both worth more, monetarily, than your common Apple hardware I find discarded (and have discarded) regularly.
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Apparently you didn't understand me. The A1200 and the Falcon are both worth more, monetarily, than your common Apple hardware I find discarded (and have discarded) regularly.
Sorry, I appologize for the offensive comments. I definately misread the intent of your post.
And you are right. If you want to run OSX, a G4 is not the hardware you want to use (of course I don't even have OSX installed). And the nearly free equipment capable of running an NG OS makes the idea of buying an X1000 impracticle.
YES, if only I'd had a clue in the past when Amiga hardware was at a low point that this stuff would be selling for the outrageous prices that they are going for now I would have invested in a stockpile of it.
As I indicated in my last post, I was a devoted supporter of anything 68K based. The design was so much more elegant than X86. At one time, I really did believe we had a chance of staking a larger place in the market. I think it kind of fell apart when CD-i failed, Tandy did not move its Color Computers to 68K, and high end Amigas like the 4000 cost about twice what a PC cost.
And I do understand why people are willing to pay these high prices for this hardware. I myself was recently talking to someone who was selling a functional SWTPC computer (the first personal computer I had any experience with) and I was seriously considering paying over $1000 for a 2 Mhz computer. I also wish I could find a functional Peripheral Technologies PT68K. And the Amiga? Why hell, it SHOULD have suceeded. When introduced, it was so far ahead of its time that it can only be due to incredibly poor corporate mismanagement that it did not win ovewver the market.
Blame Commodore bean counters. They never has a clue what they had or how to sell it.
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My advice is the Falcon is better than the plain A1200, but the OS is crap
Hopefully the OS part will some day be fixed with a 68k port of AROS to the Atari STs and Falcon.
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Hopefully the OS part will some day be fixed with a 68k port of AROS to the Atari STs and Falcon.
WOW, now that is an idea I had never considered. AROS 68K could be ported to non Amiga systems. Damn. What about the coldfire?
Hey, where can I get a Falcon and wasn't there a 100Mhz derivitive at the EOL of the Atari lifecycle?
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That's what I love about this forum, so many objective opinions. Personally, I'd love to have a Falcon to play around with. Its graphics modes don't require some of the intensely bizzarre and convoluted programing coding required by the Amiga.
The point is, that AGA was completely worthless crap.
Even in 1992 it was much less than they had PC / Mac / Atari.
Graphics card in the Amiga was strictly necessary to normal work.
Unfortunately, some morons gives an almost religious veneration for AGA.
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The sad thing about the Falcon was that Atari again did something stupid and tried to make it cheap and sell it for too much.
The TT030 had a faster CPU, was actually 32bit through and through, but was just missing the DSP and extra video modes of the Falcon.
The TT030 came out before it did as well.
I would still like to own a Falcon, but other posters were correct, there really weren't that many pieces of software that were Falcon specific. Whereas there were a LOT of AGA software made.
Actually there are probably a comparable amount of software that is RTG Only for the Amiga as there are Falcon Only software that used the higher color depth. Even less software that actually took advantage of the TT030.
I personally love both, but was raised more of an Atari person.
I currently own an Atari 800XL, 130XE, 1040ST, Mega STe, TT030 and an Amiga 4000. I used to have an Amiga 500, but I'm not 100% sure what happened to it. I know it died long ago, just not sure where it is now though.
I was always rather jealous of the AmigaOS, Atari TOS/Gem sucked as stock.
slaapliedje
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The point is, that AGA was completely worthless crap.
Even in 1992 it was much less than they had PC / Mac / Atari.
Graphics card in the Amiga was strictly necessary to normal work.
Unfortunately, some morons gives an almost religious veneration for AGA.
Yes that was kind of my point when it came to the Falcons graphics system. AGA produces nice displays, but it is a programmers nightmare.
That why I understand the use of RTG and the advantages of graphics on NG systems. You'rev not going to see an OpenGL implementation on AGA.
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And you are right. If you want to run OSX, a G4 is not the hardware you want to use (of course I don't even have OSX installed).
What, what WHAT?!? lol
Is this a misprint? OSX (nearly ALL flavors) run perfectly fine on G3's, G4's AND G5's of course. I have a 1.1ghz G3 Powermac running 10.4.11 that runs great in millions of colors even. And both my G4 laptops (iBook and Powerbook) as well as a another Powermac G4, at 450mhz runs Tiger fine also.
What I didn't like was running Leopard on a PowerPC based Mac. Th Finder experience *did* suck, but was more than tolerable if I really cared to use it - which I don't. And thanks Apple for ditching us by NOT finishing support for Leopard in the form of that Intel only Snow update :mad:
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its a tough heat between Falcon and 1200. On one hand as released with just what is in the case as purchased the Falcon certainly has some advantages over the 1200
Faster CPU, DSP beats the anchient Paula for sound,no board needed to expand memory. Then only the video chip can access memmory at 32bit.
When you look at expansion capabilities, though, 1200 beats the Falcon easily. PCMCIA, Hard drive controller, CPU socket, Clock port (who expected them to use the clock port for so many addons?) which allow you to easily add Ethernet, CD-ROM, faster CPUs, RAM, SCSI, Audio and video cards.
This can easily be seen in the longevity of the 1200 (and 4000) which people have been able to use far into the Internet age meanwhile the Falcon is relegated mostly to music without even the ability to run much of the ST software base.
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What, what WHAT?!? lol
Is this a misprint? OSX (specifically ALL flavors) run perfectly fine on G3's, G4's AND G5's of course. I have a 1.1ghz G3 Powermac running 10.4.11 that runs great in millions of colors even. And both my G4 laptops (iBook and Powerbook) as well as a another Powermac G4, at 450mhz runs Tiger fine also.
What I didn't like was running Leopard on a PowerPC based Mac. Th Finder experience *did* suck, but was more than tolerable if I really cared to use it - which I don't. And thanks Apple for ditching us by NOT finishing support for Leopard in the form of tha Snow update :mad:
Personally, I find OSX kinda painful on anything other than a G5 (and then I'd say it might be BETTER than some of the lower end X86s).
While there is more software for OSX and better browers, still prefer MorphOS and Ubuntu on my Powermac. I have Tiger installed on a hard drive, but its not currently installed in the machine as the only use I've had for it recently was to install the Sonnett firmware patches.
BTW - Why are you taking offense to my dismisal of OSX when tone's commeny's on Apple hardware were much harsher?
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BTW - Why are you taking offense to my dismisal of OSX when tone's commeny's on Apple hardware were much harsher?
No offense taken :) Was just surprised to hear OSX rippage on machines it was designed to run on is all. I haven't had such bad luck as you with 'em. And come to think of it, the latest version of Safari screams on my machines. I normally don't look forward to updates on older systems, but Apple's been rockin' on the browser front. And certainly... bet MorphOS on a nice G4 is the makes for a kick ass and super responsive experience. I just haven't had 'the pleasure' yet. Patiently waiting for MorphOS to come out for my G4 iBook and 2.1ghz G5 iMac. When that happens, it'll be bedtime for Bonzo and will give me an excuse to purchase a Quad-core 27" iMac :)
Oh and I get what Tone was saying, just that I apply that sentiment to all things WinTel. Not an obsessive Apple groupie at all (really not). Just prefer to work on/with machines that work as advertised. That's why I don't get too upset when people rip Apple stuff. To each their own.
Now, speaking of an OS that I don't like running on minimum specs, that award would surely go to AmigaOS3.9 ;)
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No offense taken :) Was just surprised to hear OSX rippage on machines it was designed to run on is all. I haven't had such bad luck as you with 'em. And come to think of it, the latest version of Safari screams on my machines. I normally don't look forward to updates on older systems, but Apple's been rockin' on the browser front. And certainly... bet MorphOS on a nice G4 is the makes for a kick ass and super responsive experience. I just haven't had 'the pleasure' yet. Patiently waiting for MorphOS to come out for my G4 iBook and 2.1ghz G5 iMac. When that happens, it'll be bedtime for Bonzo and will give me an excuse to purchase a Quad-core 27" iMac :)
Oh and I get what Tone was saying, just that I apply that sentiment to all things WinTel. Not an obsessive Apple groupie at all (really not). Just prefer to work on/with machines that work as advertised. That's why I don't get too upset when people rip Apple stuff. To each their own.
Now, speaking of an OS that I don't like running on minimum specs, that award would surely go to AmigaOS3.9 ;)
Yep 3.9 is truely not meant for anything other than an accelerated Amiga (or a top end machine at least). And one thing I do miss is the huge variety of browsers available under OSX. And OSX has a surprisingly quick load time (MorphOS is quicker).
But its interesting how much more responsive a PPC system is when it isn't loaded down with a Unix based OS.
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Unfortunately, some morons gives an almost religious veneration for AGA.
You are on a amiga forum writing about that falcon is better than any amiga and callling moron to some users, congratulations youre a troll.
Just watching some videos on youtube about some applications of falcon and OS seems slow with a terrible slow refresh with low colored screens, but ok... its better.
Falcon "maybe" can be good on some specs, but dont dream.
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Some points to consider... The Atari Falcon has since its release been upgraded with a better OS; you can now run MiNT, which is multitasking and backwards compatible with TOS. It might not be Amiga OS, but it's not as bad as some of you make it out to be.
As for the graphics, they aren't necessarily "better" just because it has 16 bit colors. It's more colorful, and that's all. Whether that is better or not depends on how you apply it.
When it comes to sound, I think we can all agree that Paula has nothing on it and its DSP.
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The Atari Falcon -like the entire ST line- is full of mysteries that I wish somebody could solve in a book like the one on Commodore from Bagnall.
This thread compares the Atari Falcon to the Amiga and while I think personally the Amiga wins out, the Falcon is another great example of 'How did that ever get through a design group?'.
What I mean is that when these machines were new, I was a kid that really didn't know anything. As an educated adult in the Computer Science field, I look at some decisions in utter amazement.
Please, don't think that I'm trying to be arrogant or that I know everything. Trust me, I make plenty of mistakes and there is much I don't know.
Given that, there are certain decisions where even the simplest person had to know it was a fatal design mistake.
As I had posted before, Atari wrote TOS using instructions in the 68k that we not certified to be there in future processors. In fact, Motorola went out of their way to let companies know which instructions would be in their next CPUs.
TOS uses instructions that are not available from the 010 and beyond. This is why the ST line couldn't use an 010 through the 060.
The Atari TT has a new version of TOS but it clobbers backward compatibility because most software assumed that it wasn't going to have a new processor. Given all the great stuff Atari included, they *removed* the blitter from their *graphics* workstation.
Lastly, the Atari Falcon tries to over come these two issues but its given a puny 16bit bus that fatally cripples it.
I sincerely don't understand how any of these got through design and Q/A meetings. Unless, Jack just dictated plans by himself, I just can't imagine anybody with a degree in engineering (CS, EE, etc..) that would have thought this was a good idea.
You might be able to argue that the TT and Falcon were fatally wounded by cost or marketing folks. However, writing the core OS and using instructions that are deprecated is just unheard of...I mean its just unthinkable from a design stand point.
Lest, you think you come away with nothing from this post. Does anybody know which computer TOS was written on?
The Apple Lisa.
Cheers!
-P
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You are on a amiga forum writing about that falcon is better than any amiga and callling moron to some users, congratulations youre a troll.
Just watching some videos on youtube about some applications of falcon and OS seems slow with a terrible slow refresh with low colored screens, but ok... its better.
Falcon "maybe" can be good on some specs, but dont dream.
Hey, he maybe he has a point (even if he's a little rude presenting it). AGA looks good. but its performance is crap and whoever came up with the mode must have been on a bad trip because programming AGA modes is sheer torture.
And the last post is being far to modest. A 16 bit color display on a Falcon at 800x600 is going to look better than a 256 color display on an Amiga at any resolution. 256 ciolor modes were outdated when AGA was introduced.
Those of you that aren't as comitted to compatibility with gaming software and have upgraded to RTG know how much better a 16, 24, or 32 bit color display looks.
So much has been made of the Amiga's ability to do photo and video editing, but thesepackages don't really work well without at least 16 bit color.
So in that one area, the Falcon is clearly superior (although I doubt there's software to make good use of it).
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The Atari Falcon -like the entire ST line- is full of mysteries that I wish somebody could solve in a book like the one on Commodore from Bagnall.
This thread compares the Atari Falcon to the Amiga and while I think personally the Amiga wins out, the Falcon is another great example of 'How did that ever get through a design group?'.
What I mean is that when these machines were new, I was a kid that really didn't know anything. As an educated adult in the Computer Science field, I look at some decisions in utter amazement.
Please, don't think that I'm trying to be arrogant or that I know everything. Trust me, I make plenty of mistakes and there is much I don't know.
Given that, there are certain decisions where even the simplest person had to know it was a fatal design mistake.
As I had posted before, Atari wrote TOS using instructions in the 68k that we not certified to be there in future processors. In fact, Motorola went out of their way to let companies know which instructions would be in their next CPUs.
TOS uses instructions that are not available from the 010 and beyond. This is why the ST line couldn't use an 010 through the 060.
The Atari TT has a new version of TOS but it clobbers backward compatibility because most software assumed that it wasn't going to have a new processor. Given all the great stuff Atari included, they *removed* the blitter from their *graphics* workstation.
Lastly, the Atari Falcon tries to over come these two issues but its given a puny 16bit bus that fatally cripples it.
I sincerely don't understand how any of these got through design and Q/A meetings. Unless, Jack just dictated plans by himself, I just can't imagine anybody with a degree in engineering (CS, EE, etc..) that would have thought this was a good idea.
You might be able to argue that the TT and Falcon were fatally wounded by cost or marketing folks. However, writing the core OS and using instructions that are deprecated is just unheard of...I mean its just unthinkable from a design stand point.
Lest, you think you come away with nothing from this post. Does anybody know which computer TOS was written on?
The Apple Lisa.
Cheers!
-P
This bus width issue has been around a long time. Why did IBM use and 8088 processor instead of an 8086? Because the 8088 has an 8 bit memory bus (making it slower than the 8086 with a 16 bit memory bus). Considering what IBM was charging for PC when they introduced them how much did they save with that idea?
Technically, while touted as a 16 bit compuyter the PC and PC XT were 8 bit computers (8 bit memory, 8 bit expansion) with a processor that had some 16 bit instructions.
How did we lose out to the desendants of this crap? In many operations a 4.77Mhz PC was no faster than a 1 Mhz AppleII or a .89MHz Color Computer.
When AGA was introduced it was far too little, far too late, and we all lost out.
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You must also specify the fact that the 68000 is only a system controller, and that the jaguar is a 64bit console.
Atari Jaguar wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar)
Jaguar is really 32bit, the way they decided it was a 64bit machine was marketing foobar.
My point was that with Tom and Jerry custom chips + 13.??mhz 68k the Jaguar did a better rendition of Doom than a Pentium PC and cheap 32bit PCI graphics card costing about £1500. Just proves that well designed custom chips could have still achieved what Amiga 1000 did in 1985/86 :)
For those wondering, the Falcon had to have that crippled 16bit bus identical to an ST because that is how they kept ST comparability. AGA has more problems than lack of Fast RAM (big issue for CD32 though and totally stupid not to put a SIMM socket on CD32 to boost 3D games like Gaurdian). The biggest problem is throughput was not improved enough for 8 bit plane 256 colour graphics AND the blitter was still the same 16bit one from OCS/ECS just happened to work on a 14mhz bus not 7mhz.
Shouldn't over simplify things, both had problems but in true fashion both were quite acceptable for the price if you used them in their niche roles and quite easily superior to PC/Mac (music/video work respectively) :)
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And the last post is being far to modest. A 16 bit color display on a Falcon at 800x600 is going to look better than a 256 color display on an Amiga at any resolution. 256 ciolor modes were outdated when AGA was introduced.
256 colour modes were the standard for years after AGA came out. What was outdated was the lack of higher resolution modes (60Hz+ 800x600 non-interlaced, 1024x768 non-interlaced, etc).
Did the Falcon allow 800x600x16bit? That's 55MB/s of video bandwidth... pretty high for a home computer of that era.
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Jaguar is really 32bit, the way they decided it was a 64bit machine was marketing foobar.
My point was that with Tom and Jerry custom chips + 13.??mhz 68k the Jaguar did a better rendition of Doom than a Pentium PC and cheap 32bit PCI graphics card costing about £1500. Just proves that well designed custom chips could have still achieved what Amiga 1000 did in 1985/86 :)
For those wondering, the Falcon had to have that crippled 16bit bus identical to an ST because that is how they kept ST comparability. AGA has more problems than lack of Fast RAM (big issue for CD32 though and totally stupid not to put a SIMM socket on CD32 to boost 3D games like Gaurdian). The biggest problem is throughput was not improved enough for 8 bit plane 256 colour graphics AND the blitter was still the same 16bit one from OCS/ECS just happened to work on a 14mhz bus not 7mhz.
Shouldn't over simplify things, both had problems but in true fashion both were quite acceptable for the price if you used them in their niche roles and quite easily superior to PC/Mac (music/video work respectively) :)
Yes, but both COULD have been better. I've heard that excuse about the Falcon for years. ST compatibility creates a bit width limit? Care to explain that to me? Because I can't see why the system couldn't be 32 bit and if 16 bit WAS somehow required, a backward compatibility mode could have been added.
Your point about Jaguar is very valid. Custom chips could have still beat upgradable PCI cards, but they didn't because the designs just weren't good enough.
Jaguar, pretty impressive.
Falcon, 16 bit , also pretty impressive.
AGA - WTF?
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Personally, I like the high-res true-color possibilities of the Falcon out-of-the-box :)
This bus width issue has been around a long time. Why did IBM use and 8088 processor instead of an 8086? Because the 8088 has an 8 bit memory bus (making it slower than the 8086 with a 16 bit memory bus). Considering what IBM was charging for PC when they introduced them how much did they save with that idea?
Considering that their upcoming computer would be competing with other 8-bit architectures in the marketplace, it probably made good business sense to use off-the-shelf (8-bit) peripheral and memory parts, instead of going to a custom chipset (to take full advantage of bus expansion possibilities of the 8086). This not only saved them money, but it also severely cut the development time!
Technically, while touted as a 16 bit computer the PC and PC XT were 8 bit computers (8 bit memory, 8 bit expansion) with a processor that had some 16 bit instructions. How did we lose out to the desendants of this crap? In many operations a 4.77Mhz PC was no faster than a 1 Mhz AppleII or a .89MHz Color Computer.
The 8088/8086 processors both had identical instruction sets and register models internally. Therefore 98% of those instructions could deal with both 8 AND 16-bit data values, making the 8088 appear a 'true' 16-bit processing machine and promote the IBM-PC as a 16-bit machine they did! ;)
I hate to say it, but as crappy as the 8086/8088 was, still technically a better core overall than the 6502, Z80 or even (from what I understand) the 6809!
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So during this discussion I was looking up some technical specs, and ran into this;
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html
It's sad how Atari actually had so many awesome ideas, but much like Commodore, was mismanaged and especially toward the end, were just plain stupid.
Dumping all of their computer related research to push the Atari Jaguar was a huge mistake. While the Jaguar was cool, they didn't even do that right. They needed better developer documentation and more actual developers.
Sadly, the way everything has gone, the only arena where we really see competition is in the smart phone business. There will most likely never be arguments on the technical merits of hardware like there used to be. The closest I've seen is between Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. But it's not like the good ol' days of telling your buddy that just paid $250 bucks for a sound card so he could have stero sound in his IBM that you already have stereo sound in your Amiga.
Guess that's what 'they' call 'progress'.
slaapliedje
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So during this discussion I was looking up some technical specs, and ran into this;
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html
It's sad how Atari actually had so many awesome ideas, but much like Commodore, was mismanaged and especially toward the end, were just plain stupid.
Dumping all of their computer related research to push the Atari Jaguar was a huge mistake. While the Jaguar was cool, they didn't even do that right. They needed better developer documentation and more actual developers.
Sadly, the way everything has gone, the only arena where we really see competition is in the smart phone business. There will most likely never be arguments on the technical merits of hardware like there used to be. The closest I've seen is between Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. But it's not like the good ol' days of telling your buddy that just paid $250 bucks for a sound card so he could have stero sound in his IBM that you already have stereo sound in your Amiga.
Guess that's what 'they' call 'progress'.
slaapliedje
Yes, its really kind of scary that the last place we're seeing some really interesting totally integrated chipsets is in game machines. I've argued this point over with my fellow MorphOS users repeatedly.
Nothing made today reminds me of an Amiga (at least in its core design philosophies) as does the XBox360 or the PS3.
There was even a lengthy discussion on MorphZone as to whether or not the PS3 would make a good target for a MorphOS port.
Several things worked against it.
First, when Sony allowed alternative OS' to be installed on the PS3, the hypervisor prevented access to hardware video acceleration and other useful feature that Sony reserved for Game mode use only(probably to prevent independently developed software from becoming competitive with Sony authorized titles)
Then, when the hypervisor was hacked, Sony removed the alternate OS option.And finally, the PS3 does not have that much memory (although.I do believe its twice what the Efika has, so it would be adequate) and its processor while clocked at 3.2 Ghz has an in order execution pipeline which lowers its processing power (essentially a PS3 would be no more powerful than current MOS hardware).
Still you have to admit, current game consoles are very miggy.
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Yes, but both COULD have been better. I've heard that excuse about the Falcon for years. ST compatibility creates a bit width limit? Care to explain that to me? Because I can't see why the system couldn't be 32 bit and if 16 bit WAS somehow required, a backward compatibility mode could have been added.
Your point about Jaguar is very valid. Custom chips could have still beat upgradable PCI cards, but they didn't because the designs just weren't good enough.
Jaguar, pretty impressive.
Falcon, 16 bit , also pretty impressive.
AGA - WTF?
Hmmm well Atari were losing interest after the battering the ST got from Amiga by 92/93 so the Falcon was assigned far less dev costs. There is nothing essential about making Falcon 16bit design at all except it was a quick and dirty hack for ST compatibility.
The issue with AGA is similar, in order to keep some reasonable compatibility for OCS games they were a bit limited because Amiga is a very complex chipset and any game worth a damn is hitting the hardware directly. The way Sony did it was to put PS2 custom chips on the PS3 motherboard. Commodore could have done that too, put two Paula chips onboard or integrate 2 into 1 package for sound compatibility AND improvement (like dual SID and Pokey boards for 8bit machines now) and keep cheapest Agnus and Denise in there. Then just create a super fast 32bit blitter and new screen mode chip for new modes. This would have cost more though and probably put the price of A1200 at £500.
It's a shame both Commodore and Atari got the 'console market' bug again, both flopped with C64GS and Atari 7800/Lynx so why try again? Commodore actually finished A1400 motherboard but wasted the last of their cash on pathetic CD32 which had no answer for SNES SuperFX equipped games thanks to a crippled chip ram only forever design on the 14mhz 020.
Had Atari stuck the Jaguar chipset into an ST styled casing it would have sold more than Falcon and could have sold about the same as Amiga 1200 if they wanted to hammer the market. No PC would have touched that for gaming and you can write letters on an Amstrad z80 based machine so business software users got plenty of power too.
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Hmmm well Atari were losing interest after the battering the ST got from Amiga by 92/93 so the Falcon was assigned far less dev costs. There is nothing essential about making Falcon 16bit design at all except it was a quick and dirty hack for ST compatibility.
The issue with AGA is similar, in order to keep some reasonable compatibility for OCS games they were a bit limited because Amiga is a very complex chipset and any game worth a damn is hitting the hardware directly. The way Sony did it was to put PS2 custom chips on the PS3 motherboard. Commodore could have done that too, put two Paula chips onboard or integrate 2 into 1 package for sound compatibility AND improvement (like dual SID and Pokey boards for 8bit machines now) and keep cheapest Agnus and Denise in there. Then just create a super fast 32bit blitter and new screen mode chip for new modes. This would have cost more though and probably put the price of A1200 at £500.
It's a shame both Commodore and Atari got the 'console market' bug again, both flopped with C64GS and Atari 7800/Lynx so why try again? Commodore actually finished A1400 motherboard but wasted the last of their cash on pathetic CD32 which had no answer for SNES SuperFX equipped games thanks to a crippled chip ram only forever design on the 14mhz 020.
Had Atari stuck the Jaguar chipset into an ST styled casing it would have sold more than Falcon and could have sold about the same as Amiga 1200 if they wanted to hammer the market. No PC would have touched that for gaming and you can write letters on an Amstrad z80 based machine so business software users got plenty of power too.
Wow! Concise and accurate. I can't add anything to that, you're absolutely right. If enough development resources had been commited, these companies might still be in the game. It's a damned shame.
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Still you have to admit, current game consoles are very miggy.
That's because the whole ethos of Amiga 1000 (and to a less powerful degree A500) was to produce games far far superior to those that came before (PC EGA/ST/Mac/ALL 8bit consoles and computers) AND provide more powerful computing than the most expensive PC/MAC/ST at the time too. So priced somewhere between the two camps of last gen console and next gen PC/Mac.
By a general rule of thumb the Amiga 500 was double the cost of a comparable console like the Sega Genesis/Megadrive (games were half the price though!), and half the price or less than equivalent PC in 1990. PS3 is double the price of Wii but it is a full blown Linux box (original shiny PS3 will not remove BIOS option for Other OS, only plasticy PS3 Slim which has no such option is a problem...so 35 million machines are OK for Linux use still) but you would need to spend £1000 to get PS3 quality graphics via Win7/Vista box (XP is only DirectX 9.0c max).
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When I read and post in threads like these, I think they are a great deal of fun. Debating who had the better hardware and what each company should have done is like reliving some history.
However, it makes me sad to think that Commodore, Atari, Ti, Tandy, and many others really helped to shape the computer landscape but are forgotten in the folds of history.
I am grateful that Brian Bagnall decided to write about Commodore and fill in gaps that many of us had wondered about.
In truth, I wish Brian -or another like him- would do the same for Atari. While there are other companies that helped shape the computer landscape, I cannot think of another company -besides Commodore- that had such a colorful line of products.
I would love to read some insider stuff on the 400/800, the XLs, the STs, and their consoles... Atari really had a dizzying array of products that were both good and bad. I bet there are some great stories just waiting to be told.
Today, almost all the books dwell on Apple and Microsoft with a smattering of IBM thrown in but the landscape was much more then these three companies.
-P
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That's because the whole ethos of Amiga 1000 (and to a less powerful degree A500) was to produce games far far superior to those that came before (PC EGA/ST/Mac/ALL 8bit consoles and computers) AND provide more powerful computing than the most expensive PC/MAC/ST at the time too. So priced somewhere between the two camps of last gen console and next gen PC/Mac.
By a general rule of thumb the Amiga 500 was double the cost of a comparable console like the Sega Genesis/Megadrive (games were half the price though!), and half the price or less than equivalent PC in 1990. PS3 is double the price of Wii but it is a full blown Linux box (original shiny PS3 will not remove BIOS option for Other OS, only plasticy PS3 Slim which has no such option is a problem...so 35 million machines are OK for Linux use still) but you would need to spend £1000 to get PS3 quality graphics via Win7/Vista box (XP is only DirectX 9.0c max).
YES! THhat's where I've been getting all the flack lately from people on this forum who don't understand my point of view. The original 1000 was brilliant. The 500 was a lower cost console using the same components that probably appealed better to Commodores traditional market.
Their failure was in not fully developing future models. Sticking a faster processor in it or adding a lame video enhancement with no other improvements was bogus. Commoodore dis not design the Amiga, and they had no idea how to advance such a revolutionary system.
And now we're having simplistic arguements over whether or not you "hate" the AGA system. Heck, what I hate ios the fact that with each generation after the 1000 and 500 they didn't keep enhancing EVERYTHING to keep up with the improvements in their CPUs.
Lame ass bean counters cost us the personal computing crown. We had a much better processor and the companies using it failed us. Its hard to believe that the perpetually kludged X86 has become the processor of choice. How many design revisions of that crap have we seen just to make it tolerable and the systems are still huge resource hogs.
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Their failure was in not fully developing future models. Sticking a faster processor in it or adding a lame video enhancement with no other improvements was bogus.
Well, I wouldn't call merging OCS/ECS with a FF/SD "lame", but Atari made the same exact mistakes in not developing their 8-bits either. Adding a little extra RAM here and there. Changing the case design. Yeah, there's some real advancements for 'ya! Each incarnation of the ST's weren't much better, but there's definitely evolutional retardation to be witnessed in both camps. Personally, I feel the beginning of the end for both companies was when Tramiel left Commodore. In one fell swoop, that move doomed both Atari AND Commodore. Amazing it took them as long as it did though - which might say something about the Amiga's resilience. Either way, I'm starting to think the Illuminati were a part of this crippling consumer choice. :lol:
Lame ass bean counters cost us the personal computing crown. We had a much better processor and the companies using it failed us. Its hard to believe that the perpetually kludged X86 has become the processor of choice. How many design revisions of that crap have we seen just to make it tolerable and the systems are still huge resource hogs.
Couldn't agree more :)
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Its hard to believe that the perpetually kludged X86 has become the processor of choice. How many design revisions of that crap have we seen just to make it tolerable and the systems are still huge resource hogs.
Yes and no. It's not really the processor of choice for mobile devices, like Tablets, smartphones - and in my opinion these are becoming the 'personal computers' of the future. ARM, it looks like, has an early lead as the processor of choice for the next generation of computing. And I think we'll even see more arm based netbooks, as time goes on.
In any event, I don't consider x86 to be all that bad, since around the time AMD released Opteron, and Intel later released core duo. I mean from the perspective of a technology consumer, the market is much more satisfying. I liked the Commodore 64, Atari 800 - I was still a big fan of the Atari ST, Amiga 500 - I made the transition to 16 bit without considering the 'pc' market.
But by the time Amiga 1200 came out - even though I owned one, that AGA graphics was pathetic, and it just wasn't realistic trying to get a graphics card for one, so you started looking at the big box amiga's and they were ridiculous in price. Apple was in love with the high price too. One had to reluctantly consider the PC.
Nowadays that has changed, I'm happy with the Mac market - it may be slightly less competitive than the pc market, but not by much. you can get a nice intel based mac from ebay for 500 bucks - it's not quite the multi-thousand dollar proposition that buying a big box amiga or mac was, back in those days.
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I'm with MarkTime - I don't think x86-64 is all that bad because it does fix a lot of the problems with x86, especially the number of registers and non-orthogonal instructions. And the implementations run fast and get a very high instructions-per-clock too.
Back in the 80s though, the 68k was king, the custom chipset in the A1000 was astounding, and it was all good. The A500 was all good too, getting the technology into a far cheaper product. But we had 1985 hardware until 1992, with no upgrades apart from ECS! AGA would have been great in 1988, and expected in 1990 - and that's an AGA that had a full 32-bit blitter and ran faster internally. It did come, eventually, and was not what it should have been, and that is Commodore's fault. At least it came out.
A better hardware release plan would have been something like:
1985: OCS
1988: OCS + ECS + 32-bit Blitter + 64 palette entries + 8 bitplane support (incl. HAM-8) and 18-bit colour palette.
1992: Above + 16-bit sound, 8 sound channels, 256 palette entries, more sprites, byteplanes (chunky graphics), alpha transparency in sprites and multiple playfields, etc...
Instead it seems that the engineers got distracted by new chipsets and gave up on the incremental upgrades - probably because that wasn't the done thing in the 80s.
Things like Natami are for hobbyists to get a possible dream 1996 Amiga, with the hardware that could have been.
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The STE was quite a serious improvement early on, but once A500 was down to £400 STE was doomed (around 1990). Also games programmers screwed over just as many STE owners as Amiga owner with games that rarely used the blitter on either.
Thing is, Commodore bought Amiga as is off the shelf (and sacked half the Hi-Toro engineers to cut costs) so improving it was no simple task and EVERY new iteration of a chipset enhancement would require herculean efforts to make new games look better instantly AND none of your old games improved.
On the other hand, playing original ST games on a 16mhz 68000 based machine is much more productive...Gauntlet 1 and Lotus II become more playable and run smoother and faster. And there is the key, the original ST and PC only needed faster CPUs to improve your entire games catalogue. So once PCs were getting their VGA graphics in arcade games as standard that was the point of critical mass (between 1990-1991). Poor old Amiga though, not only suffered at the hands of incompetent ST-ports (not even STE ports FFS) BUT even if you bought your A1200 none of the old non-polygon based games improved....Xenon II was still slow as hell like playing an arcade game sunken in treacle.
I feel sorry for Commodore because they had chosen the hardest route, all custom chip based performance = difficult to keep updating as games programmers don't write for unsold/tiny marketshare machines (ie the same problem STE owners had!). How pissed off would you be if every 2-3 years you got shafted the same way A600 buyers felt in early 1992 before A1200 was announced out of the blue that Autumn. Tricky business decisions there.
To be totally frank, the ST was a 16bit replacement for the Commodore PET, that's all it is. If it didn't have the name Atari stuck on it and came in a nice Amiga 1000/3000 style slimline case it would have wiped the floor with the original Macintosh at 1/3 the price for a superior machine. Anyone who bought a Mac or PC XT/AT in the 80s was an idiot :)
And it was Irving Gould who refused to upgrade the Amiga CPU, he is famously quoted as saying 7mhz 68000 is enough for Amiga users around 1990.
Of course if Commodore had sold the A1000 just 20% cheaper AND ACTUALLY MARKETED IT they would have had enough sales in the bag to make the A500 a 12mhz 68000 (fastest PC AT speed) and then A500+ could have been 16mhz plus what AGA was (2 extra bitplanes tacked onto OCS) to give reasonable 128/256 colour speed for 1990s when everyone in PC land had crappy ISA 286/16 machines anyway for home use.
And what numbnuts decided in all-in-one designs? They look like toys next to PCs and Macs sorry. How much extra does an A1000 keyboard cost than an A500 one inside the case? Bugger all that's what :)
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All incredibly valid points. What I hold against the X86 isn the constant additions to its incredibly large instruction set. But as an owber of a Phenom X3, I will admit that X86-64 is a very strong performer.
However, Intel may just find the legacy of the long dead Acorn (ARM) sneaking up on them.
I've seen announcements for a 2Gjhz dual core processor to be produced in China next year and Freescale's claiming a future 4Ghz unit (that would definately compete directly against X86).
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Oh definitely, ARM is sneaking up on Intel just as the market is shifting towards tablets and mobile devices. Marvell has quad-core ARMs on the market soon, 2GHz dual-core A9s will be along soon enough, A15 is coming in the future... and they will all be beyond the current 'good enough' performance level.
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I have an interview with one of the chief Arm designers explaining Archimedes CPU really well, if I knew how to split the vid into 3x 10min chunks then I'd upload it to Youtube. Even he first chip finished in 1985 was 25mhz 030/020 performance!
With my 'new' X64 laptop I may even be able to record AVIs from WinUAE with sound too so expect more of my zany obscure games vids on Youtube too! haha
(not new new because new laptops are cock that can't run games newer than 1999 due to pathetic GPUs, mine is just a 2.2 T7400 Inspiron 9400 I got for a good price ex-corporate hooray and happy xmas to me lol)
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I have an interview with one of the chief Arm designers explaining Archimedes CPU really well, if I knew how to split the vid into 3x 10min chunks then I'd upload it to Youtube. Even he first chip finished in 1985 was 25mhz 030/020 performance!
With my 'new' X64 laptop I may even be able to record AVIs from WinUAE with sound too so expect more of my zany obscure games vids on Youtube too! haha
(not new new because new laptops are cock that can't run games newer than 1999 due to pathetic GPUs, mine is just a 2.2 T7400 Inspiron 9400 I got for a good price ex-corporate hooray and happy xmas to me lol)
I would like to see it, zip it and pop it on a file share site like dropbox :) x
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I would like to see it, zip it and pop it on a file share site like dropbox :) x
Excellent idea. It does sound interesting. ARM is about the only design I feel any great entusiam aboutlately.
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What I find really ironic about the whole Amiga v's ST debate was that the Commodore fanboys were sticking up for machine was more or less made by Atari computer while the Atari fanboys were sticking up for the computer that was more or less a Commodore machine!!! :lol:
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Don't think RJ Mical or Dave Needle was anything to do with Atari and Jay owned Amiga Computers (machine was called Lorraine back then) and was only 1/3 of the brains..
Also none of the C64 VIC-II/SID designers had anything to do with the ST. Shiraz Shivji had no major role in the important areas of the C64 design.
The two Atari 68000 based workstation prototypes had no Amiga custom chips, and were started when Warner still owned it.
:)
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I would like to see it, zip it and pop it on a file share site like dropbox :) x
Virgin media need shooting, my upload speed is about 5-10kbs half the time even if I downloaded nothing all day, and internet is crawling at 512kb broadband speeds if I'm lucky.:roflmao: