DoomMaster's whereabouts

[yogisumo]

>> The Amiga was mainly designed to do video work.
   The Amiga was supposed to be a games console...

>> The Atari ST was mainly designed to do MIDI work and
>> classic Macintosh emulation.

   Midi?  Designed?  Midi = Serial port... don't think so.

>> And both have excellent games to play.  
   So did the C64..

[yogisumo]

BoingBoss wrote:
Hi Karlos,

Go and buy yourself an Athlon64 based system - it'll "blow the doors off" any P4 system

Actually, my Pentium 4 PC does everything that I want it to do accept run Blood and Shadow Warrior without crashing.  I am going to down-grade my machine back to a Pentium III, 500 MHz.  That was the best processor I every used.  EVERYTHING worked on it and worked really well.  I still use Windows 98 Second Edition because I like it better then Windows XP.  In fact, I do NOT allow people using Windows XP to enter my game rooms at Kali Game Server.  I have placed a NO Win XP sign on my game rooms.

Karlos, Why should I upgrade to a newer processor when the one I have now works just fine?  You guys are never satisfied.  I on the otherhand am perfectly happy with what I have (just as soon as I down-grade to a Pentium III, 500 MHz processor).   :-D

That's it!  I'm upgrading my AthlonXP to a 486 system!!!

[yogisumo]

I recall reading about Amiga history.  What I remember is that Jay Miner and others were developing a game console and being funded by a group of doctors.  The bottom fell out of the gaming industry so they started writing an OS so they could market Amiga as a computer.  Same difference I guess.  That's about when C= stepped in and bought it.  Think Jack Tramiel ( Atari ) who was running C= at the time was pivotal.  C= had $ trouble and was bailed out by Irving Gould.  Gould ( bean counter ) and Tramiel had a fight and Tramiel left to go to Atari.  That was the beginning of the end.... Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...

[yogisumo]

Any computer with a serial port is "designed" to do midi.  Serial communciations at 115,200 bps are not exactly demanding on a modern computer.  That's the max rate of standard serial.  A big 115200bps/8/1024=@14k/s(not taking into account modulation/compression speeds of modems).  A midi interface is a couple of wires and connectors.  How is an entire computer deemed to be "designed for midi" because it has a couple of extra wires in it.  Doesn't even compare to custom chip development (aka Amiga).  A midi interface.....
http://home.concepts-ict.nl/~nctnico/midi/am_midi.txt
Midi isn't exactly demanding on a computer.  The one thing that Atari had was software development.  And that's more chicken and egg than anything else.  Weren't the Atari midi interfaces added *after* the Atari started to have a decent midi software base.  The Amiga's design, conversely, did give it an inherent advantage in certain areas (ie multimedia/games/video).

[yogisumo]

Half life was base on the Quake2 engine.  The Quake series, Quake, QuakeII, QuakeIII, Wolfenstien, Doom, DoomII, DoomIII were all done by IDSoftware.  ID games are almost a showcase for their game engine which they license to other game makers.  A lot of pc games are based on the various Quake game engines.  HalfLife2 is an original game engine that does not use the Quake engine.  Unreal also licenses the core/engine of Unreal to other companies.  Big business.

[yogisumo]

[yogisumo]

   Back when I first started shopping for a computer ( late 80's ), everybody used to tell me that the Mac was "the" midi computer.  I met a couple of people that were talking up the Atari but not many.  I know that I passed it up at the time.  A MacII with 020 and greyscale monitor was @$10,000 Canadian at the time.  The Atari was <$1000 and an Amiga 2000 was @$2000.  A PC(386/EGA) was about $3500.  The choice seemed pretty clear to me.  
   As far as midi, the Amiga wasn't the first choice for a lot of people but it did have some software.  I met a guy in Alberta that was using an Amiga 1000 to run his light show and all his keyboards/drum machines with SoundScape which is how I first knew of the Amiga.  Anyway, I looked at the Atari and I wanted an all around computer that would be good at everything and the midi ports on the Atari weren't enough to convince me to buy one.
   I suppose if low cost midi computer was my primary concern, the Atari might have been a better choice but at the time I was basically taking a break from the music biz.  @5 years on the road was starting to get monotonous.
   It hardly matters now though does it?  Thanks to CommodeDoor, the Ameoba is no longer... and for that matter.. either is the Atari.