Falcon 030 vs. A1200 vs. Performa 400

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Hammer wrote:
According wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon
Falcon's 030 CPU is connected to a 16bit bus.

A standard falcon has a 16 bit databus, with a memory bandwidth of approx 4mb/s.

What happened to 14bit Paula audio modes for the Amigas?

Well, that's more of a trick. For example, clever programming made the YM chip in the ST output 6bit sound - but that's not something you usually put in the hardware specs.

I'd say the original article has a certain bias towards the Falcon:) (huge understatement).

Even though based on the same CPU family, I'd say it's very difficult to compare these machines. It all depends on which aspects you compare.

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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

Darth_X wrote:
The A3000 was supposed to be released with AGA and a DSP, but you know C= always trying to mess around with their R&D dept, cutting funding, delaying projects, etc..

Damn, that would have blown everyones socks off back in the day. Too bad it didn't happen :-(

The Atari story in this case is not much different from that of the A1200. Atari had some really cool machines in the pipeline, but for cost reasons they decided to release a patched and souped up STE (i.e. the Falcon).

[shoggoth]

The Falcon seems to trounce the A1200 in quite a few areas but the A1200 beats it to a pulp when it comes to video and graphics.

The Falcon did have a 16-bit chunky mode though.

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TjLaZer wrote:
I own a Falcon030 and it is a nice machine.  It can only be upgraded to 14MB RAM and that is 16-bit.  You can get 3rd party CPU upgrades, even a 100MHz 68060!  But the OS is really bad IMHO, Amiga OS is so much better, even 3.1 shines over TOS 4.04 and MagiC IMHO...

Back in the days, AmigaOS was certantly lightyears ahead of TOS.  TOS didn't evolve at all until MultiTOS, and that wasn't even ready when it was released. Getting of topic - the OS went opensource after MultiTOS. FreeMiNT + a recent AES (XaAES) is a pretty nice posix like OS. MagiC is, and always was, crap.

[shoggoth]

HopperJF wrote:
Reading these posts makes me want to try out a Falcon, its a shame they are so rare. One that is upgraded with the latest OS would be interesting to see since I am used to Amigas and would like to see what a souped up Atari is capable of!

Actually I would go for an accellerated machine in that case, since "modern" OS distros sort of expect a 50Mhz 030/040 or - better still - a 060.

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Amithony wrote:
I like th eidea of putting a 100Mhz 060 in a falcon. Will it truly fly, or fry like kentucky?

AFAIK it's the fastest 060 machine around. Bus speed is 100Mhz due to the use of SDRAM memory. Just like on the Amiga, chipram (or ST-ram, as it's called in Atari-space) is the main bottleneck in the system.

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Amithony wrote:
I wonder if one might be able to Jam some more chip ram in somehow with a soldering iron

Wouldn't help in this case, since it's the bandwidth that is the problem, not the actual size (well, more is always better, but it won't improve the bandwidth issur).

[shoggoth]

freqmax wrote:
What was this 'MagiC' OS ..?
Btw, it wouldn't be hard to add a DSP to Minimig etc..

MagiC OS was an alternative implementation of a multitasking TOS/GEM. While being quite efficient on a 8Mhz 68000 (iirc it was implemented mostly in assembler), it had a few flaws that made it unattractive compared to FreeMiNT (which is the opensource incarnation of MiNT, the multitasking kernel for MultiTOS). It wasn't multi-user, it had no file locking, no memory protection, no support for alternative filesystems or device drivers, and it didn't fully comply to Ataris specifications. The latter caused a divide in the community, since it made it difficult to support the different systems on the market. Personally I believe this was a deliberate choice by the MagiC developers, as it forced perople to use their OS.

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Yeah, Looks like it was the A3K+
http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf

That would have been a seriously cool machine. The DSP would have access to main memory, cool. Even though the 56001 in the Falcon is fairly fast, the host communication impose a real bottleneck at times.

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persia wrote:
What is the point of arguing what was state of the art a decade and a half ago?

Nah, sorry dude, you got it all wrong. I dunno if I phrased myself in a bad way or something. It's about comparing features, not arguing. It's the last machines of their kind, and marks the end of the most interesting part of the history of home computing (if you ask me). Personally I choose the dark side, but I'm very interested in Amigas as well.

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Amithony wrote:
Amen to that! If I ever made it big. My first mission will be to get Amiga hardware back into production. How much would it cost do you reckon? Good to have a dream to aspire to, whether it's achievable or not.

When I become a billionaire, I will fund the development of the ultimate Amiga, and the ultimate Atari. Then we could start bashing eachother again just like we used to! ;-)

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Amithony wrote:
I was being serious! How many Millions do you reckon it would take to get it off the ground? Never underestimate the power of a great machine that could have done with a bit of marketing.

Depends on what you mean. Creating a new machine, or make new batches of existing models?