Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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?

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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?

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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).

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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?

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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).

[Iggy]

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.