some question about the 68k and amiga vs mac

[paulgerman]

i have some question about the amiga hardaware ?

1) When the amiga 1000 was release in the 80 , I know that it was a super computer but at the time which machine was better or similar in hardaware ( or power ) to the amiga 1000 ?

2) What happen to motorola ? why they did not contiuned with the 68k cpu , why are not today a company like intel ,amd or even ibm . Can anybody tell what happen to the 68k cpu ?

3) Knowing about mac , i just wander at the time that the release  a500 to the a4000 , in hardaware and os which plataform was better the mac or the amiga , i know the run same cpu at the time, but which one was better plataform ? in hardaware and software ?

[NightShade737]

Motorolla went from the 68k to the G3, from the G3 to the G4 and from that to the current G5 which is using in the Apple Mac G5.

I think it was preference on the OS at the time of the Amigas, but I think AOS had more software. At least access to a lot more games.

[shIva]

1) in that time nearly nobody really thought about cpu power. the whole system was what interested people.

2) motorola started the ppc series (afaik together with apple and ibm).

3) as today : the better system is that one YOU like better. doesn´t matter what others say.

;-)

[jeffimix]

1) Again- whole system, the beautiful OCS chipsetand its strong integration into the whole computer. The closest thing would be an Atari, but they came out a few months later, and really the Amiga had better gfx/audio/OS...

2) Motorola DO make the 'Coldfire' (now coldfusion?) line of processors which are somewhat 68K compatible, they seemd to be based on 68K at the least. There are independent developers making a coldfire accelerator for both the amiga and atari, classic macs lack that kind of serious interest.

3) Macs generally couldn't do the multimedia of the amiga. Amiga's also were first desktops with Broadcast quality Video (ever seen those M&M guys?)

[Dan]

NightShade737 wrote:
Motorolla went from the 68k to the G3, from the G3 to the G4 and from that to the current G5 which is using in the Apple Mac G5.

I think it was preference on the OS at the time of the Amigas, but I think AOS had more software. At least access to a lot more games.

Actually the 601 was the first PowerPC, I think it was only 66MHz, it was later followed by the 603(BlizzardPPC for A1200),604(CyberstormPPC for A4000) and later by G2,G3 and G4.
The G5 is an IBM chip.
BTW anybody remmeber the 620? and what was the name of that 800Mhz chip by a thirdpart that never saw the ligth of the day?

[evilrich]

2) motorola started the ppc series

I wouldn't put the emphasis on Motorola. They were a partner in the venture, true - but the PowerPC was based on IBM's POWER architecture, with changes to make it more suitable for microprocessor production (the POWER series were multi-chip designs). Motorola's 88000 bus was used in the first PowerPC chips, but this was mainly because Apple already had motherboard designs based on the 88000.

[NightShade737]

How could I forget the 60X series  :insane:

[evilrich]

Actually the 601 was the first PowerPC, I think it was only 66MHz

Apple used 60MHz and 80Mhz parts, AFAICR.

it was later followed by the 603(BlizzardPPC for A1200),604(CyberstormPPC for A4000) and later by G2,G3 and G4.

Acutally, the BlizzardPPC used the 603e and the CyberstormPPC used the 604e - which were 2nd generation designs. I never saw them refered to as G2, though. Th Gx naming was Apple's doing. IBM never used this naming.

BTW anybody remmeber the 620?

I don't think this ever saw use outside of IBM RS/6000 series machines.

What about the fabled 615 which was supposed to be able handle the x86 instruction set?

[Dan]

paulgerman wrote:
i have some question about the amiga hardaware ?

1) When the amiga 1000 was release in the 80 , I know that it was a super computer but at the time which machine was better or similar in hardaware ( or power ) to the amiga 1000 ?

I don´t think there was any machine with similar audio and video capabilities.

2) What happen to motorola ? why they did not contiuned with the 68k cpu , why are not today a company like intel ,amd or even ibm . Can anybody tell what happen to the 68k cpu ?

The 68k got replaced by PowerPC on the desktop and by the Coldfire(which has a partial 68k emulator integrated, search for the Amiga Coldfire project for more info)  in the more powerful embedded systems. Variants of the 68k is however still used in smaller embedded systems, I heard about somebody who found one in a washingmachine that was faster than the one in A500. My graphing calculator from Texas Instruments uses a 10Mhz 68000( with256Kb ram) for example. Also the first Dragonball processors used in the Palm pdas was somekind of 68k variant.

3) Knowing about mac , i just wander at the time that the release  a500 to the a4000 , in hardaware and os which plataform was better the mac or the amiga , i know the run same cpu at the time, but which one was better plataform ? in hardaware and software ?

When A500/A2000 was released: Amiga
When A3000 was released:they were close to equal but A3000 had better graphics for video and a lowerprice (Color Mac was expensive)
When A4000 was released: they were close to equal but A4000 had better graphics for videowork, MAC was better for DTP
When A1200 was released: A1200 had the better price, Mac Performa was more powerful, Atari Falcon had the best compromise between power/price

[Dan]

evilrich wrote:

Actually the 601 was the first PowerPC, I think it was only 66MHz

Apple used 60MHz and 80Mhz parts, AFAICR.

Then it was 60Mhz, what wasn´t the first named something like PowerMac 6000,8000 and 9000?

it was later followed by the 603(BlizzardPPC for A1200),604(CyberstormPPC for A4000) and later by G2,G3 and G4.

Acutally, the BlizzardPPC used the 603e and the CyberstormPPC used the 604e - which were 2nd generation designs. I never saw them refered to as G2, though. Th Gx naming was Apple's doing. IBM never used this naming.

What was the difference between the 603/604 and the 603e/604e?
I seem to remmeber that the 603e had some important improvments but I cant remmeber what they where(both faster and produced less heath?)
The G2 was around the time when Steve Jobs got back to Apple and killed the clones. Was there a G2 Powerbook? I don´t remmeber.

What about the fabled 615 which was supposed to be able handle the x86 instruction set?

It wasn´t let outside the lab at all. Nobody ever saw it, aside from the technicans.

[evilrich]

Then it was 60Mhz, what wasn´t the first named something like PowerMac 6000,8000 and 9000?

My memory was indeed faulty. Apple did indeed use the 601 at a  bunch of different frequencies up to 120 MHz (I guess some of these must have used CPUs under-clocked to match a specific bus speed).

See Eveymac.com

The first three PowerMacs models were the 6100/60, 7100/66 and 8100/80 all of which used the 601.

The G2 was around the time when Steve Jobs got back to Apple

I guess the term might have been applied restrospectively to the 603(e) and 604(e) when they started using the G3 name. They never used the name G2 in any of their model names, though.

[Tenacious]

I've been using Amigas sinse 1988.  To this day, I love the philosophy behind the design of the OS, and the hardware too.

A year ago I began collecting vintage Macs, LC III, Quadra 800, G3 server (biege tower  running OS9).  The LC & Quadra had hw comparible to the A1200, A3000, and A4000.  I run Mac OS 7.5.5 (now freeware) on them which came out in the mid 90s. After a year of living with 7.5.5 and trying to make it work, I can make some suggestions for comparison. First, find a Mac that compares to a specific Amiga model that you're interested in. Then, try finding software on the net (MacOS, games, applications, diagnostics, etc). Make sure all of these elements are compatible. If things go wrong, take stock of the features built into MacOS for diagnostics; pay attention to the clarity of the error messages.  If an installation goes wrong, how many work arounds are there? Check out the utilities on the net to help you through.  Try to get your vintage Mac on the internet. Who can give expert advise?  Run modern multimedia files (mov, avi, mpeg, mp3s, mods, etc). Can you find meaningful and useful content?

The machine outlined in my signature is still my main machine for everything.  Other machines (OS9, Windows XP) sometimes suppliment it's abilities. I wouldn't choose to do this with any other vintage machine.