PC still playing Amiga catchup

[amigaksi]

Not entirely, though. The stability of the 040 system, if allowed to boot up to a full workbench without the 040.library would be seriously compromised. Any code compiled for an FPU will fail the moment it calls any operation the 040 had to emulate.

You never understood my point.  If I take an OCS machine with 68000 and run the program which works fine and now switch to an accelerator 68020/68030/68040/etc., the program should work fine (barring some rare exception).  You keep throwing in FPU/MMU into the picture to confuse things and thus your so-called experiment is a failure.

[amigaksi]

I don't see why amigaksi can't acknowledge the Catweasel Mk IV, I assume it has it's own clock/timer on board.:bitch:

This point was already addressed in this thread.  I guess you didn't read it when we were talking about parallel port joystick interfaces and this one.  Amazingly, the general "sidekick" gives his/her view in post #1200 as if he/she missed that point too.  Custom hardware can be built for any machine and that does not count as a standard component of a particular system.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep2

Try playing an MP3 or stream net radio on your A1200, and simultaneously use a web browser, or do something disk related/open drawers. Anything that requires a large chunk of CPU will slow it right down.

I was rendering a 3d animation in a solid renderer, Real 3D, each frame was being saved to hard drive progressively, flicked to the workbench screen, unarchiving a zip file to hard drive, opening and closing a partition on the same hard drive with 30-odd drawers repeatedly, moving the open window on screen, opening the menu bar in workbench and selecting different menus with no perceptible slow down with any of these system functions.  The 68060 doesn't even work up a sweat playing a 128 bit rate mp3.  

I used to listen to mp3's with Ibrowse browsing on an A4000 68060 with a CV64 over a hypercom serial port years ago, basic system functions like opening drawers, menus, mouse movement were unaffected.

[amigaksi]

The crux of the matter... There is no area where the PC is playing catch up to the Amiga. The PC learned from the Amiga, equaled the Amiga and then surpassed the Amiga by the mid 90s.

You claim that it is in several areas... Why not bullet point these areas?


...

I did in post #275 (way back).  I stated some since then, but even those in post #275 haven't been addressed.  Part of the gaming interface is not just joystick speed but even the gaming elements are standard on amiga like sprites, collision detection, priority settings, blitter, etc.  Sure you can find some cards that may have a few of these but mostly it's done in software.  So amiga would win there as well when it you time how long it takes to find collision detection of various elements, move sprites around, etc.

>Um... The work I do, music production, simply can't be done on older machines, they are just too slow and have no support for the high definition audio interfaces that I use.

For many things, Amiga audio is sufficient for things.  I know they have a method of doing 14-bit sound by merging amiga's audio channels which is more than enough for me.

>What, a few years ago, used to require several rooms of equipment and a large mixing console, can now be done on a £2000 MacBook Pro, a 24bit firewire multichannel audio interface and Logic Studio (plus and other software of your choice)...

You may have that-- but is that a standard.  If not, you can buy an audio board for Amiga as well.

[amigaksi]

Deja Vu. I think amigaksi is a die hard strategist. He will hold onto his bad play until you a) Flinch b) Make a mistake.

Not really.  I have been quite lenient with regards to "logic" used by others.  I am more of a realist.  There are some unique features of Amiga and those are the points I am trying to get across.  I know in a technical debate, you just try to pin someone on some point but then nobody learns anything from that-- just a mental excercise of victory/defeat.

[amigaksi]

Great sense of humor you have there, Askii. Have you heard the saying 'if the only tool you have is a hammer evyerthing ooks like a nail"?

It wasn't a joke.  I'll only joke if it's also true otherwise I will explicitly state that it's a joke if it doesn't reflect reality.  You can run some applications faster using older OSes; that's a fact.  It may be true for all applications but all applications are not available for older OSes.

I can boot up Windows 3.1 using a floppy disk just like I can boot up an Amiga OS using a floppy disk.

[amigaksi]

Yes, yes I did, because I didn't consider booting up with a comprimised OS.
...

Depends on the OS.  Regardless, we are talking about compatibility.

>There's that word again. You truly do not know what that word means. I've stated my position, but I'll be clearer for the headstickers among us:

You are biased.  There is sufficient proof given by you.

>How is the above bias? Oh yes, that's right, it's bias because I don't agree with your unsubstantiated nonsense, that's how.

I don't like the way this Amiga.org is organized.  As soon as you hit reply, you can't tell what I originally stated.  I am going to reply that part in my next reply.

>Those same minor differences you absolutely lambasted the PC for. Either way the point remains, if you write software that uses functions specific to the 68000, there is an ever increasing risk of them not working at all with each successive model in that series unless you have software emulation to paper over the cracks - something you claimed (repeatedly I might add) was not necessary at all.

If you get more exact with this rather than juggle words like "risk" you will see that 680x0 are backward compatible with 68000.

>I do so dare. I'm not the one making claims that cannot be backed up, further I'm willing to be corrected when I mess up. Anything less is a clear sign of a fanatic (or a retard, much the same tbh).

Okay, then keep correcting yourself as I reply.

>So, where are the figures to back up your claims? What's that? You don't have any? Well that's a shocker!

Again, wait for next reply as I can't remember what you replied to.

>I am. The difference is that I, along with most of the rest of the English speaking world have a very different understanding of what that word means. To you it seems to mean "you are objective and unbiased only if you agree with me, no matter how far off the ball I am".

You are biased and NOT objective and speaking about objectivity then makes you a hypocrite.

[Damion]

With several concurrent CPU intensive processes running, the system (while perhaps still usable) will become less responsive. Especially an A1200 with slow IDE/PCMCIA interfaces. While it may be acceptable to you, using the CPU to decode MP3 has an obvious impact on system performance, period. Try listening to a 320k net stream with a DSP card, then switch back to CPU decoding and tell me there's no difference... LOL.

"I can do it without problems" isn't the same as "it doesn't slow down at all"

But don't let me stop you guys from having fun with your magic A1200's.

[amigaksi]

...
I do not give a rats ass what platform I use so long as it runs the software I need in an acceptable fashion. Towards this end I could use an SGI workstation, a Sun workstation, an IBM workstation, a Mac, or a PC running any of the BSDs, Linux or even Windows. It makes no difference to me so long as it's stable and reasonably fast.

How is the above bias? Oh yes, that's right, it's bias because I don't agree with your unsubstantiated nonsense, that's how.
...

I never said that was biased.  You are biased in many things you have stated in the two threads.  

>So, where are the figures to back up your claims? What's that? You don't have any? Well that's a shocker!

Okay, this one wasn't Amiga.org's fault.  You are being vague.  Don't answer for me.  I did back-up my claim and gave procedure of how to test it.  You are just all talk-- mostly based on your mental speculations and bias toward PC.

I have better understanding of "bias" and "objectivity" than you do because I am unbiased and objective.

[amigaksi]

Everyone's been pretty clear about where the compatibility issues lie. You can't use a 68040 or 68060 in an Amiga without certain software workarounds, and optimizations (read: hacks) that work on a 68000 might not work on a later processor.

We're talking object code compatibility (I called it opcode compatibility).  It's not my labeling it but what other's have claimed as well:

http://www.digchip.com/datasheets/parts/datasheet/522/68040.php

This is another link since some people thought the previous link I gave was "my" brochure.

[ElPolloDiabl]

The Amiga interface (Workbench) is very logical, don't you think? I don't know how to describe better.

[stefcep2]

With several concurrent CPU intensive processes running, the system (while perhaps still usable) will become less responsive. Especially an A1200 with slow IDE/PCMCIA interfaces. While it may be acceptable to you, using the CPU to decode MP3 has an obvious impact on system performance, period. Try listening to a 320k net stream with a DSP card, then switch back to CPU decoding and tell me there's no difference... LOL.

"I can do it without problems" isn't the same as "it doesn't slow down at all"

But don't let me stop you guys from having fun with your magic A1200's.

But thats simply because 15 year old motorolla cpu's are running at 50 mhz not 3000 mhz.  Even so core system functions are extremely snappy, if there is slow down its not perceptible in the example I gave.

Much of what is done on PC's these days boils down to number crunching: decoding/encoding music/video/archives and yes a 3000 mhz cpu will do it faster than a 50 mhz.  Big deal.  Its not the OS that makes your 3000 mhz CPU run at 3000 mhz, but it is the OS that decides if playing back that video is more important than a command you've issued.

[Hammer]

Guys, to be honest some of the technical detail you've gone into is over my head.  You are probably right about how more advanced modern PC operating systems are, in particular how their multitasking systems and memory protection ought to make for a more responsive system.  What i can argue though is what I see in front of me with my machines.

So I got out the 060 A1200 and just had a play with it.  No executive or other speed hacks.  I set up a Real 3D animation render in 640x480 24 bit shadows, reflection, refraction antialias, saving each frame progressively to hard drive, basically all knobs on.  I screen flicked to workbench: it was instantaneous.  On workbech screen (8 colors 640x480 productivity) the mouse pointer moved as smoothly and precisley as if nothing was happening in the background. I double clicked my hard drive partition with 25 drawers, no delay in opening and displaying them in window. I started unarchiving a 10 meg zip file to hard drive with Real 3D still going. I closed the window, the close gadget responded instanteously to my mouse click.  Opened the partition again, no delay.  Opened the games drawer with 28 drawers, no delay in displaying the window contents. Dragged the window, no delay in  redrawing the window.  Right clicked to bring the Workbench menu bar, which has 11 menues, many with submenu. Sliding the mouse pointer along the menu bar, each menu drawn instaneously drawn, no delay, no screen garbage left behind, no overlap of each menu as a new one is erased, no sticking or skipping of the mouse pointer as I slide it down each menu, mouse pointer totally smooth. Don't forget both Real 3D and the archiver are writing periodically to the internal hard drive.

Yes it takes longer to do the render in Real, it takes longer to unarchive the zip, but THE SYSTEM is still very snappy.

Contrast this with Vista on my 2.4 ghhz c2D with 4 gig ram and 7200 rpm hard drive and 256 meg Geforce 9200: The start menu jerks up, especially if I select the orb whenever anything is being read/written to the hard drive. The mouse pointer jerks as well, disappearing and reappearing somewhere unpredictably.  The system cannot highlight each item in the start menu as I move my mouse pointer, so it "jumps", ie it can't keep with the mouse pointer.

On your Amiga, install Amikit.

My ASUS G1SN laptop is fine i.e. it has Geforce 9500M GS with 512MB dedicated VRAM. I use Google Chrome and IE8.

Does your Geforce 9200 GS have dedicated VRAM?

[Hammer]

You never understood my point.  If I take an OCS machine with 68000 and run the program which works fine and now switch to an accelerator 68020/68030/68040/etc., the program should work fine (barring some rare exception).  You keep throwing in FPU/MMU into the picture to confuse things and thus your so-called experiment is a failure.

Run Breathless 3D AGA game on 68060 without 68060.library.

The "MC68060 processor, can't directly execute 64bit divisions and multiplications and Breathless engine use a lot of these instructions."

Refer to
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/MC68060UM.pdf?fpsp=1&WT_TYPE=Reference%20Manuals&WT_VENDOR=FREESCALE&WT_FILE_FORMAT=pdf&WT_ASSET=Documentation

Goto page 391
"Table D-1. M68000 Family Instruction Set and Processor Cross-Reference"

For desktop CPUs (for 68K based PC market), Motorola’s lossy legacy protection ultimately leads to PowerPC.

[bloodline]

I did in post #275 (way back).  I stated some since then, but even those in post #275 haven't been addressed.  Part of the gaming interface is not just joystick speed but even the gaming elements are standard on amiga like sprites, collision detection, priority settings, blitter, etc.  Sure you can find some cards that may have a few of these but mostly it's done in software.  So amiga would win there as well when it you time how long it takes to find collision detection of various elements, move sprites around, etc.

If you had ever written anything more complicated than a simple shoot'em up or platformer, then even on the amiga, you would avoid using the sprite hardware and use the blitter... And the hardware colision detection was also only useful for the simplest of tasks... Software routines were simply better.

>Um... The work I do, music production, simply can't be done on older machines, they are just too slow and have no support for the high definition audio interfaces that I use.

For many things, Amiga audio is sufficient for things.  I know they have a method of doing 14-bit sound by merging amiga's audio channels which is more than enough for me.

I have written several subranging routines on the amiga I know how to fake 14bit the audio, the results are noisy and certainly not suitable for professional audio... Or even modern consumer Hi-Fi equipment!

>What, a few years ago, used to require several rooms of equipment and a large mixing console, can now be done on a £2000 MacBook Pro, a 24bit firewire multichannel audio interface and Logic Studio (plus and other software of your choice)...

You may have that-- but is that a standard.  If not, you can buy an audio board for Amiga as well.

The laptop is standard, albeit top of the range CPU. The laptop comes as standard with a 24bit 48Khz audio interface! Something that you can't get for the Amiga at all (which even with expensive hardware never got beyond 16bit @44100Hz.

The is no FireWire for amiga, thus no good audio interfaces

[warpdesign]

The Amiga interface (Workbench) is very logical

I wouldn't say that...
Just give an Amiga, a Windows machine, a Mac to people who never ever touched a computer and we'll see which one is the more logical, or... intuitive...