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From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: NeXT/Amiga Flamage: Get a life.
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.021411.8392@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
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Organization: The Internet
References: <f&1Gjg#h1@cs.psu.edu> <1991Apr7.034535.26282@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Apr9.004657.26302@marlin.jcu.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 02:14:11 GMT
Lines: 64

In article <1991Apr9.004657.26302@marlin.jcu.edu.au> cpca@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Colin Adams) writes:
>In article <1991Apr7.034535.26282@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>> BTW, $3250 is the price to beat.
>>
>>How about $500? As an applications platform, the Amiga 500 is pretty close,
>>since it's not tossing CPU speed away on VM. Really, a stock NeXT is about as
>>responsive as a Mac Classic, which the 500 has beat all hollow. Oh, sure, CPU
>>intensive stuff will be faster on the NeXT. What CPU-intensive stuff do you
>>get with the machine?
>
>Surely you're not comparing the NeXT to an Amiga 500 ?????  Get serious people.
  Atleast the 500 has 1 expansion slot.

>In Australia, for about $3500, all you can get is a 2000 with multisync, 50
>megs HD, and 3 megs RAM.  You can run slllowwwww productivity without flicker,
>but you still have interlaced screens a lot; you only get a poor 7 MHz 68000
>which is years dated; a chip set that is pretty crud by 1991 standards and
>an OS without VM or any sort of memory protection (wouldn't matter really since
>you only get a 68000).  If you want to get rid of flicker you have to pay $700
>for a flicker fixer as the 2320 isn't available here and mightn't be for years.

  Hmm, those prices are highway robbery! Perhaps you can smuggle an a3000
order from the US. For $3500 you can get an A3000-25/105. (A3000, 5megs ram,
105 mb HD). The A3000 already has a deinterlacer. You get an HD transfer
rate that would blow the socks off that 386sx, and a 1950 monitor ($399).
This is educational pricing of course. Add $500 and you can get the
A3000UX which gives you that VM and Memory protection you want.
(and all the other bulkyness of Unix).

 I wouldn't call the Amiga chip set crude or crud, they get the job done.
Most of the graphic cards today use existing chip designs from 1985 just
like the Amiga. They take a few OEM'ed chips from various companies,
put them on a board, and voila, they declare a new graphics innovation.
There are new custom VLSI chips being made everyyear (XGA, C-Cube, etc)
but I see old technology being reused just as much as the Amiga. Why?
Because it's cheap, and proven to work. Good examples are PS/2, the Mac Classic,
and the old computer systems being used on space probes. You won't see
NASA or the DoD using 68040's in their new projects anytime soon, but
I bet alot of equipment still uses old 6502s and z80's.

>For the same price you could either get a good quality 386sx (super vga +
>windows + hard drive) or a cheaper clone with 25 MHz 386dx (with the lot too).
>Real cpu speed! (get xenix or some of the other multitasking os's and you can
>have a real os too).  The point of all this is.... the 2000 needs a serious
>upgrade it is far too slow/poor graphics for anyone to consider it who doesn't
>have a special need for an Amiga (like I did).
  The A2000 has been upgraded. There's the A2500, and the A3000.

>>Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
>><peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.
>
>
>-- 
>Colin Adams                                  
>Computer Science Department                     James Cook University 
>Internet : cpca@marlin.jcu.edu.au               North Queensland
>'And on the eight day, God created Manchester'


--
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|n|   rjc@albert.ai.mit.edu   Amiga, the computer for the creative mind.  |n|
|~|                                .-. .-.                                |~|
|_|________________________________| |_| |________________________________|_|
