Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
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From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.230303.25634@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
References: <1991Jun4.003619.3661@news.iastate.edu> <1991Jun4.025024.823@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991Jun4.105736.15468@news.iastate.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 23:03:03 GMT
Lines: 214

In article <1991Jun4.105736.15468@news.iastate.edu> taab5@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
>In article <1991Jun4.025024.823@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>, rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>>In article <1991Jun4.003619.3661@news.iastate.edu> taab5@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
>>
>>  
>>  [Where does he get these statistics?]
>>
>>>   Time for a reality check.  For 95% of the people in the Amiga community,
>>>the Toaster is totally useless.  The Toaster is not going to save the
>>>Amiga, because it is a product intended for a very limited purpose.  Few
>>>Amiga owners have any need whatsoever for a special-effects box, and the
>>>flickering display makes the Toaster unsuitable for other applications.

  [Let me apologize for this personal attack on Marc. I had unsubscribed
this group afdter I got overloaded with 100+ Amiga/Next messages from
Mike D Mellinger. After I come back, I see Marc reiterating his same
arguements. I wish he would pick on something else, atleast it would be new.]

>>  Marc, are you epileptic? The reason I ask is because everytime you
>>make an arguement against the Amiga you always bring up the flicker.
>>NON-Flicker displays are expensive, NTSC incompatible, and only
>>useful for TEXT processing. In short, if a machine doesn't have an
>                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>interlaced display mode, it sucks.
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>   Excuse me while I laugh my head of...
>
>    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

   OK, ok. So I forgot the smiley. I was trying to be sarcastic.

[Deleted Marc's response to my joke.]

>>Removing flicker from the Toaster
>>would be idiotic. For drawing/rendering for broadcast video, flicker
>>is acceptable. It's besides the point anyway, since the A3000/ECS provide
>>non-flickering SHARP displays.
>
>   Every time someone mentions broadcasting, as if all computers are used
>for broadcasting and none are used for anything else, I wish I could reach
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  The same could be said for publishing. The major arguement for the
Mac is that it's the be-all of publishing. 

>through the CRT of my monitor and wrench that person's brains out of their
>ears.  Even with the Amiga, which is ideally suited for broadcast uses,
>only a tiny fraction of the installed base of Amigas are used for
>broadcasting.  By far the majority of all Amigas sold are being used 
>for the same uses that all other MACs and IBMs are being used for:
>games, word processing, desktop publishing, etc..   All of these 
>applications benefit so greatly from a sharp display that the flicering,
>interlaced display of the Amiga killed the Amiga as a general-purpose
>computer for a long time.  Eventually Commodore was forced to implement
>a kludge to eliminate the flicker from their newest Amiga.  Without 
>the Display Enhancer, nobody doubts that the A3000 would not have had
>a chance against the systems from Apple and IBM with very sharp flicker-
>free displays.

    A sharp display is important however it's not the reason for the
Amiga's poor sales. The ST also had a noninterlaced monochrome mode, but
it didn't take off either. Advertising is what we need! The vast majority
of Mac's are mono, so 24 bit megapixel doesn't help text processing much. 
(It's also mega-expensive as are the monitors that can handle it.)
Why can't text processing be done in 640x200? IBM's Text mode on
the older machines was 80 columns x 25 lines and it didn't seem to 
inhibit their ability to dominate the market.

>>
>>>   The ECS isn't going to do much for the Amiga, either, because it was
>>>obsolete before it even went into production.  The ECS is also 98% 
>>>identical to the very oldest Amiga chipset.  
>>
>>  How do you know this? Have you compared the schematics? Just because
>>it only has slightly improved display modes doesn't mean that it's
>>virtually identical. It may have taken considerable design effort and
>>optimizations to fit those extra features on the already packed chips.
>>I get the feeling you think the engineers merely threw in some new
>>modes over a lunch break and had it ready in a few days. I admit, I'm
>>not an expert on the chip design process, but I'll bet that the
>>ECS is NOT 98% identical to the old chip set. The denise has had many
>>new programmble features added.
>
>   With the ECS, Commodore basically took some of the registers that
>were hard-wired in the old chipset and made them programmable.  From 
>here, the new modes were achieved by using the new programmable 
>registers.  Overall, however, not all that many changes were made.

   I'm not arguing that on the surface not many features were added, however
at the lower level, I doubt it was as trivial as you make. Adding
a 'few programmble features' could have taken a year or more of work
to debug the chip.

>   If you doubt my word, use common sense.  Most of the features of the
>old chipset are unchanged in the ECS.  Commodore made a few registers
>programmable, and as a result was able to add some resolution modes
>and other capabilities, but overall everything is the some.  Hell,
>Commodore did not even touch the Paula chip at all, which remains 
>exactly the same today as it was six years ago.  I can even take two
>of the custom chips from my old A1000 (Commodore's oldest machine) sitting
>here, put them into an A3000 (Commodore's newest and most advanced machine),
>and many people would not be able to tell the difference when using 
>the A3000.
>   
>>
>>  [tangential stuff deleted]
>>  A few months you were complaining about no video cards being availible
>>for the Amiga, now the situation has changed (Toaster, HAM-E, DCTV,
>>Colorburst, DMI's Card, Firecracker/24, A2410, A2024(well sorta),
>>VideoMaster/32(not out yet),Video Blender(not out yet),Harlequin, etc.
>>BTW, DMI and Firecracker both have higher resolution than Apple's 8/24
>>card. They require very expensive monitors(DMI) for the high resolution
>>modes (megapixel 24bit color).)
>
>   I don't remember ever complaining about the lack of video cards for
>the Amiga in the past two years.  For the past three years, I've 
>actually been complaining about there being too many available that
>were incompatible with each other and even with the Amiga's OS.  There
>are no standards for the Amiga third-party video hardware market in
>sight, and any program that is written for one video card absolutely
>will not work with any of the other video cards.  I believe the thread
>I started was called "Amiga Video Mess", and the problem shows no
>signs of alleviating as more incompatible video cards are produced.

  Commodore _IS_ working on it. They can't perform miracles, and
most of the display manufacturers will have to supply drivers. Most of
the standard graphics lib and intuition calls ARE portable.
(e.g. WritePixel, Draw/Move, Text, AreaMove/End/etc, Flood, etc., even
BltBitMap is portable, see CpuBlit on ab20). The harder stuff to port
is the copperlist and multiple view stuff. MOst of the productivety
software that uses the high level gfx/intuition calls would run without
change. Anything that uses sprites, copperlist, view/viewport stuff
(instead of OpenScreen[Tags]) will most likely break. It's not
all that unreasomable to require developers to update and support their
software for new features in an OS. Look at Apple, their compatibility
% of System 7.0 is worse than ADOS 2.0. Even Excel didn't work under
7.0, but I bet an update/patched copy of Excel will be out very soon.
Every once is a while backwards compatibility needs to be discarded
for increased functionality otherwise you'll end up like MS-DOS.

>>
>>  After all this, you are now back to picking on the custom chip set and
>>flicker again? Remember, it took the Mac 6 _years_ to finally overcome
>>the PC market, the Amiga is not going become a success overnight however
>>it is gaining ground. Technical specs don't define success either, since
>>the Amiga has had better specs than both the Mac and the IBM when the
>>Amiga was released. Advertising and software availibility are the key.
>>Marc, do you actually own an Amiga? Everytime someone posts an
>>"Amiga's future/success in business/new display availible" you 
>>respond with a "Doom and Gloom" post. If you're this down on the Amiga, why
>>don't you just buy a Mac and be over with it? 
>> Myself, I won't settle for anything less than an Amiga or a Unix box.
>>
>>[Why did I bring up the Mac? Well Marc would have brung it up anyway,
>>and I happen to despise the Mac environment (too confining) and it's 
>>condescending interface. ]
>
>   If you don't like the MAC's "condescending interface", you had better
>not ever take a look at a CDTV.  The interface of the CDTV is so rigid
>and simplistic as to make the MAC look like a UNIX system.  The fact is,
>the average American person is a complete moron, and you have to make
>computers simple or they will not sell.  Commodore borrowed quite a
>lot from the MAC with Workbench 2.0, and people are continually calling
>on Commodore to borrow more from Apple and make the Workbench even more
>MAC-like.  Judging from the sales of the MAC compared to the sales of
>the Amiga, Commodore is right to be borrowing as much as possible
>from the MAC.

  CDTV isn't a computer. I doubt I'll be doing any programming/word
processing on it. AmigaDOS is superior to the Mac in that I am not
forced to use Workbench if I dont want to. The Shell interface
is just as powerful as the Graphical one(Workbench 2.0) whereas the
Mac hasn't developed a great shell interface that works with ALL
programs. (Tell me, does Word take command line arguements?)

  Finder is nothing more than a program loader. It reminds me of
the boot menu I had on my C128, or GEOS on the 64. BTW, Commodore didn't
"borrow" from the Mac, they borrowed from "the industry". Apple didn't
invent the graphic interface. Besides, Workbench 2.0 is organized
considerably different than Finder. The proper thing to say is
Commodore borrowed from existing ideas in the industry and built
upon them.

  The "masses" may be ignorant in "math/computers/programming" but
they are not "stupid", they can learn. I feel that hiding the workings
of the interface behind a shield of symbolism keeps the population
ignorant. The older population may be more stubborn to learn 
a new interface so an abstract one may be needed to alleviate the
computerphobe syndrome some people have. However, when I see a class
of 30 students, some who have never used a computer before, walk into
a computer lab and type up a fortran program on a VERY old IBM mainframe
running MUSIC I am convinced that an abstract interface is not a prerequisite
for the human race. Sometimes it can be a time saver, other times it can
get in the way.

>>--
>>/ INET:rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu     *   // The opinions expressed here do not      \
>>| INET:r_cromwe@upr2.clu.net  | \X/  in any way reflect the views of my self.|
>>\ UUCP:uunet!tnc!m0023        *                                              /
>>
>  -------------------------------------------------------------
> / Marc Barrett  -MB- | BITNET:   XGR39@ISUVAX.BITNET        /   
>/  ISU COM S Student  | Internet: XGR39@CCVAX.IASTATE.EDU   /      
>------------------------------------------------------------    
>\  ISU : The Home of the Goon                             /
> \       Who wants to Blow Up the Moon                   /
>  -------------------------------------------------------


--
/ INET:rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu     *   // The opinions expressed here do not      \
| INET:r_cromwe@upr2.clu.net  | \X/  in any way reflect the views of my self.|
\ UUCP:uunet!tnc!m0023        *                                              /

