CompuServe Messages

Ah, good. I'm glad to see I mischaracterized you as a PC fan. PC's make me ill too, Mark. 😛 But I do have to disagree on some points. While PC sound boards may be cheaper and more flexible than Amiga sound boards…look at what they are designed for. PC sound cards are made primarily to give a little life to games. All the Amiga boards I can think of (AD1012, AD516, Toccata-16, etc.) are designed primarily to give professional-quality, multi-track, disk-based audio-for-video or pro audio capabilities, which probably accounts for their relative inflexibility. Amiga 8-bit audio is still better than anything I've heard off my SoundBlaster 16. If the Amiga weren't so dependent on its custom chips, it would not be half the computer it is today. If it weren't for the custom chips, Commodore probably would not have sold any computers since they would then have had nothing over Apple or IBM. The chips are what let my A1200 do better animation and play higher-quality games than a video-accelerated 486-66. Before you say, "I know that, but their usefulness has expired," take a look at what the custom chips in the game consoles of 1991-1994 can do. You probably would be hard-pressed to get a PCI video-equipped P5-90 to keep up with a Super NES or (especially) a 3DO or a Jaguar at graphics. Sega's 32X add-on for the Genesis (due out in November) also looks good. And next year, we'll (supposedly) be seeing Nintendo's SGI-based Ultra 64, a 64-bit upgrade for 3DO, the Sony PlayStation, and possibly Sega's Saturn (the preliminary specs of which I can hardly believe). If the New Amiga Company could somehow incorporate similar features into its chipset (or license one of the above?), the Amiga's graphics would once again be lightyears ahead of any of its competition. (There's also an alternate option to the "I Hate WinDoze" dilemma here: The new owners of AmigaDOS could write an Intuition-like OS for PC's…. <g>) And while I agree that it would be nice to be able to access PC peripheral cards on an Amiga, who would write the drivers? BTW, I personally think that if Amiga can run NT in the future, great! That'll be one less emulator to buy. <g> But I agree that if it becomes the _primary_ OS…all is lost…. 😮 – Jim, on AutoPilot!