CompuServe Messages

As an owner of both machines, I can start opening the fire: 1) True that the chip set in the Amiga makes for a great game machine, but I am sure the Tramiels didn't mean it as a compliment. 2) The statement that the chip set in the Amiga is the same chip set in the 800XL but expanded to work with the 16 bit processor is completely false. True, the Amiga chip set is a LOGICAL extension of the 800XL chip set PHILOSOPHY but nothing more. It is a disgrace to compare the two on equal grounds. The 800XL is not capable of more than 40 columns, has a max 320×200 mono mode, does not bit blit, runs at less than 2 Mhz, is limited to 256 colors of which only four are available in any decent res mode, without any fancy display interrupt programming. 3) The Amiga only steals some CPU speed in modes that the ST doesn't have at all, like 640x400x16 colors, and extensive bit blit operations. However, the bit blitter, even if it SUSPENDED the processor functions TOTALLY, would still do the job much faster than the 68000. 4) The statement that the ST is 8mhz therefore it is suited for business and telecom applications, and the Amiga is .8 Mhz slower and therefore is not suited for these applications is an absolute joke. 0.8 Mhz hardly makes a difference, and the overall system throughput is far greater on the Amiga. (The Amiga is much faster overall, and I am not just talking games here!) 5) Believe it or not, the Amiga's drives are a lot faster and more intelligent than the ST's drives, even though it doesn't seem that way due to a very slow disk directory structure on the Amiga. However, you will all see: If OS/9 comes out for both machines, as scheduled, than you will see how much faster the Amiga is at the same operations. 6) The Amiga is fully expandable, the ST is not. Does the ST claim any way of expanding the 520ST beyond 512K or the 1040 beyond 1 meg, hacking the machine not considered? Even with hacking the machine, the limit is 1 meg. Even if they came out with a new machine that used the whole capability of the MMU in the ST, it would still be limited to a 4meg ceiling. 7) About the cycle stealing that I talked about above, the Amiga will run faster if one adds memory beyond the 512K. No cycle stealing will occur if a program resides there. 8) The Amiga's video/audio superiority does not shinw with games only. Look at the possibilities of using Digiview in HAM and then using a HAM editor (not yet available, but feasable) to edit the picture! You can have the equivalent of those $20,000 computers that they use in some dept. stores to allow women customers to see the make-up on, or clothes or whatever, without physically trying it on! The Amiga in HAM is almost broadcast quality. Oh and the stereo sound. Oh and the Genlocking capabilities (which are not feasable on the ST because they weren't designed into it, and the machine is not fully expandable.) 9) It is NOT easier to connect a hard disk to the ST, as claimed by the Tramiels. The port on the ST is a mere DMA port and NOT a hard disk port. The Amiga has many more DMA channels (the St only one) and the Amiga's DMA is available on the expansion port. To connect a hard disk to the ST, you have to have a controller card on top of the hard disk, and a power supply to power both. IT IS THE EXACT SAME ON THE AMIGA! Except, if you buy the Zorro type expansion boxes, you will have ALL the fuctions you will ever buy IN THE EXPANSION BOX, with a single power supply. On the ST you will need an extra power supply foe every other device you buy, and each one that you add to the DMA port decreases the overall throuput per device of that DMA port. In effect, you cannot attach DMA devices to your heart's content on the ST. And believe me, expansion through the DMA port is clumsy, and the promised 32bit compute engine that will sit on the DMA port will NEVER COME OUT. Atari will release it as