#CBU Takeover for REAL?
10 messages in this thread
The Atari Lynx machine is basically a hand-held Amiga. All development for
it is done on the Amiga.
Don
Humm…the Lynx is a handheld Amiga eh???? And just how did
Atari get ahold of the Amiga's custom chipset and operating system?
While I'm not specifically familiar with the Lynx…I'd be
very surprised if it was at all like the Amiga other than they are
both computers.
I'm not sure of the details, but I was talkin to someone who develops
games for te Lynx, and he said that they definitely develop
everything on the Amiga. Maybe characterizing the Lynx as a
hand-held Amiga was a bit of an overstatement, but there's enough of
a similarity to be able to use it as a development platform.
Just because games are developed on the Amiga for LYNX doesnt make it an
Amiga hand held. There are NO Amiga custom chips or Amiga anything in the
LYNX. From what I hear SEGA games are written onthe Amiga too. That doesnt
make the SEGA an Amiga clone. The reason that they use Amiga is because the
folks at EPYX who developed the LYNX and sold it to Atari wrote the
programming software on the Amiga. They could have used any other machine
to do the job and the results would be the same.
Nick
Yes. As I mentioned in a previous statement, I was indulging in a bit of
overstatement regarding the Lynx re the Amiga.
Don
Actually, the Lynx is most definitely not an Amiga, although it is a
distant relative. RJ Michal was one of the folks that worked on the
original Lynx development team (for Epyx). RJ, of course, was one of
the original Amiga software developers. The development tools for
the Lynx are Amiga-based. Atari purchased the Lynx system from Epyx,
and inherited the development tools and heritage, much to the
Tramiel's displeasure. So there's some truth behind the original
statement, although it definitely needs a bit of clarification.
Actually, I think that the reason an ST wasn't used for Lynx
development is that it couldn't handle the graphics (512 color
animated) or the 4 voice sound. (This isn't official or anything, but
my guess.) The Lynx has custom chips, just like the Amiga, but they
aren't the same chips. There's a graphics/blitter chip, a sound chip,
and a chip which handles the network port and the card slot and I
think it also handles the joystick and other controls. About as close
to a handheld Amiga as you can come.
Also, the development environment required multitasking. It was kind
of pretty…think of Metascope^2 with lots more windows and an
interface to a shared ram card between the Amiga and the Lynx (or
'Handy')
No, it does have some similarities, but it's not an Amiga… and
develoment IS done on Amigas.
I was talking about this with a colleague of mine the other night. At
one time I wanted to become a Lynx developer.. but it was $5K up
front for two cards to fit into my 2000… while this isn't
unreasonable, looking back on it, it prevented an _enthusiastic_
developer from writing software for it… we went through his
collection of Lynx games… 2 out of 12 were made by not atari/epyx
owned companies.