#Uk Amiga Press Conf!
8 messages in this thread
Fred,
Every now and then the Amiga's multitasking power is really impressed on me.
Yesterday I was playing with Windows 95 on a 486-66 –decent computer, if not
top of the line–and if I ran more than one program, I spent a lot of time
waiting for screen refreshes.
This morning, with my A2000 (030), with less than 3 megs to spare after I
loaded my rad drive (long story), I had running: Superbase Pro, Phasar
(finances), WordPerfect Library, GPFax and Transcript. I closed down Phasar
(while SBPro was loading) because I figured I'd pushed the limits a little, but
otherwise I was using all of them, switching from screen to screen
instantaneously, and leaving SBPro to sort a filter while I went to Transcript
to write a letter.
But if I tried to explain it to a "Win guy", they simply wouldn't believe it…
Marion Deland
CROSSINGS – Newsletter for Amiga/PC/Mac compatibility
Marion,
I still think the computer's industry would look very different if the money
thrown into PC hardware (graphic cards, network cards etc), Dos/Windows and
their apps. had been used to upgrade the 90s' style Amigas! We would have
something close to (today's) Silicon Indigos at home for a few bucks. The
expensive machines would be something I can't even picture…
And Bill Gates would be as rich as he is now… And people would remember the
PC as that old 640k machine…
Sigh.
So 486-66 is a decent computer for you? Well, my DX4-100 8Megs under Win95 at
home is nothing but a PITA when launching more than 2 serious apps…
Fred.
Frederic Botton from Paris, France
fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
You can RUN windows95 on 8mb, I couldn't, I needed 16mb (although we do need
the workgroups stuff, that adds a bit, ). I ran the norton utilities preview
when we first got it. Although norton would be taking up some memory, just
booting up needed 15mb of memory!
Phill
Well, I can boot (no SCSI devices, no network devices), but using serious apps.
(Word/Access) involves hours staring at the flashing HD light, listening to the
swapping process 🙁
BTW, Bill Gates is going to boost its sales, his partners' sales, hardware
manufacturers' sales…
Fred.
Frederic Botton from Paris, France
fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
Yeah, I know how you feel, even with 16mb this machine still slows down
PLEASE, oh, PLEASE, won't Escom port AmigaDos to the pentium? I would like the
speed of the pentium but I hate to leave AmigaDos behind for Windoze. If
AmigaDos ran on pentium, those who needed Windoze could just run it as a task –
then no compatibility problems running other existing 'doze software within an
overall AmigaDos environment. The rest of us could just get busy porting
AmigaDos applications to pentium to run under AmigaDos in that environment.
You're a sick puppy. I thought that you liked to do the assembly code thing.
Life under x86? Puh-lease. Make it PPC.
Dale L. Larson, dale@iam.com
el Presidente, IAM
http://www.iam.com
What do you do about all the custom chip calls embedded in the Amiga software?
In the Amiga environment display, audio, uart, par, ser, blitter, etc all look
one way. Any third party stuff has to fit the pattern established for the
ckustom chips in a base machine to maintian a high level of compatibility with
existing apps. In the PC world there is no standardization of anything, which
is why every peice of hardware comes with and ungodly plethora of drivers and
support software. (Remember, 'Plug and Play' is merely a marketting term
whereas autoconfig is a reality). How is an OS to deal with a world where all
the basic I/O except keyboard (and even then there is the darn code page crap)
is willy-nilly board specific?
I think ADos on a PC is impracticle until there is an Amiga on a card to go
with it to support it, or, until the PC world bites the bullet and standardizes
the application-to-device interfaces at the OS level like ADos did.
wmc – via Autopilot!