#Amiga to Mac
12 messages in this thread
Hi,
I'm sorry to seem stupid but some of my clients (we're an Apple dealer) have
got clients with Amigas and Achimedes (Achimedi?) and they get asked if they
can take files so they ask me and now I'm asking you. Funny old world. The
question is really can your machines/applications write postscript files onto
either a Mac or PC 3 1/2" floppy? If they can (and easily) I'm laughing (ho
ho), if it needs anything else (to access PC floppies for instance) what do I
(they) need and where do we get it?
TIA
Peter
Nowadays a lot of people seem to have difficulties and the necessity to
transfer files between Macs and Amigas, so see the other threats in this forum
concerning this problem, too.
The easiest way would be to use CrossDos on the Amiga, or any other program
that allows you to r/w MS-DOS disks, which your Mac can read, too.
In the latest system software this ability is already built in. Remember that
the Amiga can only r/w to DD disks, if you do not build in a HD floppy.
Rob.
Peter:
I write Postscript files from Amiga applications to PC and Mac disks all
the time. I even print PS files to disk and then copy them to a PS printer
hooked to a friend's PC. If the Amiga has CrossDOS and CrossMac (or one of
the shareware alternatives), this is all a snap.
Any Amiga store or mail-order shop can supply the Cross products. Try Safe
Harbor computers in Waukesha, Wisconsin at 800-544-6599.
The standard Amiga floppy drive is a 3.5" low density. Some Amigas come
with high density floppies. Obviously, if he needs to copy to a high
density PC or Mac diskette, your client would need a high density Amiga
drive. Safe Harbor and other dealers supply those, too. Safe Harbor's
order line is 800-544-6599, Mon-Sat 9-5 CST.
Archimedes is a British PC of different heritage and not compatible with
the Amiga, or, probably, PCs or Macs. Someone else should confirm that.
By the way, note that there are Amiga-based hardware emulators that
actually will let Amiga owners RUN Mac and PC software on an Amiga. The
A-Max and the even-more capable Emplant board handle Mac. How about a
virtual Mac Quadra or Pentium in a 256-color window on the Amiga
Workbench? It's do-able.
>Archimedes is a British PC of different heritage and not compatible with
the Amiga, or, probably, PCs or Macs. Someone else should confirm that.<
Uh. It's british, but not a PC. In fact, it is the FIRST RISC personal
computer (to my knowledge). I read somewhere sometime ago something <g>
like the Newton's CPU was an evolution of that RISC chip.
That's why they are not compatibles. No "Intel Inside" nor Moto.
Rafa <Motorola Inside>
…via AutoPilot 1.72 from Berlin
What, the C-64's 6502 wasn't a "RISC"?
Ummm, the C-64's chip was technically a 6510. It certainly had a reduced
instruction set! (compared to the mainframes I was used to coding on.)
Robb
A reduced instruction set? Ever tried coding on a DEC PDP-8? Now THAT was a
reduced instruction set! (Eight basic op codes, seven-bit addresses!)
–Jim
Umm, well, no I haven't. I guess a PDP-8 takes the cake in my experience for
RISC! Of course it also has the advantage of RA, reduced addressability!
Robb
As best I recall, the eight instructions included AND, DSZ (decrement and
skip if zero), JMP, JSR, ADD, (an I/O instruction, I believe), and two OP
instructions, which were address-less operations; the 7 address bits and 2 mode
bits turned into microcodes for the accumulator, such as complement, rotate
left/right…
Data was organized into 128-byte "pages", hence the 7 bit addresses. To get
outside a page, you had to set the indirect mode bit within an instruction;
then you could use a 12-bit address to reach (wow!) 4096 memory addresses, the
primary system memory size limit.
And yet people shoehorned wonderful programs into these tiny machines.
Can you imagine how mind-blowing it was to leave these mini-computers and
discover that microprocessors had MUCH more powerful instruction and addressing
sets? Heck, they were like the "big" machines!
–Jim
The 6502 and its related CPUs (6510, etc.) were certainly near-RISC.
Pipelined processing was used internally, so that almost no memory accesses
were wasted. To execute a two-byte instruction such as LDA #$34 took two
memory cycles – the two cycles that were needed to fetch the instruction. A
three-byte instruction such as LDA $1234 took four cycles – three to get the
instruction, one to get the data at address $1234. No wastage.
This made clock speeds a very poor indicator of comparable processor power. A
8080 chip would need to run at about 4 MHZ to match the performance of a 6502
at 1MHZ.
The main non-RISC aspect of the 6502 series was its limited number of
registers: there were only three for data (A, X,and Y). Fanatics would point
out, however, that the way the architecture was set up, all 256 bytes of zero
page could be used to perform register-like functions, fast.
In these days of multiple decoder/multiple ALU/internal cache processor
chips, the 6502 certainly cannot be called leading edge RISC. With no
multiply/divide, its advanced arithmetic was slow; and the lack of a true
16-bit data register made the handling of interrupt vectors a little tricky.
But it was a heluva sophisticated chip for its time, and still performs
decently.
On a non-technical matter, few people realize that the 6502 also deserves
credit for breaking the microprocessor price barrier. In early 1976, almost
all 8-bit chips cost around $150+ in order quantities of 200 or more. The 6501
(soon retired because of litigation) came in at $25, single quantity!
–Jim
What about the Z80?
Rafa <Motorola Inside>
…via AutoPilot 1.72 from Berlin