Things the Amiga could do better than a contemporary PC

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

That's probably because you're using Picasso96 screenmode for your workbench. Picasso96 doesn't support screen dragging, but screenmodes on the native chipset do. And this features works fine in FS-UAE.


Indeed, I still use it quite regularly when I'm using native screenmodes or OS4, and miss it when I'm using my OS3/P96 setups.

Indeed I am using Picasso96. That explains that. Thanks. It's not that bad, I can still click and bring-to-front.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Indeed I am using Picasso96. That explains that. Thanks. It's not that bad, I can still click and bring-to-front.

A future version of (the commercial) Picasso96 is supposed to support screen dragging.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by hooverphonique

I'd say that the Amiga doesn't have a *better* controller, but rather a very *simple* one, making it possible to decode the formats using the cpu/blitter (which may be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your viewpoint).

Simple is probably the wrong word. Cheap would be better. Commodore loved cheap

Let's go with flexible

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by roondar

On the Amiga you only really need to worry about a large enough block of memory existing for any given allocation and the effectively CPU doesn't care where in memory (or on what card the memory physically is located) the block actually is. This was very different on PC's, where you actually had to worry about 64KB segments and conventional/extended/hi memory for a very long time.

Oh good god, don't remind me of my dark days with MS-DOS after my PC migration in early 1995, it was like using a severely limited computer after WW3 had occurred and the better machines were destroyed.

Luckily, Win95 came out later that year, so it didn't last for long.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Oh good god, don't remind me of my dark days with MS-DOS after my PC migration in early 1995, it was like using a severely limited computer after WW3 had occurred and the better machines were destroyed.

Lol, greatly put.

Originally Posted by Foebane

Luckily, Win95 came out later that year, so it didn't last for long.

For me, it was not before WinXP, that I finally got used.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Oh good god, don't remind me of my dark days with MS-DOS after my PC migration in early 1995, it was like using a severely limited computer after WW3 had occurred and the better machines were destroyed.

Nobody told you about Dos Navigator? Poor chap

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

For me, it was not before WinXP, that I finally got used.

For me Windows 2000 SP4 was the pinnacle of the Windows experience. After that, things started getting simplified too much for my tastes, culminating in where we are today, with such things as network activity monitors that no longer show network activity (presumably to disguise the fact that now there's always network activity!).

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

For me Windows 2000 SP4 was the pinnacle of the Windows experience. After that, things started getting simplified too much for my tastes, culminating in where we are today, with such things as network activity monitors that no longer show network activity (presumably to disguise the fact that now there's always network activity!).

I had been using MS-DOS at work for years. We had something similar to Midnight Commander installed at my last job as a construction estimator and project manager that allowed us to quickly navigate our 8088s with their two (one 10mb partitioned) 5mb hard drives. We ran the Symphony suite and other apps. A few of us installed Win 3.1 which I used only for the word processor I installed. I came, as I noted before, the Mac world during the mid-80s. MS-DOS was a shock.

We were still using Win 3.11 when I started my first IT job but we were gearing up to roll-out Win 95 (in 1997!). Personally, I was still a Linux dweeb but I got along well with the technology. Our network was Novell Netware. After Y2K we moved up to Windows networking. This was all across two city campuses in Columbus, Ohio, and our NY and NJ offices.

I would never have made my entry into the IT world without the Amiga. It positioned me well to learn Linux from scratch and I learned Win95 at home as well. I turned a hobby into a job that sustained me well for 15 years until I retired.

My favorite working OSs:

Amiga OS3 Workbench
Windows 7 - I honestly hated to see it go. I thought it was the best OS MS ever came up with.
Mac OS (any iteration incl Big Sur).

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

For me, it was not before WinXP, that I finally got used.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Nobody told you about Dos Navigator? Poor chap

There seems to be some confusion over what I meant with my post. I did not say that MS-DOS sucked because of the CLI, which the Amiga also had, and so I learnt all the MS-DOS commands as soon as I could.

What I meant is the memory allocation of MS-DOS, and how I had to constantly edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in order to get enough memory just to run games, not forgetting a sound and mouse driver a lot of the time.

THAT'S what I meant.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Foebane

There seems to be some confusion over what I meant with my post. I did not say that MS-DOS sucked because of the CLI, which the Amiga also had, and so I learnt all the MS-DOS commands as soon as I could.

What I meant is the memory allocation of MS-DOS, and how I had to constantly edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in order to get enough memory just to run games, not forgetting a sound and mouse driver a lot of the time.

THAT'S what I meant.

...and there was Bill Gates, laughing at us, "no plug and play for you!"

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Windows 7 - I honestly hated to see it go. I thought it was the best OS MS ever came up with.

Agreed.

My memory of the last several OSes I've used:

Windows ME - A complete joke
Windows XP - Nice and stable, felt very solid, a great improvement
Windows 7 - Lovely!
Windows 10 - Rocky start, and it looks worse, but there's no other choice now

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What I meant is the memory allocation of MS-DOS, and how I had to constantly edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in order to get enough memory just to run games, not forgetting a sound and mouse driver a lot of the time.

THAT'S what I meant.

I have realized that after posting and thought about deleting, but, eh, it was just a little joke.

Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with the proper context as well. This exaggerated woe-be-me about DOS memory is one of popular modern myths - handling it was never really that hard. Just a few different configs choosable on boot would do in 95% of cases, boot disk in others. A slight inonvenience? Yes. A severely limited computer after WW3? Not really. Besides, when you are playing the likes of Darklands or System Shock you realize it's really a worthy trade-off.

Since before internet and multimedia I had no much use for multitasking (I can't recall a single time I would do that on my humble A500) the singular nature of DOS wasn't a problem at all. And navigating by using a double-pane program is actually superior in many respects to a GUI, and the reason why Total Commander is what I use for majority of my desktop activities even now.

As for Windows, 95 was a blue-screen central and a real nightmare at the beginning. 98 was much better, proving the old trope that every second Windows is okay. As for 10, I'd say that if we forgot the spying/constant updates nonsense then it would be the best yet, because it's super stable and efficient. It's a big if though.

[grond]

I'm not sure we are still on-topic but I remember that my PC friend found no AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS that allowed him to run Syndicate on his 4MB 386SX which ran just fine on my unexpanded A600.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by grond

I'm not sure we are still on-topic but I remember that my PC friend found no AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS that allowed him to run Syndicate on his 4MB 386SX which ran just fine on my unexpanded A600.

You're right, we should pull this back on topic. Prior to 1990, the PC was pretty limited in scope as to what it could do and really wouldn't come into its own until after 1993.

[frank_b]

In a word, everything circa 1985.

1. Powerful command line vs the monstrosity of MS DOS in design and implementation
2. Flat address space for the CPU vs insane segments/offsets on the 8086
3. 32 bit forward thinking CPU ISA vs 16 bit bad ISA with software compiled for 8086/8088
4. 24 bit memory addressing vs 1 meg (8086 real mode. Don't even mention XMS overlays)
5. Multitasking
6. GUI
7. Hardware display segmentation via copper
8. Hardware cursor (or 8 if you prefer)
9. 3 source bit blitter with powerful masking capabilities
10. Hardware line draw/area fill
11. Hardware collision detection
12. Arbitrary collision detection via the blitter without invalidating dest buffer
13. Parallel CPU/Custom chip bus
14. Long file names
15. 4x 3.5 inch floppy disks vs 2 5 1/4 drives
16. 4 channel hardware module playing sound chip
17. Auto config. Look ma, no jumpers!
18. 12 bit colour palette.
19. 32 colour/ 64 colour EHB or 12 bit colour HAM modes
20. Hardware overlay 8/8 dual playfield modes
21. high res 16 colour mode
22. Built in Genlock compatability
23. 16 bit bus vs 8 bit ISA bus
25. Separate bitplane addressing
26. Hardware assisted scrolling

etc etc etc etc etc.

Only thing the PC has that the Amiga lacks is a text video mode.

[Glen M]

Amiga won the battle, IBM won the war and for all the reasons outlined above. The architecture of Amiga was crippled by Commodore who rode the fantastic performance of their purchase for far to long without expanding on it. I think people tend to forget Commodore bought Amiga. After that just how much expansion on the architecture did they do, not a lot really.

As for memory management on a DOS computer that's all part of the fun, at least for me anyway. Great fun hunting for different device drivers to get that extra few K of memory so you can run your game. Frontier (that go to Amiga game) is pretty hard to get going on the PC, needs 580-590(ish) of free conventional memory. Generally needs you to drop CD-Rom drivers but easy to do with a script in autoexec.bat with boot options.

Picking up on the discussion around Microsoft OS's and having recently setup 3 retro machines I can tell you without doubt that 98 can be an unstable mess too, especially when it comes to sound. In fact on this front I'd consider 95 more compatible. All be it DMA in 95 is broken and you need 98 to fix that. DOS is hard to beat though, once you get your drivers loaded it just works. Yeah its not pretty but it is good. DRDOS I'm fairly sure has an inbuilt GUI file browser plus there are others to make life easier. Or like I had back in the day my MSDOS boot disk had a little script so all you had to do was press 1-5 to load whatever game.

Hard to beat a late night beer session setting up and configuring a retro IBM compatible, or is that just me?

All that said my primary use for any of these boxes is games. I'm sure from a productivity point of view Amiga mops the floor with any early IBM compatible.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

You're right, we should pull this back on topic. Prior to 1990, the PC was pretty limited in scope as to what it could do and really wouldn't come into its own until after 1993.

From 1990 Amiga was just on par, at best. Still better than PC at some 2D console type games, but in this regard was losing to the actual consoles. And when it comes to "computer" games it was slowly being left behind, just look at Sierra's adventures frm that period for example.

Then 1992 came, the likes of Wolfenstein, Commanche and Ultima Underworld were released and...well, and that was it.

[grond]

Yes, I also think that the PC (in a typical configuration) surpassed the Amiga in most hardware aspects at around 1990. The remaining hardware advantages weighed less and less with time until effectively only legacy burdens remained that turned the Amiga into (even more of) a niche and ultimately retro computer.

The A3000 was a great computer but very expensive and ECS was already too little. It should have been AGA+chunky at that point in time. And the following year should have seen an A1200-type follow-up to the still very successful A500. Anyway, I don't want to turn this into yet another "what Commodore should have done" type thread.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by grond

Yes, I also think that the PC (in a typical configuration) surpassed the Amiga in most hardware aspects at around 1990. The remaining hardware advantages weighed less and less with time until effectively only legacy burdens remained that turned the Amiga into (even more of) a niche and ultimately retro computer.

What I loved about the Amiga was that it was an all-in-one package for excellent graphics, sound and gameplay around 1990, wherein you didn't have to pay for anything extra, except maybe a cheap memory expansion in some cases. Try saying that for the PC! It was highlighted to me in my college course because we used old bulky IBM PCs, and while they had VGA, they certainly didn't have soundcards. It was really weird to go from the Gods game back home on Amiga to seeing it on PC, with identical graphics but NONE of the wonderful audio the Amiga had. This was not much of a convincer for me back then. Not even Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 changed things much, I thought it was an ugly, simple game.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by grond

Oh, mentioning the A600: wasn't it the first computer to actually use PCMCIA? It predates the standard.

It doesn't.


The HP 95LX Handheld had PCMCIA before the A600 came out in 1991, and the PCMCIA standard was published in 1990.

The idea that the Amiga predates PCMCIA standards is also not really correct, PCMCIA 1.0 was out far before the A600 released.

I guess it's because a lot of the cards people wanted to use started in the late 90's when 2.0 was already entrenched and weird bugs popped up.