Things the Amiga could do better than a contemporary PC

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Yes, which makes a total - purely in principle - of 1.75GB. As has already been said.

Nope - go back and read it again...

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

As I wrote: the A3000

And no Wiki does not say it was only expandable to 2MB - that is just the amount it usually was sold with ...

You are right. Correction accepted. What it does say is it's DRAM expandable to 16MB. Any more than that has to be mounted in slow Zorro III daughter cards, not the mother board DRAM slots.

All your memory accesses are going to be going over a bus with about 9MB/sec transfer speed.

While we're talking corrections, there is currently every reason to believe your original claim of being able to expand the 3000 to 2GB in 1990 is false. The Zorro III specification doesn't have that much space to allocate RAM, and the 256MB BigRAM devices we're discussing were not available until 2012.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Nope - go back and read it again...

Sure, it says:

"The total hardware memory space defined by the Amiga Zorro III expansion bus specification is 1792 MB. This is shared by RAM expansions, RTG video memory, and other peripherals. If for example an RTG display card has 128 MB of video memory, that has to be subtracted from the maximum address space"



What do you think I missed?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

You are right. Correction accepted. What it does say is it's DRAM expandable to 16MB. Any more than that has to be mounted in slow Zorro III daughter cards, not the mother board DRAM slots.

A total of 265MB are reserved for the motherboard the the CPU Expansion (a different slot than the zorro3-slots)
So this is added to the zorro3-space - giving you (roughly) 2GB as a maximum.

All your memory accesses are going to be going over a bus with about 9MB/sec transfer speed.

That ist NOT the Zorro3-Bus speed - there has been much discussion about that, but the bus is at least capable of 25MB/s ... but you would need SRAM chips to get the timings right ...

But that was not my point and not my argument at all... so please stop the derailing.

While we're talking corrections, there is currently every reason to believe your original claim of being able to expand the 3000 to 2GB is 1990 is false.

Please stop that nonsense - that is no way to discuss here!
I never made that claim about 1990 - as you are surely aware of

But as your were constantly saying in the other thread: availability is no technical specification.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Sure, it says:

"The total hardware memory space defined by the Amiga Zorro III expansion bus specification is 1792 MB. This is shared by RAM expansions, RTG video memory, and other peripherals. If for example an RTG display card has 128 MB of video memory, that has to be subtracted from the maximum address space"



What do you think I missed?

The two rows above the Zorro-space obviously ...

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

A total of 265MB are reserved for the motherboard the the CPU Expansion (a different slot than the zorro3-slots)
So this is added to the zorro3-space - giving you (roughly) 2GB as a maximum.



That ist NOT the Zorro3-Bus speed - there has been much discussion about that, but the bus is at least capable of 25MB/s ... but you would need SRAM chips to get the timings right ...

But that was not my point and not my argument at all... so please stop the derailing.



Please stop that nonsense - that is no way to discuss here!
I never made that claim about 1990 - as you are surely aware of

But as your were constantly saying in the other thread: availability is no technical specification.

"But as your were constantly saying in the other thread: availability is no technical specification."

Please stop misquoting me and putting words in my mouth I have never said. I never made this claim.

Hardware wise, commercial availability is the main thing.

You can't possibly make any serious claim about something which didn't exist.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

The two rows above the Zorro-space obviously ...

So.... you think we should take your word on this above the word of the producers of Amiga Forever?

It clearly states 1.75GB is the maximum.

It's actually written in the memory map.

And you STILL haven't found ANY hardware which fulfils your claim.

Even with the 2012 256MB BigRAM expansion you still cannot get past 1GB and you STILL have to wait until 2012 for it.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

"But as your were constantly saying in the other thread: availability is no technical specification."

Please stop misquoting me and putting words in my mouth I have never said. I never made this claim.

Well - but you did say that ... that one is on you.

Hardware wise, commercial availability is the main thing.

Dave’s SRAM board was available ...

You can't possibly make any serious claim about something which didn't exist.

It existed ...

But: I never said or claimed that this would be the case - so again:
this was not my argument.

Go back and read my initial statement again. I never made the point about all the expansions being available in 1990, but that a Amiga from that time had the capability to be expanded in that way (... which would than later be proven true by actual hardware)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

So.... you think we should take your word on this above the word of the producers of Amiga Forever?

It clearly states 1.75GB is the maximum.

It's actually written in the memory map.

Yes - for the Zorro3 address space ...
now look at the row ABOVE that line!

Even with the 2012 256MB BigRAM expansion you still cannot get past 1GB and you STILL have to wait until 2012 for it.

I don’t know what year you are living in, but we here are already in 2020.
Welcome to the future!

[Gorf]

Server is acting strange ... got double messages shown .. but when I delete one, both are gone ...

Posting an earlier answer again:

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Looks like there's more than one caveat with that claim. Seems it was only "in principle" expandable to that amount, in the timeframe stated.

1. Each BigRAM board is maxxed out at 256MB. I've seen nothing yet which says you can just plug 4 of them in and expect it to work. They'd all need to occupy a separate memory mapped address space. I don't deny it's possible, but have seen no confirmation. This would obviously also mean you had nothing in your Amiga except RAM: It would occupy all four Zorro slots.

The address space ist still flat.
You are not limited to just four slots.

2. The BigRAMPlus boards were *not available* until 2012, implying nobody was actually able to expand the Amiga to even 1GB with available hardware until about 20 years after the 1990 date claimed.

So?
That was not the statement..

3. The Zorro III was famously slow and according to these estimates maxxed out at 14MB/sec but with the BigRAMPlus Zorro III cards maxxing out at about 9.5MB/sec.

You can reach more speed than that ... anyway:
Still faster than anything the PC got in 1990

And again - speed was not part of my statement ..

So... 1GB twenty two years later in 2012 appears to be the honest answer?

There were a few big zorro3 ram boards predating that one ...
But again: totally irrelevant for my argument

Also, the Zorro III memory map actively prevents over 1.75GB of RAM in any event. This is confirmed by this emulator page:

True: because you have 256MB und the motherboard and CPU-Card.

[amiman99]

Back to topic, audio sampling and playback of sampled sound.
Together with music trackers you could use Amiga as a music sampler similar to AKAI samplers.
Until 1989 when Soundblaster was released.

[Weaselrama]

This guy is still honked off that his x286 PC from 1985 - 1990 could not do what an Amiga could do so he's been allowed to reduce the discussion to absurdities to pretend that such a PC theoretically existed pre-1990/91 when it did not.

He should be made to produce the pre-1990 machine in question, list its peripherals, RAM, and software with details on what each title did that made this "PC" the equal or better of an Amiga. He can't, he knows he can't, so he derails every discussion down to a muddle of nonsense.

Vascillious: It is time to put up or shut up. We don't want the name of some fancy video card. We don't want to know "in theory" what a x286 could have been if some manufacturer supported the upper-end of any of its capabilities. It's time for you to spec out the machine you seem to think existed, *including software* that allowed a pre-1990 PC to do what an Amiga could do. No one cares what you think of a Paula audio chip or any other hardware aspect of the Amiga. Show us the PC that bested it prior to 1990. This should be pretty simple for a PC fan who thought the PC was superior to the Amiga for nearly 5 years before it actually was.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

This guy is still honked off that his x286 PC from 1985 - 1990 could not do what an Amiga could do so he's been allowed to reduce the discussion to absurdities to pretend that such a PC theoretically existed pre-1990/91 when it did not.

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Vascillious: It is time to put up or shut up. We don't want the name of some fancy video card. We don't want to know "in theory" what a x286 could have been if some manufacturer supported the upper-end of any of its capabilities.

This has already been more than adequately proven to be false. I haven't provided theories. I've directed you to several separate sites, including journals printed in its day, all corroborating the existence of specific hardware which was available to buy.

Also, it's shifting the burden of proof: You haven't provided the proof for many of the claims you have made and many of them you continue to repeat have already been shown to be false.

If you don't start supplying documentary evidence and concrete claims with specific hardware with your posts I'm just going to block you because every single one of your posts so far is worth precisely as much to me as empty drunken shouting. I'm bored of it.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

If you don't start supplying documentary evidence and concrete claims with specific hardware with your posts I'm just going to block you because every single one of your posts so far sounds much like drunken shouting.

YOU are going to block US? That's rich! We've already started blocking you as it is.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

This has already been more than adequately proven to be false. I haven't provided theories. I've directed you to several separate sites, including journals printed in its day, all corroborating the existence of specific hardware which was available to buy.

Also, it's shifting the burden of proof: You haven't provided the proof for many of the claims you have made and many of them you continue to repeat have already been shown to be false.

If you don't start supplying documentary evidence and concrete claims with specific hardware with your posts I'm just going to block you because every single one of your posts so far is worth precisely as much to me as empty drunken shouting. I'm bored of it.

You're not going to block me because my posts are like "empty drunken shouting." You're going to "block me" because I'm challenging you to provide
details of your dream, pre-1990 x286 PC that can beat the Amiga. You know you can't and it's starting to piss you off that I keep repeating the challenge.

The only thing you've done is point us to proof that shows that fancy card of yours existed. We don't care that a niche care existed with fancy specs used for a very specific purpose utilizing software you probably couldn't own. It's the only thing you've provided. You completely failed to show any software you could have run on that card that would have done ANYTHING the Amiga could do with ease.

You say we haven't proven our case. We've proven the Amiga met the definition of a multimedia computer between 1985 and 1992. In 3 separate threads we have linked you to videos and photographs which you reject without viewing as if there were any other way for us to demonstrate the Amiga. Truth be told, you don't want to see any demonstration of the Amiga's capabilities because you detest the Amiga and are having a sad that you can't put together a x286 PC prior to 1990 that could do what the Amiga could do.

Only a coward would block another user over a discussion. It's not like I'm following you from thread to thread, calling you names. For the umteenth time I'm asking you to stop the bullshit and put your money where your mouth is:

PRODUCE THE MACHINE AND THE SOFTWARE, Vascillious. Name each component, name the software titles, and show us your pre-1990 multimedia computer.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

The address space ist still flat.

Irrelevant. You still can't just drop RAM anywhere you like and expect it to work. I am a professional computer programmer. Don't try to bluff me. It's annoying.

Originally Posted by Gorf

You are not limited to just four slots.

OK.... where? The A3000 only had four Zorro III slots.

Originally Posted by Gorf

That was not the statement..

Yes, we have since established you meant the computer from 1990 could be expanded to 2GB if you waited to 2012 for products with that capability to come out. We've also learned there were a lot of problems doing it that way and 2GB was an "approximation", read: Exaggeration. You still can't literally expand an Amiga of that date to 2GB today. Not even with an emulator.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Still faster than anything the PC got in 1990

False. You have no evidence for this. Like Weaselrama you're just throwing out random claims. As I recommended to the other guy: Instead of empty phoney bragging, why not start telling the truth? Provide documentary evidence, a magazine article from the day, which corroborates your claim.

Originally Posted by Gorf

And again - speed was not part of my statement ..

You're right, but it IS mine. The RAM wasn't and isn't something you can plug into the DRAM slots. That may not matter to you, but it does to me. RAM which the CPU talks to over the Zorro bus is going to be slow.

Originally Posted by Gorf

There were a few big zorro3 ram boards predating that one ...

Yet another empty claim. Where? Show me? There is thus far no evidence of such a thing which would fulfil your claim, which we already know by now is false anyway.

It's also been written in emulator guides that even if you did fill your Amiga to the theoretical maximum of 1.75GB you should not expect it to work because the OS is not specified for that much RAM. That is definitely relevant.

Originally Posted by Gorf

True: because you have 256MB und the motherboard and CPU-Card.

Well there may be a dispute over the exact amount of RAM, one thing there can be no dispute over is, however much it is, it's less than 2GB. It might be "very nearly 2GB", but quibbling over the exact amount is wasting time and spamming the thread. Which I am not interested in doing, even though I am interested in drilling down to the facts beyond the idle bragging. However much RAM it is, it's less than 2GB, and the devices to achieve it didn't exist in the time frame you cited.

To remind you, your exact, verbatim, words were:

Originally Posted by Gorf

But show me a PC from late 87-91 that can be expanded up to 2 GB of RAM, multiple gfx-cards, new processor-cards with different CPU-architecture, bridge-boards to completely different computer architecture, adapter to a totally different system bus like zorroIII to pci, ... all with the same motherboard. my A3000 is capable doing this

The truth is, in the 1987-1991 time frame, the total RAM was A LOT LESS than 2GB. The "almost 2GB" expansion potential didn't emerge for something like two decades later.

Still, we're quibbling. The single important thing to come out from this discussion is, the single claim in your original post which was not possible on any PC I know of was not possible on the Amiga at that time either.

By the time it became possible to expand the Amiga past the 1GB range, it was also possible to do the same on contemporary PCs. It is also possible on contemporary PC servers to massively outclass 2GB as a claim. We're way past the days when PC servers running Unix could support terabytes of RAM, 1000 times as much as your claim.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Truth be told, you don't want to see any demonstration of the Amiga's capabilities because you detest the Amiga

False. I just detest blow-hards and liars.

As I said, you're also shifting the burden of proof.

You're right, I did prove a PAL and NTSC genlock compatible card with 24bit graphics at 512x480 resolution was available for the PC before the Amiga was even released.

I also showed, according to the Amiga hardware database, 24bit cards didn't emerge for the Amiga for another 6-7 years. At which point far more options had already since emerged for the PC.

So, at this stage I no longer have the burden of proof. I'm still waiting for you to reply to my statement of fact. Until then you're just running your mouth and it's boring to everybody.

[Nishicorn]

Amiga also was able to do 'sub-pixel scrolling', so it wasn't just normal 'smooth 50/60Hz scrolling', but something better.

The OP didn't mention the four sound channels that could use samples, which effectively increased the number of simultaneous sounds that could be played at any given time.

Were hardware sprites and BOBs not mentioned?

I would add 'the feel' to the mix, as unscientific and unmeasurable as that may sound. Contemporary PCs did not have the 'feel of an Amiga'.

Also, 'smooth usage' with the mouse, that still isn't replicated to this day (this was a bit of a shock to me when I compared using emulator and real Amiga, just how smooth it felt to use the real Amiga for graphics - I did NOT expect it, so it's not some nostalgia-based illusory dream).
I also always liked Amiga's 'screens' feature, and how you could always smoothly pull a screen down to reveal another screen behind it. Never seen this anywhere else.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Foebane

YOU are going to block US? That's rich! We've already started blocking you as it is.

Do as you will. I'm here open to having my belief challenged that the PC was never outclassed, in a list of ways which actually mattered to buyers, as a professional platform by the Amiga. You can block me all you want. That just won't cut any ice towards evidence the Amiga wasn't just what I think it is: A cheap flashy toy for teenage bedrooms in blue-collar houses.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Do as you will. I'm here open to having my belief challenged that the PC was never outclassed, in a list of ways which actually mattered to buyers, as a professional platform by the Amiga. You can block me all you want. That just won't cut any ice towards evidence the Amiga wasn't just what I think it is: A cheap flashy toy for teenage bedrooms in blue-collar houses.

That's nice. Please go away now.