Amiga Vs ST

[Si-Pie]

Well I started this thread off but dont get me wrong it was not to bash the ST Goldrunner but it was to prove a point to someone who denied any advantage the Amiga had and was adamant all the games were the same.

I personally think the ST was a good machine and it had some good uses and yes I agree on some of your points about the uses of the ST e.g for music due to the built in Midi. But hardware wise and the sheer power of a system then the Amiga won hands down. Back then I had no idea but now that I work in computer hardware I realise just how much more powerful the Amiga was!

Yes the ST did have a slightly higher clocked CPU but you have to remember it had no dedicated graphics or sound hardware so had to rely solely on the CPU unlike the Amiga.

Not sure about your point on Frontier because I ran a check once on both the Amiga and ST version and they ran at exactly the same fps. think both ran at about 15 fps.

Also the interrupt tricks used to display more colours on a ST was right but useless in games and only useful in static images like the Amigas HAM mode. Dont get me wrong though ST was a great machine and without it back then it would not of been the same and I agree it did help to drive the 16-bit market. I just love the old classic systems and all had a place in computer history!

[TCD]

@Photon
Ah, Acorn Archimedes. You could have mentioned that somewhere Well, yes

[Doc Mindie]

Si-Pie:

I think I have to agree with your points completly.

A quick rundown on what came builtin to the ST:
Scsi, midi, 68000@16MHz, 3channel sound.

Amiga: Paula, Agnus, Denise, Gary to help take a HUGE load of power off of the 68000@7MHz.

I believe more companies made 3rd party addon hardware for the Amiga than for the ST.... don't get me wong, the ST had some few nice features, but I myself believe the Amiga had "the edge" simply because of the design.

Then... Atari "threw together" the ST when Commodore bought Amiga, Inc. from under their noses, and so didn't have as much time to develop it fully, while the Amiga had been worked on for three or four years before C= bought it.... and just needed some final touches.

CAOS... anyone know if there's any chance of getting hold of it? CAOS was, I've been lead to believe, the OS C= wanted to ship with the Amiga, but couldn't iron out the bugs in time, and Workbench was "thrown together" as an alternative... which was less major bugs but more minor ones, IIRC.... and it had the Guru Meditation.

[Harrison]

Acorn still around? Am I missing something? The company was broken up in 1998 into several independent operations, and the RISC personal computer subsidiary disolved and sold off in 2000 after Morgan Stanley Dean Witter group purchased it to gain the 24% share in ARM Holdings.

After further development many of the different parts of the original Acorn Computers changed hands and ended up being owned by many different companies. Some parts were brought back together by a management Team, but it didn't reform Acorn as it once was. Instead focused on set top box development, which failed.

Much like the Amiga, RISCOS was licensed to a company called RISCOS Ltd who continue to develop and support it much like Amiga OS (only better handled). And the rights to hardware development of Acorn computers was bought in 1998 by Castle Technology, and later the rights to RISCOS as well, from RISCOS Ltd.

So you could in a way say that Castle Technology is the new Acorn.

So, yes the legacy of Acorn, with its OS, hardware and processor development are all still active, but the OS and hardware have not been anything to do with the original company since 1998.

The only original part of Acorn that is still going today is ARM Holdings, continuing to develop and manufacture RISC processors, and these are mainly for integrated appliances. Much like today's PPC processor development.

And today, you will find a company calling themselves Acorn Computers and using exactly the same logo and branding. But that is where it ends. This is a PC manufacturer based in Nottingham and has no connection with the original company. They just license the trademark from a French company who own it. Exactly the same as the Commodore Gaming company that now exists. Just a PC manufacturing company using licensed Commodore branding.

[killergorilla]

Better handled than AmigaOS?!?!?!


HOW!?!?!?

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

A quick rundown on what came builtin to the ST:
Scsi, midi, 68000@16MHz, 3channel sound.

16MHz? : If it was running at that speed I don't think the Amiga would have had quite the technological lead it did. The ST's 68000 ran at 8MHz!

If it had been running at 16MHz then coders could have easily used that extra speed to help counter the Amiga's custom chipset advantage.

[Goldrunner]

Seems I got my figures wrong when I mentioned that Frontier was 25% faster on the ST, is was actually no more than 15%. I actually started thinking that figure I quoted must be wrong since 25% seems to much. So I went looking for the magazine article and found the relevant section below, really sorry for getting this wrong I wasn't trying to mislead:

The CPU on the ST ran at 8Mhz and not 16Mhz as someone stated here, unless they are talking about TT. In any case the slight increase of CPU speed is easily countered on the Amiga with its custom chips, only purely 3D games like Frontier would actually play faster. In any other type of game the Amiga would have the speed advantage if they used the Amiga's hardware properly.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

Better handled than AmigaOS?!?!?!

HOW!?!?!?

While the breakup of Acorn did see probably even more twists and turns than the Commodore/Amiga one, development did continue on RISCOS quite consistently after 1998, with 2 branches of the OS still in development today, through RISCOS Ltd, and its license holder Castle Technology Ltd, with their ITONIX and Acorn A7000+ systems running RISCOS 5. Plus ARM Holdings was unaffected, so CPU development of RISC processors continued.

You can't say the same about AmigaOS or the hardware it runs on. How long did we have to wait for AmigaOS 4 to finally arrive? And it still isn't the OS it could have been had development been allowed to continue from the demise of Commodore.

And what about the hardware to run it on? There was no easy or clear upgrade path for owners of classic Amiga hardware, due to classic Amiga PPC cards being so rare, out of production for years, and so commanding a premium. And the AmigaOne was such a limite run you could view it was a complete failure. And in many peoples eyes (mine included) the current PPC based PCs running AmigaOS 4.1 are not Amigas. The Amiga was more than just the OS. The hardware was the magical part that made the Amiga so special. For this reason (and sorry for going off topic), there are no logical reasons for sticking with expensive to manufacter and sell PPC based PCs for AmigaOS 4, when x86 hardware is now so prolific and affordable out of the box. The Amiga has ended up becoming just an OS. The heart and soul of the classic Amiga, its hardware, has been left behind.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

Seems I got my figures wrong when I mentioned that Frontier was 25% faster on the ST, is was actually no more than 15%. I actually started thinking that figure I quoted must be wrong since 25% seems to much. So I went looking for the magazine article and found the relevant section below, really sorry for getting this wrong I wasn't trying to mislead:

The CPU on the ST ran at 8Mhz and not 16Mhz as someone stated here, unless they are talking about TT. In any case the slight increase of CPU speed is easily countered on the Amiga with its custom chips, only purely 3D games like Frontier would actually play faster. In any other type of game the Amiga would have the speed advantage if they used the Amiga's hardware properly.

Yep, and what did i say a bit sooner, this game use exactly the same code between amiga and ST ! And he made it rely on CPU. Guess why the ST win ? It is an ST coding way ! So with this the game is sure to be slower on amiga....... And it doesn't prove that the ST is superior in 3D, it's just related to the way it's coded

[Si-Pie]

Yep I agree with you Doc Mindie the Amiga certainly did have an edge. As Harrison and Goldrunner has just pointed out the ST CPU ran at 8MHz which was slightly higher than the Amiga but this was a moot point as the ST cpu had to do all the work by itself where the Amiga had the custom chips to help its CPU out.

Goldrunner mentioned the STE being released and he was right it came with a Blitter and few other improvements but the Blitter in the STE was not as good or complex as the one found in the Amiga. This was unusual as the Amigas blitter was over 4 years old at this point. The Amigas blitter is 2x more efficient at copying and 3 x more efficient at masking sprites.

Also Goldrunner was right the STe had an improved palette making it equal to the Amigas 4096 colours but still could only display 16 colours in games. Problem with the STe and why it was a flop in the marketplace was because it was too late to the party.

It was released in 1990 so the Amiga had already captured the market and developers kept on developing for the original ST in fear of alienating the ST owners. Atari made too many mistakes with the ST in making too many configurations and developers just developed for the lowest common denominator. The STf market was just too important to software editors (especially game editors) so they didn't sell STe versions of their products.

[Si-Pie]

Yep if memory serves Goldrunner the ST version of Falcon also ran faster than the Amiga version due to the slightly higher clocked CPU. Of course as dlfrsilver mentioned it all comes down to the coding.

[r.cade]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

Si-Pie:

CAOS... anyone know if there's any chance of getting hold of it? CAOS was, I've been lead to believe, the OS C= wanted to ship with the Amiga, but couldn't iron out the bugs in time, and Workbench was "thrown together" as an alternative... which was less major bugs but more minor ones, IIRC.... and it had the Guru Meditation.

The only piece that wasn't developed on time and had to be changed was the filesystem. It wasn't EXEC or Workbench or anything like that. The story goes they had to go with a quick port of TripOS (renamed to AmigaDOS) because the people that were contracted to do the original filesystem wanted a lot more money to finish it when they found out they were dealing with Commodore instead of a small California startup.

[Goldrunner]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I have frontier elite 2 on both amiga and atari STE. Where are the 25% more speed on ST ? Also, if Braben has choosed to make frontier rely only on CPU processor, it's an atari ST
programming port. An amiga coding means using custom chips or else it's crap

Frontier on the Amiga crap, well that is new to me since i played it extensivelly on the Amiga when it came out and it is was far from crap. The Amiga version is not a port from the ST, the Amiga version was developed first and then the ST (please see the scan I posted). Frontier was a pure 3D game meaning maths intensive calculations, so the blitter and copper would not have been used. Seeing as everything was done with the CPU it was bound to be slightly faster on the ST.

If you know a way of using the Amiga's custom chips for Frontier then I suggest you post your ideas here, I'm sure Amiga programmers would be very interested. Even David Braben may learn where he went wrong with his Amiga version.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Everything you do in software eats up your CPU power. That's why there's nothing better in the world than hardwired effects. They eats no cpu power at all. About the 512 colors, i will
only take a known example : Wings of death title screen / thalion. The title screen is a spectrum 512 picture on atari ST. But they made it too on amiga how ? By using the COPPER !!! No need to use ham on amiga to display 512 colors, use the copper instead

I may be wrong but I can't remember any copper paint package on the Amiga so that people didn't have to use HAM. If there is then I salute the Amiga once again for getting around the HAM problem when painting in high colour. Th ST managed a 512 colour at once by switching the palette every cycle, it amazing what you can do with crap hardware isn't it.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

While having 4096 colors, the blitter on STE is really weak. In game coding, when the STE was out, some famous Atari ST coders like Paul Cuisset made some tests, and it appears that the A500 blitter is WAY faster and better.

I have seen you state this before on the Atari forums, but when people ask you to justify this claim you don't answer. So I will do the same and ask, please can you give me the technical reasons why the ST's blitter is weak. I can then conform your answer with ST programmers to see if your correct. Also, if Paul Cuisset made some test then please point me in the direction of his findings.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The amiga computer was great ; because it was light years ahead (15-20 years ahead) before everyone. The atari st is only a mediocre hardware that had some good and bad programs running on it. The amiga and neogeo have similar technology (M68000) but have nothing in common.
It's the same between amiga and ST. Sharing the same processor but the difference stops here. To me video games on 16/32 bits like amiga and ST
are seperated in 3 generations ; the 1 st generation where the 16 bits machines had just appeared, and the coders were not handling the computers at their best (8 bits lookish). this was the time where games appeared on atari ST and were converted badly on amiga, as straight port era going from 1985 to 1989. 2nd generation came with Shadow of the beast ; It was the first time the atari ST got deadly stabbed, beast coders made other coders eyes opened, the amiga was indeed more powerful, and consequently to a serious coding, some new possibilities in games arised.
Since the atari ST was the lowest platform, and as such used as the development machine (tools, etc...) ; it was now time to use the amiga as base machine, meaning more powerful tools, instead of ST limited ones in term of colors, etc.... this era was 1989-1991 ; The 3rd generation has seen games hardly or even not possible to convert on atari ST signing its own death on the market : Flashback, Monkey island 2, indy 4, Jim Power (with the results we know), Mr nutz, Lion heart to say the least.
period going from 1992 to the end of amiga life.

Yes the Amiga was and is a brilliant machine but you really should come down to earth with your blinkered view of other machines. For example, you stated the Atari ST was the lowest computer in 1989, erm what about the Spectrum, Amstard CPC, Commodore 64, etc, etc, that where still widely used at this date? The Amiga was 10 to 15 years ahead of everything else, what about the 32-bit Archimedes are you stating that this machine was 15 years behind the Amiga!?!? I won't even mention that by the year 2001 (1986+15 years) every PC and MAC available was more powerful. I wouldn't even say the Amiga was 15 years ahead of the ST, ahead yes, but 15 years is basically absurd.

OK, software support on the ST basically died out by 1993, there where a few releases in 1994 like Frontier, Transartica, the Ishar Trilogy, etc, but by the main most companies had left the ST market by 1993. The Amiga lasted another year before the companies started leaving it. But its decline was a lot slower and commerical products still trickled into the market well after its commercial highs of the early 90's. It really is a testament to its users that the Amiga struggled on against the consoles and PC's.

The Amiga golden age was the earlier 90's while the ST was the the mid to late 80's. You say the Amiga had crap ST ports at that time, maybe you would have preferred no port at all if you dislike the games of this period so much, in fact the Amiga would'nt have got the port at all if the ST wasn't around since the Amiga's market share was to small. This trend obviously reversed in the 90's since the Amiga was the dominant platform.

I really have no problem with the fact that the Amiga was more powerful than the ST, but please don't put it on such a lofty position and say everything else was crap. Everyting machine from the 80's had something to like and the ST is no exception. I am a devoted Amiga user and used the machine extensively is the early 90's, I even designed and developed a couple of commericial titles on the machine. But that doesn't mean I will bash other machines like the ST, in fact we all should embrace that golden age and stop sqabbling like children about our own favourites.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

I may be wrong but I can't remember any copper paint package on the Amiga so that people didn't have to use HAM. If there is then I salute the Amiga once for getting around the HAM problem when painting in high colour. Th ST managed a 512 colour at once by switching the palette every cycle, it amazing what you can do with crap hardware isn't it.

There's a program called HamLab on Aminet. It can render 24 bit images to a 15 color per scan line (one color is fixed) format in hires lace on an A500: HamLab (demo version). Although this isn't a paint program, it still allowes you to use such modes.

512 colors may seem amazing, but as I said before an A500 can do 55*256=14080 colors per screen (more with vertical overscan).

[Goldrunner]

Originally Posted by Thorham

There's a program called HamLab on Aminet. It can render 24 bit images to a 15 color per scan line (one color is fixed) format in hires lace on an A500: HamLab (demo version). Although this isn't a paint program, it still allowes you to use such modes.

512 colors may seem amazing, but as I said before an A500 can do 55*256=14080 colors per screen (more with vertical overscan).

Well, there is no doubt the Amiga had better graphics I have never disputed that fact. All I am disputing is the view that 16 colours was the max on the ST at once. The 16 colour barrier was routinely beoken by games using a interupt B copper effect, I know this as fact because I have taken thosands of screenshots for Guardians an many games go well beyond 16 colours.

Of course copper effects and 512 colour pictures are hardware tricks on the ST, but so are HAM and EHB mode on the Amiga. However, there is no way of geting past the 32 colour standard low res screen on the Amiga, the ST's 16 colours just pales against it, as it does for all the other resolutions the Amiga as got to offer.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

Well, there is no doubt the Amiga had better graphics I have never disputed that fact. All I am disputing is the view that 16 colours was the max on the ST at once. The 16 colour barrier was routinely beoken by games using a interupt B copper effect, I know this as fact because I have taken thosands of screenshots for Guardians an many games go well beyond 16 colours.

Don't worry, I believe you . It's a technique that can be used on any hardware that keeps fetching the color data while updating the screen, and can be used not only on Amigas and Sts, but also on the C64, although you can't change the palette on that machine, you can change parts of the color table in a similar way.

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

Of course copper effects and 512 colour pictures are hardware tricks on the ST, but so are HAM and EHB mode on the Amiga.

Not quite. HAM and EHB are hardware modes, you don't need tricks to use them. Same goes for changing palette values with the copper, it's not really a trick, because you're using documented features. More than 16 colors on the ST could be viewed as a software trick.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

Frontier on the Amiga crap, well that is new to me since i played it extensivelly on the Amiga when it came out and it is was far from crap.

The game is good, the way it's coded is crap (it's coded like it was running on an ST).

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

The Amiga version is not a port from the ST, the Amiga version was developed first and then the ST (please see the scan I posted). Frontier was a pure 3D game meaning maths intensive calculations, so the blitter and copper would not have been used. Seeing as everything was done with the CPU it was bound to be slightly faster on the ST.

David Braben has been coding it CPU first in mind. That's the way ST games are coded. This is not the way games must be coded on amiga.
The CPU is much more used on an ST since it handles everything. When you look a game coded on amiga with amiga in mind, you find LOTs of hardware calls.....

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

If you know a way of using the Amiga's custom chips for Frontier then I suggest you post your ideas here, I'm sure Amiga programmers would be very interested. Even David Braben may learn where he went wrong with his Amiga version.

Some 3D games don't rely only on the CPU doing calculations. Games like Epic, Robocop 3..... mmhh ? We should ask Galahad or AHLE2 on youtube . It's not that David Braben did it wrong like 'crap game' it's more 'bad coding way'. If you code the amiga like an atari St, be sure it will be slow..
mercs, strider, most us gold games are ST ports with ST coding in mind.

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

I may be wrong but I can't remember any copper paint package on the Amiga so that people didn't have to use HAM. If there is then I salute the Amiga once again for getting around the HAM problem when painting in high colour. Th ST managed a 512 colour at once by switching the palette every cycle, it amazing what you can do with crap hardware isn't it.

The trick used on WOD amiga is done via coding. So out of reach from users at first. the amiga can do dynamic palettizing (ex: Pang, Golden Axe). On pang it's impossible to see the palette changes, while it's visible
on golden Axe. When i say crap hardware i mean by it that it doesn't has anything particularly brilliant ; The ST hardware was rushed to face the amiga..... well known story.

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

I have seen you state this before on the Atari forums, but when people ask you to justify this claim you don't answer. So I will do the same and ask, please can you give me the technical reasons why the ST's blitter is weak. I can then conform your answer with ST programmers to see if your correct. Also, if Paul Cuisset made some test then please point me in the direction of his findings.

Ok, here is the facts : When the STE was out in France, a journalist of the french magazine Joystick asked to Paul Cuisset in an interview if he will be using the STE blitter in delphine games. Since Paul had one to make some tests, he answered that the STE blitter was not what he hoped..... Meaning he wanted the STE to have one as strong as the one of an A500,
to finally find something weak...... he was disappointed.

[quote=Goldrunner;578187]Yes the Amiga was and is a brilliant machine but you really should come down to earth with your blinkered view of other machines. For example, you stated the Atari ST was the lowest computer in 1989, erm what about the Spectrum, Amstard CPC, Commodore 64, etc, etc, that where still widely used at this date? The Amiga was 10 to 15 years ahead of everything else, what about the 32-bit Archimedes are you stating that this machine was 15 years behind the Amiga!?!?

Well, the problem here is that the acorn was an english only machine.
It was never exported outside England. I never seen one, never seen games running on it. You can't compare too the ST to the 8 bits, they were not in the same rank it's not fair to compare a 16 bit machine to 8 bitters.

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

I won't even mention that by the year 2001 (1986+15 years) every PC and MAC available was more powerful. I wouldn't even say the Amiga was 15 years ahead of the ST, ahead yes, but 15 years is basically absurd.

I was not talking too about PURE power, but technology. The amiga technology allowed so MANY possibilities.... The PC autorun is a license bought by microsoft to commodore (they were first on this with amiga CD32). There is a document floating on the net about this

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

OK, software support on the ST basically died out by 1993, there where a few releases in 1994 like Frontier, Transartica, the Ishar Trilogy, etc, but by the main most companies had left the ST market by 1993. The Amiga lasted another year before the companies started leaving it. But its decline was a lot slower and commerical products still trickled into the market well after its commercial highs of the early 90's. It really is a testament to its users that the Amiga struggled on against the consoles and PC's.

Yes you are right here

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

The Amiga golden age was the earlier 90's while the ST was the mid to late 80's. You say the Amiga had crap ST ports at that time, maybe you would have preferred no port at all if you dislike the games of this period so much, in fact the Amiga would'nt have got the port at all if the ST wasn't around since the Amiga's market share was to small. This trend obviously reversed in the 90's since the Amiga was the dominant platform.

It was not the case of the amiga market too small, it was because the game companies wanted to output games on MOST formats. The ST was the bridge between the amiga and amstrad CPC game conversions.
Exemple : Turrican 2. Coded by and on amiga. Converted to ST, and then the amstrad cpc version was coded and ported from a 1040 STE. The fact is that it was very often the case. The same happens with Ocean software. All their CPC games were done on atari ST via custom tools (I have them btw). And of course, when it's good for CPC, heh why not doing that also for amiga games ? The ST was the dev machine.

Originally Posted by Goldrunner

I really have no problem with the fact that the Amiga was more powerful than the ST, but please don't put it on such a lofty position and say everything else was crap. Everyting machine from the 80's had something to like and the ST is no exception. I am a devoted Amiga user and used the machine extensively is the early 90's, I even designed and developed a couple of commericial titles on the machine. But that doesn't mean I will bash other machines like the ST, in fact we all should embrace that golden age and stop sqabbling like children about our own favourites.

It's not bashing the ST by saying it had a weak hardware. It's the truth.
The CPC also had a weak hardware, and many games where really nice to play. i had some games surprises on atari ST (Wod, NZS, twinworld), you see, i don't hate this machine Having a strong hardware is a luck, a luck that allows to do more complex games, and many devs were limited on atari ST to do some effects coming from their imagination. The amiga power was a luck to coders to make better games, the more they do, the more they want abilities to do more advanced games that some hardware can't cope with. don't you agree ?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Harrison

Acorn still around? Am I missing something? The company was broken up in 1998 into several independent operations, and the RISC personal computer subsidiary disolved and sold off in 2000 after Morgan Stanley Dean Witter group purchased it to gain the 24% share in ARM Holdings.

After further development many of the different parts of the original Acorn Computers changed hands and ended up being owned by many different companies. Some parts were brought back together by a management Team, but it didn't reform Acorn as it once was. Instead focused on set top box development, which failed.

Much like the Amiga, RISCOS was licensed to a company called RISCOS Ltd who continue to develop and support it much like Amiga OS (only better handled). And the rights to hardware development of Acorn computers was bought in 1998 by Castle Technology, and later the rights to RISCOS as well, from RISCOS Ltd.

So you could in a way say that Castle Technology is the new Acorn.

So, yes the legacy of Acorn, with its OS, hardware and processor development are all still active, but the OS and hardware have not been anything to do with the original company since 1998.

The only original part of Acorn that is still going today is ARM Holdings, continuing to develop and manufacture RISC processors, and these are mainly for integrated appliances. Much like today's PPC processor development.

And today, you will find a company calling themselves Acorn Computers and using exactly the same logo and branding. But that is where it ends. This is a PC manufacturer based in Nottingham and has no connection with the original company. They just license the trademark from a French company who own it. Exactly the same as the Commodore Gaming company that now exists. Just a PC manufacturing company using licensed Commodore branding.

Hm, wow. I don't doubt your veracity, still you have to agree the original Acorn coped with adversities way past the death of Commodore Amiga, and it's pretty amazing misc. defense industry products use 2GHz versions of the original, beautiful 29000 transistor ARM cpu Acorn created.

Also, their BASICs rocked throughout all their platforms, unlike the tripe the rest of us had to put up with on the rest of the platforms (well, alternatives emerged later, phew!)

The same kind of awesomeness seems to follow Jay Miner through the various platforms. Make no mistake, his vision for the Amiga chipset is on par with Steve Wozniak's design for Apple II in 1976.

AFAIC, there has only been these 3 names in the history of computing. They cared and did it right (still doesn't mean some VPUs were iffy, f.ex. the games for Archimedes were pretty bad, Zarch and not much more :P)

The rest is just some chips in a box that anyone could have designed nine to five.

The more you learn about OCS tho, the more you understand how great he was.

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The amiga can do dynamic palettizing (ex: Pang, Golden Axe). On pang it's impossible to see the palette changes, while it's visible on golden Axe.

Where was "dynamic palettizing" used in Amiga Golden Axe?

I used a Mega 4 ST to develop in which I had an aftermarket 16MHz 68000 (with 8K 16MHz external cache as I recall) - which ran really well but the stock 512 and 1040 ST's were 8MHz. In the early days the Amiga wasn't really supported because of its price, then games got ported from ST to Amiga, not really using the Amiga's hardware. Then games were developed for both, starting to use the Amiga's custom chips. Then there was Amiga development with a really bad ST conversion because the hardware wasn't upto it and finally the ST died and Amiga went it alone for a while.

Whilst the Amiga has lots of lovely hardware I always felt restricted by the custom chips only being able to access 512K, once 1MB of memory was common. FAT Agnus meant more memory was accessible on the A500+, A600 and A1200 (gross agnus ) but commercially I had to write for the common platform which was A500.

The Amiga's hardware also stole cycles off the 68K, particularly with the blitter running full blast, but there was still the opportunity for some parallel processing although I doubt the hardware in the Amiga would have been much use for 3D modelling hence David Braben's comments re: ST CPU speed.

The Amiga's hardware sprites were a frustration to, I thought they were a bit messy and were only suitable for games which had been designed to use them if you see what I mean. Although their usage created some nice, interesting code.

The Amiga's hardware also had some timing issues, not all Amiga's were built the same. Software which was at the limit of the machine worked OK on some Amiga's but on others there were display glitches etc so certain things were restricted. Whereas an ST was an ST, worked on all of them.

As far as games are concerned, the operating systems were meaningless - I never used any of the ST's OS and the only thing I ever asked the Amiga's OS was "what CPU have you got?", "how much memory"? and "where is is?" then all the vectors got overwritten and I took over

Ultimately the ST was a better work tool and the Amiga a better console, what made me laugh was how serious the people who wrote the Amiga's OS were thinking it was some kind of business machine - Commodore only got hold of it by accident, it should really have been an Atari in my opinion. As Jay Miner said, "I am not surprised at what people have done with the Amiga but it still amazes me what people do with the Atari 400 and 800". For me the Amiga will always be the Atari 16000

Memories

[turrican3]

stop it
the amiga was better that's all