ok I hate to say this but do you not think the atari ST

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by Photon

The Amiga pretty much has the most ambitious chipset ever made in a home computer. If you mean that an 8-way 'mapper' and music playing at the same time to boot(!) isn't complex to do on a base Amiga, well I couldn't agree more...?

And certainly you have to write complex code to make the ST do things it wasn't designed to do, like games with stuff moving around.

As a result, many ST coders learned more 68000 tricks and wrote tighter code than most Amiga coders.

But the complexity is then in the software, as you mentioned.

I guess you don't really mean that the Amiga design wasn't complex, certainly not contrasted by the rudimentary 'off-the-shelf' designs of MSX, ST, PC, etc.

It's a different era but I'd say the GBA is more complex to code on than the Amiga despite being built for the same kind of 2d games. The playfield and sprite hardware has more features on that unit. I'd guess the SNES was of a similar level of complexity but never did anything on it so I can't say for sure. Either way as long as you have good docs you can't go wrong. The HRM is a very good piece of documentation. Out of curiosity have you ever fiddled with the ST from asm? You might like it.. It's different but still fun.

The STe is a nice machine to code on as is the Falcon if you can source one.

[ImmortalA1000]

Going off topic I know (because we were talking case designs) but speaking of the ST/STE lines, wouldn't the better solution for Atari after launching a weaker machine [compared to the Amiga 1000] have been to simply bolt on a 16mhz 68000 instead of forcing recoding of all games to get any improvements with an inferior 2 channel 8bit DAC and their less sophisticated blitter setup?

I say this because if the PC (spit!!) market has taught us anything, consumers like having their favourite software run miraculously faster when they eventually 'upgrade' their computer with a newer one. Had Atari done this then ALL games would instantly have improved with a 16mhz 68000 not just polygon games. The most the code would need is a little tweak for the main game engine loop timing or nothing at all. Running Gauntlet 1 on a 16mhz ST gives a very satisfying arcade conversion which is light years ahead of either Garrison or Gauntlet 2 on Amiga. Lotus II also runs almost as smooth as the Amiga version with a 16mhz 68000....sound is another issue on Lotus Luckily Gauntlet 1 is 100% software sample playback on the ST though so in that case still worked a treat.

(Gauntlet 2 was probably some of the worst coding ever on the Amiga and even inferior on the ST to its predecessor)

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Going off topic I know (because we were talking case designs) but speaking of the ST/STE lines, wouldn't the better solution for Atari after launching a weaker machine [compared to the Amiga 1000] have been to simply bolt on a 16mhz 68000 instead of forcing recoding of all games to get any improvements with an inferior 2 channel 8bit DAC and their less sophisticated blitter setup?

I say this because if the PC (spit!!) market has taught us anything, consumers like having their favourite software run miraculously faster when they eventually 'upgrade' their computer with a newer one. Had Atari done this then ALL games would instantly have improved with a 16mhz 68000 not just polygon games. The most the code would need is a little tweak for the main game engine loop timing or nothing at all. Running Gauntlet 1 on a 16mhz ST gives a very satisfying arcade conversion which is light years ahead of either Garrison or Gauntlet 2 on Amiga. Lotus II also runs almost as smooth as the Amiga version with a 16mhz 68000....sound is another issue on Lotus Luckily Gauntlet 1 is 100% software sample playback on the ST though so in that case still worked a treat.

(Gauntlet 2 was probably some of the worst coding ever on the Amiga and even inferior on the ST to its predecessor)

They did The Mega STE had a 16 mhz cpu.

The blitter keeps getting panned on the ST but it's quite nice. The only area relevant to games where it trails the Amiga is cookie cut since it requires two passes to mask. D = ~S&D ; D = S | D

Even then it's fast enough for games.

It *is* a full implementation of bitblit with extensions. It doesn't have line draw or area fill but it does have smudge (an indirect addressing mode) which can be used for fast magnification or hflipping rasters. It's also capable of blitting across the 24 bit address range. IE you can blit from ROM or hit the memory mapped IO registers with it.

Compared to the 68k it's no contest. It'll murder it for speed since shifts are free. The sound on the ste on the other hand... Grrrr...

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by frank_b

They did The Mega STE had a 16 mhz cpu.

The blitter keeps getting panned on the ST but it's quite nice. The only area relevant to games where it trails the Amiga is cookie cut since it requires two passes to mask. D = ~S&D ; D = S | D

Even then it's fast enough for games.

It *is* a full implementation of bitblit with extensions. It doesn't have line draw or area fill but it does have smudge (an indirect addressing mode) which can be used for fast magnification or hflipping rasters. It's also capable of blitting across the 24 bit address range. IE you can blit from ROM or hit the memory mapped IO registers with it.

Compared to the 68k it's no contest. It'll murder it for speed since shifts are free. The sound on the ste on the other hand... Grrrr...

The Mega STE (not Mega ST) did have a 16mhz option yes but as the ROM required for it is so new most original games don't work.

The Blitter/Stereo DAC/4096 CLUT mods are fine as they are but two points...

1. ALL software still looked the same with zero improvement on the STE machines with the extra features.

2. If you thought the AGA catalogue was pathetic compared to OCS/ECS then you just check out all 5 STE only games ever written for the Atari.

Spec sheets are fine but as a user when no games are STE specifically designed and all your old games still shift along like a granny with two broken hips despite you having a good DAC/Blitter added onto the £100 extra machine you see where the problem is...........??

[athiga]

quote in tramels own words i wanted to make a cheaper machine
for people who didnt need anything fancy and it can run dbase
using gem ect oh an its got a midi interface lol

no word of multimedia ect atari rushed a cheap machine onto the
market before comodore sold amiga's

the xbox is not as grand as the ps3
but xbox is way cheaper an was out before ps3


and like amiga v atari st guess wich one is the xbox ??

bash bash > ready to duck

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by athiga

quote in tramels own words i wanted to make a cheaper machine
for people who didnt need anything fancy and it can run dbase
using gem ect oh an its got a midi interface lol

no word of multimedia ect atari rushed a cheap machine onto the
market before comodore sold amiga's

the xbox is not as grand as the ps3
but xbox is way cheaper an was out before ps3


and like amiga v atari st guess wich one is the xbox ??

bash bash > ready to duck

As a games console only the 360's games can look more or less identical to the PS3 games thanks to a fantastic (and superior) ATI GPU. The PS3 has something akin to a dual 6800GTX setup in a PC in the RSX Nvidia supplied to Sony...the CELL is a superior geometry setup engine however so it kinda balances out. But if all you do is play games then really the cheaper option is just as good

I've no problem with the ST, it was superior to the Mac in ever way you care to mention in 1985 and it cost 75% LESS so all credit there to Jack and co.

My only point was that doubling CPU speedy properly would have given the ST a massive boost with its back catalogue (unlike the STE which didn't make any improvement to the existing or new games unless recoded for specifically)...this is part of my project I am working on though so I'll leave it at that until I am finished up on it

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The Mega STE (not Mega ST) did have a 16mhz option yes but as the ROM required for it is so new most original games don't work.

The Blitter/Stereo DAC/4096 CLUT mods are fine as they are but two points...

1. ALL software still looked the same with zero improvement on the STE machines with the extra features.

2. If you thought the AGA catalogue was pathetic compared to OCS/ECS then you just check out all 5 STE only games ever written for the Atari.

Spec sheets are fine but as a user when no games are STE specifically designed and all your old games still shift along like a granny with two broken hips despite you having a good DAC/Blitter added onto the £100 extra machine you see where the problem is...........??

Perhaps for users. As someone who got a kick out of learning how to use those features I think I got my money's worth* Incidentally the STE was 10 quid cheaper than the FM when I bought it.


Frank

*Demoing stuff on it and the Amiga landed me my first games development job.

[athiga]

wow ive learned somthing ati in xbox and ps3 two 6800's so ps3 is purely just a better cpu and blue ray with better cooling i

ive also heard that some st's are prone to failure more often

corect me if im wrong

im just the average amiga user that belives all the storys
so im atari ignorant

it must be true some bloke down the pub told me

[athiga]

yes i know old arguments an all that herd it before ok no more st bashin
amiga an st is like brotherly love u have a few fights but generaly u get on ok
so yes
god bless atari for the 2600 and the old geezers with the tshirts

[Photon]

The A1000 cost about $1300 (in USA) in 1985, though. Still quite a bit lower than $2000-2500 for the Mac. The A500 was about 1/4 of that when it came.

(Side note, in Sweden the A1000 was about $2500 when it was introduced, the same as the Mac. They lowered it drastically after about a year.)

[athiga]

ok ive gota be honest i didnt know what st meant thats how ignorant i was
also its ironic that the ST was designed by ex-Commodore enginers and the Amiga by ex-Atarians

so all st bashing is stupid

interstingly if the gaza the Gaza was a dual MC68000 processor system
atari was developing was ever finished atari os would have been multi
core ready and would have eaten the amiga for breakfast and s*iT wb
out for tea

wow dream of dreams a multi cpu amiga they say intuition carnt
handle it needs all sorts like memory protection ect wich would bloat os
so much we would think pc is small os

[TCD]

Originally Posted by athiga

so all st bashing is stupid

Haha, no. It's a ripoff and we're here to let them know... we were... you get the idea

[athiga]

when u think about it the atari amiga and the comodore st
whould have been the right way round

as atari were the origonal gamers and amiga was a gamers machine

and CBM ST fits nice a 6800 based cheap pc clone

and what did we learn today children?

[TCD]

No idea. Maybe that pointless threads are pointless? Anyway, it's the way it is and I think Amiga is still Amiga (not Commodore or Atari).

[athiga]

and we all know you carnt own her

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by athiga

ok ive gota be honest i didnt know what st meant thats how ignorant i was
also its ironic that the ST was designed by ex-Commodore enginers and the Amiga by ex-Atarians

so all st bashing is stupid

interstingly if the gaza the Gaza was a dual MC68000 processor system
atari was developing was ever finished atari os would have been multi
core ready and would have eaten the amiga for breakfast and s*iT wb
out for tea

wow dream of dreams a multi cpu amiga they say intuition carnt
handle it needs all sorts like memory protection ect wich would bloat os
so much we would think pc is small os

I doubt very much the Amiga OS could ever be as bloated or inefficient as OS X/Linux/Vista/Win7 And anyway Workbench/Kickstart managed in 1985 what it took Apple and M$ two decades. Memory protection is fine and dandy but the simple fact is I can create a 2kb program that STILL instantly locks up Win7 or Vista....not a virus...just a simple task due to Windows still being as crap today as it ever was Hell a spec of dust on your DVD whilst burning = forced shutdown and reboot in Windows 7...how crap is that!

Gazza would have made the A1000 look like a disposable computer as far as costs were concerned too....And the A1000 was Commodore just trying it on just like when Jack overcharged his PET customers simply because he knew he had a superior product...the A500 which is identical to the A1000 didn't really cost that much less to make save for 256kb or whatever of WORM RAM onboard. Wouldn't have cost a lot to use the same quality keyboard as the 1000 in the 500 but they chose not to.

However I think what was better/worse isn't important, but it IS important to know about where things were in the mid 80s and what role Acorn/Apple/Atari/Commodore/IBM & wannabe machines played and why things are so depressing now when you walk into a shop and you have overpriced underpowered(GPU) Apple stuff and bloatware Wintel stuff.....the two worst priced/performing machines won....how did that happen!?!?! lol

(I know how it happened, Atari spent too much time trying to be Amiga, Commodore were lost for strategy and Acorn...well they were Acorn...what the hell did they know about mass market computing...so the other two would win no matter how crap/expensive their machines were because nobody else was left to compete!)

Now...what is really interesting is...if you notice the first 18 months of games coding for the ST pretty much everyone ignored the fact of it's limitations (like dodgy sound, no scrolling etc) and quite a few games had OK horizontal scrolling (Road Runner being a good example), all sound was sample playback (Gauntlet 1 already pushing plenty pixels!), 512 simultaneous colour intro screens (The Pawn) etc etc...then when all the big guns got involved we got the shovelware with plinky plonk sound, shit scrolling and hardly any presentation worth squat....and that IS bad because in meant ST ports like Gauntlet 2 on the Amiga are a complete pile of crap that look worse than 8bit Sega Nintendo consoles AND inferior to the ST exclusive version of Gauntlet.

So you see, being a fan of one machine is all very well, but unless you take an interest [without bias] of EVERY machine you will never really understand how it was...in this case why so many Amiga games failed to deliver anything like 100% of the OCS/ECS chipset capability. I cringe when I think of the arcade conversions...especially the Sega ones...that involve anything like sophisticated graphics (Outrun/Powerdrift/Chase HQ yadda yadda).

As an example, over a decade ago me and Neill Corlett (author of the excellent DOS gauntlet emulator from the 90s) did some preliminary work on writing Gauntlet from scratch and there is no reason why the OCS Amigas couldn't have an arcade perfect looking version given the limitations of composite video/modulator output. Most of that emulator at the time was transcoding x86 to 68k ASM core...and we are talking Pentium II 300mhz days at best....ie not even fast enough to run WinUAE....bit of an eye opener.

[athiga]

some good pionts windows locking up if it carnt read a cd

ahh there is other threads with people disasembling the games an reasemling them ! for better use of the amiga hardware ha ha first whdload what next i wonder?

[Paul_s]

Atari 1200ST launched, eeek

[aeberbach]

I have no practical experience of using an Atari at all after the membrane-keyboard 400 that was my first computer. But I have always thought the Atari industrial design was way ahead of almost everyone. The 800 is maybe the best-looking 8-bit machine, better than the Apple IIc or anything else. I prefer their 16-bit designs to Commodore's.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

Atari 1200ST launched, eeek

Cool, looks good.

Imagine if Commodore and formed a partnership with Atari to build Amiga's rather than competing with them for a dwindling market share against the IBM PC clone onslaught