Machine Wars - Fight!

[OmegaMax]

Originally Posted by touko

Yes we are expecting much more in 92 than a simple refresh of a 8 years old technology .
This don't mean that AGA was a bad system, it was only too little,too late .

[touko]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Absolute bullshit. If compatibility was such an important factor, why was anything other than a 68000/010 machine useless for games?

Ah, are you sure compatibily is bullshit??
a simple question, why do you think commodore put a bus,copper,blitter in AGA at 7.16 Mhz with a 2 access cycle chipRAM like OCS if not to maintain compatibility ??
Do you really think that a full 1 cycle access to chipram was not possible 8 years later ??, sure it was, but compatibility would surely have gone and the machine would have been more expensive too .

Btw another way to read your remark about the RAM expansion as 'out of budget' is to understand you admit RAM upgrade for the Amiga was very expensive, thus making the Archimedes, with its standard 1 Mbyte of RAM ( + 512 kbytes ROM at launch time), not that expensive after all.

RAM always have been expensive, it's not an amiga fact, and i don't see how SRAM at 8mhz(archimedes) could be less expensive or more or less at the same price than DRAM at 3.5 mhz(amiga),even in 1992.
And the difference in price between an A500 and a base archimedes in france was close to twice ,maybe more .*
EDIT : in a french mag "atari ST magazine n°21" the archimedes A310 was sold 11990 francs vs A500 4490 francs, without monitor in 1988,so more than 2.5x the price of the amiga and the 512 KB of RAM for amiga was sold for 1090 francs,so i'll don't call the archimedes not that expensive .

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Plus you mention ‘breathtaking’ new modes in these new models, show me some games that look so much better on an A3010 than on a A3000....and not just an old faster 3D game.

Why would they need to look better on an A3010 than on an A3000? It was the A1200 and Falcon that were playing catch-up to the A3000 in the first place.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Why would they need to look better on an A3010 than on an A3000? It was the A1200 and Falcon that were playing catch-up to the A3000 in the first place.

Because the A3010 was launched directly in the same market price range and time as the A1200 and Falcon thats why the comparison was made, the A3000 was double the price of the A500 in 1989 and was aimed at more for schools and education.

[MalikS]

Originally Posted by touko

[SNIP]


RAM always have been expensive, it's not an amiga fact, and i don't see how SRAM at 8mhz(archimedes) could be less expensive or more or less at the same price than DRAM at 3.5 mhz(amiga),even in 1992.
And the difference in price between an A500 and a base archimedes in france was close to twice ,maybe more .*
EDIT : in a french mag "atari ST magazine n°21" the archimedes A310 was sold 11990 francs vs A500 4490 francs, without monitor in 1988,so more than 2.5x the price of the amiga and the 512 KB of RAM for amiga was sold for 1090 francs,so i'll don't call the archimedes not that expensive .

SRAM ? Where does this come from ?
DRAM at 3.5 Mhz for the Amiga ? What the heck ? Where did you get that from ?

IIRC the Archimedes didn't use the same type of widely available DRAM as used in the Amiga, so yes by comparison DRAM for the Archie was expensive in 1987.
Remember the Archimedes' ARM (or better : ARM + MEMC) has a 32 bit wide memory bus, it doesn't access memory in chunks of 16 bits as the Amiga does ;-) , so it must have the right type of memory to do so, and it was rare and expensive at the time (how many true 32 bits machines in the world at the time ?).
It was not as rare in 1992, things had changed, so prices were much lower.

The price you give for the Archies are French prices, about 20% more expensive than UK prices ... And still if you want to keep up comparing an Archie with an Amiga just add an accelerator card to bring you over 4 MIPS (you won't find any), a graphics card to get higher screen modes and more colours (I doubt there were some at not-silly prices) and a sound card to get 8 voices (you won't find any). Plus excellent BASIC and so on and so forth ...
So comparing machines only using the price as a basis when they are so different is like comparing salads and carotts : that just makes no sense (but it is great to give the Amiga an advantage based on lower price and hiding the lack of features the Archie has as standard ).
But let's play with this idea of price-biased comparing machines, with a great sense of humour : I declare it just means the Spectrum or the C64 were the best machines, much better than an Amiga : after all they cost at the time less than a quarter / sixth of the price of an Amiga, when the Amiga wasn't more than 4 or 6 times better after all. Ah ah aha !
I love exposing lack of intellectual coherence, always used to bash the Archies.

Oh I was just going to forget : when comparing price of the Archie and the Amiga, maybe a bit of fairness would mean that you compare the Amiga 2000 with the A310, as they both use separate casing and keyboard.
And for the price of the Archies, they followed the same downtrend all machines know, high the year they are launched, and then becoming cheaper year after year ... Archie is from 1987, Amiga is from 1985, yes, it's good to remember that.
I won't tease you reminding you how ridiculously high priced the Amiga 1000 was, when it was launched, with only 256 kbytes of RAM ;-) and how much it cost in France when import circuits were not in place (as it has always been the case for the Archies in France. Acorn didn't give a damn about distributing in Frogland : for them it was UK 1st, then English speaking countries like Australia and New Zealand).
You can compare the launching price and the specs of the Amiga 1000 and the Archimedes A310, you'll see the overpriced machine wasn't the Archie.

[touko]

SRAM ? Where does this come from ?
DRAM at 3.5 Mhz for the Amiga ? What the heck ? Where did you get that from ?

I expected from you that you know what kind of RAM the archimedes has ,and it seems that you don't know that the amiga's chipram was DRAM,and it was a 2 cycles access at 7.16 mhz, so a 3.5 mhz .
The archie RAM is SRAM (static RAM) at 8 mhz,so a 1 cycle access RAM,this why the archimedes was so expensive.
The amiga was developed to be the most efficient possible with the cheapest ram possible,because RAM was the main cost for a computer at that time . .

I won't tease you reminding you how ridiculously high priced the Amiga 1000 was

i agree, this why it was very hard to sold, and also because at this time the atari ST was a better choice,until the A500 came out .

you'll see the overpriced machine wasn't the Archie.

Really this is only your statement, the A1000 was in fact not really overpriced, because it include so many extension ports which were removed in the A500 to reduce costs, it was only overpriced like i said before, for the mass market .

I declare it just means the Spectrum or the C64 were the best machines, much better than an Amiga : after all they cost at the time less than a quarter / sixth of the price of an Amiga

Why not, if price was your first and main criteria,and there is a ton of games on those systems.
We all have our criterias for defining what's a good system,this is also why you and me,we'll never agree on this point .

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Because the A3010 was launched directly in the same market price range and time as the A1200 and Falcon thats why the comparison was made, the A3000 was double the price of the A500 in 1989 and was aimed at more for schools and education.

I repeat: Why does it matter if there are A3010-exclusive games if Archimedes games are already on par with the A1200 and Falcon?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by idrougge

I repeat: Why does it matter if there are A3010-exclusive games if Archimedes games are already on par with the A1200 and Falcon?

Because they were selling a new piece of hardware to consumers, without dedicated software its like buying a new 386 PC with 2MB of RAM, only to be told you cant run Doom sorry, but hey you can play the old games faster instead!

As i said in an earlier post, games that weren't playable on the A3000 were out but needed 2MB RAM, i’m sure developers would have wanted to include support for the base A3010 but only 1MB RAM was a major issue in 1992 as Falcon owners found out too. And yes of course both could be upgraded to play these but my comparison was for base machines that was the only comparion i was trying to make game number wise.

[MalikS]

Originally Posted by touko

I expected from you that you know what kind of RAM the archimedes has ,and it seems that you don't know that the amiga's chipram was DRAM,and it was a 2 cycles access at 7.16 mhz, so a 3.5 mhz .
The archie RAM is SRAM (static RAM) at 8 mhz,so a 1 cycle access RAM,this why the archimedes was so expensive.
The amiga was developed to be the most efficient possible with the cheapest ram possible,because RAM was the main cost for a computer at that time . .


i agree, this why it was very hard to sold, and also because at this time the atari ST was a better choice,until the A500 came out .


Really this is only your statement, the A1000 was in fact not really overpriced, because it include so many extension ports which were removed in the A500 to reduce costs, it was only overpriced like i said before, for the mass market .


Why not, if price was your first and main criteria,and there is a ton of games on those systems.
We all have our criterias for defining what's a good system,this is also why you and me,we'll never agree on this point .

This is DRAM for the Archie, a Google search will prove it.
Where did you get this strange idea SRAM memory was used from ? Really ?
In the same pages stating that a sound chip must have one DAC per channel, maybe ?
Interesting ;-)

I know very well it is DRAM too for the Amiga, thanks ;-) (I know the hardware).
It is your statement that the D-RAM frequency is 3.5 Mhz that I am questioning.
(A polite way to say you are wrong, again, and don't know your Amiga. Again.).
So : I doubt what you say for the Amiga DRAM at 3.5 Mhz is true, and it is easy to understand why simply with what you are writing : if there are 2 accesses at 7.16 Mhz, then automatically it means this DRAM is fast enough to 'respond' at 7.16 Mhz, so it is not max-3.5 Mhz capable RAM that was used.
Accessing at 7.16 Mhz some 3.5 Mhz DRAM would result in a crash or would be utterly unreliable.
My guess is that C= used widespread (at the time) 8 Mhz capable DRAM, that is 125 ns.
So there is nothing glorious about the Amiga development in this area.
If you look at the Archie, you can say that yes there is the implementation of something interesting as far as memory is concerned, since the ARM+MEMC makes use of fast page mode, meaning a 32 bit access in memory takes only 1 cycle, after the 1st access in a list of multiple accesses. (Usage of the LDM and STM ARM instructions)
Prove me wrong but no other CPU at the time (1987) could do that, and it is part of the explanation for the ARM based Acorn machines speed.
At the heart of the design of the chipset was this simple idea of maximizing usage of memory bandwith. (rendering the costly process of the design of ( and the need of ) a blitter irrelevant. The other reason there is no blitter is also that the ARM+MEMC always use the memory bus because of the ARM 3 stage pipeline architecture, so there is no idle cycle left on the memory bus that could be cleverly used by a blitter. I use 'cleverly' as yes, what the C= engineers designed is clever, and remarkable, I fully agree on that. It makes sense when you have a 68000 CPU so slow at accessing memory, and it doesn't when you have an ARM).


And yes as you stated in your conclusion, we'll never agree : not only the Archimedes wasn't that highly priced when you compare with other machines initial launch price ; but also the Archimedes is the only machine boasting its own innovative and revolutionary RISC CPU.
That means something. That is something huge in terms of technological leap forward. Of course it has a price.
Still, it was the cheapest machine in terms of MIPS per GBP, and it is why it's been worlwide praised and received various prizes for its stunning performances.

[touko]

1) the chipram is a 280ns DRAM,you can find this information easily .
2) the fastest chips(blitter,copper) are accessing to this RAM ,1 word every 2 cycles(to be easily interleaved with the 68k's 4 cycles of acces time) at 7.16 mhz, which confirm the first point .

For the SRAM in the archie,i have read this information on a tec note, but in don't remember where !!.
So until i find this information i trust you, but i don't remember to have read any refresh time on the archie's tec docs .

EDIT: You were right, it use DRAM,i saw it in the VIDC's techdoc,but it's more than twice as fast than amiga one .

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by MalikS

This is DRAM for the Archie, a Google search will prove it.
Where did you get this strange idea SRAM memory was used from ? Really ?
In the same pages stating that a sound chip must have one DAC per channel, maybe ?
Interesting ;-)

I know very well it is DRAM too for the Amiga, thanks ;-) (I know the hardware).
It is your statement that the D-RAM frequency is 3.5 Mhz that I am questioning.
(A polite way to say you are wrong, again, and don't know your Amiga. Again.).
So : I doubt what you say for the Amiga DRAM at 3.5 Mhz is true, and it is easy to understand why simply with what you are writing : if there are 2 accesses at 7.16 Mhz, then automatically it means this DRAM is fast enough to 'respond' at 7.16 Mhz, so it is not max-3.5 Mhz capable RAM that was used.
Accessing at 7.16 Mhz some 3.5 Mhz DRAM would result in a crash or would be utterly unreliable.
My guess is that C= used widespread (at the time) 8 Mhz capable DRAM, that is 125 ns.
So there is nothing glorious about the Amiga development in this area.
If you look at the Archie, you can say that yes there is the implementation of something interesting as far as memory is concerned, since the ARM+MEMC makes use of fast page mode, meaning a 32 bit access in memory takes only 1 cycle, after the 1st access in a list of multiple accesses. (Usage of the LDM and STM ARM instructions)
Prove me wrong but no other CPU at the time (1987) could do that, and it is part of the explanation for the ARM based Acorn machines speed.
At the heart of the design of the chipset was this simple idea of maximizing usage of memory bandwith. (rendering the costly process of the design of ( and the need of ) a blitter irrelevant. The other reason there is no blitter is also that the ARM+MEMC always use the memory bus because of the ARM 3 stage pipeline architecture, so there is no idle cycle left on the memory bus that could be cleverly used by a blitter. I use 'cleverly' as yes, what the C= engineers designed is clever, and remarkable, I fully agree on that. It makes sense when you have a 68000 CPU so slow at accessing memory, and it doesn't when you have an ARM).


And yes as you stated in your conclusion, we'll never agree : not only the Archimedes wasn't that highly priced when you compare with other machines initial launch price ; but also the Archimedes is the only machine boasting its own innovative and revolutionary RISC CPU.
That means something. That is something huge in terms of technological leap forward. Of course it has a price.
Still, it was the cheapest machine in terms of MIPS per GBP, and it is why it's been worlwide praised and received various prizes for its stunning performances.

The Archimedes never had any success, because its owners were just fecking idiots 10.000 feet below the level of the sea.

When you have such a great machine and leap forward, you just go international. Instead of this they just went like this : "Oy, for fuck sake we keep the dough in Britain!".

Case closed, this computer was maybe more powerful CPU wise, but it was a FAIL !

A fail the same way as the Atari Falcon, it was powerful, but not the machine people were waiting for !

To be honest, the archimedes doesn't appeal to me at all, i'd prefer buy out a typewriter instead, instead of this "i so great, but i never did my proof on the market".

Even the superior X68000 has sold so much more than the Archimedes in UK, and it has a brilliant software library. A great machine always had companies and programmers support. The support for the Archimedes was...ridiculous.

[MalikS]

@Dlfrsilver : sorry man : if you use insults, I leave you in your mud.

[MalikS]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The Archimedes never had any success, because its owners were just fecking idiots 10.000 feet below the level of the sea.

When you have such a great machine and leap forward, you just go international. Instead of this they just went like this : "Oy, for fuck sake we keep the dough in Britain!".

Case closed, this computer was maybe more powerful CPU wise, but it was a FAIL !

A fail the same way as the Atari Falcon, it was powerful, but not the machine people were waiting for !

To be honest, the archimedes doesn't appeal to me at all, i'd prefer buy out a typewriter instead, instead of this "i so great, but i never did my proof on the market".

Even the superior X68000 has sold so much more than the Archimedes in UK, and it has a brilliant software library. A great machine always had companies and programmers support. The support for the Archimedes was...ridiculous.

Answered with quotes, to show you insulting (no suprise, anyway).
All wrong of course, as usual.

[MalikS]

Originally Posted by touko

1) the chipram is a 280ns DRAM,you can find this information easily .
2) the fastest chips(blitter,copper) are accessing to this RAM ,1 word every 2 cycles(to be easily interleaved with the 68k's 4 cycles of acces time) at 7.16 mhz, which confirm the first point .

For the SRAM in the archie,i have read this information on a tec note, but in don't remember where !!.
So until i find this information i trust you, but i don't remember to have read any refresh time on the archie's tec docs .

EDIT: You were right, it use DRAM,i saw it in the VIDC's techdoc,but it's more than twice as fast than amiga one .

I was talking about the fast RAM (to compare with what the Archie has : fast RAM only).
I have an Amiga 512 kbyte RAM card on my desk, it uses 80 ns chips.
I still believe for the fast RAM the Amiga had to use 125 ns capable D-RAMs (or better, like these 80 ns capable chips), so there is no 'magic' making the Amiga design awesome in this matter, in reality.

Back to the topic :
In 1992 :
- best machine for technical innovation : Falcon
- best gaming machine with great library, with affordable pricing : Amiga A1200

[touko]

Fast RAM is even slower as only the CPU can access it,this is why when i read "slowram" extension as used as fastram is not fast enought i'am laughing so much .
With A 68K at 7.16 mhz you can use 500ns RAM chips,and it's still too fast, so the so called slowram is in fact a RAM extention which use chipRAM modules and they are 280ns chips,the name "slowram" come from the fact that the extension take the unused part of the chipram bus and not the one dedicated to fastram and is a bit slower because it share the same bus as chipram .

Back to the topic :
In 1992 :
- best machine for technical innovation : Falcon
- best gaming,and evolutionary machine with great library, with affordable pricing : Amiga A1200

I agree,no problem for me,and i saw it like this,but i want to put a precision,the AGA seems to have the same DRAM than OCS, so 280ns but on a 32 bit bus .

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by MalikS

Answered with quotes, to show you insulting (no suprise, anyway).
All wrong of course, as usual.

It's not insults, but what really happened at Acorn. They just were short sighted market wise, and they told it themselves :

"how about selling and expanding the archimedes to other european countries ?"

"fuck no, it will stay in Britain, end of the story!"

All is right as usual you mean. the archimedes was a fail, this due to their manufacturers.

[MalikS]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

It's not insults, but what really happened at Acorn. They just were short sighted market wise, and they told it themselves :

"how about selling and expanding the archimedes to other european countries ?"

"fuck no, it will stay in Britain, end of the story!"

All is right as usual you mean. the archimedes was a fail, this due to their manufacturers.

You wrote Archie owners were fucking idiots, for me that's enough
I quote you : ' The Archimedes never had any success, because its owners were just fecking idiots 10.000 feet below the level of the sea.
'
You are a 12 year old child.

[touko]

Don't worry,you can notice i put the change in bold exactly to show it was my modification, and not what you said .
it's normal to do like this on a forum when you want correct a post to add or modify something that somebody said,mainly when the original post is some posts higher,but the modifications must be easily visible(this why it's in bold), nothing extraordinary here .

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by MalikS

You wrote Archie owners were fucking idiots, for me that's enough
I quote you : ' The Archimedes never had any success, because its owners were just fecking idiots 10.000 feet below the level of the sea.
'
You are a 12 year old child.

Ok you don't seem to master english correctly, (oh surprising, since you're french Zarchos ahahah ).

Owners is a false friend. Owner just doesn't apply in the case "i own an amiga", but it also applies for a company boss, called a "Owner".

for instance Galahad of Fairlight has its own business, he is an "Owner", which means in french "Propriétaire" but more specifically "Patrons" for the case of Acorn.

A french guy who is calling me 12 years old when he doesn't know jack about english subtilities .

Just go buy yourself an english training here :

http://www.eab.fr/

[MigaTech]

Would this be a fair comparison?

If Amiga and Atari ST were super cars, then Amiga would be Aston Martin and Atari ST would be Maserati. Superb quality cars, yet one clearly out shines the other.

TBH, if it wasn't for the Falcon then Atari ST would never have had a chance against Amiga.

I think if you was to blend both the A1200 and Falcon together, then you would have the ultimate 90's era 32 BIT computer.