What was better for 'serious' tasks, Amiga or ST?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Amiga's 640x512 in 16 greyscales for photo-editing via Dpaint 3 is absolutely fine, staring at spreadsheet cells for hours at a time...not really recommended lol.

Fortunate then that Amiga spreadsheets didn't force you to use interlace.

I can stare at numbers in hi-res non-interlace (640x256) for hours at a time, and do so quite often when programming on my Amiga. The only difference is the font is 8x8 pixels instead of 8x16 (for the same aspect ratio), so the characters aren't quite as well defined. This is no problem for me as I am used to the same definition on other machines (Amstrad CPC, BBC micro, IBM CGA etc.).

I used Professional Calc for my Amiga spreadsheeting needs. Here's a short video of it in action:-

[ Show youtube player ]

Here are some other Amiga spreadsheet programs running in hir-res non-lace, including Final Calc printing a nice calendar in postscript via UAE.

[ Show youtube player ]

...and another video showing Wordworth, Pagestream, and Turbocalc all running fine in hi-res non-lace.

[ Show youtube player ]

One advantage of using only NTSC/PAL screen modes on the Amiga is that you don't need a special multisync monitor, and can even use a standard TV for everything. On the ST you had to unplug one monitor and plug in the other when switching resolutions. On the PC (before EGA) people would have two graphics cards and two monitors.

Another advantage is that multitasking and screen dragging allows you to have several screens open at once, perhaps one with the spreadsheet in non-lace and another showing a gragh in interlace (as well as other programs in their own screens). This can greatly enhance productivity, but other platforms didn't have it so their users didn't understand what they were missing.

Of course all that just contributed to the Amiga being seen as a toy. 'Real' computers didn't run on a TV, and didn't have silly screen dragging and 'preemptive multitasking' (whatever that meant). I mean what professional would want a game in one screen and something else in another while they were doing 'serious' work? When real computers want to display two screens at once they either use multiple monitors or one huge one with enough room to put it all on the desktop!

Interestingly there was an Atari ST mono screen mode emulator for colour monitors that actually uses interlace like the Amiga does and it is just as unusable except for novelty use, you wouldn't run 1st Word on it for serious work for the same reason.

This is just as well. Imagine not getting better Amiga apps because ST programs worked well enough in an emulator.

Interestingly, early versions of Microsoft Windows had a 'runtime-only' package that had just enough to run GUI apps from DOS, in effect 'emulating' a GUI OS making it easier to port programs from the Mac.

[saimon69]

Missing Art Expression, the best option for Amiga vector graphics until later on Pro Draw appears

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The problem is using the Amiga in the 1980s/1990s in 640x512 on a CRT display without going the flicker fixer and expensive monitor route is what I am talking about.

You didn't need an 'expensive' monitor, but a mono VGA monitor wasn't what most Amiga users would want.

And since we are comparing it to the ST, the same applies there too. If you bought the ST with mono monitor you were stuck with using a TV for color, or buying a color monitor as well and switching between them. That sucked.

A 'serious' user was quite prepared to pay for a better monitor though. By 1988 you could plug a flicker fixer into your A2000 and use a VGA monitor for everything. Several of my friends did that. My A3000 came with an expensive multisync monitor that was largely wasted because everything went through the flicker fixer (another peculiar choice by Commodore that nobody talks about!).

The great thing about the Amiga's graphics was that lowly A500 owners could run the same programs as 'serious' users without spending any more money, and just had to put up with a bit of flicker. If you wanted 640x400 on a typical business PC you had to buy another card and monitor. Mac users had to buy an expensive color model (the Macintosh II cost US$7,145 in 1987, equivalent to US$17,000 today).

This was important because the Amiga market was too small for developers to target only high-end machines with productivity apps. I'm betting the ST suffered because most users had a color monitor and so couldn't run those apps that needed 640x400. 4 colors in 640x200 was no better than the Amiga's Workbench screen (worse if you had a PAL Amiga with 640x256). The Amiga could easily do 8 or even 16 colors, and in interlace too if you didn't mind the flicker (OK for eg. previewing a document before printing). But the ST's flicker free 640x400 b/w display did look very nice, and 'serious' users had no need for color - right?

The truth is, while the Amiga was perceived as not being suited to 'serious' use, in reality it got used for it lot more than is generally realized. One of the most popular addons I sold to A500 users was a printer. The bundled Kindwords got a lot of flack for being slow and awkward, but many people did use it to write letters etc. Magazines like Amiga Format and Amiga World were full of articles showing how to do 'serious' stuff even on 'low-end' Amigas, and adverts were full of 'serious' software and hardware.

Unfortunately it's too late now to do a poll on what people used their Amigas and ST's for, and the results wouldn't have been reliable in the 80's and 90's anyway, so we will never know the truth. Once again we are stuck with perceptions instead of reality.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Kickstart is easily more sophisticated than GEM, Mac OS, Windows 286 in any meaningful way but you can get by with just a print spool feature on a Word Processor on the other three OS options. There were integrated packages for Mac too, Lotus Symphony?, so maybe you didn't need multitasking to have a WP and a spreadsheet running together.

Strange how we don't even think about those things today, and Amiga users never did. "Print spooler"? What would you use that for - can't you just send it to a file and then print it while doing other stuff? WP and spreadshhet integrated in one app? Why can't you run them separately at the same time and share data between them? Surely you don't have to quit one before running the other???

Yet that is exactly what users of other computers had to do. How archaic!

A PC version of UNIX is not going to be easy to find and it is running on the opposite endian method of the 680x0 series UNIX releases were more commonly honed for.

Actually XENIX was quite popular for a while, but you don't hear about it because it was targeted at multiuser OEM systems and not sold directly to end users.

Wikipedia says:-

"Microsoft hopes that Xenix will become the preferred choice for software production and exchange", the company stated in 1981. Microsoft referred to its own MS-DOS as its "single-user, single-tasking operating system", and advised customers that wanted multiuser or multitasking support to buy Xenix. It planned to over time improve MS-DOS so it would be almost indistinguishable from single-user Xenix, or XEDOS, which would also run on the 68000, Z8000, and LSI-11; they would be upwardly compatible with Xenix, which Byte in 1983 described as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the future". Microsoft's Chris Larson described MS-DOS 2.0's Xenix compatibility as "the second most important feature". His company advertised DOS and Xenix together, describing MS-DOS 2.0 (its "single-user OS") as sharing features and system calls with Xenix ("the multi-user, multi-tasking, Unix-derived operating system"), and promising easy porting between them.

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

So I would say, as a rival to the £500 Amstrad PC1512 the £400 520STFM+mono monitor is an admirable alternative, if you want to go above that sort of level then you are at least in the price territory of a Commodore flicker fixer A2000 setup and that is better once you remove the headache inducing aspect of how the Amiga design generates broadcast quality display output, which is totally unsuitable for using a spreadsheet for hours with IMO.

AFAIK the Amstrad PC1512 only did CGA scan rates, though it could do 16 colors in 640x200 like the Amiga. You might be confused by the fact that it was commonly sold with a paper-white mono monitor (I had one for a little while).

The mono PC1512 was good value so long as you didn't want to upgrade to color. The power supply was in the monitor and the connector from it to the main unit was proprietary, so you had to purchase Amstrad's own color monitor.

You could just as easily argue that thanks to the revolutionary method of laser printing that Atari designed for use with their 'dumb' SLM804 laser printer with a Mega ST the Mac was really just for people with money to burn.

Yeah, but the Mac got there first with the LaserWriter. This more than anything else is what put the Mac 'on the map'. The combo was expensive, but you could produce professional quality output suitable for commercial printing. Later on the Amiga could do it too of course (just needed the right software), but by that time the Mac had 'brand recognition' on its side.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Actually XENIX was quite popular for a while, but you don't hear about it because it was targeted at multiuser OEM systems and not sold directly to end users.

SCO Unix was quite popular and used in end customer business (definitely more popular than OS/2) on 386 and higher machines.
I've meet quite commonly such installations (SCO + Progress database).

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Yeah, but the Mac got there first with the LaserWriter. This more than anything else is what put the Mac 'on the map'.

Not sure about first, as the HP Laserjet (I'm thinking the ST could talk to one of those) came out before the LaserWriter, but the LaserWriter had two advantages.
1: Postscript...
2: LocalTalk networking...

So like a lot of Apple things, it wasn't about being first, it was about making it work well and fairly easily...

And it was expensive.. ;-)
(Although with the networking, a "shared" LaserWriter would be more cost effective than several local laser printers. ;-)

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by desiv

Not sure about first, as the HP Laserjet (I'm thinking the ST could talk to one of those) came out before the LaserWriter, but the

The LaserWriter came out in Jan 1985. The Atari ST came out in June 1985, but good luck getting it to print a full page image at 300dpi on the HP Laserjet.

A full page bitmap needs over 700kB of RAM. The LaserWriter had 1.5MB which its 12MHz 68000 rendered into using postscript. The HP Laserjet only had 128k RAM. In September 1985 the Laserjet Plus came out with 512k RAM, enough to do graphics on ~70% of a 'letter' size page.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The LaserWriter had 1.5MB which its 12MHz 68000 rendered into using postscript.

If only I had mentioned Postscript as my number 1 benefit for the LaserWriter...

Oh wait... :-)

[Total Eclipse]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Interestingly there was an Atari ST mono screen mode emulator for colour monitors that actually uses interlace like the Amiga does and it is just as unusable except for novelty use, you wouldn't run 1st Word on it for serious work for the same reason.

Being pedantic, the ST doesn't actually have an interlaced mode, the best you'd get is a mono emulator that changes the image every field. That'd probably look even worse to be fair, as you don't even get the perceived higher resolution that a true interlace mode would give you.

Having tried the two main mono emulators though, neither of them do that. One simply opts for chunky pixels that looks awful, the other does some kind of smoothing to offer a slightly better experience.

[ImmortalA1000]

Like I said, depends what you are doing. If you are retouching 16 greyscale photos in Dpaint 3 in hi-res lace then no problem using a decent TV because broadcast signals are interlaced too and they are fine.

Staring at 1 pixel thin boxes on something like a spreadsheet for hours a week would drive you towards non-interlaced monitors though. A500plus/600/1200 etc can all do double PAL and double NTSC and with the VGA dongle you can get by with just a cheap monochrome VGA monitor too.

I had assumed the ST range was dead and buried by 1991 but not so, a famous UK retailer called Argos stocked the 1040STE for the same price as the A500 1mb Cartoon Classics pack at £400 and the 520STE was £300 in 1992.

[Megalomaniac]

ST Format claimed that the ST range briefly outsold the Amiga range in late 1991, around the time the A500+ launched, but I'm doubtful. Other than for making music, the Amiga was probably ahead all round by then, helped by WB2's new features, which definitely improved the Amiga for non-games tasks.

[paul1981]

I've read this whole thread and was wondering about the serial/MIDI issue with the Amiga. This, you say Bruce, is due to it's multitasking nature and not an actual hardware issue as such. If so, does this mean that with an A1200 then that the problem does not exist, providing you don't do anything else with the computer except run your MIDI software (such as Music-X). The video speed is much better on the 1200 than 500 and add fast ram as well and does the problem not exist at all?
If Music-X was released in a 2-colour mode instead, would these rare drop-outs never have occured? I'm talking A500 again here.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by paul1981

If Music-X was released in a 2-colour mode instead, would these rare drop-outs never have occured? I'm talking A500 again here.

https://dreamertalin.medium.com/music-x-b4abc68d6f78

[paul1981]

Here's the relevant section from the above site (I read it years ago actually, but thanks for the link)

But Bryce, bless his heart, continued to poke at this problem behind the scenes and eventually came up with an answer. It turned out that the Amiga’s four timer chips were interfering with the serial port. Both the timer chips and the serial hardware were interrupt-driven, and the timer interrupts were a higher priority than the serial interrupts. Worse, the Amiga’s serial chip only had a 1-byte buffer — which means that if you didn’t pick up the data before the next byte arrived, the data would be lost.

Bryce was able to mitigate the problem somewhat by having AmigaOS turn off timer chips that weren’t in use. Unfortunately, they couldn’t all be turned off — AmigaOS needed one timer, and Music-X needed another. Turning off two of the four timers greatly reduced the frequency of the bug, but didn’t eliminate it entirely. And by this point the reputation of the Amiga had been stained beyond redemption, at least in professional music circles. It was too late.

Bruce (on EAB) is saying it's a software issue though, not a hardware issue. If the OS was bypassed/removed there would be no issue. Bryce hints at it too.
Also, this is only an issue with the Amiga's built-in serial port. As you know, 3rd party ones were available and Zorro MIDI too, also parallel port MIDI.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by paul1981

Here's the relevant section from the above site (I read it years ago actually, but thanks for the link)

Just to be clear, most (all?) other contemporary machines with serial ports also only had a 1 byte buffer. National Semiconductor's NS16550 UART chip came out in 1985. It was supposed to have a 16 byte FIFO buffer, but according to an NS app note published in 1989 this was buggy and essentially non-functional. The NS16550A fixed this in 1987, but until the 90's many PC serial ports were still using a 16450 (or compatible) UART chip with 1 byte buffer.

Could Commodore have put a FIFO buffer on Paula's serial port in 1985 if they were more onto it? Perhaps, but since NS had a patent out on it...

[TCD]

I think this is missing a very important point... Musicians (like most people) just want things to work. So if it is 'plug and play' on ST and Amiga you'd have to buy extra stuff it's a no brainer which machine to get.

Of course I know this is more about 'But it could have done it!' and not actually why a machine was 'better' at a given task, so go ahead and have fun kids

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Just to be clear, most (all?) other contemporary machines with serial ports also only had a 1 byte buffer. National Semiconductor's NS16550 UART chip came out in 1985. It was supposed to have a 16 byte FIFO buffer, but according to an NS app note published in 1989 this was buggy and essentially non-functional. The NS16550A fixed this in 1987, but until the 90's many PC serial ports were still using a 16450 (or compatible) UART chip with 1 byte buffer.

Could Commodore have put a FIFO buffer on Paula's serial port in 1985 if they were more onto it? Perhaps, but since NS had a patent out on it...

i quote :

"But Bryce, bless his heart, continued to poke at this problem behind the scenes and eventually came up with an answer. It turned out that the Amiga’s four timer chips were interfering with the serial port. Both the timer chips and the serial hardware were interrupt-driven, and the timer interrupts were a higher priority than the serial interrupts. Worse, the Amiga’s serial chip only had a 1-byte buffer — which means that if you didn’t pick up the data before the next byte arrived, the data would be lost."

Bryce was able to mitigate the problem somewhat by having AmigaOS turn off timer chips that weren’t in use. Unfortunately, they couldn’t all be turned off — AmigaOS needed one timer, and Music-X needed another. Turning off two of the four timers greatly reduced the frequency of the bug, but didn’t eliminate it entirely. And by this point the reputation of the Amiga had been stained beyond redemption, at least in professional music circles. It was too late."

[grond]

What implications would it have to give the serial port priority over the timers in AmigaOS? Are interrupt priorities determined by the hardware (and thus fixed) or by AmigaOS (and thus changeable)? Ranking the serial port interrupt higher should mitigate at least much of the problem with lost serial data / MIDI notes but it might have other, more important negative side effects.

[Megalomaniac]

Was Music-X actually the best music package on the Amiga, or just the best-known? Were there others which worked around this serial port timing issue, perhaps by dumping the OS?

[drHirudo]

Well, from another thread (started by me), the Atari ST was also prefered over the Amiga for recording studios, because the Amiga monitor produced 15 kHz hum:
Quote from:
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...7&postcount=85 by idrougge

Why would you choose the computer without MIDI ports and with a monitor that pollutes your studio environment with a constant 15 kHz hum?

So, it wasn't only the MIDI! It was because the Amiga had superior monitor (in color) that was not very suitable for audio works in the 1980-ies environment. The crappier B&W Atari and Macs proved more useful there.