Things the Amiga could do better than a contemporary PC

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Why not, for nice change, instead of hurling impotent rocks at me, which change nothing, you instead actually have a go at informing the debate?
---><8

Good idea,
you see what the topic of the thread is, stick to that and put things that's have been said into a table and fill in counter points of your choice for a contemporary PC in such a way that you feel it is a fair and relevant comparison.... Instead of giving us 27 examples of how logs can beat a mouse, a piece of plastic can beat a jellyfish and so on. You've made your point about about your opinion regarding how people lay out their arguments, now its time to move on and stick to the topic. ;-) Moderators in the forums will not allow this trolling to go on forever.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Why not, for nice change, instead of hurling impotent rocks at me, which change nothing, you instead actually have a go at informing the debate?

As far as what I've written in this thread so far goes, it's an epistemological basic fact so it doesn't make any difference at all if you accept it or not. A refusal to accept it only constitutes burying your head in the sand and doesn't make it go away.

It is pretty obvious what happens if you claim to be comparing two things, A and B, and you then make up your mind to run a tombola which is decided wholly upon what is true of A and not B. If any of you know any basic boolean algebra you will know there can be no other outcome: If your process is to select only from attributes true of A and not B, and then ask which of those items those chosen attributes are true of, then A will always be the final selection. It doesn't make any difference at all what A and B actually are.

You can compare spiders to cheese that way and have cheese win.

So it has nothing to with anything you've just listed between you. It's just the statement of a basic epistemological fact.

So having Weaselrama step in to continue to add more in that exact same process is continuing to mean exactly nothing. You can, as I said, run exactly anything though the same process for absolutely any contest between any one thing and any other, and always have the thing win that you wanted to win before you started. When your process is "pick things that are true about A and not B" then A will always win. It doesn't matter what A and B are.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

I have to agree, I have absolutely no idea as to what Vascillious is waffling on about now.

[Gorf]

I would argue that at least the big box Amigas were more expandable than a PC.
That is usually thought as a PC stronghold: modularity and cards for everything ...

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 ...

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I would argue that at least the big box Amigas were more expandable than a PC.
That is usually thought as a PC stronghold: modularity and cards for everything ...

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 ...

What Amiga from that date can be expanded to 2GB of RAM?

According to Wikipedia, the Amiga 4000 and later 4000T could only be expanded to 18MB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000T

Apart from that: All of them. Processor cards began appearing on the PC in the early 1980s, before the AT was launched and therefore also before the Amiga was launched. It was possible to get CPU daughter cards with a 10Mhz 68000 and 512K of local RAM, and a number of other interchangeable CPUs with the same boards, in 1983 before the Amiga was released, which ran CP/M, or Xenix, a multi-user Unix variant. A choice of graphics cards also began to appear on the PC before the Amiga existed.

As for PCI, well what was the point? In the PCI era, PCs were PCI anyway. They were the first mass-produced PCI devices.

So for most of that you didn't need to wait for the late 1980s. You could get it in the early 1980s.

According the Wikipedia page on the A3000, it was expandable to 2MB, not 2GB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_3000

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Gorf

But show me a PC from late 87-91 that can be expanded up to 2 GB of RAM

my A3000 is capable doing this ...

Source? 2GB?? How???

EDIT: I hate to side with Vascilious over this possible typo, but I know that even 1990s versions of Windows couldn't address that much memory on a PC, let alone anything else.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Source? 2GB?? How???

EDIT: I hate to side with Vascilious over this possible typo, but I know that even 1990s versions of Windows couldn't address that much memory on a PC, let alone anything else.

Here a novel idea: Instead of siding with the Amiga why not have a crack at siding with the truth.

Just a thought.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

Here a novel idea: Instead of siding with the Amiga why not have a crack at siding with the truth.

Just a thought.

I am aware that a microprocessor, whether it be 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit, can only address a certain amount of memory, which increases exponentially as the bits increase. But there IS always a limit, whereas it's impossible for them to address any more. I just don't know what the limits are.

What IS the truth? There was so much hardware floating out there from various companies that I cannot possibly know all of them and be able to speak authoritatively, and I honestly doubt so can you.

I will side with the Amiga around 1985-1994, always, but I just wanted clarification as to certain statements.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Source? 2GB?? How???

EDIT: I hate to side with Vascilious over this possible typo, but I know that even 1990s versions of Windows couldn't address that much memory on a PC, let alone anything else.

Even servers in that time were typically expandable only into the megabytes range.

I can't imagine, even if it turns out to be true, there was any market pressure or demand for 2GB platforms in 1990, especially as there was no software designed to take advantage of it and no hardware designed with that requirement. 1 megapixel 24bit graphics was still a novelty in 1990, that's 4MB.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I am aware that a microprocessor, whether it be 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit, can only address a certain amount of memory, which increases exponentially as the bits increase. But there IS always a limit, whereas it's impossible for them to address any more. I just don't know what the limits are.

What IS the truth? There was so much hardware floating out there from various companies that I cannot possibly know all of them and be able to speak authoritatively, and I honestly doubt so can you.

I will side with the Amiga around 1985-1994, always, but I just wanted clarification as to certain statements.

Well, I can definitely speak "authoritatively" on the matter of being able to get 256MB multiprocessing PCs at that time, because you can still find the magazines online where they were sold. I mean ones where all the RAM slots were there and you only had to populate them (they went directly into the mother board DRAM slots, they weren't memory mapped onto expansion cards).

I can also speak authoritatively on the fact that the Zorro III slot didn't permit 2GB of RAM to be installed, and even if it could, autoconfig only supported up to 1GB, and that was only in principle, it doesn't imply there were devices at that time, or any time, which fulfilled that maximum potential, which is less than 2GB anyway.

https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-1...20to%2016%20MB.

[amiman99]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I would argue that at least the big box Amigas were more expandable than a PC.
That is usually thought as a PC stronghold: modularity and cards for everything ...

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 A3000 could use 4x256MB BigRAMPLus to give you 1GB RAM.

[Dunny]

Vascillious: What's your aim here? You want people to stop using their Amigas? Maybe put an end to WinUAE/WinFellow/UAE development maybe?

Somehow, despite the indisputable fact that these people's Macs or PCs are orders of magnitude more powerful than any Amiga, they're still here chatting about Amigas and enjoying playing with Amigas and even using Amigas.

I can't see what your goal is here other than to try to stir up argument.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by amiman99

The A3000 could use 4x256MB BigRAMPLus to give you 1GB RAM.

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.

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.

https://www.vesalia.de/files/BRP_manual_bilingual.pdf

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.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=95022

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

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

"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"


https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-111

By 2009 Windows 7 supported 2GB on 64bit CPUs, even by then there wasn't exactly a sigh of relief. It's only now you need 8GB before there's any point switching on your computer.

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Vascillious: What's your aim here? You want people to stop using their Amigas? Maybe put an end to WinUAE/WinFellow/UAE development maybe?

Somehow, despite the indisputable fact that these people's Macs or PCs are orders of magnitude more powerful than any Amiga, they're still here chatting about Amigas and enjoying playing with Amigas and even using Amigas.

I can't see what your goal is here other than to try to stir up argument.

My goal is to not accept things as true which aren't true.

How about that?

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

My goal is to not accept things as true which aren't true.

How about that?

What does it fucking matter? Maybe we just ENJOY using our primitive 1980s Amigas because we grew up with them? Or because of the unique hardware? I don't honestly think most of us gave a toss as to how our favourite computer compared to the other hardware of the time, because we had such a fun time with our chosen platform! Seriously, in the massively grand scheme of things, does your criteria of relative hardware relevance really matter, as long as we had fun and got the most out of it, while we had it?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by amiman99

The A3000 could use 4x256MB BigRAMPLus to give you 1GB RAM.

Plus the Fast-RAM in the Motherboard
Plus the RAM on the CPU-Card

Here is the Memory Map:

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node00D4.html

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Plus the Fast-RAM in the Motherboard
Plus the RAM on the CPU-Card

Here is the Memory Map:

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node00D4.html

Thanks for explaining

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What does it fucking matter? Maybe we just ENJOY using our primitive 1980s Amigas because we grew up with them? Or because of the unique hardware? I don't honestly think most of us gave a toss as to how our favourite computer compared to the other hardware of the time, because we had such a fun time with our chosen platform! Seriously, in the massively grand scheme of things, does your criteria of relative hardware relevance really matter, as long as we had fun and got the most out of it, while we had it?

"What does it fucking matter? Maybe we just ENJOY using our primitive 1980s Amigas because we grew up with them?"

What's that got to do with it? Enjoy it all you want. I'm not condemning the enjoyment of it, I'm condemning Lying about it, and lying about the competition.

I actually think enjoyment is a huge factor. Amiga fans enjoyed using them, they're just confusing a computer they enjoyed with a computer which was powerful and failing to recognise computing power is not proportional to your devotion to it and love of it.

"Or because of the unique hardware?"

We've been through this. ALL examples of computer hardware are unique the Atari 800 was unique, the ZX81 was unique. Again, the Amiga fan base confuses a banal claim with an extraordinary one: Many monolithic computer designs are unique, not just the Amiga. Again, uniqueness isn't the same thing as power.

"Seriously, in the massively grand scheme of things, does your criteria of relative hardware relevance really matter, as long as we had fun and got the most out of it"

Well, the answer to that is the same as "Does it matter to you that the Amiga was a failure and the PC was a success?". Most of the features cited by Amiga fans just weren't all that important to most people actually buying computers, that's basically the *honest* explanation for why it failed.

"I don't honestly think most of us gave a toss as to how our favourite computer compared to the other hardware of the time"

But yet here you are making an entire thread dedicated to the topic and the rancour against the PC rages on. You also get extremely angry when anybody has the temerity to mention it.

Looks like it matters rather too much to me.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Vascillious

What Amiga from that date can be expanded to 2GB of RAM?

According the Wikipedia page on the A3000, it was expandable to 2MB, not 2GB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_3000

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 ...

[Vascillious]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Plus the Fast-RAM in the Motherboard
Plus the RAM on the CPU-Card

Here is the Memory Map:

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node00D4.html

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

"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"

This does not imply devices which produced as much RAM were actually available. It seems the BigRAM devices didn't appear until 2012. Also, the 4x256MB RAM option would occupy all 4 Zorro III slots. They were Zorro III daughter cards, with RAM on them, they weren't memory modules plugged into DRAM slots. This means it would also be slow, at around 9.5MB/sec bandwidth.

Realistically, you'd want a graphics adaptor, so you're looking at 768MB of slow RAM with a graphics card, in 2012. Not 2Gb in 1990 as was claimed. Suddenly once you accounted for all the drawbacks, it's worse than a PC of the same time, not better.