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Atari 8bit is superior to the ST


Marius

Atari 8bit is superior to the ST  

210 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you agree?

    • Yes; Atari 8bit is superior to ST in all ways
    • Yes; Atari 8bit is superior to ST in most ways
    • NO; Atari ST is superior to 8bit in all ways
    • NO; Atari ST is superior to 8bit in most ways
    • NO; Both systems are cool on their own.

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I actually have original 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 A1000 kickstart disks left over from my A1000s.. I dont recall any of the problems Atarian63 is talking about.. And if he had a "fuzzy display" he was probably using a crap composite monitor..

 

I still use KS1.3 ROMs in my current AMIGA.. When I boot from the hardisk, it soft-kicks a 3.1 ROM image (which then gets the libraries pathced to 3.9)... no problems whatsoever..

 

If 1.2 was so "bug ridden" in the A1000, then why did they bother to make 1.2 kickroms for the A500? I have a few of those laying around too..

 

 

I can imagine scaenarios like this in Atarian63's store:

 

Customer: My friend has this bad ass machine.. It's an A3000-040.. He has a 24bit graphics card, two internal hard disks, 128megs of RAM, and something called a Video toaster.. I'm really impressed with it.. Can you show me something similar?

 

Atarian63: NOO!! You Don't want one of those DAMN AMOEBAS! Here, let me show you a MEGA STE... It's got everything you need.. 4megs ram and a 16mhz processor.. The MIDI port is the best in the business.. AND it's alot CHEAPER..

 

Customer: But how can that compete with a system like the A3000 that has literally 10 times the resources & capability?

 

Atarian63: Because those Amoebas don't really even work.. Those amoeba fanboys are lying.. TRUST ME.. You'll be much happier with this..

Wow you really are nuts.

No standard customer would ever ask such questions. Maybe some rare geekazoid who was already a fanboy,but hey if he wanted one,no problem, I'll take the money. This was the business in the A1000 days.ST was great and much cheaper and easier to use. Turn it on and there is the O/S, no kickstart,no workbench. so.. it's easier and much cheaper and I don't have to mess around with floppies in order to boot it? Great! I'll take one.

Using your example the customer almost always bought the ST. However we are talking 85-89 time period. Most later amiga customer wanted an A500 for games. A few customers wanted Amiga's for video work including several Video companies in town.

No sales involved. For example they would want an A2500 or a 3000 , they only wanted to know how much and when.

Really though, by the time of the Falcon and A3000 nobody really cared. They were all wanting Pc's. Amiga and St were old news and dying.

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Ir was a goofy fuzzy display and the CLI did not work like standard PC Dos, it was weird,customers did not like it.

Yeah weird, the customers didn't like it but yet they bought Amigas :D

Not really, the A1000 period they didn't here in the US. When A500 came out goofy fuzzy video doesnt matter for a games machine. Don't get me wrong, I like games machines. We sold tons of A520 video adapters for people to use a tv with the A500.

My point is it almost certainly would have been better as a Warner machine, but that didn't happen.

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Incorrect.

 

The early A1000's did have broken code, but it wasn't the OS, it was the 1.2 kickstart ROM. Later A1000's before the a500 premiere had KS1.3 and thus were solid machines. If you tried a 1.2 1000 of COURSE you thought an Amiga was crap. 1.2 is a crap kickstart.

 

 

First off, Kickstart was not in ROM on an A1000, it was on disk - which as we know now, was because the machine was "rushed". Brilliant design actually, being able to change Kickstarts with floppy. Doesn't take long at all to load 256k and I NEVER felt it was an inconvenience. KS 1.2 is not that buggy my friend. Main difference between that and 1.3 was the ability to boot the OS off of a hard drive. OS 1.x was actually really nice and streamlined for the time. And again, not to sound like a broken record, but I have never experienced 1/2 of the GURU meditations you guys are talking about. Yes, AmigaOS has "unprotected" memory. And yes, the A1000 when shipped with 256k of memory totally blew, but you knew at the time of purchase to immediately get the other 256k ram expansion for the front (A1050). A 512kb Amiga machine is quite useful and programmers did a great job of maximizing their code back then.

Yep, the 256k thing was bad but lasted only a very short time, they were available pretty soon after release. Easy install, happier customer.

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And the average person could easily buy an A3000 and build a machine of that spec (or much higher) just by plugging in cards..

 

I remember when the 3000 came out. It was the cover story on Byte mag (May 1990 I think)

 

In that magazine they pointed out that the most powerful personal computer released to that date was the Mac IIfx that they'd just reviewed the month before. The Amiga 3000 benchmarked just a few percent slower makign the A3K the 2nd fastest released PC in the word at the time.

 

The cost difference was more than $5,000 (5K for the Amiga, 10K-11K for the Mac)

 

I don't know that any computer has ever achived this levr of price/performance before or since.

 

For it's era, the A3000 was as close to a perfect computer as has ever been released.

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See to have missed the point that Mac (which the ST was more like) was very successful and even higher priced that amiga. was much more successful

Turn off the fanboyism and the rants.

 

That would be a good idea for all concerned. All this is doubly off-topic. The Amiga has come into this thread and the original topic was ST vs. A8.

 

I have to go with some of the sentiments expressed earlier. In absolute terms, the ST is a 68000 based machine that had higher resolution, more memory, more processing power, and later hacks in the late eighties pretty much gave it more color options too seeing that Spectrum 512 could put 48 different colors on a scan line and ripped and retried on the fly to give a user of that mode as much freedom with color placement as possible. Only the POKEY may have some timbres not easily available to the ST but used as a DSP it outclassed POKEY since POKEY would have trouble doing 8-bit 11kHz which I know the Yamaha chip could do. Maybe it could even manage 22 but I remember doing that much. All this can be had with the lowly 520STf much less a 1040STE where the comparison gets even more ridiculous. If we allow the TTs and the Falcons then it gets just plain stupid. In short, there isn't much doubt that the ST is more POWERFUL than the A8 even if the A8 has some features like sprites and so-forth to help out.

 

On the other hand, I do believe the A8 was more INNOVATIVE for it's time. It was designed and sold as a "Cadillac" machine that made as few compromises as possible when designed in the late seventies and it had the price tag to show for it. It pioneered a video co-processor, video that could use any part of the memory map, hardware sprites, a highly programmable soundchip and ways are still being found to wring new capabilities from it. It took until the early eighties to get serious competition with the C64 but it at least held it's own against that machine (IMHO...lets not have THAT argument again.....). The ST on the other hand was basically designed to be a less expensive Macintosh class machine. It succeeded admirably at that and being able to afford one was a major reason that I had one but it is not particularly innovative compared to other machines of the period. It's saving grace was reasonable performance at a low price.

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I like that both computers saw 68060 and PPC upgrades.

 

But I love how the Amiga architecture was designed so well that clever upgrades could be applied across the entire range pretty much agnostic of release date, OS, or other items.

 

This is my Amiga 1000. It was used by Byte-by-Byte in Texas and was made in July of 85. The write control store has been replaced with an Expert Rejuvenator, giving the unit the enhanced chip set, 2MB chip (video) RAM, Kickstart 3.x, super denise (up to 1280x512 programmable resolution), enhanced audio filter, etc,), a PP&S 68040 @25Mhz with 16MB fast RAM, an ATOnce Plus 286 hardware card @16Mhz with FPU, an ADSpeed @14MHz for no reason at all (because I had a socket free for it), an ICD FFV 2 for retargeting Amiga display modes to VGA, and an expansion chassis for adding newer video cards, Ethernet cards, SCSI/IDE cards, etc.

 

Not bad for a 1985 computer. You would have had to throw out a 1985 ST and start over before you could get near this.

 

-edit- added pic

 

 

post-11578-125978883692_thumb.gif

 

That is one kick-ass A1000! I wish I could find one of those Rejuvenator boards for mine.

 

By the way, I posted this using my "games machine" A500. :D

Edited by Mr.Amiga500
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I used an 800XL with 1050 disk drive for a long time and loved the machine. Then saved my money to buy a 520ST (not FM) and SF314 disk drive in early 1987.

 

I tried hard to like the new machine. I wanted the bragging rights, it was 16-bit! - had so much memory! This was the new-age.

 

I did write one paper on the machine using First Word Plus. But it was a frustrating experience. The word processor was slow, frequently missing key strokes. The TOS/GEM OS was terrible, frequently powering up to bombs on the screen. At other times it would boot up and then scramble the contents of the disks. I got into the habit of write protecting all disks all the time in case the ST threw a temper tantrum and wiped out my work.

 

I tried to get into programming with it, but ST BASIC was slow and buggy. I did acquire a C compiler (I forget which version) but it too was slow and buggy. The whole platform (and software too) seemed to be thrown together in a hurry with little though to long term use.

 

I bought a SM125 hi-res monitor which provided a very nice flicker-free display, but was awkward to unplug when i wanted to switch to the colour display and play games.

 

I heard alot of my problems might be due to a buggy TOS and I should get a new one. But the new one was a 2-chip design and my machine was a 6-chip design, and Atari UK didn't seem to know what I could do.

 

Additionally the 3.5 disks seem to suffer regular failures. My 5.25 disks on the XL never ever had problems (and still don't to this day!) - but the 3.5 disks seemed to go bad all the time.

 

There were some good games - Virus and Elite Frontier are fondly remembered - but other "block buster" games like Starglider or Capt Blood sported wonderful graphics but lousy game play. Star Raiders on the ST was a dud. Black Lamp played better and sounded better on the 800XL. My favourite app was one to remove the graphical desktop and let me just use a command-line.

 

With the buggy applications and buggy OS, and with access to the glorious Turbo Pascal v2 at college, I set about trying to run PC apps on the ST with PC-Ditto and some other approaches. Each attempt brought limited success and more frustration, that could be solved with some additional hardware or another upgrade.... and in the end I realized that for the same hassle I could just buy a PC.

 

Before I sold my ST in 1989 I got the serial transfer cable (from Page6 magazine) to move all my files back to the 800XL. Unable to quite afford the PC I wanted I moved my word-processing to Mini Office and later the First XLent Word Processor on the XL. With a printer interface to allow me to connect my Epson LX-800 printer I had all I needed, and I was glad to see the back of the ST. The XL software was stable and fast enough, the machine powered up without scrambling disks and the 40-column display was a small price to pay for reliability. The ST's bigger memory was largely negated by the OS overhead - as long as I could write a chapter of a paper it was good enough for what I needed.

 

 

A few years later I ran into a guy at University who raved about his ST and so I gave him my thoughts on the platform's limitations. He responded that his ST was tricked out and he could run Apple Macintosh software on it, therefore it was the better machine. All that means is you like the Macintosh I told him, not the ST.

 

 

I know some people loved their STs, just as I love my VIC-20. They are both products of the same Tramiel design philosophy - "make them as cheaply as possible". And both machines spawned some great games inspite of their hardware limitations. But whereas the Amiga and the Atari 800 were built to a spec, the ST and the VIC were built to a price - and a low one at that.

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The Mega STE, TT030 and Falcon030 (and modified STs) do exactly that: the FDC is clocked to 16 MHz instead of the original 8 MHz, and the HD floppy is read with double speed and the same rpm. That is what the Atari AJAX floppy controller is all about: it's a WD1772 compatible controller that runs stable at 16 MHz (HD) and 32 MHz (ED), while the original WD1772 only works at 8 MHz officially (the 02-02 variant may run in 16 MHz, but this is not guaranteed). While ED died rather quickly and thus was hardly used (Steven Jobs had it in his NeXTstations and some Ataris were retrofitted with ED drives, but that's about it), HD became the standard floppy disk format for several years.

 

Thorsten

 

All three PC, ST, and Amiga have a 500kbits/second transfer rate from floppy disk for their double density 3.5" disks; however, the amount of sectors per track vary from 9..11.

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I remember when the 3000 came out. It was the cover story on Byte mag (May 1990 I think)

 

In that magazine they pointed out that the most powerful personal computer released to that date was the Mac IIfx that they'd just reviewed the month before. The Amiga 3000 benchmarked just a few percent slower makign the A3K the 2nd fastest released PC in the word at the time.

 

What about high-end contemporary PCs? (at very least, 486-based work station class PCs of the time should have been faster, and probably a good deal more expensive than the A3000, though maybe not the MAC IIfx)

 

Not really, the A1000 period they didn't here in the US. When A500 came out goofy fuzzy video doesnt matter for a games machine. Don't get me wrong, I like games machines. We sold tons of A520 video adapters for people to use a tv with the A500.

The A500 had faulty RGB output? I'd have though it would be rather similar to other NTSC/PAL RGB devices, that's odd. Or were you talking in context of a composite monitor/TV display? (in which case the ST would be just as fuzzy)

 

My point is it almost certainly would have been better as a Warner machine, but that didn't happen.

But that was no where close to reality, for that to have happened, Atari Inc would need to have been managed better under Warner such that Jay and other engineers didn't leave. The Amiga+Warner deal was shaky at best as I understand it, with the Amiga guys doing it out of desparation for funding and looking for a way out (which they found with CBM). On top of that, I think Warner/Atari would only have been allowed to use the Amiga hardware for a dedicated game console for the first year, after which point they could relaease their own version of the full computer. (and as a game console it would have likely been far too expensive in 1985)

 

It's more plausible that Atari Inc would have gone with one of their own advanced 16-bit machines they had in the works (Sierra/Gaza etc).

 

With that thought however, one wonders how the ST would have done as a Commodore product. (or if Jack had stayed president of CBM and managed either the ST/RBP release or Amiga, had CBM still gone that route)

 

Anyway, the ST or Amiga would probably have fared better had it not been for the 2 intercompeting along with PCs and MACs. (hell, maybe one would still be around to day as a player along with MAC and PC, or perhaps instead of the MAC)

 

 

But this has gone completely off topic, so I'll stop there.

Edited by kool kitty89
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What about high-end contemporary PCs? (at very least, 486-based work station class PCs of the time should have been faster, and probably a good deal more expensive than the A3000, though maybe not the MAC IIfx)

 

 

 

Hahah.. Uhmm.. no... There was nothing in the PC world that could touch an A3000 when it came out in 90-91... That article he was talking about was making comparissons to systems available at the time, and jokingly referred to the A3000 as a "mainframe in a desktop case".. But they were comparing alot more than just clock speed and MIPS..

 

Yeah, there were 486s... not 486DX2s.. Just 486s... like 33mhz, or 50mhz if you wanted to pay server-class prices.. These machines did not hold a freakin candle to the A3000...

 

What PC do you know of in 1991 that could adress GIGs of contiguous RAM? How many 24-bit color graphics cards were available for PCs then? Let alone video editing suites.. Let's see.. Windows 3.1 was out.. And we all know how wonderful/stable of an OS that was.. Most people were still using MSDOS 6.22... Not to mention the performance differences between the 040 and 486 processors.. Where expansion buswidth is concerned, Mac had Nubus and Amiga had Zorro III. The PCs were still using 16bit ISA..

 

a 40 mhz 040 machine (mac or amiga) basically out-ran a 40mhz 486 by at least 2:1 in overall system performance.. And if we are talking about things like total system resources, multitasking capabilities, or OS functionality, they are not even in the same ballpark.

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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Wow! Careful, careful no flamewar erupts! Ha ha - this is great to see such enthusiasm for the old machines.

 

I must admit, I bought ST for 2 reasons: (1) I wouldn't even look at the Amiga because I DID have my "Atari blinders" on back then. I was 15 years old. (2) I could barely muster the $$$ for the ST, much less the A1000.

 

A died-in-the-wool Atari fanboy, I wouldn't even CONSIDER anything branded Commodore. A shame, really, because now that I've outgrown (for the most part, please forgive) I find the Amiga intriguiging, and I am sorry I never explored it. [i even enjoy pure Commodore stuff like 64 and Vic-20 nowdays].

 

I don't think it is necessary to trounce on the ST as a piece of junk, however....OR the Amiga. There's no doubt that the ST was a good value for the day, even though the hardware is "less special" or "less innovative" or however you want to term it. Just because something isn't the ABSOLUTE "best" doesn't mean it completely sucks.

 

If there were an EASY way to expore the Amiga nowdays - like the SIO2PC for the Atari-8 - and never screw with floppies - I think there could be some catch-up fun for people who missed out. I don't really miss too much about the ST, but likewise if it were easy. I guess when I got into Super Nintendo and Genesis I kind of forgot about the 16-bit computer gaming. It's too bad the floppy emulators are so rare and expensive.

 

I think Metalguy (or someone of similar hardware ability) should whip up some kind of USB-enabled A500-to-PC device that lets you browse Amiga disc images for the old games. The HxC just seems too rare.....

http://torlus.com/floppy/index.php?en

 

 

One of the problems for those who missed out on a line of computers is newbie status so far after the fact.... I mean, I don't even know how to format a disc (disc image, that is) with my Commodore 64. At risk of sounding ignorant, I wouldn't know how to do jack-shit with an Amiga.

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I think Metalguy (or someone of similar hardware ability) should whip up some kind of USB-enabled A500-to-PC device that lets you browse Amiga disc images for the old games.

 

Already done. We have a TON of modern options for playing games on Amiga:

 

WHDLoad (most ALL games now installable on a hard drive, screw messing with floppies)

 

USB adapter called Subway and Deneb (use mass storage devices such as thumbdrives to get data in/out)

 

...in the case of the A500, you can add internal/external SCSI, which you can then get a SCSI<>IDE adapter and then an IDE<>CF Card adapter (I currently use that scenario now, but have an internal card that fits between the 68000 processor and adds both an IDE interface AND CF card slot to which I've already got OS3.1 and a bevy of games loaded on it). REAL excited about this solution all the way from Finland :)

Edited by save2600
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The Mega STE, TT030 and Falcon030 (and modified STs) do exactly that: the FDC is clocked to 16 MHz instead of the original 8 MHz, and the HD floppy is read with double speed and the same rpm. That is what the Atari AJAX floppy controller is all about: it's a WD1772 compatible controller that runs stable at 16 MHz (HD) and 32 MHz (ED), while the original WD1772 only works at 8 MHz officially (the 02-02 variant may run in 16 MHz, but this is not guaranteed). While ED died rather quickly and thus was hardly used (Steven Jobs had it in his NeXTstations and some Ataris were retrofitted with ED drives, but that's about it), HD became the standard floppy disk format for several years.

 

Thorsten

 

 

I stand corrected then. I didn't realize there was an upgrade path for the earlier STs, my origional comment is that the 8-bit *is* able to read/write HD at full speed using a Black Box w/ floppy board, interesting to hear that the ST was able to do the same. Were there any options to add VGA or IDE controllers?

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Really guys, enough of this 8-bit vs ST vs Amiga. Let's get right down to the nitty gritty. The Apple II is clearly superior to the Macintosh and don't even get me started on how the Timex Sinclair kicks all sorts of major arse on the C64.

 

As you were..

 

You know, I have always wondered why Apple, who was one of the first to offer a home computer with a color display, switch to that little tiny mono monitor used in the Mac. Hmmm.....

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Wow! Careful, careful no flamewar erupts! Ha ha - this is great to see such enthusiasm for the old machines.

 

I must admit, I bought ST for 2 reasons: (1) I wouldn't even look at the Amiga because I DID have my "Atari blinders" on back then. I was 15 years old. (2) I could barely muster the $$$ for the ST, much less the A1000.

 

A died-in-the-wool Atari fanboy, I wouldn't even CONSIDER anything branded Commodore. A shame, really, because now that I've outgrown (for the most part, please forgive) I find the Amiga intriguiging, and I am sorry I never explored it. [i even enjoy pure Commodore stuff like 64 and Vic-20 nowdays].

 

 

Information was not as free back in 1985 as it is today. I speak for myself but I suspect for others too when I say I preferred the Atari 8-bit computer line and naturally assumed that the ST was the 16-bit descendant of the Atari 8-bit. I felt cheated to learn that the Amiga was the computer I should have chosen based on my love of the Atari 1200XL.

 

It's hard to describe the feeling. it isn't hatred of the ST, it is a kind of ambivalence. Like: "let's just put this unpleasant experience behind us and move on."

 

Imagine you want to love your newborn son but try as you might something seems to be a little wrong. You find out a few months later the infant was switched at birth and you've had the wrong son these past months. You don't hate the baby, but that moment when you get your actual son back - that "this is so right" feeling - that's the probably the same feeling as moving from an ST to an Amiga.

 

 

-edit-

 

Though that bit was a bit corny so I was gonna edit it, but… nah.

 

I swear, when I first sat down seriously with an Amiga I think I could hear “Ode to Joy” and I’m not sure, but I think the clouds may have parted and a precise beam of sunshine illuminated the keyboard.

Edited by FastRobPlus
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<snipped>

 

Not bad for a 1985 computer. You would have had to throw out a 1985 ST and start over before you could get near this.

 

 

Very nice. I've always liked the A1000's case and recessed keyboard.

 

Not necessarily true though - the PAK030/50 board would give the ST close to the

oomph of your setup. It also added mucho Ram, newer TOS version, etc,...

 

Not belitting your setup - its awesome - but as I said, there are options for both,

not just one.

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How many such expansions were readily avialble (though 3rd parties and such) for STs compared to Amigas? (CPU accelerator cards, video cards, etc)

 

Hmm, wasn't arguing "quantity". Just pointing out that these options and add-ons were

available for both machines. :)

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Really guys, enough of this 8-bit vs ST vs Amiga. Let's get right down to the nitty gritty. The Apple II is clearly superior to the Macintosh and don't even get me started on how the Timex Sinclair kicks all sorts of major arse on the C64.

 

As you were..

 

My Abacus owns them all! :D

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Except a) thats a hacked together terrible looking pile of shit.. He was running a retail computer store.. not a salvage yard.. About a year ago, I was gonna sledge hammer a falcon on video and post it on youtube... But after seeing photo's of what you did to yours, I figured I'd be hard pressed to deface one worse than you already did.. Love the black spray paint..

 

You know, I spent a lot of time and effort on my Falcon. It's a very cool machine, boots up *fast*, rock solid, lots of fun to play with. I've had a ball working on it, don't regret one moment of it. I'd say its a lot like how you must feel about your every chip resocketed, upgraded 130XE. I've always admired your work and dedication to the 8bits, very worthy. I have to say your atitude and intolerance towards others with different opinions leaves much to be desired.

 

I won't sink to your level, and slam your machine in retaliation. Nope, I'm better than that.

 

I'll just keep on looking at my ultra-cool OS and thinking about how great diversity is. :)

 

post-5822-125982788228_thumb.jpg

 

post-5822-125982790661_thumb.jpg

 

and b) none of that was available in 1991 when the Mega STE came out.. Everything I mentioned was.. And the average person could easily buy an A3000 and build a machine of that spec (or much higher) just by plugging in cards..

 

No arguing with you about the timeframe, but thank you for vindicating my argument, that options

are available for both.

 

Have a nice day, MetalGuy66.

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I remember when the 3000 came out. It was the cover story on Byte mag (May 1990 I think)

 

In that magazine they pointed out that the most powerful personal computer released to that date was the Mac IIfx that they'd just reviewed the month before. The Amiga 3000 benchmarked just a few percent slower makign the A3K the 2nd fastest released PC in the word at the time.

 

The cost difference was more than $5,000 (5K for the Amiga, 10K-11K for the Mac)

 

I don't know that any computer has ever achived this levr of price/performance before or since.

 

For it's era, the A3000 was as close to a perfect computer as has ever been released.

 

The A3000 is a nice machine.

 

Instead of comparing it to the Mac IIfx though, just for the fun of it - compare it to the

Atari TT030 released at approximately the same time.

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I remember when the 3000 came out. It was the cover story on Byte mag (May 1990 I think)

 

In that magazine they pointed out that the most powerful personal computer released to that date was the Mac IIfx that they'd just reviewed the month before. The Amiga 3000 benchmarked just a few percent slower makign the A3K the 2nd fastest released PC in the word at the time.

 

The cost difference was more than $5,000 (5K for the Amiga, 10K-11K for the Mac)

 

I don't know that any computer has ever achived this levr of price/performance before or since.

 

For it's era, the A3000 was as close to a perfect computer as has ever been released.

 

The A3000 is a nice machine.

 

Instead of comparing it to the Mac IIfx though, just for the fun of it - compare it to the

Atari TT030 released at approximately the same time.

 

I only vaguely remember the TT. I think it was used for Calamus and driving laser printers. Looking it up on wikipedia, it looks to be an STe retrofitted with a 16mhz '030. Is there more to it?

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I only vaguely remember the TT. I think it was used for Calamus and driving laser printers. Looking it up on wikipedia, it looks to be an STe retrofitted with a 16mhz '030. Is there more to it?

 

Quite a bit more actually:

 

68030 CPU @ 32mhz

FPU: Motorola 68882 @ 32 MHz

System RAM 2 MB ST RAM expandable to 12 MB

TT RAM expandable to 256 MB TT RAM on daughter board using either 30-pin or 72-pin SIMMs

Custom chips:

TT Shifter "TT Video shift register chip" — Enabled bitmap graphics. Featured a 64-bit wide bus with interleaved access to ("dual purpose") system memory and on-chip buffers for high bandwidths. Contiguous 32 KB memory for ST modes, 154 KB for TT modes.

TT GLU "Generalized Logic Unit" — Control logic for the system used to connect the STs chips. Not part of the data path, but needed to bridge chips with each other. Used in TT and MEGA STE.

DMA "Direct Memory Access" — Three independent channels, one for floppy and hard drive data transfers, one for the SCSI port and one for 85C30 SCC network port. Direct access to ("dual purpose") system memory in the ST. 2 chips used.

MCU "Memory Control Unit" — For system RAM.

Color: 320×200 (16 color), 320×480 (256 colors), 640×200 (4 colors), 640×480 (16 colors), palette of 4096 colors

Duochrome: 640×400 (2 colors)

Monochrome: 1280×960 mono TT high with special 19 in monitor

Sound: Yamaha YM2149 + National LMC 1992

Drive: 1.44 MB

MIDI In/Out

3 x RS-232

Serial LAN RS-422

Appletalk network port

Printer

VGA Monitor (analog RGB and Mono)

Extra Disk drive port

ACSI and SCSI port

VMEbus inside case

cartridge (128 KB)

keyboard (detachable)

Joystick and Mouse ports (on keyboard)

Case: Two-piece desktop-style.

Release Date: 1990-1991

$2995 with 2 MB RAM and 50 MB hard drive

 

Like the A3000, not a bad machine. :)

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