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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!eneevax!gyuri
From: gyuri@eneevax.UUCP (Gyorgy Fekete)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari,net.micro.amiga
Subject: Amiga and ST (important comparisons!)
Message-ID: <377@eneevax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 00:43:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: eneevax.377
Posted: Fri Oct  4 00:43:15 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 05:41:47 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Maryland, EE Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 113
Xref: watmath net.micro.atari:1270 net.micro.amiga:320

I am trying to forward this, but twice before I was unsuccesful...
So here it is, with a bit of delay...

Date: Tuesday, 24 Sep 1985 23:53:23-PDT
From: umcp-cs!seismo!allegra!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-cgvax2!boiko  (Michael Boiko MKO2-2/KO2 264-3626)
To: seismo!allegra!umcp-cs!eneevax!info-st  (Distribution list @ST)
Subject: More ST vs Amiga info......
Status: R

	Here's a note I came across yesterday that you all might be
interested in reading. It sums up some of the thoughts an Amiga/ST developer
has about the Amiga vs ST comparison question.
	The one question should be if the ST is that good (and I feel it is)
why isn't the Computer media/trade mags. falling all over it. What's going
on!!
	By the way I have had an ST for about 2-3 weeks,and I think it's one
of the best bargains to come along in a long time.....
	Once again I would appreciate someone posting this to micro.net.atari,
since I'am still having problems posting notes.	
						Thank You
						Mike Boiko
						
==============================================================================
Msg#: 0053    Lines=15
Sent: Sept 23,1985   at 10:11 PM
  To: DR. MICHAEL MITCHELL
From: JOHN DEMAR          
Subj: st

MICHAEL:
   I'm sure you are a sane, rational person, so I'll continue...
I'm a software/hardware developer and an electronics engineer. I've seen
and used computers from $50 to $5Million and have designed VLSI chips
for 6 years at GE until starting my business last year. So, the following
is said from technical expertise and not first-impression judgments from
marketing "fluff"...
  I own (or have owned) both the Atari 520ST and Amiga PC. I've given
them both a good bit of work and inspection, including o/s design and
hardware architecture. Here are some facts and my conclusion:
  The Amiga's graphics IC's are very powerful in their own right and
the sound/io chip definitely gives nice synthesized music. But, that is
where the power stops dead. However, since people respond emotionally to
sight  and sound, the demos are easy to catch someone's eye. Inside the
Amiga, there is very little true support for the power of a 68000 cpu

	In the low res mode, those fantastic graphics chips
steal almost 70% (yes!) of the possible CPU time that the 68000 could be
using to do real computer things like calculate, move/sort data, and
plot graphics on your screen. Since the complicated screen data for the
Amiga must come from the same ram on the same bus as the CPU, there are
excessive wait-cycles imposed on the 68000. This, together with the
CPU speed that is 10% or more slower than the Atari 520ST, the Amiga
does not come close to the true power and useful capabilities of the ST.
  Inside the ST, you will find MORE custom IC's than the Amiga and MORE
powerful chips 'off the shelf' than the Amiga. This adds up to a real
optimized, fast and versatile computer. First, there are a pair of chips
working together to optimize data bus and screen data access. The memory
controller prefetches 16-bit data directly for the 68000 and also places
screen data onto a separate bus for the screen refresh chip. This
operation only steals 8-18% of the available true CPU time.

	Further into the hardware, the 520ST has three serial
ports, RS-232, midi, and keyboard. All of these are handled separately
from the concern of the 68000 and all in hardware. The 520ST has a
68901 interrupt controller that keeps track of 16 separate events in the
system with very little intervention of the CPU (this chip is really a
necessity in a true 68000 architecture and is missing in the Amiga).
Now, the best feature and performer in the ST design is the custom
disk DMA controller which transfers data to the RAM without using the CPU
and does this at a rate of 1.3Megabytes per second! This IC also helps
the Western Digital floppy controller and makes for the fastest micro
computer disk access that I have ever seen. The ST brings in a 32K file
in less than 4 seconds, including drive start up, directory search, etc.
The Amiga takes almost 20 seconds!! Maybe you like waiting, I don't.
Not to mention the optimized set-up that the DMA chip has for adding
low-cost, fast peripherals like Hard drives and CD Roms. The Amiga uses

	the amiga has a non-standard disk configuration and does
much of the disk support in software (ie. slow). The drives have slightly
more capacity than the the ST's DS drives (880K to 720K) but this is at
the expense of speed. The Amiga directory format (or lack of) is done
much like a commodore-64. In fact, to get a directory, the Amiga goes out
and finds a program called DIR, loads it and goes back searching!

  Now that I have started into the topic of software, I have more bad
news for you. Intuition is graphically and color-wise more advanced than
GEM or the MAC but fails to perform as a real user interface. The
windows are poorly configured and move with flicker. I rate the MAC slightly
higher then GEM in usefulness but GEM on the ST is much faster and more
predictable for the user. The Amiga OS(s) are full of bugs and are 
clumsy to use after using GEM for 3 months. As far as real software goes,
the ST already has many useful programs and there are more developers
working on ST projects than Amiga. (I hope plan on mostly games!)...

	As a programmer, I found the 520ST documentation to be
very well written and complete. And, if something was unclear, Atari was
very open and very helpful. On the other hand, the Amiga has a great
deal of documentation but things change everyday. Worst of all, you have
to be God or Electronic Arts to talk to anyone at Commodore. They simply
are not professional people. 

  To finish off here, I would like to say a couple of BAD things about
the ST... The case could be nicer and they should have picked easier-to-
find connectors for the monitor and drive ports. Besides that, I think
(and over 50,000 others think) that the Atari 520ST is most powerful and
elegantly configured computer ever made. Also, I feel that Atari will
sell more computers than any other company has ever sold to date. This
is not solely due to marketing hype (like the C-64) but from true
value and power that was never offered before.  Save $1000 and take a
vacation next summer.... buy an ST.   Sincerely, John DeMar, QMI.