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From: jack@cca.CCA.COM (Jack Orenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: And the winner is...
Message-ID: <17680@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 13:19:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: cca.17680
Posted: Mon Jul 13 13:19:17 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jul-87 05:48:47 EDT
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Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
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Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:6461 comp.sys.atari.st:4383



A while ago I sent the following request to the amiga and atari groups:


| - COST: How much can I expect to spend on the system, color monitor, 20 meg
|   disk and 1 meg main memory? How much for the C software and editor?
| - SPEED: What's the speed of the compiler? Relative measures (e.g. twice the
|   speed of an 8088-based PC) and absolute measures (e.g. 500 lines per
|   minute) are of interest.
| - GRAPHICS: Speed and ease-of-programming.
| - OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: What do you particularly like and dislike?

Thanks to Karl Rowley, John M. Olsen, Keith Hedger, Ali Ozer, Avery
Shealey, Jonathan Nagy, and Bryce Nesbitt for your responses.

| The second biggest lie in recorded history is "I'll post a summary to
| the net", but I really will if enough people respond.

And so I will:

Many responses were in the form "I prefer X because of Y" (e.g.  X =
"Amiga", Y = "multitasking"). The clear favorite was the Amiga.  Reasons
most often cited were more sophisticated hardware support for graphics
and multitasking (a big favorite).  The Amiga seems to be more
expandable.  According to Ali Ozer:

| If you want to expand above 1 Meg [on the Atari 1040ST],
| you need to start kludging things, and you can't go above 4 even with the
| biggest hacks. The A2000 is 68020 compatible, and you can one day easily
| plug in a 68020/68881 board for increased performance. (Such boards do
| exist; CSA makes one for the A1000, for instance.) 1040ST can't be
| upgraded to the 68020; the 24-bit address pointer is engraved in their OS.

For my purposes, I need as much memory as I can get my hands on, so I'm
happy to hear that the Amiga can support up to 9 meg.  According to a
local dealer of Ataris and Amigas, the Amiga A2000 will be available at
the end of this month while the new Ataris (with 2-4 meg) won't be
available for a while longer. I've heard that both new machines are
already available in Europe.

As far as C development goes, the preferences seem to be Mark Williams C
for the Atari, and Manx Aztec (or is the Aztec Manx?) for the Amiga.
The Amiga also has Lattice C, but based on my own experience with
Lattice for the IBM PC, I'd be reluctant to try them again. Especially
since the Amiga product seems to have so many similarities to the IBM PC
product (based on a quick reading of the documentation). Amiga's C
compiler is produced by Lattice.  I've heard various estimates of when
the Manx symbolic debugger will be available. They range from "next
release - this summer" to "next year".  I have no idea what to believe
on this topic.

Hard disks are available but the Amiga dealer here said that there was
some room for improvement in quality. According to respondents, prices
for the Amiga disks are slightly higher than for the Atari. The Amiga
prices I've heard are about $1000 for a 20 meg drive.

Several people said that the Amiga is more expensive but worth it.  The
dealer here has a trade-in plan: A1000 + $1000 = A2000. While it seems
that the A1000 will meet my requirements, it's nice to know I can move
up without losing my investment.

One person commented on documentation, saying that the Amiga did better.


So it's an Amiga for me. I'm looking at this as a machine for the next
couple of years until 68020-class machines come down in price. Given that
there are *already* some impressive 68020 boxes for the Amiga, it's possible
that I can use the machine for an even longer time.


Anyone want a used IBM PC?


Jack Orenstein