VOGONS


A 286 computer, is it totally useless?

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Reply 160 of 229, by brostenen

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PTherapist wrote:

Wow, those Tiki & Piccolo computers look cool. Interesting that schools over there opted for Z80 (later 80186) systems running some variant of CP/M, it certainly would have opened up a wide software library. But with those costs it's easy to see why they never gained traction for home usage.

https://rc700.dk/ There are an downloadeable Piccoline emulator and software on this website.

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Reply 161 of 229, by Shagittarius

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MAZter wrote:

Short answer is:

yes, 286 processor is incompatible with most of MS-Dos games, too slow

This is not even close to being accurate. My 286 8Mhz plays the majority of games through 1992 perfectly fine.

Reply 162 of 229, by HanJammer

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Errius wrote:

For games, the PC wasn't even a contender in 1989-1992.

I 🤣-ed

You can't be serious, man... take a look at Gunship 2000... or anything from Microprose for that matter... PC versions are as good as Amiga ones if not better (Gunship 2k has much better soundtrack on a PC that's for sure). Amiga shined in the 80s - before the times of VGA. In the 90s it was over - even mediocre PC offered better visuals and audio than Amiga. Ever heard of Alone in the Dark? Have you seen it on Amiga? No? Yet it still runs pretty well on 286. And then came 1993 and Doom. And it was finally over.

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Reply 163 of 229, by Grzyb

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Well, there was a few good games for PC before 1992, but not enough to make it the obvious winner.
Lemmings (1991) was still originally for Amiga, and the PC port lacked some features.
Pinball Fantasies (1992) was also for Amiga, and while the PC port was better than the original, it wasn't out until 1994.

I consider 1992 as the turning point - primarily because of Wolfenstein 3D, and Links Pro was also pretty important.
These were where Amiga finally failed.

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 164 of 229, by Shagittarius

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There are exceptions, the games that were ported to Amiga that play way better on a PC. All Sierra games for example. I'm not poo pooing the Amiga I had a 500 with a hardwired Adspeed, and later a 1200 back in the day which I used regularly till about 95. Everything that wasn't a port was better on the Amiga but it doesn't mean the PC versions are shit.

Reply 165 of 229, by brostenen

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You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete.

Better GFX had to be on the market.
Better sound had to be on the market.
A better bus was needed.
You had to unload the CPU from lots of stuff.

Yes. Games were better on the PC by the end of 1992. As the Amiga was designed to be 10 years ahead when it launched. Yet as much as you design a computer to be 10 years ahead, it will not always be 10 years ahead. For the Amiga it was more like somewere between 7 to 8 years. Here I am talking about OCS machines and not AGA. As AGA was only a stop gap before the NYX were suposed to launch. That did not happen. Actually an interresting thing. Imagine 64 bit and reprogramable stuff around 1994 in a consumer grade machine. Oh mama.... 😜

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 166 of 229, by appiah4

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brostenen wrote:
You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete. […]
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You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete.

Better GFX had to be on the market.
Better sound had to be on the market.
A better bus was needed.
You had to unload the CPU from lots of stuff.

Yes. Games were better on the PC by the end of 1992. As the Amiga was designed to be 10 years ahead when it launched. Yet as much as you design a computer to be 10 years ahead, it will not always be 10 years ahead. For the Amiga it was more like somewere between 7 to 8 years. Here I am talking about OCS machines and not AGA. As AGA was only a stop gap before the NYX were suposed to launch. That did not happen. Actually an interresting thing. Imagine 64 bit and reprogramable stuff around 1994 in a consumer grade machine. Oh mama.... 😜

No, Amiga was more or less obsolete upon Civilization's release to be honest, so it was obsolete in 1992. If you don't believe me try to play a turn of Civ 1 on an Amiga into the 1900s.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 167 of 229, by brostenen

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Grzyb wrote:

I consider 1992 as the turning point - primarily because of Wolfenstein 3D, and Links Pro was also pretty important.
These were where Amiga finally failed.

True if we are talking games only. On other points, the Amiga were still ahead of the PC. Like when was it, that you would be able to unload the GFX calculations from the CPU to a dedicated GFX chip? Voodoo and those alike made that possible on the PC. And that was not untill the second half of the 1990's. Another technology that the Amiga was able to master, and by now obsolete technology generally speaking, was that you had a fully dynamic ram drive. The PC only ever had a static version, that you manually set a size for and will stay that way. That was fully dynamic on the Amiga only as large or small as what the data in the drive was in size.

As a gaming platform, it was obsolete by the end of 1992, if we look at the gaming experience exclusively. Yet that did not prevent NASA from using them to calculate numbers and data, vital to launching the space shuttle. Nasa always said, that no computer were able to replace the Amiga, were it was deployed in the launch center. That does not sound obsolete to me. Rather that everything else had not catched up on all points.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 168 of 229, by brostenen

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appiah4 wrote:
brostenen wrote:
You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete. […]
Show full quote

You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete.

Better GFX had to be on the market.
Better sound had to be on the market.
A better bus was needed.
You had to unload the CPU from lots of stuff.

Yes. Games were better on the PC by the end of 1992. As the Amiga was designed to be 10 years ahead when it launched. Yet as much as you design a computer to be 10 years ahead, it will not always be 10 years ahead. For the Amiga it was more like somewere between 7 to 8 years. Here I am talking about OCS machines and not AGA. As AGA was only a stop gap before the NYX were suposed to launch. That did not happen. Actually an interresting thing. Imagine 64 bit and reprogramable stuff around 1994 in a consumer grade machine. Oh mama.... 😜

No, Amiga was more or less obsolete upon Civilization's release to be honest, so it was obsolete in 1992. If you don't believe me try to play a turn of Civ 1 on an Amiga into the 1900s.

I did and it is better, than on a stock consumer grade PC from 1991 that was more expensive than an Amiga500. And as I tried to explain, then obsolete are not always gaming only. There are way more to that word than the gaming world.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 169 of 229, by appiah4

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brostenen wrote:
appiah4 wrote:
brostenen wrote:
You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete. […]
Show full quote

You still had to get into the 486 era, before the Amiga was considered obsolete.

Better GFX had to be on the market.
Better sound had to be on the market.
A better bus was needed.
You had to unload the CPU from lots of stuff.

Yes. Games were better on the PC by the end of 1992. As the Amiga was designed to be 10 years ahead when it launched. Yet as much as you design a computer to be 10 years ahead, it will not always be 10 years ahead. For the Amiga it was more like somewere between 7 to 8 years. Here I am talking about OCS machines and not AGA. As AGA was only a stop gap before the NYX were suposed to launch. That did not happen. Actually an interresting thing. Imagine 64 bit and reprogramable stuff around 1994 in a consumer grade machine. Oh mama.... 😜

No, Amiga was more or less obsolete upon Civilization's release to be honest, so it was obsolete in 1992. If you don't believe me try to play a turn of Civ 1 on an Amiga into the 1900s.

I did and it is better, than on a stock consumer grade PC from 1991 that was more expensive than an Amiga500. And as I tried to explain, then obsolete are not always gaming only. There are way more to that word than the gaming world.

It honestly is not; we had this argument with my PC buddies back in the day and we actually sat down to play together, and his 286 destroyed my A500. Believe me, it was a personal humiliation for me.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 170 of 229, by Grzyb

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brostenen wrote:
Grzyb wrote:

I consider 1992 as the turning point - primarily because of Wolfenstein 3D, and Links Pro was also pretty important.
These were where Amiga finally failed.

True if we are talking games only. On other points, the Amiga were still ahead of the PC. Like when was it, that you would be able to unload the GFX calculations from the CPU to a dedicated GFX chip?

You mean Amiga was better than PC for professional stuff? Seriously?

Try working with some large spreadsheet or database on an average PC from that era, and then try the same with an average Amiga - which means a 7 MHz one 😜
Even with graphics software, PC was the winner: 3DStudio, Autocad, Corel Draw, Microstation, PhotoStyler... Try such stuff on Amiga and see if it's faster, see if those dedicated GFX chips can be of any help here 😜

Also, if you really wanted, there were graphics accelerators/coprocessors for PC: first the PGC (1984), later on the 8514/A (1987), and in the early 90s there were already pretty popular with those who did professional graphics.

Voodoo and those alike made that possible on the PC. And that was not untill the second half of the 1990's.

Voodoo was for games only, so off-topic here.
And years before Voodoo, all cards had some 2D acceleration - you can find some non-accelerated cards for VLB, but for PCI - probably not.

Another technology that the Amiga was able to master, and by now obsolete technology generally speaking, was that you had a fully dynamic ram drive. The PC only ever had a static version, that you manually set a size for and will stay that way. That was fully dynamic on the Amiga only as large or small as what the data in the drive was in size.

And nobody cared, as - contrary to Amigas - all PCs had an HDD 😜

And yes, obviously there's a need for a dedicated "Amiga vs. PC" thread, maybe even for an entire sub-forum? 😁

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 171 of 229, by brostenen

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Grzyb wrote:

You mean Amiga was better than PC for professional stuff? Seriously?

Try working with some large spreadsheet or database on an average PC from that era, and then try the same with an average Amiga - which means a 7 MHz one 😜
Even with graphics software, PC was the winner: 3DStudio, Autocad, Corel Draw, Microstation, PhotoStyler... Try such stuff on Amiga and see if it's faster, see if those dedicated GFX chips can be of any help here 😜

Yes. I am serious. And I am not talking better in every segment of professional use. I am talking about a select few segments in wich the Amiga was superiour. The Amiga was the best at photo editing, before Mac took the lead, untill you had the Windows edition of Photoshop that was just as good on PC than on Mac. I will name the space shuttle program again, as Nasa did not any other platform at all, that was able to replace their Amiga's. And how about one Amiga controlling an entire highschool district's heating system, that they need to spend millions on PC stuff, if it have to be replaced. And not to mention early special effects in movies, were the Amiga was used big time. Like Babylon5, Young indiana jones, and more. The Amiga was selected for info-channels, because it's video signal was the same as tv systems. It was used in the 1992(93?) virtual reality system, because nothing else was capeable at the price (yes, I have tried one, it was awesomme in 92/93). Do you remember them colourfull MTV-Logo clips, that MTV used in the early 90's? One is with an astronaut holding an MTV-Flag. That was created on Amiga. The Amiga was also used in music production, because the PC sucked at that back in the 80's. Mostly it was Atari, yet the Amiga was used as well.

I am not talking stuff like Autocad and 3D studio. I know the Amiga was not capeable of that, or actually. There was a Cad program, though because it was not directly disk compatible with the PC (720k vs 880k), then people stuck to PC for Autocad. My mother used autocad, so I am fully aware that they did not use Amiga. What I want to say. (Again), is that there were stuff, that the Amiga did way better than any other platform. Basically, it was just as professional than any other platform back then. And to recap the gaming aspect, then it kicked so much any other platforms ass up to early 1992 if we look at the broad picture. Not just taking one single game and proclaiming that because of that game, the entire platform is superiour to another. The word obsolete have so many aspects to it.

Now. The dedicated chips in the Amiga, is not only for GFX you know. Try looking into the arcitecture, and you will see that there are more to it, than just GFX. True it had fast GFX because of Fat Agnus. Yet the disk/storage sub system had a dedicated chip, the sound system had a dedicated chip, you were able to move data around in the memory, without the use of the CPU at all.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 172 of 229, by brostenen

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Grzyb wrote:

And nobody cared, as - contrary to Amigas - all PCs had an HDD 😜

And yes, obviously there's a need for a dedicated "Amiga vs. PC" thread, maybe even for an entire sub-forum? 😁

Not all PC's had HDD in 1985, 1986 or even 1989. It was a luxury, on the same level as soundcards were a luxury in 1992.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 173 of 229, by brostenen

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Grzyb wrote:

Voodoo was for games only, so off-topic here.

Ohh really?! Then why do my stash of old software, contain a DivX player for Voodoo1 cards?

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 174 of 229, by maxtherabbit

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brostenen wrote:
Grzyb wrote:

Voodoo was for games only, so off-topic here.

Ohh really?! Then why do my stash of old software, contain a DivX player for Voodoo1 cards?

seriously? honestly never heard of them being used for anything but 3d acceleration - are you talking about the voodoo rush maybb?

Reply 175 of 229, by brostenen

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maxtherabbit wrote:
brostenen wrote:
Grzyb wrote:

Voodoo was for games only, so off-topic here.

Ohh really?! Then why do my stash of old software, contain a DivX player for Voodoo1 cards?

seriously? honestly never heard of them being used for anything but 3d acceleration - are you talking about the voodoo rush maybb?

Nope. I used it on the Orchid V1, that I had around 2000. I used it in an K6-II-500/Gigabyte-GA5AX setup.
I have it on a CD somewere.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 176 of 229, by Grzyb

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brostenen wrote:

The Amiga was the best at photo editing, before Mac took the lead, untill you had the Windows edition of Photoshop that was just as good on PC than on Mac.

But how?
You know, around 1990, SVGA cards supporting 256 colors in high resolutions were already easily available.
Before Photoshop, there was Photo Styler, and even simple Paintbrush did support SVGA.

Amiga had what? 32 colors?
HAM wasn't feasible for photo editing, was it?
Or are you talking about big Amigas with some special graphics cards?

And not to mention early special effects in movies, were the Amiga was used big time. Like Babylon5, Young indiana jones, and more. The Amiga was selected for info-channels, because it's video signal was the same as tv systems. It was used in the 1992(93?) virtual reality system, because nothing else was capeable at the price (yes, I have tried one, it was awesomme in 92/93). Do you remember them colourfull MTV-Logo clips, that MTV used in the early 90's? One is with an astronaut holding an MTV-Flag. That was created on Amiga.

OK, you're right, Amiga was good for video editing.
15 kHz video was bad for most applications, but it allowed for easy integration with TV stuff.
Genlocks for Amiga were popular and affordable, while similar stuff for PC was mad expensive and hard to get.

Not all PC's had HDD in 1985, 1986 or even 1989.

We were talking about early 90s - if there were still PCs sold without HDD, they were probably for special purposes, eg. network terminals.

Then why do my stash of old software, contain a DivX player for Voodoo1 cards?

My stash of old software contains some XFree86 version supporting Voodoo as a regular graphics card.
Nevertheless, Voodoo wasn't designed for such purposes.

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 178 of 229, by Scali

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brostenen wrote:

Nope. I used it on the Orchid V1, that I had around 2000. I used it in an K6-II-500/Gigabyte-GA5AX setup.
I have it on a CD somewere.

I might know what you mean.
Back in those days, especially scaling video to fullscreen was very expensive without hardware support.
I've seen a video player that used a VooDoo to render the video into a texture and then stretch it to fullscreen in hardware, with filtering.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 179 of 229, by appiah4

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Scali wrote:
I might know what you mean. Back in those days, especially scaling video to fullscreen was very expensive without hardware suppo […]
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brostenen wrote:

Nope. I used it on the Orchid V1, that I had around 2000. I used it in an K6-II-500/Gigabyte-GA5AX setup.
I have it on a CD somewere.

I might know what you mean.
Back in those days, especially scaling video to fullscreen was very expensive without hardware support.
I've seen a video player that used a VooDoo to render the video into a texture and then stretch it to fullscreen in hardware, with filtering.

Interesting. Did Voodoo use any kind of texture compression? If not, I guess the raw screen buffer would have to fit in Voodoo's memory? What kind of resolution limitations did that imply, I wonder.. Could it handle DVD quality video?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.