It should, had enough hardware to offload the processing, but the Soundscape came out at the end of the DOS area in 1994, GUS came out in 1992.

HunterZ wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

I remember being very frustrated that my old 486 didn't have enough power to play MOD music and do anything else at the same time.

You were probably trying to use the PC speaker as an output device.

Good heavens, no!

As I dimly recall, it might have been an AWE64, actually. I did find a specialized program that could take advantage of the card's onboard RAM to play MOD files more quickly, but the program couldn't do much with the tiny amount of RAM included on the AWE.

One Must Fall was released 2 years before the AWE64 and used MOD tracker music during the game.

Yes, much the same could be said about Megazeux. I should add that I was trying to play the MODs (and do other things at the same time) under Windows 95.

Back when I originally had an Amiga & PC at the same time. I'd have to say that just about every game (about 95% or so,) that I had for both systems were either better or just as good on the Amiga. About the only reason I used the PC at all was for the games I wanted that just didn't have an Amiga port.

The main problem I had with the PC back then was implementation. My stock Amiga 2000 (no accelerator,) with only 9 meg of memory consistently out performed my 25mhz 486DX with 32 meg of memory. I wasn't able to find PC versions of games that performed better until I got a 486DX-4/100mhz system (the same 32 meg of memory.) Amiga games consistently required only 512k ram, or maybe 1meg in some cases, while the same PC games were requireing 8meg or more. There was also a space issue. An amiga game that came on 3 880k floppies, would be on 6 or more 1.44 meg floppies. My original 80 meg HDD on my Amiga never even came close to being full (and I did a HDD install on everything that had the option.) Meanwhile, the 250 meg HDD on my PCC was almost always stuffed to the limit. I had to constantly uninstall (delete,) games from it, just to play something else.

As for upgradeability, the Amiga 4000 was out long before I was able to afford a VGA card with more than 512k of RAM. On one of my days off back then (early 90's not sure of the exact date,) I had stopped by the Amiga store and did a little drooling over the 4000 which was relatively new (but had been out for a little while.) Couldn't afford it of course. That same day, I stopped by a PC store to price out some upgrades for my 486, and the 1meg VGA card was over $800. At the time, VGA cards were still relatively new. That same day I also went by an Apple/Mac store, but that was my last look at Macs. At the time, it was virtually impossable to do your own upgrades on a Mac system. Apart from needing special tools, the dealer told me that they had to sign an agreement not to resell the upgrade parts, they could only install them themselves. I'm sorry, back then, I just wasn't willing to shell out $100+ for a part, only to have to shell out the same amount or more, just to have somone remove a panel, insert part, replace the panel.

Even today, working with eBay bought parts, My shiny new A4000 nicely kitted out, consistently outperforms my Duo-Core 2.7mhz 4gig RAM PC, at simular tasks. My conclusion is that the PC archetecture is just clunky and inefficient. While the Amiga was a little more streamlined and had more thought put into it. That's just my opinion.

You could say the same thing about the old Macs and how they managed to do what a PC could only do with a lot more RAM. The 68k CPU was just better that way. (The original IBM PC design team went with the Intel CPU because it was cheaper.)

Not sure what to say about hard drive space on Amigas, but if I'm not mistaken people were running stuff on Amigas off of boot floppies for a lot longer than they were on PCs, so perhaps stuff was installed less frequently.

And I'm sure that if your Amiga is outperforming your duo-core on "simular tasks", you could probably find DOS apps that could outperform your Amiga on "simular tasks".

Allow me to hammer the final nail :

Commodore Amigas ruled the computer-based gaming scene till PCs' more powerful architecture with VGA and SVGA and better sound support with digital cards combining sound fonts and great midi modules, namely the Roland's, took over.

Thanks or no thanks to companies like Access Software, Origin, and Sierra itself, they have pushed the limits of system requirements, taking advantage of the pc's newer techs from day 1, which has turned the attention towards pcs.

Generally, IBM PC compatibles with the x86 architecture have withstood all the trials and turbulences of the computer gaming world. (Even Apple started leaning on intel, processor wise.) Like it or not, the flexibility of the PC architecture has engulfed all the other platforms.

With Amiga Forever Package, you can still relive the golden Amiga days in the pc. And best of all, you don't need to maintain different Amiga computers and chipsets by this method. You get the best of both worlds.

Jorpho wrote:

Not sure what to say about hard drive space on Amigas, but if I'm not mistaken people were running stuff on Amigas off of boot floppies for a lot longer than they were on PCs, so perhaps stuff was installed less frequently.

And I'm sure that if your Amiga is outperforming your duo-core on "simular tasks", you could probably find DOS apps that could outperform your Amiga on "simular tasks".

Actually most of the HDD space issue is because the Amiga used a more efficient storage format than the PC's FAT system. Less wasted space. Also, the 68k code was also more effecient meaning programs that do the same thing were much smaller on the Amiga (and Mac I guess, since it used the same 68k family.) This was also seen in the way memory and special function chips (sound, graphics, etc...) were accessed. No jumping through a million loops just to access more than 640k of ram (for example.)

Pleas don't get me started on trying to get DOS apps running 🙁 DOSBox is a big friend of mine. But again, that's basically just running an emulator, and the emulator can outperform the past machines as well.

According to what I've read about the original PC's: Most of the problems begin with the attitude IBM had when it decided to dabble in the personal computer (instead of just the bussiness computer,) market. The Intel chipset was chosen because IBM had an abundance of extra 8088 cpu's just lying around. The memory & device access problems were because the designers thought, "Personal computers are never going to go anywhere, so there is no need to plan for more than 1 meg of memory ever being used." From what I read, tho only reason PC's are such a big part of modern personal computers is because IBM, thinking there would never really be a market for the personal computer, did not make any part of the design proprietary. Anyone and everyone could design software and/or hardware without having to buy a license (like the do/did for the Amiga & Mac.) This meant that, in the beginning, expansions & upgrades for the PC could be found a lot cheaper (on average,) than for the Amiga or Mac. The same attitude is how the FAT system was designed. It was simple & easy with little room for expansion. It was created for floppies that held less than 1meg of data. With those, the system isn't really all that inefficient. It was just never designed with larger storage mediums in mind. It had to be patched to get past 500 meg, then again for 2 gig.. or was it 4gig, don't remember now 🙁

FeedingDragon wrote:

Actually most of the HDD space issue is because the Amiga used a more efficient storage format than the PC's FAT system. Less wasted space.

Do you have any links explaining why the Amiga file system is that much more efficient? I really don't think slack space was much of a problem on 250 MB hard drives, except in the case of large numbers of tiny files.

Pleas don't get me started on trying to get DOS apps running 🙁 DOSBox is a big friend of mine. But again, that's basically just running an emulator, and the emulator can outperform the past machines as well.

So fine, a more complex app on a faster computer runs slower than a much simpler app designed for a much slower computer. This is not surprising.

It had to be patched to get past 500 meg, then again for 2 gig.. or was it 4gig, don't remember now 🙁

The maximum partition size usable in MS-DOS 6.22 was two gigabytes - more than enough for most DOS users given the software available. There was another limitation prior to MS-DOS 5, but again, users at the time might not have commonly needed that much.

32 color 5bit graphics vs 256 color 8bit graphics, 60% more space required.

Jorpho wrote:

Yes, much the same could be said about Megazeux. I should add that I was trying to play the MODs (and do other things at the same time) under Windows 95.

My 486 never had problems with playback using Modplug Player in Windows. Perhaps you were using a very crappy module player? Cubic worked great with 16 channel modules on 66mhz machines (I used to play them in the background going into DOS prompt with it running even), and Galaxy Module Player could even do 8 channel stereo playback on IBM XTs without splitting hairs.

I didn't have an AWE32 in my 486 at the time, just a CS4231 card. Of course an AWE32 was taken advantage of in Cubic Player and used the 8MB on it 😀

HunterZ wrote:

One Must Fall was released 2 years before the AWE64 and used MOD tracker music during the game.

*cough*

Anyway, the said game runs fine on 12MHz 286 despite its tracker music.

Jorpho wrote:

Do you have any links explaining why the Amiga file system is that much more efficient? I really don't think slack space was mu […]
Show full quote

FeedingDragon wrote:

Actually most of the HDD space issue is because the Amiga used a more efficient storage format than the PC's FAT system. Less wasted space.

Do you have any links explaining why the Amiga file system is that much more efficient? I really don't think slack space was much of a problem on 250 MB hard drives, except in the case of large numbers of tiny files.

Pleas don't get me started on trying to get DOS apps running 🙁 DOSBox is a big friend of mine. But again, that's basically just running an emulator, and the emulator can outperform the past machines as well.

So fine, a more complex app on a faster computer runs slower than a much simpler app designed for a much slower computer. This is not surprising.

It had to be patched to get past 500 meg, then again for 2 gig.. or was it 4gig, don't remember now 🙁

The maximum partition size usable in MS-DOS 6.22 was two gigabytes - more than enough for most DOS users given the software available. There was another limitation prior to MS-DOS 5, but again, users at the time might not have commonly needed that much.

Prior to DOS 6.22 with FAT16, they used FAT12, with a 500meg limit, though this is not the main problem. Motherboards at the time (actually for quite a while after 6.22 came out,) were not able to set up hard drives over that 500 megs. Sure, the OS could access 2gig, but it depended on the MB to give it access to that 2gig, which they didn't without patching the boot. When Pentiums first came out, they started building MBs with the patch built in (called LBA - or Large Block Access, in the BIOS.) The same problem came up again with HDDs over 2gig. The, then new, Windows 95 and its FAT32 could access much larger hard drives, but again, the motherboards couldn't support it. My P2 system has a 40gig HDD that appears as a 2gig, until I load up the special "patch" booter that I had to download from Maxtor, for it to actually access everything past 2gig. In this case, it took P3 motherboards to start supporting the larger HDDs.

As for the file systems themselves, they both had the exact same problem with slack space. That is, if a file takes up only 1 byte of a specific block, the entire block is out of use. The advantage of the Amiga's system (which is very similar to all the Commodore systems,) is that instead of reserving a huge chunk of space for the FAT, the files are stored in a stream format. What that means is that each block of data points to the next block of data. This used 1-4 bytes (depending on the size of the drive,) at the beginning of each block that tells the OS where the next block is, or if this is the last block and how much of the block is actually data. This allowed the OS to customize every single drive for the most efficient use. The FAT system reserves the exact same amount of space for a 50meg HDD as a 200meg HDD. Also, in the stream system, the file is read in a constant stream - block 1, block 2, block 3, etc... In the FAT system it jumps back and forth - FAT, block 1, FAT, block 2, FAT, block 3, etc... It wasn't until modern HDDs that they started actually buffering the FAT (why they never did it earlier I don't know,) but this is actually done on the HDD controller itself (built onto the drive,) and not by the OS.

First, I don't run many apps (e-mail, web browser, & notepad are about it,) and no apps on the Amiga. Ok, back in the day I ran Word Perfect a few times, and was dabbling with Super Base to organize my game solutions & such (which BT1 items become what BT2 items when I transfer characters, etc...) Basically, I'm just interested in games. There isn't a lot of crossover between Amiga & modern PC's. Ok, there aren't any that I really know of. All I can really compare with is approximations based on what is being done. I just don't play that many modern games. So, many of the "features" of a modern PC just aren't used. But what is being used, just doesn't "blow the Amiga away," like should be the case between a 3ghz PC and a 50mhz Amiga (A4000 w/Accelerator.) Sure, my PC can put up awesome HW rendered 3D graphics, but if my game doesn't need it, it's just wasted resources. The problem arises that Windows reserves and uses those resources, even when my game doesn't need them. This slows things down, so that the 3ghz becomes less in practice. So, yes, my 3ghz machine can do more, but considering that there is a 15 year gap between my PC and my beefiest Amiga, that isn't all that surprising. But looking at the advancement curve, if Amiga had continued growth, an Amiga 60k (brand new, just came out last year,) would probably have blown my PC out of the water (with room to spare.)

About the 60% space between 32 colors and 256 colors, that isn't even the majority of the space saved. First, even though 256 colors were available, most cross platform games didn't use much if any more space for the graphics on the PC than they did on the Amiga. Actually, in all the Amiga games I have right now, the Amiga graphics look just as good, if not better than the same game I have for the PC. The same thing goes for the audio. Amiga only had 4 8bit audio channels, but the cross platform games I have, the Amiga sound was better. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a good example here. Where did the wolf howl go at the opening credits? Why doesn’t Elvira speak in the DOS version? Ok, I still haven’t found an “original” DOS version (that is, on floppies,) I’ve just been using the one I downloaded from the HorrorSoft sight a few years ago. I “thought” it was an official site, but cannot find it now. I’ll keep looking. Then again, the games coming out in my gaming era rarely took advantage of the, then expensive, VGA cards. There were only a couple of companies that risked requirements that advanced. Of course, one of them was my favourite (Origin Systems – Ultima series.)

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Anyway, the said game runs fine on 12MHz 286

Disagreed. The 'planetizing' encouraged me to go 40mhz

FeedingDragon wrote:

About the 60% space between 32 colors and 256 colors, that isn't even the majority of the space saved. First, even though 256 colors were available, most cross platform games didn't use much if any more space for the graphics on the PC than they did on the Amiga. Actually, in all the Amiga games I have right now, the Amiga graphics look just as good, if not better than the same game I have for the PC. The same thing goes for the audio. Amiga only had 4 8bit audio channels, but the cross platform games I have, the Amiga sound was better. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a good example here. Where did the wolf howl go at the opening credits? Why doesn’t Elvira speak in the DOS version?

Ehrmmm. Elvira: Mistress of the dark VGA graphics were A LOT better on PC, mate. They were good and adequate on Amiga, but definitely better on VGA 256c.

Doesn't matter how many colors utilized, still stored as 5 or 8 bit. What's an example of a game that came on 3 880k floppies for the Amiga and 6 or more 1.44 floppies for the PC?

I don't know, but I know Willy Beamish had 32 colors and came on 12 disks for the Amiga, and the PC version just had 8 or 7 with full 256 colors.

Maybe they were 3 1/2" 1.44MB disks as opposed to Amiga 800KB+ ones.

Ok, 1 example of disk multiplication. Ultima V. Amiga = 2 880k disks, PC = 4 1.2m disks.

As for Elvira, that was an example of the sound. As for the graphics, I've played them both, and the PC's graphics weren't all that much better than the Amiga's. A slight improvement is all, not enough considering the extra 224 colors. What I was pointing out is the better audio in the Amiga version. The Amiga version was 5 880k disks. I'm not sure about the PC version's number of disks. The only PC version I've seen was the one HorrorSoft had available for download for a while. Searching on eBay, I found one that had 8 1.2m disks. Another said only 4 1.44m or 3 1.2m floppies. I don't think that one is complete.

FeedingDragon wrote:

Ok, 1 example of disk multiplication. Ultima V. Amiga = 2 880k disks, PC = 4 1.2m disks.

Wrong. The PC version of Ultima V came on either four 360K 5.25" disks or two 720K 3.5" disks.