5u3 wrote:

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.

Are you sure? My Amiga couldn't read the HD disks in it's DD drive. I was attempting to run it in PC-Task because my PC was just too fast for it. I had to multi-pack the floppies onto about 5 720k floppies to copy it over. Even then, I couldn't images set up for install, I ended up canceling the whole plan. I had the same problem with Ultima VI, which came on 5 disks (or maybe 6, don't remember exactly.) I know Ultima IV was on DD instead of HD disks (2 720k floppies.) Could you be thinking of that one?

FeedingDragon wrote:

Are you sure?

Yes. Old Ultima releases are well documented on the net because of their collector's value. See here, for example.

5u3 wrote:

Old Ultima releases are well documented on the net because of their collector's value. See here, for example.

I stumbled upon that ultima collectors website about a month ago, because I wanted to find out more about UU1's package contents. What a great website! 😀

5u3 wrote:

FeedingDragon wrote:

Are you sure?

Yes. Old Ultima releases are well documented on the net because of their collector's value. See here, for example.

I'm a fan of the site too. Though, I mainly only use it to reference the collectablas I have/don't have.

Ok, I stand corrected. U4 has 2 for PC and 1 for Ami, U5 has 2 for both PC & Ami, and U6 has 4 for PC and 3 for Ami. I seem to recall more than that for U5 & U6 though. Haven't had the floppy version for years, sold all but the trinkets I didn't have when I got the 1-8 collection CD.

FeedingDragon wrote:

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.

Whatever! The question was whether the file system was inherently more efficient with regards to slack space.

And you could probably have a much smaller cluster size on a 50 MB FAT16 partition than on a 200 MB partition, resulting in less slack space. Not that the wasted space necessarily amounted to very much anyway.

LBA = Logical block addressing

There's also the LRG mode (Large Mode) aka Extended CHS. That was the quick patch jobber.

I heart "Vs" threads.

The lines you're going to read are biased ramblings; take necessary caution.

Amiga lost most of it's value when PC games started to become better. Amiga became just the multimedia computer but companies advertised multimedia as if multimedia meant CDROMS and Midi Soundcards. (When people were making movies with Amiga) (had to share this sorry) 😀

If a game not 3d, is harddrive installable, is made for an AGA Amiga with and equivalent Ram and CPU (286 vs 68000, 386 vs 68030, 486 vs 68040, Pentium-100 vs 68060-50) , then it always has the potential to be better than the DOS version. If it supported sound and graphics cards on the Amiga too, then it definitely would be better on Amiga (even 3d).

If I were to compare an Amiga500 with 7mhz CPU and 1 MB Ram, I can easily say any game that wasn't 3d and had scrolling in it destroyed the PC version even if the PC had hundreds of megahertz.

One huge advantage of Amiga games over the PC versions was that Amiga sends 50 frames of data to the monitor which also runs at 50hz. There is no screen tearing and the concept is alien to Amiga. This is a problem the PC solved only recently.

Another advantage of Amiga was the music and the sound effects. Just compare some of the most memorable soundtracks. For example Lotus3.

When I had an Amiga 500, a friend of mine had a 486 with 8mb and Sound Blaster16. Whenever he saw an Amiga version of some game. He opened his eyes widely and said. Why does it feel and sound better! One time he got angry and left 😀 After I bought an Amiga1200 and connected a 3.5" 100MB harddrive ( which he threw out of his PC and gave to me) He was in delirium when he saw my Amiga boot to a highly expanded Workbench in 7 seconds ( and I was listening to a mod, formatting a floppy in DOS format in order to copy some mods and pics to him), when he was trying to install Windows95 on his 486 (it booted in 30minutes and crashed after 15minutes)

The PC always had the cheaper and faster CPU's. 3D games were much faster on the PC and VGA. That's when Amiga lost the battle. "Doom" is the Amiga killer.

It took more than 15 years for PC to catch how Amiga was.

Today I use my Amiga4000T with PowerPC acceleratorand many other expansions. It leaves me with a strange feeling. I always feel, I can do more with this machine.

One huge mistake when people compare Amiga and PC is that they start comparing an Amiga500 with 68000-7mhz with an 386... and then Pentium... and then Gravis Ultrasound... but they forget to upgrade their Amiga. It's still the same old Amiga. Why don't you upgrade to 68060, install 128Mb RAM?

ancalimonungol: you can even upgrade your power pc card to an insanely fast processor.

WolverineDK: I have the option but not the guts! 😉

ancalimonungol wrote:

One huge advantage of Amiga games over the PC versions was that Amiga sends 50 frames of data to the monitor which also runs at 50hz. There is no screen tearing and the concept is alien to Amiga. This is a problem the PC solved only recently.

Vertical retrace synchronization (vsync) was actually available on the PC with VGA and VESA SVGA, but it wasn't widely used because noone noticed until the screen resolutions got high enough for tearing to become noticeable (especially in 3D games).

Also, some PC users would consider being able to disable vsync on modern video hardware to be an advantage because it can increase responsiveness to input and allow for more accurate video hardware benchmarking.

Personally I'm a big fan of using vsync wherever possible.

When I had an Amiga 500, a friend of mine had a 486 with 8mb and Sound Blaster16. Whenever he saw an Amiga version of some game. He opened his eyes widely and said. Why does it feel and sound better! One time he got angry and left 😀

At that point your PC friend's computer would have been capable of playing MOD soundtracks in PC games, but the problem was that tracker music never caught on in PC games because it couldn't be done well without a decent sound card and a bit of CPU power (for mixing the multiple channels unless you're using a GUS). It wasn't until CD-ROM drives hit the market that game designers could assume that people had a fast enough CPU and good enough sound hardware for tracker music, but at that point they switched to using CD audio tracks for game music.

He was in delirium when he saw my Amiga boot to a highly expanded Workbench in 7 seconds ( and I was listening to a mod, formatting a floppy in DOS format in order to copy some mods and pics to him), when he was trying to install Windows95 on his 486 (it booted in 30minutes and crashed after 15minutes)

Odd, I ran Win95 on a 486DX4-120 without any problems. It even ran Jedi Knight almost playably in software rendering mode (at low resolutions of course) once I installed a VLB video card.

As a long-time PC gamer, I find it interesting how the PC stacked up to other systems over time. I remember wishing I had a Commodore 64 or even an Apple II at times when looking at the screenshots on the backs of game boxes, even though my 286's CPU was around an order of magnitude faster than that of those systems. The Amiga in particular was more obscure, though, so it didn't register as much on my consciousness.

HunterZ wrote:

Vertical retrace synchronization (vsync) was actually available on the PC with VGA and VESA SVGA, but it wasn't widely used beca […]
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ancalimonungol wrote:

One huge advantage of Amiga games over the PC versions was that Amiga sends 50 frames of data to the monitor which also runs at 50hz. There is no screen tearing and the concept is alien to Amiga. This is a problem the PC solved only recently.

Vertical retrace synchronization (vsync) was actually available on the PC with VGA and VESA SVGA, but it wasn't widely used because noone noticed until the screen resolutions got high enough for tearing to become noticeable (especially in 3D games).

Also, some PC users would consider being able to disable vsync on modern video hardware to be an advantage because it can increase responsiveness to input and allow for more accurate video hardware benchmarking.

Personally I'm a big fan of using vsync wherever possible.

When I had an Amiga 500, a friend of mine had a 486 with 8mb and Sound Blaster16. Whenever he saw an Amiga version of some game. He opened his eyes widely and said. Why does it feel and sound better! One time he got angry and left 😀

At that point your PC friend's computer would have been capable of playing MOD soundtracks in PC games, but the problem was that tracker music never caught on in PC games because it couldn't be done well without a decent sound card and a bit of CPU power (for mixing the multiple channels unless you're using a GUS). It wasn't until CD-ROM drives hit the market that game designers could assume that people had a fast enough CPU and good enough sound hardware for tracker music, but at that point they switched to using CD audio tracks for game music.

He was in delirium when he saw my Amiga boot to a highly expanded Workbench in 7 seconds ( and I was listening to a mod, formatting a floppy in DOS format in order to copy some mods and pics to him), when he was trying to install Windows95 on his 486 (it booted in 30minutes and crashed after 15minutes)

Odd, I ran Win95 on a 486DX4-120 without any problems. It even ran Jedi Knight almost playably in software rendering mode (at low resolutions of course) once I installed a VLB video card.

As a long-time PC gamer, I find it interesting how the PC stacked up to other systems over time. I remember wishing I had a Commodore 64 or even an Apple II at times when looking at the screenshots on the backs of game boxes, even though my 286's CPU was around an order of magnitude faster than that of those systems. The Amiga in particular was more obscure, though, so it didn't register as much on my consciousness.

I think he's from Europe like me where the Amiga was big...not like in the States where you're from in which it was mostly used for video and music

PC's were in obscurity here (in Sweden) when it came to gaming...the Amiga, Atari and the consoles ruled until circa 1993-94.

Xian97 wrote:

Some that I think were better on the Amiga: Times of Lore Ultima III, IV, and V Dungeon Master, though the Amiga version was nea […]
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Some that I think were better on the Amiga:
Times of Lore
Ultima III, IV, and V
Dungeon Master, though the Amiga version was nearly identical to the original Atari ST version
Bard's Tale 1-3
Faery Tale Adventure
The Pawn
Defender of the Crown
Populous 1 & 2
The original Star Control 1
The original Sim City

There are some interesting games on that list. 😀 I don't own an Amiga, but that list makes me want to try an emulator on my PC. Also, I expect there are some good RPGs and adventures on the Amiga that were not available on the PC.

retro games 100: I would actually recommend you Amiga Forever if you want to do more than just try an Amiga emulator

http://www.amigaforever.com

1st CD-ROM drive came out long before in 85, first CD release in 86, wide use for games from 90 as indicated by mobygames, while GUS and SB16 came out in 92, GUS being cheaper.

Did any of you know the first "computer" to come standard with a CDROM drive was the Amiga CDTV? But it was a major fail. The world apparently was not ready.

You can use WinUAE the best Amiga emulator. You'll need a real Amiga to dump your Kickstart ROMS and a way to transfer them to your PC, or you can buy Amiga Forever (it includes all Kickstart ROMS) or find other ways.
You can download whdload games (games that are installed on the harddrive and started with a utility called whdload, you should register it) from many places.

If you try Amiga emulation, I advice you to use a 50hz screen mode so you'll have smooth scrolling.

Thanks a lot for the emulation advice! 😀 I'm definitely going to check out Amiga Forever. It seems like a good way of doing this.

HunterZ wrote:

Vertical retrace synchronization (vsync) was actually available on the PC with VGA and VESA SVGA, but it wasn't widely used because noone noticed until the screen resolutions got high enough for tearing to become noticeable (especially in 3D games).

Tearing is extremely noticeable in 2D scrolling too, that's where the Amiga was king. The hardware was so much better with it's smooth 2D scrolling while the PC looked like a tearing disaster. But then the 3D revolution came and the Amiga hardware was much too weak to handle complex 3D graphics.

Generally speaking, I think the Amiga versions of games were vastly superior to the DOS versions of same games, until 1993. Although there are some exceptions, of course, on both sides.

But today the ancient AmigaOS 3.0 got features that I don't see in any modern OS. For example, it had an excellent and flexible multiple-language-system and a good scripting language (AREXX) which one could pretty much control anything with.

Freddo: the avatar you are using is from the game Agony on Amiga , right ?

WolverineDK wrote:

Freddo: the avatar you are using is from the game Agony on Amiga , right ?

It's Psygnosis logo 😀

Amigaz wrote:

WolverineDK wrote:

Freddo: the avatar you are using is from the game Agony on Amiga , right ?

It's Psygnosis logo 😀

Potato potaato I call it kartoffel and the Swedes are calling it potatis, and I know it is the logo of Psygnosis. But Psygnosis has made made the game Agony on Amiga where the owl has a big role in the game 😀.