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The Word 13
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The Word 13 (Disk 1 of 2).adf
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02-PC-or-Amiga.TxT
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02-PC-or-Amiga.TxT
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1997-03-02
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$032|1-Taking the PC Plunge!
$123 To switch, or not to switch...
By Robert Glover
$9ac
Okay, you're depressed. Depressed about how little known the Amiga is.
Or at least that's how it appears. At any rate, you find yourself
considering more and more the possibility of moving to the PC and
selling your beloved Amiga. Let's take a look at what you're going to
need to be as happy with your new PC as you go.
First, I'm going to assume that you have at the very least a
semi-powerful Amiga system. This means something along the lines of a
souped up A500 or A1200, or perhaps an A2000 with plenty of extra
memory, and maybe a graphics card. An accelerator isn't necessarily
required, but essentially a decent hard drive and plenty of RAM is what
I mean. Not one of those shitty A600 consoley things.
Now, in order to have as nice a machine (in essense) as your Amiga,
you'll have to run Ody seems to really like NT that much right now, so
I'll stick with OS/2.
OS/2's requirements are (at a minimum) a 386SX with at least 6 meg of
RAM, and about 60 meg of free hard disk space. However, for best
overall results, plan on a 486DX/33 with at least 12 to 16 meg of RAM,
and a 340 to 500 meg hard drive. I'm not kidding. Everyone I've talked
to says that even a big 486DX2/66 can be a bit slow with OS/2, but like
with Windows, memory is the key. With 16 meg of RAM, you'll hOS/2 from
having to rely on virtual memory too often. Remember, OS/2 is huge. In
fact, it comes on about twenty high density disks, or an optional CD ROM
disc (I highly recommend this), to simplify things.
$ff0
[My 486 has only 8MBs of RAM and W95 has set up 10MBs of VMM and if your
hard drive starts getting full your PC slows down then crashes! Kei]
$9ac
So let's settle on a 486DX/33 with 16 meg of RAM and a 340 meg hard
drive. Without a monitor or video card, you're looking at 1800-2000,
depending on the brand. This is a VESA localbus system, too, BTW. Now,
there are several good choices for video cards. My first choice is meg
of video RAM. This is the fastest 32-bit video card on the PC to date,
and OS/2 drivers were recently released for it. Drivers? Yes, you'll
have to be sure whatever video card you choose has drivers available to
run OS/2 in any mode above standard VGA's 640x480.
$ff0
[Hmm your prices are wrong. You can pick up a fast 486 for £300-£600
these days. You can get a P75 for £400 if you shop around! Kei]
$9ac
Basically, the cards it supports are any S3 cards (Viper, Genoa, ATI,
etc.), plus the video systems in IBM's own PS/1 and PS/2 series. And a
good video card will set you back anywhere from 100-400, depending on
wha I have heard through the grapevine that the Genoa is the best one
for the money, being available mail order for about 95. It ranks in
performance-wise along with the ATI Ultra Graphics Pro, yet is
reasonably priced, and can take another meg of video RAM, for a total of
two.
So we'll add another 150 to our 1800 figure, to make 1950 (I added the
extra meg of video RAM, for good measure). Now you're going to want a
good CD ROM system. See, part of what is making the PC take ofare the
wide array of multimedia software available. This includes Microsoft
Bookshelf, a nice all-in-one reference library, Grolier's and Compton's
multimedia encyclopedias, fabulous games like Seventh Guest, and so on.
So you'll need a sound card and a CD ROM. What to get? Well, forget
about those cheap 300 packages at Best Buy and Wal Mart. They are the
older MPC Level 1 kits, that have 16-bit sound cards (like Sound Blaster
16 or Media Vision), and a 150K/sec 350 ms CD ROM ited for this
fast-paced marketplace. Also, OS/2 will not run on anything but a pure
SCSI CD ROM. So plan on a sound card that has a true SCSI port, and
Sound Blaster doesn't. Two choices are the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 or the
Gravis Ultra Sound. The Gravis is a nice board, but lacks support by
many games, as it is not Sound Blaster compatible. It is, however, the
closest thing you'll find to a 16-bit version of the Amiga's Paula chip
as you're going to get. Sound Blaster has beenazine as having poor
sound quality. This is because Sound Blaster (like it's competitors)
have pre-sampled sounds in ROM, which are called by programs and games.
That's why games like X-Wing sound so "synthesizery." The Gravis, on the
other hand, has onboard RAM and will accept true digitized samples, much
like Paula does. You give up some compatibility, but the sound quality
makes it worthwhile. Or, you could get a Gravis, and then pick up a
used Sound Blaster Pro (8-bit card) cdifferent IRQ, and have the best of
both worlds.
IRQ?? What's that, you ask? Well, the PC doesn't have the
auto-configuring convenience that the Amiga does. Every time you add a
new board, you'll get to set its interrupt request setting (IRQ), and a
host of other things. I won't go into detail here, because, well,
frankly, it makes me shudder just thinking about it.
The Pro Audio Spectrum 16 or Gravis boards will run you about 150 on the
street, so our price is up to 2100. Rhave a monitor selected. We'll do
that a little later. Next we need a CD ROM drive. A good multispin
drive (which means it can do 150K/sec or 300K/sec) plus have a
reasonable seek time of 300 ms or better will cost about 400 bare. Now
our total is up to 2500.
Okay... now we have the computer, the memory, the sound card, video
card with 2 meg, and a big hard drive. Now we need a monitor. There
are some important things you need to know about monitors.
I've done a lot of look different computer stores and discount chains
(Best Buy, Wal Mart, Sam's, Sears, etc), and found a lot of things.
First of all, the monitors that are included with 99% of these pre-
packaged systems are garbage. The monitor is probably the most
important part of your computer. Without a good monitor, you won't be
able to get the most out of the system. Either the resolution isn't
high enough, or the size of the screen isn't large enough, or worse
still -- the refresh rate isn't eft with lots of flicker. The
"standards" for PC resolutions are 800x600 at 72 Hz and 1024x768
non-interlaced at 74 or 76 Hz. The Packard Bell monitors you find
around town do 800x600 at 50 Hz and will do 1024x768 at 72 Hz, but it's
interlaced, so there IS flicker. Furthermore, these monitors have a
lousy 0.39 mm dot pitch (or worse -- I've seen Tandy monitors -- the VGM
225 -- with a 0.52 mm dot pitch!), which makes the text fuzzy, even at
640x480.
A GOOD monitor will cost you at I have in mind is a
new Philips 15" flatscreen at Best Buy. Actually, they want 468 for it.
Or, you can buy a refurbished NEC 4D directly from NEC for about 450.
Both of these monitors are excellent -- both have a dot pitch of 0.28
mm, and have a very crisp, clear picture.
So by the time we get a good monitor and pay tax or shipping, we're
looking at 500. So our total is now up to 3000. Again, this is for a
486DX2/66 machine with 16 meg of RAM, a 16-bit sound card with SCSa 340
meg IDE hard drive, and a decent monitor. That is what is required to
have a PC that can equal your Amiga in terms of usability and overall
pleasure. Dealing with Windows is far too frustrating to count, and
since it can't multitask worth a darn, it doesn't really count anyway.
Now, to maintain a bit of fairness, we are talking about a pretty
decked-out PC versus a fairly baseline Amiga. Yeah, the PC will have
better overall sound and graphics, but it takes so much money tos easy
to use as your Amiga.
I know what you're saying now... "What if I were to take an Amiga and
max it out, for comparison?" Okay, let's do that. We'll start with one
of those blowout Amiga 3000's from Creative Computers. They're 900 with
5 meg of RAM, a 120 meg hard drive, and one floppy drive. Add 400 to
bring memory up to 18 meg (which includes 2 meg of Chip RAM), for
1300US. Let's add 100 for a second floppy drive (what the heck)...
1400US. Now we'll add 450 for one oo II boards that'll do 1600x1280 in
24-bit if you have enough RAM in the computer... 1850. And a refurbed
NEC 4D for 500US 2350US. Oh, and in case we need to do NTSC
resolutions, let's grab a used 1084 for 150... 2500. The only real
difference now is that the A3000 is a 25 MHz 68030 compared to a 66 MHz
486. There is a bit of processor power difference, but I'm not going to
count it, on the basis that you pretty much need a 66 MHz 486 to make
OS/2 run well. Oh, and the 120 m is due to the size of the operating
system on the PC.
Now, an alternate system to consider is an Amiga 1200... for 380 you
get a base machine. Add an MBX1200z or equivelent RAM board with 8 meg
of Fast RAM and a 25 MHz FPU for about 400 for a total of 780. Add a
120 meg, 2.5" IDE hard drive for about 220... 1000. Or instead,
instead of the RAM board, add a 50 MHz 68030 on an MBX1200XA and a 25
MHz FPU for about 600, to total about 1200.
So the bottom line is that in orde as an Amiga, you're looking at a good
3000 minimum, whereas you could have a nice Amiga system with plenty of
bells and whistles for between half and 25% less.
$ff0
[Your info is a bit dated however, I prefer the old saying "The Amiga
1000 can do more in 1MBs of memory than the PC can do with 4" -BYTE
magazine. Kei]
$9ac
end