NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/misc-part1/9419

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 2.0 KB

Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rycohen
From: [e-mail] (Ross Y Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: New Press Release!
Date: 23 Mar 1996 16:32:40 GMT
Organization: UB
Message-ID: <4j1938$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4itbc2$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu
NNTP-Posting-User: rycohen

In article <[e-mail]>,
Pacarana <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>       I think AT's long term prospects would be a lot better if they
>>took BE's approach: ~ $2200 machine that blows all the other paltforms
>>out of the water.  This would entail taking the path that D. Haynie
>>has outlined a number of times: dump outmoded expensive custom chips,
>>port the OS to PPC, and go modular on the design.  The Amiga would
>>then have recaptured the 'WOW!' factor that it used to have.
> But the custom chips are precisely they the Amiga had a wow factor. And they
>were not expensive, they gave a walop of power for very little. Look at a U64,
>it packs much better than highest-end Pentium power for something like $200-
>300. And the PPC is the wowiest RISC CPU either (although it may turn out to
>have been a good choice IF it ever ends up taking over the market like Intel
>80x86 have now).
>
Yes, I agree that one of the reasons for the Amiga's astonishing performance
was the custom chips (though the OS was probably equally responsible), but
from what I understand, custom chip develope ment is too expensive to keep
up with the off-the-shelf suppliers unless you are going to move enormous
numbers of them.  Also, I gather from what various people have said that some
of the new off-the-shelf v-cards have built in many of the features that
our custom chips used to have(and still do, obviously).
    With our sleek OS the Amy should always be significantly better than
the competition, _as _long _as we have comparable hardware.

Ross