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TheUpgradingNightmare.txt
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2002-03-12
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»CL6:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
»CL0: The Upgrading Nightmare - Will It Ever End?
»CL6:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by »CL5:Alvin »CL6:of »CL5:Nah-Kolor
»CL1:In the beginning, there was the Amiga
500 (actually, the A1000). Half a
megabyte of memory was plenty. Every
piece of software worked the same way
on all configurations, simply because
all configurations were pretty much
the same: disk drive, half a megabyte
of CHIP memory, stereo sound, and a
lot of colours. »CL6:Everyone could run
every game and demo out there.»CL1: It was
a configuration pretty much
everything worked on. Everyone was
happy.
Along came the PC. Inferior in every
aspect, it was now to conquer the
world and »CL7:show the Amiga users that
the PC was the superior machine. One
can of course wonder how black and
white can be superior»CL1: in any way
to our beloved Workbench. Naturally,
it is not.
The PC could not beat the Amiga when
comparing basic configuration to basic
configuration, so upgrading the
inferior PC structure was the only
way. This is also what happened and
this is where the PC world is today.
»PIC:4.iff» »PIC:4.iff» »PIC:4.iff»
Throughout the years, »CL8:Amiga users have
always had their comments about
incompatibility issues on the PC.»CL1: With
a number of different graphics cards
available, software producers were
forced to write a driver for every
card. The situation concerning
soundcards was pretty much the same.
Developers simply had to work more and
harder to ensure that their product
would be compatible with the greatest
number of set-ups available. »CL6:The more
compatible a product was, the more
people bought it or got it and the
more money or fame the producers
received.»CL1:
For many years, compatibility was not
really an issue on Amigas. Most people
had the A500 or the A2000 and all
users were pretty much on the same
level. Along came the A1200/A4000 with
the AGA chipset. Suddenly, upgrading
was the way to go to continue with the
Amiga. »CL7:The software developers and the
Amiga demo-scene jumped on the AGA and
within a year, AGA was all over the
place.»CL1: For those with an A500, this
meant that much of the new software
-releases would not work on their
machine and they were left behind.
It seems like the next step was speed.
The PC platform has always boasted
about its superior speed (even though
Windows never seem to be able to
utilize it properly) and it was not
long after AGA was introduced that the
need for speed was upon us, 030 here
040 there. Users were asked to upgrade
since new software would require more
speed.
»CL7:Sure enough, accelerator boards were
sold left and right and software came
out that utilized the increase in
speed.»CL1: Doom-clones and other amazing
games and demos hit the Amiga platform
and everyone was amazed with the
greatness of the software.
Graphics cards and PowerPC cards seem
to have been the next step. The
demands for more MHz and faster
display options eventually led the way
for the PowerPC revolution. Speed
jumped to numbers that Amiga owners
had only dreamed of in the past and
suddenly, »CL6:games like Wipeout and demos
that could compete with the PC-demos
could be produced»CL1:. One should think
that the Amiga Scene would be doing
better than ever, with all the power
available to it.
It is not so. True, after adding
accelerator cards, graphics cards and
many megabytes of RAM, the Amiga is
surely faster and more powerful than
it ever was. The problem is that this
power only seems to be available to a
minority. The majority cared little
about power and simply wanted good
productions.
Through the years, as our Amigas have
needed upgrades, there have always
been some, who were not able to
upgrade for some reason. »CL8:When the
Scene went from ECS to AGA, some were
left behind.»CL1: Eventually they either
sold their Amigas because they could
not afford upgrading or kept using
their A500 to the best of their
ability. When the 030 and 040 replaced
the 020, some users were left behind
without accelerated Amigas and again,
many of them disappeared. These days
we see the same thing happening again.
PPC is the thing to have. Supposedly.
There might barely be any software out
there, but it is fast and powerful.
It is common knowledge that the PPC
revolution was and still is crawling
due to compatibility issues. Is it
time for another upgrade with the new
Amiga OS supposedly some time soon? Is
it time to leave what we have known
for years and reach into the unknown?
»CLA:Warp-speed anyone?»CLB: Or should we
return to mother Earth?