CU Amiga Super CD-ROM 27

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Text File | 1994-10-19 | 28.2 KB | 847 lines

Andy, Have a read through this and see if it is ok. If you want changes made, please let me know.. By the way, if I send text in Words for Mac format, would that be easier? John Note: Please give me some sort of clue as to what kind of pictures you would like to see... WHICH COMPUTER ARTICLE What's available? Looking for a fight? Nip into your local computer club and start saying "My Computer Is Better Than Your Computer". Computer owners will fight to the death to defend their chosen system, and no amount of logical argument can persuade someone to change platforms. The UK home computer market is an unpredictable place. One year consoles are in, then computers are happening, then it's consoles again. It's a place where the most technically advanced products don't always fair the best, and where nothing is certain other than gory games sell best as Christmas. To help you make your mind up as to which computer system to stick with (or move to), we've created a comprehensive list of comparisons for you to read. We've tried to be unbiased as possible (honest!) but if you enjoy a good argument, you can always read it out loud in the computer club.. The plan is simple - you have £800 burning a hole in your pocket, and you want a home computer. If you want a games console, then be honest and go read Computer an Video Games: we are talking proper computers here. For all that money, you can expect to get the computer itself, a monitor that can display a high-resolution colour screen without inducing epilepsy, a hard disk and something in the way of sound effects. The system must be able to be used as a word processor, but it must also be able to play games. We are looking for all-round versitility, as well as value for money. We have picked out three different systems to examine in detail - a PC clone, an Apple Mac and (suprise) an Amiga. As there is only one manufacturer of the Amiga and Mac, their model numbers and prices are well know. The PC is different however, as there are hundred to choose from. We have selected a hardware configuration which if you shop around and haggle, you should be able to get for £800: we certainly managed it by checking with advertisers in the PC mags. What ever you do, don't settle for a 386 processor - they are now considered obsolete. IBM-PC CLONE In the grey corner we have the PC, or should I say, the IBM compatible PC. In the last year or so, the PC has really taken off as the Home Computer of choice - more so with the novel introduction of the 'multimedia PC': basically a PC with a sound card and a CD-ROM drive. Price: About £800 Processor: 80486DX Speed: 33Mhz Memory: 4Mb Hard drive: 210Mb IDE Operating system: Windows/Dos Interfaces: 2 serial, 1 parallel, mouse Monitor: 14 inch colour high-resolution Graphics: Local bus SVGA card, 256 colours, 800 by 600 Most cards capable of much higher (>1024) resolutions with more graphics memory and better monitors. Sound: Depends on sound card, but usually multichannel 8bit or 16bit with mono sampling input. For a little bit more you could get... A 486DX66 computer: same specs but twice the raw processing power. For complete MP2 (multimedia 2 compliance) you will also need a double speed CD-ROM drive, and a 16bit sound card. The above system is typical of one you can pick up if you shop around - and prices are only going to fall. Remember that you will also need a sound card (which usually includes a joystick port and sometimes a MIDI and CD-ROM interface). APPLE MAC Making more serious inroads into the home market is Apple, with the 'Low Cost' versions of their popular Macintosh systems. Designed to be stylish, powerful and also to be easy to use, Apple has carved itself a niche in many markets, supposedly appealing to creative sorts rather then tech-heads. Price: £760 Model: LCIII Processor: 68030 Speed: 25MHz Memory: 4Mb Hard drive: 80Mb SCSI Operating system: System 7 Interfaces: SCSI, AppleTalk/Modem/Printer,Sound, keyboard mouse Monitor: 14inch colour high-resolution Graphics: 256 colours, 640 by 480 and 832 by 624 512K VRAM standard, expandable to 768K. Can be expanded to give 16 bit colour at 640x480. Sound: 8 bit 22KHz mono in, stereo out. For a little bit more you could get... An Apple LC475. Similar specifications but with a 25Mhz 68040 processor. You could also invest in a double-speed CD-ROM drive will be connect externally to the SCSI interface. Apples feel lonely without printers, so add a StyleWriter inkjet to the Christmas list as well. COMMODORE AMIGA The computer we all love, and probably the only true 'home' computer left. It killed off the 8bit systems (the Spectrums, CPCs, C64s) and fought off the ST as well. Despite the parent company's best efforts, it is a great success and seen many improvements from the early days of the A500 and A2000 - a well stocked A4000 is a sight to behold. Price: About £800 Model: A1200 Processor: 68020 Speed: 14Mhz Memory: 2Mb Hard drive: 80Mb IDE Operating system: AmigaDOS / Intuition Interfaces: Parallel, Serial, composite video, stereo sound, joystick, mouse, PCMCIA Monitor: 14inch colour high-resolution (flicker free) Graphics: 256 colours 640 by 512 standard modes, 262,000 colours HAM8 modes up to 1448 x 566 or bigger Sound: 4 channel, 8-bit stereo out. For a little bit more you could get... More memory. In fact, consider some fast memory for the trapdoor an essential purchase. For the £800 you should be able to get at least 1Mb of Fast Ram, which will double the speed of the computer immidately. For a little more, a card such as the Blizzard double speed 4Mb memory is a worthwhile investment. box out: Portable options There is one area where the PC and Apple score heavily over the Amiga, and that is portability. It is possible to choose a complete, pick-up-and-go notebook computer from a range of Apple Powerbooks and clone systems. There are many screen and processor options, including Apples with fast and 68040s and superb colour screens at over £3000, and PCs with 486 processors and colour displays which are sometimes better than dedicated monitors. Portable systems have a niche market for people on the move, usually buisness types you can afford to pay extra for the flexibility that a portable computer can give. A portable Amiga seems extremely unlikely: ever. Box Out: The MicroProcessor: Intel vs. Motorolla Both the Amiga and Apple Mac use processor from the same Motorola family - the 680x0 range. The A1200 uses a 68020 processor, which is a 32 bit system running at about 14MHz. Plug accellerator cards are available which feature the faster 68030 chip operating at speeds of up to 50 Mhz. The A4000 is available in verions which use the 68030 and the 68040 - and plug in cards are available to provide the A4000 with a 40MHz 68040 - currently the fastest you can buy. The Apple LCIII comes with a 25MHz 68030, and other Macs come with 68040s operating at various speeds. Due to improved design, a 25Mhz 68040 is about two to four times faster than a 25MHz 68030, which is about twice as fast as a 68020. Motorola designed the first 68000 from scratch as a 16/32 bit processor. They didn't want to be stuck with incompatibility problems further down the road, and ditched their popular 8bit 6800 completely. Conversely, all PC clones use processors (or compaible processors) from Intel, the 80x86 family. Intel kept compatibility with the 8088 - their 8bit processor - and every processor they have made since has to include special options to work around this bottle neck, including emulation modes and all manner of tricks. The 80486 is an extremely fast processor - but it could have been so much better. In particular, memory addressing techniques on the Intel family are bizarre - and nothing like the simple sequential one-address, one-memory lcoation system used by Motorola. The follow up to the 486 is already out - the Pentium. It is faster (especially the 90Mhz systems), but not by as much as everyone hoped for, and often it is possible to get similar speeds by using extremely fast 486s. The new Motorola chip, the 68060, is apparently very nearly with us (samples have been supplied) and so Amiga accellerator cards featuring it may appear sometime next year. The 68060 (the 68050 was scrapped) runs much faster than the 68040, and also a lot cooler - which means it may even be possible to fit one to an A1200. The PowerPC is a new type of processor, created by a collaboration of several big manufactures - Motorola, Apple and IBM. Already Apple are using it in their new machines (they got bored waiting for the 68060's) and IBM are planning on creating PCs which use it to - which means a common Apple/PC platform. Commodore have stated that they would prefer to go the way of high-speed RISC processors rather than use the PowerPC which is a shame: the Amiga Workbench would have flourished on other hardware. Comparisons ----------- Notes: you may wish to change the order of these around, or put them into columns, or leave sections out or whatever. Giving a graph of results isn't really possible: how can you graph games software? And so I've rated each out of five. Obviously a nice little symbol would look better than a number. Even rating MIPS isn't possible, as an Intel is differenet from a Motorol MIP. Think about the Apple and Amiga - even when both have the same speed of processor, the Amiga can move windows around faster but the Mac can run Photoshop faster. It's all to do with the way graphics are produced and what custom hardware there is. The final conclusion is also impossible to give, as each rating carries a different weighting depending on who wants it. A games player would rate GAME SOFTWARE results much higher than a COMMS person. Expansion capabilities PC The PC has always been touted as the most expandible computer ever - and rightly, because it's modular design owes much to the fact that you need to add quite a lot of hardware in order to get it to do anything useful. There are thousands of different combinations possible when putting a PC together, as there are hundreds of sound cards and graphics cards from hundreds of different manufactures. The competition keeps the price down, but it also keeps compatibility down. It can take a long time to adjust all the settings and jumpers on the cards to get them to work together properly: and sometimes it's just not possible. Adding a modem card is a good example - you will need to ensure the card doesn't clash with the mouse and still works properly with any I/O and video cards. Great fun! Amiga The Amiga on the other hand uses a system called 'Autoconfig' which the PC can only dream about. At switch on, any cards present introduce themselves to the operating system and are automatically allocated resources. There is nothing quite like it on any other system, and although future PC operating systems may promise it, you can be sure it's not to go happen for a while. Of course, to be strictly fair this isn't a good comparison as the A1200 model does not have any true Zorro expansion bus sockets - only a trapdoor and a PCMCIA slot. The trapdoor is more advanced than that of earlier Amiga models, and not only can memory be added quickly and cheaply, but faster processors too - a 50MHz 68030 can be installed which will run extremely quickly. Cheap SCSI2 controllers can be added to many of these accellerators which means adding extremely large storage devices is a real possibility. The trapdoor provides a home computer with a relatively easy way of adding more options - without having to open the lid and poke around inside. Apple Mac The Apple Mac was not designed for people who like to lift the lid and rummage around inside, although it has to be said that he LCiii is a beautifully designed piece of hardware. Everything from the plastic case to the keyboard oozes quality, and at times you don't mind paying what you did. Opening the LCiii is easy - the lid unclips at the back and slides forward and off. Inside is a minute circuit board (with a PLCC socket for a 25Mhz 68882 maths copressor) and a single blank SIMM slot. The floppy drive, the hard drive and a fan take up the rest of the space. There is also a single NuBus expansion slot, which is available for processor expansion but that's about all. There aren't a lot of add-ons for Apples, most are accerlators or graphics cards. However the 25-way SCSI connector at the back is a Good Thing and makes adding extra hard drives and SCSI CD-ROM drives easy. Remember, up to seven devices can be chained from a SCSI system which makes for a lot of possibilities. Expansion scores: Pc 4/5 - lots of cheap cards, but it's a pain to install them. Apple 3/5 - Not a lot of expansion stuff, but SCSI as standard is sensible. Amiga 4/5 - excellent configuration options, lots of cards to choose from, but they are all rather expensive. Networking Connecting two or more computers together in order to share data and resources is extremely useful. For example, in an office several users may want to use the same printer without having to walk around with documents saved to floppy disk in their hands. PC To network PCs you need to buy a card for each computer. You've probably heard of Ethernet or Novel Netware, and this is what it's all about. You can get a networking card for about 50 pounds, and the current release of Windows (Windows for Workgroups) handles the software side of things. Apple Mac It's even easier with a Mac thanks to AppleTalk. Plug a few cables togther and the jobs done, although when the numbers start to grow and there is a lot of data heading to laser printers the system will soon start to slow down. Amiga And then there is the Amiga. What have we got? Very little unfortunately. Remarkably, for an operating system which can handle multiple processes like no other, support for networking is marginal. It was starting to creep into view with the very latest Kickstart releases, but at the moment adding an Amiga to a network is not easy. Ethernet cards have been built, but tracking them down and obtaining the relavent software is not a task for the faint hearted. Linking two machines with Parnet is one thing, but true networking is not a viable option at the present time. Networking Scores PC: 4 Large PC networks are fast and effecient. And you can play Doom other them. Mac: 4 So easy to set up thanks to AppleTalk. Amiga: 1 Embarrasing, isn't it? Operating Systems PC Windows sucks. Sorry to be so blunt, but you won't be able to convince we other wise. It is slow, it eats memory and absorbs hard disk space. Even on an extremely fast hardware, it is not fast. A lot of this is due to the backward nature of PCs, always having to run software that worked on the very earliest systems. Windows does offer a form of multitasking - when you press ALT and TAB, you can switch to different applications and leave others running in the background. However, Windows is not a pre-emptive multitasking system. In other words, the Operating System does not have overall control over the programs which are running. Instead, each program does a little bit of work, and then when it considers it has done enough it passes control over to the next. This may sound OK in theory, but in practice it is slow and when one program goes wrong, the entire system falls over. The good news for PC owners is that there are choices. OS/2 is what IBM wants all PCs to be running instead of Windows. In fact, you can now get combinations of 'OS/2 for Windows' and 'Windows for OS/2' and the current version (called Warp) seems to be both stable and useful. It is also possible to run UNIX compatible operating systems such as LINUX, and even use a GUI like X-Windows on it. NeXTStep - one of the most advanced operating systems - is also available, but this is starting to get well beyond our price range: and besides, you can't play Doom on NeXTStep. Yet. Apple Mac The Apples System 7 is also a simple task switching operating system, although it is a lot more sophisicated than Windows. Even absolute beginners can quickly get to grips with a Mac - from the smiley little face from power-up - the new user is not frightened away with technology for technologies sake. The downside to the Mac's systems is that it can be very claustraphobic. There is simply no 'disk operating system' as such - everything must be done with the mouse and some menus or it simply cannot be done. Amiga Once again we come to the Amiga, but this time things are looking up. Workbench has matured from a very sad (by 1990 standards) orange and blue operating system into an extremely sophisticated environment with the release of Workbench 3.1. The Amiga's Workbench doesn't run 'on top of' a disk operating system and it certainly doesn't take up vast quantities of memory and hard disk space. Little things - like the moving the pointer across the screen - use little amounts of processor power, unlike the PC which uses a fearsome percentage just handling the Windows and Icons. Quite amazingly, Kickstart - the heart of the Amiga - lives in a pair of 512K ROMS, and not much else is required for a fully useable system. It can even be used entirely from floppy disk if necessary, although with a hard disk it really takes off. Adding the finishing touch with a nice colour scheme, a tasteful backdrop and some well-drawn icon replacements (MagicWB) will ensure an environment a dedicated graphics workstation would be proud of, and when you start to add the 'extras': ARexx, Multiview, Datatytpes, Commodities and so on, it becomes plain that the Amiga's OS still years ahead of any others in terms of sheer useability. OS Scores: PC: 2 - the advantage of Windows is that it can be replaced with somethng else. Mac: 3 - user-friendly, quite powerful but over bearing. Amiga 5 - a true, memory effecient pre-emptive multitasking Operating System, with an interprocess communications language (ARexx) a powerful disk operaing system accessible through a Command Line Interface (the Shell) and a host of extra tools included as standard. Communications All hail the might RS232c! Yes, thanks to one of few standards ever seen in the computing world, any external modem you can buy today will work with any of the three systems - but that's not to say that some aren't better at handling comms than others. Newer operating systems for the Mac and PC promise to include TCP/IP in an integrated form. For those who have avoided anything starting in 'informaton', ending in 'highway' and containing the work 'super' in the middle, TCP/IP will make connecting these computers to the Internet a lot easier. Unfortunately the Amiga has fallen behind in this area, and any extensions will continue to be third-party add-ons for the foreseeable future, rather than integrated additions to the operating system. Comms scores Pc 4 there is lots of good software, but hardware is weak. Windows is not really up to fast comms. Mac 3 Some good stuff is starting to appear, but the Apple user is not spoilt for choice. Amiga 4 Reasonable amount of software, and no problems multi-tasking it. Serious Software PC Do we really need to go through with this? OK, so the PC has more and better business programs (including Word Processors, Databases, Spreadsheets, Desktop Publishing, Programming tools) than any other system on the planet. Of course, most of them are rather expensive, but they exists - which is why nearly every office in the world has a PC in it. Apple Mac Perhaps surprising to some, but the Mac also has a good range of software. PC-giants MicroSoft certainly have helped by developing some of their top packages (Word for example) for the Apple platform. In fact, overall with an Apple you'll be able do just about everything you need to do. Amiga Oh dear. What a sorry bunch we are when it comes to serious software. None of the 'big' names in software would touch the Amiga with a pole, and instead we have our own gallant band of software producers. However, all is not lost: when Amiga software is good, it is very good indeed. Final Writer is an excellent programs, and the SuperBase database system is reasonably featured. There is even a new spreadsheet available - so things mightn't be as bad as they first appear. However, the amount of choice in terms of business software is poor. The flip side of the coin is multimedia authoring systems. The excellent graphics and effecient operating system (and ARexx) means that integrating animation, sound, MIDI music, high-resolution images and text is much easier on the Amiga than another other platform. The Amiga even had CDXL before the PC had the very sad Video for Windows, although not many titles made use of it. Serious software scores: PC: 5 All the top programs appear on this platform - the choice is immense. Apple: 4 The Mac fairs well in the serious software stakes Amiga: 3 Not a lot - although there are some excellent exceptions. Graphics software Amiga Lightwave is something the Amiga community has always been proud of. When the credits of several US sci-fi TV shows whizzes past at 60 frames a second, most Amiga fans will experience a thrill at seeing the words NetTec appearing almost subliminally. Fans know the Amiga and Lightware is something really special. Post-processing softare on the Amiga is good - programs like Art Department Professional and ImageFX are simply not avilable for anything like the same price (if at all) on the PC. Apple Mac The Mac has a real grip on the professional illustration market with Photoshop and Illustrator: both are superb programs which rightly deserve their success - there is still nothing close on the Amiga. The same can be said of Quark Xpress - the Desktop publishing package you find reponsible for just about every magazine you can buy. There is nothing to touch Quark on the Amiga (including PageStream 3), and arty designer types wouldn't be seen dead using a boring old PC. PC The nearest software to Lightware or Ad Pro on the PC is good - but it should be, it is ludicrously expensive. Autodesk and the like cost thousands. Graphics software on the PC hasn't caught the attention of home users in the same way as the Amiga - even though there are many paint programs available, none are as widely used as Deluxe Paint on the Amiga. Graphics Software scores: PC: 2/5 Some good stuff, but ludicrously expensive. Mac: 5/5 With Photoshop and Quark, it is impossible not to rate the mac so highly. Amiga 5/5 Lightware and other rendering programs are the Amigas strong point. Games Software Amiga The way PCs and Amiga's generate graphics are completely different. The Amiga has a sophisticated chipset that was designed for video games in the 1980s. As a result, it is terrific at scrolling, offers lots of scope for graduated coloured backgrounds and offers hardware sprites. The video output is on excellent quality, and a built-in modulator means that connecting the Amiga to the family telly like a games console is easy. Games are cheap and plentiful - they make more momey for retailors than expensive cartridges for Segas and Nintendos. PC The PC on the on other hand, has a graphics card and a fast processor - and that's about it. It's not sublte, but it is fast and idealling suited to 3D type games, rather than scrolling platformers. This is why games like Doom, X-Wing and Formula 1 GP work extremely well on PCs. There is no sensible way of connecting a PC to a TV set, but 14 inch colour monitors are an ubiquitous part of a PC set-up this doesn't seem to worry most people. However, actually getting games to run on a PC is not always very easy. Remember that 640K limit? Obviously the manufacturers got around it, but it is still lurking there. You need to have as much of that memory free as possible - which means swtiching off many of the standard DOS facilities (like being able to recall the last line of text you typed at the C:> prompt). As a result, many PC owners have writen their own special boot time menu to remove the extra software whenever they want to play games. This sort of technical requirement can really cramp the PC's attempts to be the 'games console of the 90s' - it's certainly not as easy as slamming a cartridge into a desk and pressing ON. Apple Until recent price cuts, not many people in this country could afford to have a Mac at home, and certainly not one for playing games. That is changing, and more and more top titles are beginning to appear on the Apple - some CD-ROM titles especially are extremely innovative. The Mac is held back because the Operation System is hard to ignore, and games really need to run in a system-friendly way. The lack of any gee-whiz video chips also means that fast action, multi-coloured scrollers really have no chance on the Mac. Games scores: PC: 3.5 /5 Some hot games, but running them is not child's play. They are usually more expensive than Amiga versions. Mac: 2/5 Not enough to choose from, Amiga: 4/5 Still one of the best platforms for games in the UK. Conlusions ---------- It's inevitible that the PC will continue to dominate the market - there are simply so many of them out there. However, they are still based on a design that was fixed in the 1970's and backwardly comatible with 8bit processors. If you are a conformist, someone who doesn't want to be different or stand out, by all means by a PC. You'll be getting a good deal, but as prices fall almost daily, don't expect your machine to cost the same in 6 months time: it will probably be out of date. You'll get your Word Processing done alright, but the software won't be cheap. If you want to play games like Doom II and X-Wing, they yeah: they are only available for the PC. If you want to pay out £50 a go, and fight with DOS over that 640K limit then go ahead. If you like the look of Apple, remember that as home computers they still have a long way to go. Small buisness use yes - but as the number one system in the house, probably not. Software is available, but it is extremely expensive. Public domain software doesn't exist - it's all Shareware in AppleLand. The really good thing about a Mac is that it isn't a PC, and as a result it is a lot easier to use. On the other hand, perhaps you enjoy working with computer graphics. Perhaps you like being able to buy a good game for twenty quid (or less) and play it on the family TV. Perhaps you like good quality public domain software, and a thriving communitry spirit. Maybe you want to be able to use an operating system without driving yourself insane of finding out there is no way in to the level of access you need. You would certainly not lack a good word processor or a DTP program good enough for semi-professional use, and you might be tempted to add sound systems, image grabbers, hard drives, modems, accellerators and memory expansions when you wanted - and not have to struggle with IRQ and COM port numbers. You might want an Amiga. Jargon ------ 486SX/486DX A 486DX is a fully 80486 processor, whereas the SX lacks a maths co-processor. 486DX66 You often see processor's quoted in this manner. It means the 486 operates internally at 66Mhz, although externally it works at 33Mh: it's double clocked. In the same way, a 25Mhz 68040 operates at 50Mhz inside - but Motorola just don't go on about it as much. 68882 A maths co-processor, for helping out a 68020 or 68030. The 68040 has the majority of the 68882 built-in, and therefore doesn't need one. Local Bus A PC expansion bus that couples peripherals more tightly to the central processor. The result is a great increase in speed at the expense of a little flexibility. Mhz A measure of the speed at which operations are carried out inside a processor. It is pronounced 'mega - hurts' at means 'millions of clock cycles per second'.