Comment A4000 (Score 1) 130
If memory serves correctly here goes:
The Amiga 4000 could easliy outperform a Win3.1 @ 100Mhz. And beat up on 95 at 133 Mhz when it comes to multitasking and overall responsiveness. The best features were the hardware--with an OS COMPLETELY tied to it.
The processor was a 68040 @ 50 MHz there were CPU upgrade cards that took the machine to the '060' @ 50mhz--clearly as powerful as the p90 or 100. Remember the 68k family had a flat memory model and I believe was clock doubled internally.
The Amiga coprocessors truly ran in Parallel with the CPU. The only thing the CPU was responsible for was executing code. That's it. The chipset did everything else over a separate memory bus. The Amiga had TWO memory buses. One for the chip set in the low 2meg space, and one for the CPU for all memory. The chipset had priority in low memory. Some quick features of the chip set which operated INDEPENDENT OF THE CPU:
25 DMA channels were used like so
16-bit word blitter with 8-bit minterm. The blit used 3 DMA channels, two sources and one destination
4 8-bit digital to analog converters utilized DMA
The video coprocessor had a few instructions to control the video beam. Funky things like multiple color depths coexisting on the same screen were easily programmable--the Amiga pull down the screen trick.
System software:
True Mutitasking, intra application communication using message ports, fully scriptable OS and appications with AREXX. The batch language could do "back-ticks" whatever that is. Although no API existed for it, a programmer could make the Amiga "spawn" tasks in a standard way--can anyone say thread.
Exec was one of, if not the first micro-kernel.
First loadable/unloadable shared library.
Devices. Best explained as the baby brother to something like Be's "server" architecture. The interesting thing is that Devices were a super-set of Libraries. One of the Amiga legends is that the Intuition--the GUI API--was supposed to be implemented as a Device, making it replaceable, but there wasn't enough time to get it done.
And so on and so on and so on.
Michael
The Amiga 4000 could easliy outperform a Win3.1 @ 100Mhz. And beat up on 95 at 133 Mhz when it comes to multitasking and overall responsiveness. The best features were the hardware--with an OS COMPLETELY tied to it.
The processor was a 68040 @ 50 MHz there were CPU upgrade cards that took the machine to the '060' @ 50mhz--clearly as powerful as the p90 or 100. Remember the 68k family had a flat memory model and I believe was clock doubled internally.
The Amiga coprocessors truly ran in Parallel with the CPU. The only thing the CPU was responsible for was executing code. That's it. The chipset did everything else over a separate memory bus. The Amiga had TWO memory buses. One for the chip set in the low 2meg space, and one for the CPU for all memory. The chipset had priority in low memory. Some quick features of the chip set which operated INDEPENDENT OF THE CPU:
25 DMA channels were used like so
16-bit word blitter with 8-bit minterm. The blit used 3 DMA channels, two sources and one destination
4 8-bit digital to analog converters utilized DMA
The video coprocessor had a few instructions to control the video beam. Funky things like multiple color depths coexisting on the same screen were easily programmable--the Amiga pull down the screen trick.
System software:
True Mutitasking, intra application communication using message ports, fully scriptable OS and appications with AREXX. The batch language could do "back-ticks" whatever that is. Although no API existed for it, a programmer could make the Amiga "spawn" tasks in a standard way--can anyone say thread.
Exec was one of, if not the first micro-kernel.
First loadable/unloadable shared library.
Devices. Best explained as the baby brother to something like Be's "server" architecture. The interesting thing is that Devices were a super-set of Libraries. One of the Amiga legends is that the Intuition--the GUI API--was supposed to be implemented as a Device, making it replaceable, but there wasn't enough time to get it done.
And so on and so on and so on.
Michael
