ANOTHER WORLD - AMIGA vs PC.

SoundTrack: FAST SONG BY RLA / CRG
__________________________________________


(C) Andrey Andreev / Lone Wolf
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               AMIGA vs PC



   Before outlining the principal want to immediately

                explain what takes place at S PC in my life. I
c S to work professionally in

  S it. Engaged in the Administration) S the fore the network 
and training M S staff at one of the S Zai water treatment in 
our gorode.Krome RS of work in private


  S corporation on the supply and established
                Ke personal computers and peripherals for them. 
What is the PC I know not by hearsay. I have fairly broad 
access, we can say unlimited, many models of PC: from old 
486DX/66 to Pentium-II/233 MHz, including models such as the 
P133; P150; P166 MMX. All models have 16Mb of memory for

except P-II (he 64Mb). Each machine is equipped with drive 
CD-ROM (from 16x up to 24x), Sound Card from CREATIVE (y

P-II - SB64 AWE). All the models I have collected
their hands of the best parts (motherboard ASUS-T, hard drives 
and FUJITSU MAXTOR capacity from 2.1 Gb to 4.3 Gb, Monitor 
VIEWSONIC 14 ", 15", 17 "). As a consequence, the high price of 
these models PC.


   The most pleasant to talk to the model P166
MMX and P-II. This is indeed "fat" models at this price: P166 
MMX - 8500r., P-II - 17800r. That's how much it costs, really, 
a good PC. Please come, buy! 

   For its work using only licensed SOFTWARE. It's not so much 
out of respect for copyright, and how much from a desire to 
avoid trouble with the tax police and protect themselves from 
the "broken", often working copies. Of course, for the licensed 
programs and to pay not quite enough. Cost at least malomalski 
good game, for example, BLOOD 3D (Russian version) is about 240 
p. Had to buy and program costing up to $ 3000.


   As you can see, I only use the most
best. And what did I get in return, I
gives such a powerful device Pentium-II/233
MHz??? Oh, nothing! Laying out about 18000 p.
for him, I got the desired acceleration
compared with P166 MMX on only a few
programs: began to move Photoshop, fewer hang from a lack of 
memory winWORD, nice to quickly earned Norton Commander

and archive RAR, almost all the games for
Except TOMB RAIDER'a (he as a brake
on the P133 and P166 MMX, and on working properly on P-II) 
added speed. That's all better!


   Now I have a question. So is it worth to buy their 
Pentium-II??? Mere mortal upgrade my old P166 MMX, which is 
only a year ago was considered a top slope, will cost $ 930 ($ 
600 - "stone" ie processor and $ 330 - the new parent

fee). Given the fact that some firms
take old parts and pay you compensation, the cost of upgrade 
will be - $ 750-800! Is it worth chasing PC'shnoy slope in the 
hope that once you will have to stand on a table perfect

computer with a firm iNTEL?

   The attentive reader may object:
"But what about the Pentium-II - It's a super-modern 
technology!". Yes, indeed, this advanced technology ... for the 
firm iNTEL! Even more attentive reader that can read not only 
advertising Brochures firm iNTEL, but other useful books, such 
as a directory of microprocessors, unwittingly stirred up in 
the address the above-mentioned companies and exclaim: 
"Plagiarism!". And he will be right. The idea of dual tires 
addresses and data, as well as the cache memory processor 
belongs to the company Motorola. In As an example, can call 
processor 68040. Element of novelty in iNTEL is

an increase of up to 512Kb cache and clock speeds up to 233-300 
MHz. 

   And finally, why am I so long and skorpulezno describing the 
PC? Yes, now I come to AMIGA. Amiga is not the last

place in my life. When you come home
from work, tired of futile struggle against
WinWord, PhotoShop, NetWare and galaxies
like a little diversity. Here
Then I turn on the Amiga. And that, as a balm to the soul, the 
programmer and user. I will not list all the amenities Amiga -

have already repeatedly wrote many
better to narrate how I was trying to "catch"
Amiga, found serious flaws in it (for
except price).

   My friend from the Ekaterinburg
hint in one of the telephone conversations that
He came home with the A1200 accelerator on the PowerPC 175 MHz. 
To me it's an effect like a cold shower. I quickly organized a 
trip to this city. And the next day at 16:00 was ringing in a 
big iron door. After some more while I sit in front of his new 
acquisition. On the surface - nothing special, Amiga as Amiga: 
standard A1200, 16xskorostnoy external CD-ROM, sVGA-monitor 
ViewSonic14 ", connected through Scandoubler. However, little 
pricked me a powerful PSU -" Goliath ". 

   That I feel about the computer, Alexander (the name of my 
friend) left I was alone with his "girlfriend" and went to the 
kitchen to make coffee. Do not delay more than a second, I 
turned on Ammy. There has been a standard test hard disk, the 
system began to run. More precisely, immediately booted after 
15 seconds after the test HDD! (Windows'95 to this far!) Before 
my eyes appeared Workbench'NG updated with a very beautiful 
icons, a balanced color palette, stunning background image and 
is completely in Russian with 1280 x512 to 256 colors. It was 
the first blow. I accustomed to its Workbench-3.1, a graphics 
mode 640x256. (At home I have a simple Domestic Monitor 
"Electronics 202"). Pleasantly pleased indicator fast-RAM: a

my disposal was 64 Mb of memory! Armed with a mouse, which 
resembles a mouse Microsoft, I began to look for "Glitches" in 
the system and running programs. First I could not be found, so 
as Workbench'NG PowerPC defines and uses a special procedure 
designed for this "rock", which greatly increases speed of 
execution of various operations. In the catalog, I found an old 
Games Good GLOOM Deluxe. Burning with impatience,

ran setup, set the screen resolution 1280x512. My home axel 
with 68,030 such distortions are not withstand the normal 
displacement was achieved in this graphical detail at 4x4.

Anticipating that now find "gaffe", I
made detailing 1x1 and ran GLOOM. AND
what do you think the toy resignedly took up his duties, giving 
the player ie me the opportunity to enjoy a quick

rebuilding the screen and high quality
image. It was the second blow! On P-II
I was not able to squeeze out a higher resolution
than 800x600, and the speed of movement
significantly decreased with the standard graphics accelerator 
ATI Change3D. Joy from a good and fast work brought charges 
Matrox Millenium, to hire a "test" program from, as Even our 
company can not afford to buy a video card for 527

bucks. Anticipating yet another alleged
"Glitch", I ran GLOOM Deluxe with window
resolution of 320x256, occupies a quarter on
screen 1280x512. Again, no problems. The game works without any 
problems for parallel execution of another task - generating 
images in REAL 3D. I got a lot of fun, download ALIEN BREED 3D 
II. On my Amiga 68030 and 16Mb fast-RAM, this game without 
jerks worked at 1x1 detail only on a small, quarter-screen 
window. At AMMY with PowerPC she literally flew into

Full screen mode! And then I found an old play, written more 
for the A600 with 68000 processor, Lemmings. The game did not 
go, causing the system reboot. Incidentally, in the CD-ROM at 
this point was music CD, which is not stopped even

during the reboot! This trick is
only on the Amiga, which are cut first
wire, which initializes the device with a hot start. 
Unfortunately, the plume is modified in this manner is not well 
suited for two HDD, when you need to copy data from one screw 
to another. For this reason, I did not write myself

until Workbench'NG. After the euphoria caused by the
rampant downloading and running any new
programs designed for the processor 68030
and above, I almost fell into depression. But here in
Alexander entered the room. Estimating my problems, he sighed 
heavily, turned off the computer by simply clicking on the 
power button is not wait until you get a long-awaited words: 
"Now the computer can be turned off." (On a PC, this 
expectation I have had enough. I had to wait 10 minutes, when 
P166 MMX produce, finally, preparation for shutdown "). Then He 
turned the PC - turns out the hatch for installing axel he was 
not - and removed one of three jumpers. (The first two are

to determine the type of EDO memory or not and
Copy Kickstart'a in RAM.) Turned on the computer again. Amiga 
has not issued message "disk error, start scandisk", again 
loaded stop as fast as that for the first time, but now she has 
not found any PowerPC, or 64Mb of memory. Before me appeared 
the most ordinary A1200 from the HDD. Lemmings - booted without 
any problems! Unfortunately, I have not had time to test the PC 
emulator and the Mac (Time is running out and it was time to go 
home) - I left them for next time. But I'm sure they would not 
disappoint. After all, with an Amiga 68,040 fully emulates the 
Quadra-900, allowing you to run any programs for the Macintosh, 
but they are, especially toys, you can get in large quantities 
without straining. The problem of software for the Amiga, I'll 
be back. 

   And for what it's all I recounts? Wanted to show how nice to 
work on the Amiga with the accelerator on the PowerPC. Most of 
all I liked the price Axel, only some $ 500. As you can see on 
the Amiga can be to present not only in the form of "unfounded

rulez'a ", but facts.

   Talk about rulez'e. What is the word
as "pall"? Now it came to some
personality contemptuous mockery of the platform used for 
AMIGA. But with the same success it can be applied to the PC. 
For example, in the magazine Computer Press printed his geek 
called "Solutions Microsoft". Any translator, even native, will 
transfer the title back to English as a "Microsoft Rules". So

I must not think that this word privilege only Amiga.

   How to get software
for Ammy. If you do not need the services of professional 
provayzera, that is, you do not want pay, then the software can 
be pumped through a friend in the mail and there is no 
guarantee that you get what you wanted. Why not provayzerov in 
each city? Because there is no amizhnikov in these cities. Once 
they will appear as soon as there will be people who

will be able to provide you with the programs in any
taste, if you agree to pay them
services. You will get not only a good product, but also the 
quality of service. Asking for a job, such firms do not trade 
much, but you go straight home bring software or you yourself 
are going to retail outlets and choose what you need. Now we 
have already proved - on Amiga can make money. Those people who 
have realized this already now receive good interest on their

investments. The absence of strong competition
until recently - the result of high
prices for the Amiga. In conclusion, for example,
bring the cost of the CD-ROM with software for Ammy: 50-75 
rubles. You pay such money, and get up to 700 programs on one 
CD. This is a worthy investment of money money! For comparison, 
a cheap PC-shny CD piracy costs

about 40 rubles. and recorded no more than 100
programs. Calculate what is more profitable.

   This concludes my story
the two platforms. For me the choice is made
long ago, back in December 1996. Now
the choice is yours ...


  IBM and others: AVC, DVI



   Computers IBM PC type in their "natural" form of the least 
adapted to purposes of multimedia - the worst (until SuperVGA) 
graphics, a primitive monophonic sound, only 640K directly 
addressable memory (not contain even one frame of digital 
video), lack of user-friendly interface. However, due to high 
modularity, scalability architecture - IBM computer by 
installing additional cards is easily converted into a 
dedicated station of any orientation. 

   Market Multimedia IBM began to develop
in 1986, declaring the system InfoWindow, allowing the computer 
to control analog audio and video devices, as a dialog device 
InfoWindow was used touch screen (touch-screen).


   Another direction of development of multimedia
supported by IBM - it's AVC - Audio-Visual Connection 
(audio-visual communication), which the company announced in 
1989. System focused mainly on older computers family PS / 2, 
386 or 486 processor and at least 2.5m RAM. Graphic images can 
be obtained from the board Video Capture Adapter.Ona makes 
digitizing individual frames from a video camera, DVD or video 
tape, providing a resolution of 640x480 with 16 bits per pixel, 
as well as can demonstrate the on-screen "live"

analog video, or combine it with a computer image. At mid-1990
, the maximum transmission rate of digitized frames is only 3 
fps seconds for full color images (the size 614K

each), but since the VGA can operate only in modes 4 and 8 bits 
/ pixel image can be converted and

amount of data decreases.

   Soundtrack is provided by
additional fee Audio Capture / Playback Adapter, built on the 
basis of signal processor TI 320C25 productivity about 10 Mips, 
which allows produce digitized data with a linear

output of various audio, editing them and playing with a very 
high quality (including stereo). 

   In recent years, IBM's strategy
increasingly shifting towards digital
multimedia systems. This is primarily associated with the 
successes in the development of DVI line (Digital Video 
Interactive), which was co-lead of Intel and IBM. System DVI 
was developed by RCA (Sarnoff Research Center) and General 
Electric; then the right to DVI-technology firm acquired

Intel. Originally platform DVI based on asymmetric 
pattern-oriented CD-ROM. At the end of 1990 produced the first 
commercial products hardvernye DVI-two boards Action Media 750 
(by IBM - for architecture Micro Channel, and Intel - for the 
architecture of ISA). 

   Kernel boards DVI is a set of chips videobrabotki i750 firm 
Intel.Eti chips produce expansion / compression of video and 
audio in real time, in the process of writing or reading from 
disk. Major Chips set: Pixel Processor 82750PA, running at 
speeds of 12.5 Mips and Output Display Processor (ODP) 82750DA. 
ODP is capable of digital video in the range

permission from 256x200 to 1024x512, 8, 9
or 16-bits of the color of the pixel (currently being developed 
version of 24-packs bits). Furthermore, i750 provides a variety 
of visual effects due to the possibility reprogramming the 
microcode chips, not interrupting or slowing down operations. 
Fee DVI contains a library of functions visual effects,

transformations, etc., to which access may be from programs 
written in Cu.


   DVI brings television and computer technology that allows a 
computer equipped with VGA, play a full moving video. Digital 
Output Action Media is mixed with the analog output VGA; box 
DVI can be located anywhere on the screen, shrink, stretch, 
move, generated computer text and graphics can be placed in the 
window or placed on top of him. Estimated to Intel, when 
memorizing a moving video of the coefficient, compression 
achieves almost 160 to 1. Thanks This standard CD can hold 72

stereozvukovyh minute video and data (without
It has a capacity to compress only 28 seconds);
average size of the compressed frame - about 4.5K,
and even when the data rate 150K /
s CD-ROM has time to read 30 frames
sec. When storing the sets of still images (paintings, 
photographs), the coefficient compression drops to 25 to 1. 
Since DVI is a digital system, it is, in principle, can be set 
to any resolution, so it is possible to create DVI-systems

HDTV - High Definition TV (resolution 1050 or 1125 lines) and 
movies (about 4000 lines of resolution). 

   Currently, DVI provides a quality "near-VCR" - "almost-VCR 
(240 lines) for the products produced by Action Media (referred 
to as RTV - Real Time Video, or, in Russian, "real-time video). 
However, you can send the prepared data to the company Intel, 
where they will shrink to an asymmetric pattern PLV (Production 
Level Video); when playing data PLV, Action Media provides 
quality VCR. K 1992. expected to achieve higher quality of TV 
broadcasting, but lower for HDTV products and PLV Quality 
almost-TV for RTV. 

   DVI is the first technology to be used for full-featured
multimedia optical discs are not factory
production and available to any computer hard drive that 
greatly expands circle of developers and users of multimedia.


   Manufacturer Microsoft, though, and is involved
as co-executor in various projects
Multimedia (DVI, CD-ROM-XA, etc.), holds annual conference on 
CD-ROM, but obviously delayed the announcement of its own line, 
issue their own product. Only in late 1991, she was going to 
produce a multimedia extension of Windows, includes interface 
MCI-Media Control Interface, which, according to the property 
declaration would constitute a response to Microsoft's AMCA 
company Apple (Apple's Media Control Architecture, architecture 
media management information). As a result, the company leading 
the development of tools and products for multimedia computers 
through IBM, to act with an eye on possible future steps 
Microsoft, to suddenly be out of the "high road" after 
Microsoft finally announced its plans for the media. Such a 
policy is not new Microsoft - Remember the long-suffering

the history of Windows, only the last year, version 3.0, 
providing users of the service, which from birth had a 
Macintosh, from version to version of DOS, promises 
multi-tasking. 


              And in conclusion



   Well, dear readers, I believe
need to summarize all the above
material. I'd like to hope that this
article caused you some interest,
although it is essentially a reprint of the ...

   So, in the world is clearly booming multimedia. At this rate 
of development, when there are new trends, and others, which 
seemed very promising, suddenly become uncompetitive, it is 
difficult composes any surveys: their findings could become 
inaccurate or even obsolete. 

   Looks very interesting work on
introduce elements of artificial intelligence in hypermedia 
systems. System type "Knowledge Navigator" company Apple, 
"intelligent" e-books have the ability to "feel" the medium of 
communication, adapt to it and optimize the process of 
communicating with polzovatelem.Esche a rapidly developing 
field of computers, which plays an important role Multimedia - 
a system of virtual or alternate reality. Not to be confused 
with Virtual'no Amig'nym syndrome:)! And also

close to them of "Telepresence"
(Telepresence). With the help of special equipment, a helmet 
with two miniature stereo displays (eye-phones), 
kvadronaushnikami, special sensory gloves and even costume 
(well, straight Lawnmower some;)) you can "enter" into the 
generated or a simulated computer world is turning his head to 
look left or right go on, reach out ahead - and

see it in this virtual world, you can
even take a virtual object
(Feeling while its severity) and rearrange to another location; 
can thus build and create this world from the inside. 

   It is possible that multimedia technology is so integrated 
into the ideology architecture of the PC that the term 
"multimedia" gradually wither away ...