³   ¼PC against AMIGA¼
¹

I  got  the  idea  to  write my opinion
about this from another article in this
issue  of  Top  Secret.  This is a very
interesting  theme,  I think.  Which is
better    the    Amiga    or   the   Pc
compatibiles?   Hard  question,  but it
isn't   impossible   to  compare  these
machines,  because  I also own an Amiga
500  and  a  PC/AT 286.  At first about
their prices.  An average PC/AT is more
expensive  than a normal amiga.  If you
want  nice  gfx for your PC you have to
buy  at  least  a  normal VGA card.  It
makes better gfx than the amiga (262144
colors),  but it costs with the monitor
2  normal  Amiga monitors.  If you want
to  work  with your PC you should buy a
winchester   too  with  at  least  20MB
capacity.   I  tried  to  work  without
that,  but  it  was impossible.  But my
amiga  is  useable  without winchester.
Of  course  it  is  a good tool for the
amiga  too,  but  it is necessary for a
PC.   There  are  two main types of the
Pc's.   XT or AT.  An XT isn't worth to
buy,   because   The   price-difference
between  these  machines isn't too big.
The  Pc  is more enlargeable, so if you
buy  the  latest  cards  you  may  have
always a developed computer.  Of course
the  Amiga2000 is also enlargeable, but
there  aren't  as  many cards as on the
PCs.  And they are more expensive.  The
last  about  the hardware is the sound.
The  Amiga  have  very  nice sound, and
easy   to  use,  because  the  DMA.   A
standard  Pc  have a lousy sound-beeper
(only  square-wave), but with developed
softwares   it   is  possible  to  play
digi-sequences.   Then  of  course  the
Processor  is  very busy, your Pc can't
do   anything   else.    You   can  buy
sound-cards  too,  but  they are rather
expensive.   There  is  a  quite  cheap
sound-card   called:   "Sound-Blaster".
But  the soundablity of this is not too
good.   Of  course  the  more expensive
cards  are  better,  some of them makes
better sound than the amiga.
 So, the standard hardware of the Amiga
is better.
 Ok,  now  take  care  on the softwares
too.  There is a bit more PC utils, but
there  are  much more Text-editors, and
less  graphics  programs (For example I
have  never  seen any Ray-Tracer on PC.
I  don't  say there aren't Ray-Tracers,
but  I  don't know any.) Much more, and
better  CAD  programs are avaible on PC
than  on  Amiga.   In database handling
also  the  PC  is  the  winner.   There
aren't  as many packers on PC as on the
Amiga.    And   most   of   them   only
archive-packer.   (ZIP  etc...) Nothing
like PowerPacker or TetraPack.  When we
talk  about games, Amiga is the winner.
Of course there're some very good games
on  PC  too, (for example King Quest V)
but    they're   only   playable   from
Winchester,  and takes about 10Mbyte of
the  HD.  There is something wrong with
the   PC   graphics.   Nearly  all  the
pictures    digitized,   nobody   likes
drawing on PC.  I don't know why.  When
the  pictures  uses  256  colors  on  a
screen  the resolution must be 320*200.
This  is  very shit, because the Pixels
are  very visible on VGAmonitors, so if
you sitting before the monitor, you see
many-many   pixels.    I  compared  the
Dpaint   versions   on  PC  and  Amiga.
Wlah...   On  the PC you aren't able to
work   with  that.   Very  difficult to
handle.
 Ok, now some words about their machine
code.   I  think  the coders on PC have
hard  work.   Only  4 16bits registers,
and    some   index,   segment   etc...
registers.  The Girlfriend (Amiga) have
8  32bits  data,  and  8 32bits address
registers.   On  the  PC if you want to
access  a  memoryaddress, there're 4096
ways to do that.

 For example:   AMIGA      PC

               $78000  =   $7800:$0000
               $78000  =   $77ff:$0010
               $78000  =   $77fe:$0020
               .
               .
               .

If  you  code  on  an  AT you can't use
80286/386  codes, because then it won't
run  on XTs.  (XT have Intel 8088/8086)
There  are not too many assemblers, and
they  are  real  shit  compared  to the
amiga  ones.   They  are  only  creates
object files, and then you have to link
these objects.  No built in editors, or
command lines like in ASMONE.  Nooo...

   dosprompt   compiler   your source
       |         |         |
C:\MASM\MYCODES>masm intro.asm

[...]
               linker  object file
                 |       |
C:\MASM\MYCODES>link intro {options}

[...]
             run your proggy
                   |
C:\MASM\MYCODES>intro


So easy to do...

Of  course there're some possibities to
make  the  compiling  more comfortable.
But  if  you  program  with  high-level
languages like Pascal etc...  the PC is
better.   There  are  also some special
languages  like  Clipper which are very
usefull.
 Some  other  bad  things with the PCs.
There      aren't     anything     like
system-configuration.       So     many
different machines, different speeds.
And of course no really multitasking!
 I don't know why, but  the vectorgames
are  much  faster  on PC than on Amiga.
(At the same CPU speed!)   For  example
there's  Indy 500.  There isn't blitter
in  PC,  but there're better coders?  I
don't know...
 Sooo,  you  reached  the  end  of this
article.   Important!   These  were  my
opinions,  so if you don't agree please
write another article about this topic.
You are welcome.

                       ³Avantage/Majic12¹