Crazyace Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 That was just a design consideration though - the ST was a much cheaper machine than the PC-AT, and offered much more 'out of the box'. I dont think there was anything that competed graphically on the PC at the time of launch though - eventually the PC would win over all, but the home market wasn't a given in 1985. ( I think the biggest problem with the ST was that it didn't compete well enough with the Amiga in terms of H/W at launch - it worked well enough with serious apps, but games were the mass market killer apps, and when the Amiga price dropped it took away the market from the ST ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 You could say similar for A8 games on the ST - practically any fullscreen smooth h-scrolling game. Just look at h-scrollers on the ST - most run in a smallish window, and even then they often jump 4 pixels at a time. Sure, the 68000 CPU is a generation and a half ahead of the 6502. But the sound subsystem is a jump backwards. And don't bother bringing MIDI into the equation, practically nobody I know who had an ST used it. Graphically, the 1st gen ST was a disappointment. Page aligned screen origin plus kludgy bitplane arrangement does not make for a gaming machine. TBH, what rescued the system was raw CPU grunt. Although it only managed to bring the system to parity or slightly above existing 8-bit machines, but lagged significantly compared with the likes of Amiga and the Genesis/Megadrive and SNES. ... As enchanted land shows, smooth 8 way pixel by pixel scrolling with many many colours via DLI type palette swap effects is very very possible on a stock STFM...not Atari's fault a lot of people weren't as talented as some groups like TCB is it? ... Bullcrap. It's being done in software at more CPU cost than A8. You shouldn't need people hacking their monitor frequencies in a cycle-exact manner to reduce CPU cost. SYNC scrollers-- "Self-destruct Your New CRT" scrollers. Given rate of crashing on ST and other machines at the time with unstable OSes, I would say those games should come with a WARNING like cigarette boxes. Would you rather play A8 Gauntlet with smoother scrolling or ST Gauntlet 1? hmmm guess what 99% of the world would choose as the better game, and as 'better' is subjective then the majority wins... Looking at just scrolling, I'll take the A8 scrolling. Better is not subjective if you compare one to one the hardware aspects. The ST can replicate the A8 player missiles in its sleep....the C64 vs ST was the real problem and always prevented many a C64 owner buying one. Worse sound, much more powerful sprites to replicate in software...16 fixed vs 16 any colours on screen... No the ST can neither replicate C64 sprites nor A8 sprites as both can be spread out all over the full overscanned display using only a few cycles. That's comparing one to one. And ST doesn't have a sleep mode. We did this to death in the Atari vs Commodore thread but at 160x200 resolution the C64 slam dunked the A8 every time with 16 colours almost any char block on screen, massive amounts of multiplexed sprites and a superior (to the ST and A8) sound chip. As the C64 was the biggest selling computer of all time obviously C64 arcade/action games mad owners (rightly) holding back on a purchase. ... Well, you are speaking off-topic with your C64 drivel (troll bait). As beaten to death in the thread, A8 hardware can put out more colors than C64 in 160*200 but games usually didn't employ GPRIOR mode 0 techniques or horizontally re-using colors. And why just stick to 160*200, why not 192*240, GTIA modes, and other graphics features of A8. But still I'd rather play ST Gauntlet 1 than C64 Gauntlet 1 (which is light years ahead of the monochromatic rubbish on A8 palmed off as Gauntlet already). Ditto if Rescue on Fractalus/Koronis Rift/Eidolon were ever done on the ST it would be superior to the C64/A8 fact. Star Raiders could have been programmed a lot better on the ST but is still as good (but different style) to the A8. All Magnetic Scrolls adventure games (Pawn/Guild/Jinxter etc) are and always will be superior on the ST to the C64/A8. Encounter is not as good as Backlash, ST Mercenary rocks...Space Harrier on ST/A8....Lotus II on ST vs any A8 racing game etc etc. ... Stop with the excuses. Either you compare hardware one on one (like I did) or you compare games as they are and NOT draw any conclusion about the hardware from them. I can also make excuses regarding A8 games being suboptimal as well for color useage and speed. I am actually struggling to think of an A8 game that would slamdunk the ST version...which this thread is implying by the A8 wolves barking up no? I am open to suggestions of course, but honestly I can't think of one at this moment in time. Because you can't read. You mentioned some yourself. I only collect the games I like and from that Boulderdash and Joust that I recently played will slamdunk the ST versions. Now tell me the excuse that if ST had turned the monitor sideways and set starting video addresses, it would have had a better hscroll in boulderdash. Personally the blitter wasn't essential, a 16mhz CPU and better sound would have worked fine for most games programmers (not marketing men or flame war producing fanboys quoting hardware statistics of course)...rewriting code for a blitter is a huge task....tweaking VBL timings for a 16mhz CPU is lunchbreak stuff for any seasoned ASM coder No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. Where do I start Last to first...like I said...regarding the PC automatically having better games with each successive machine purchase Vs STFM and STE upgrade having no effect on your existing games catalogue. The Blitter in the original Amiga chipset is akin to a 70mhz 68000 (Byte magazine quote from 1985 issue pre-release benchmarks for A1000 Vs ST and Macintosh), so even the ST's less sophisticated implementation must be half that. The actual point was...nobody used the blitter, to recode a game to accomodate a blitter is a major task...so it's like having a Ferrari V8 running on 1 cylinder only. Doesn't matter what hardware is inside the STE, hardly any STE specific games appeared (cost of reprogramming the entire game engine Vs potential userbase purchasing it = no major STE only games push!) As I already said clearly it is a simple job to fix any [and sometimes there are none at all] problems with a game running on a 16mhz STFM. Like I said running Lotus II and Gauntlet 1 on an STE gives ZERO improvement, running them on a 16mhz 680000 ST with no extra RAM or anything = noticable increase in smoothness and speed. This is WIN....unused blitter in STE is LOSE. The point about the PC is it is ALL in software, so ISA to PCI to AGP...even a 10 year old game will run faster. Running Lotus II on an A4000 with PowerPC and PCI onboard 3D/2D accelerator makes no difference. THIS is why PC gaming has successfully weathered the constant upgrade...because those shitty routines IN SOFTWARE get faster when you swap out your ISA 386DX 40mhz for a Pentium 66mhz PCI setup with ZERO CODE CHANGES. Do you load a special version of Doom for PCI and ISA? No didn't think so Boulderdash? Clearly it is possible to do that and then some on an ST if written by some people as talented as The Care Bears as seen in my video of Enchanted Land posted. I'd like to see a full screen full overlaid dual playfield game on the A8 with 100 or so colours on screen. See maybe simple Time Pilot type 8 way scrolling is easy on the A8 but parallax is impossible of the type seen (ie not raster split parallax but full dual playfield 2x screen bandwidth) in Enchanted Land...I don't think so somehow. joust? Are you having a laugh? LOL As for hardware/games coding talent issues I have yet to see an A8 platform game as fast AND colourful as Monsterland, a shootemup as busy and colourful as Salamander. Face it the A8 has too many restrictions even compared to a C64 which is why programmers left the A8 in droves and fell in love with VIC-II less compromising features. The only good thing the A8 had was it's unusable 256 colour palette for standard 2D arcade games, Player Missile = rubbish, CPU advantage of some 0.25mhz in reality is no substitute for hardware supported features of ALL 16 colours on screen and 8 large sprites per 20 or so scanlines. If you ask me is the A8 better, then probably not, is it an advanced design for a 1979 machine? Yes! This is two seperate issues, and 3D filled/wireframe on the ST will crush an A8 sorry. People stopped listening to the theoretical this that and the other possible with GTIA and Antic when there was no evidence in sight 99% of the time of working code that looked even half as impressive as the fanboy theories thrown up. A8 players versus software blitting...erm...clearly in Enchanted Land not only is the 68000 + shifter moving the entire screen of 320x200 AND some 64 or so colours but also doing a full screen scroll of the 2nd overlaid full screen parallax of the second playfield as well. This means effectively at almost every cycle the ST is moving 640x400 ie TWO 320x200 sized screens worth of information. Even with player/missile AND soft sprites AND hardware scrolling theoretically it is not possible in the A8 chipset bandwidth to shift that amount of data. Sometimes hardware can not exceed software, this is such a case. And again something like player missiles is useless for some screen objects...like Outrun style games where Lotus II is doing a half decent job. A8 vs ST Gauntlet 1...so you'd rather have really shitty looking 1970s graphics move smoother? It is not better...that's like saying a £20,000 car is better than a £40,000 car just because it has nicer looking alloy wheels. The game as a whole IS the comparison, clearly the A8 graphics don't even look like Gauntlet, more like a VCS game with 50% improvement in resolution. A8 Gauntlet is terrible, it would be better for the machine if it didn't exist.........someone should remake it ASAP So on graphics, sound, and vertical scrolling ST Gauntlet is superior and yet because the horizontal scrolling lags sometimes it is inferior to the A8? LOL Poppycock, sync scrollers (and just about any trick on any machine with standard TV output based chipsets) are not doing anything your CRT tube is not designed to do, they are only doing things your ST is not supposed to be able to do. I just transferred Enchanted Land to floppies and ran it on 3 STs, none of them crashed so it can't be that 'bad' a routine 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 That was just a design consideration though - the ST was a much cheaper machine than the PC-AT, and offered much more 'out of the box'. I dont think there was anything that competed graphically on the PC at the time of launch though - eventually the PC would win over all, but the home market wasn't a given in 1985. ( I think the biggest problem with the ST was that it didn't compete well enough with the Amiga in terms of H/W at launch - it worked well enough with serious apps, but games were the mass market killer apps, and when the Amiga price dropped it took away the market from the ST ) Personally my attitude was there was never a need to buy a PC (and even less so today when you can do anything that 99% of PC users do 99% of the time with something as weird and alien as OS4.1 and an AmigaONE motherboard) The Amiga was there in 1985/86 with the technologically 100s of lightyears ahead tech for LESS, and the ST was still 10s of lightyears ahead still at LESS than the cost of an A1000. PCs won by default due to the incompetent management decisions Atari and Commodore made with their computers (not console!...Jaguar is a whole new kettle of fish) leading to the lack of an ST/Falcon or Amiga for people to actually walk into the shops and purchase, and Apple priced themselves out of the market for decades. This in conjunction with the fact that new PC motherboard + new graphics card = improvement in ALL VGA games for sold. Once games were made with VGA that was the final nail in the coffin for Commodore and Atari (whose arcade games rarely improved with new faster machine purchases due to hardware fixed coding and polygon games stuck in 16 lo-res colours for legacy coding). So essentially what gave these machines such a significant advantage is what killed them off ultimately. Marketing hype about mhz from PC sellers did the rest to steer the sheepbrained general public into the PC flock A few resist to this day and buy Apple machines instead, although they now use identical hardware to PCs and a nice implementation of Unix...which is more or less the same as Linux. So is there really a choice now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 (this is why I own a cheap computer and every console known to man instead...the fun is on consoles now. And as Microshits were losing $150+ dollars at the time I got my 360 and xbox1 it's OK) One of the things that pissed me off was when my PC Sega Rally wouldn't play on a newer version of Windows (98??). It worked on Win95 and whatever version of DirecX they had back then. When I tried to install it on my new machine and the game informed me I needed to "upgrade" my DirectX when I was way past whatever version it was looking for.....I decided I want my games for "keeps" so I can play them indefinitely, like consoles. Thankfully, Sega Rally still plays on my Saturn, Sega Rally 2 still plays on my Dreamcast.....etc...etc...etc. This still happens today...try installing Resident Evil 4 on a Vista PC (it was launched 6 months after Vista so no excuse by the way) and it does the same thing, trashes your DirectX 10 files over-writing them with DX9.0c OR informs you that you need to upgrade your DirectX files, at which point stops dead. It's a shame because RE4 absolutely pisses all over RE5, which is nowhere near as fun to play in any universe we occupy! So I just upscale the PS2 version on a PS3 and route it through a DLP projector onto a massive 12ft screen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 Using sync scroll code gave a real boost to scrolling ( especially vertical scrolling - horizontal still had the 16 pixel limitations ) - It's a pity that it wasn't more widely available in games earlier. Also it's not killing CRT monitors, it's just an unforeseen use of the hardware in the same way as the GPRIOR=0 hack on the 8 bit. The STe should have been the original ST though - although I agree with oky2000 that a faster 68000 would have made up for a blitter more that anything else... ( Imagine if it had been at 10MHz 68000 at launch , the increased clock would have supported 512 pixels/16 colours using full overscan ) You can't compare it to GPRIOR=0 since that's perfectly safe and useable even in BASIC like the color clock shift in Gr.10. Frequency changing is known to destroy monitors as I know it did on CGA-based PCs. I don't agree making it 10Mhz is better than having a blitter. Amiga had all sorts of accelerators but the blitter still helped out as it's DMA-based... more in my next reply. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 Personally the blitter wasn't essential, a 16mhz CPU and better sound would have worked fine for most games programmers (not marketing men or flame war producing fanboys quoting hardware statistics of course)...rewriting code for a blitter is a huge task....tweaking VBL timings for a 16mhz CPU is lunchbreak stuff for any seasoned ASM coder No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. What's that got to do with the ST though? All I/O has its limits usually much less than processor speed especially today. Amiga chip-RAM runs at 7.16Mhz even with a 68050 installed. And it wasn't an easy thing to jack up the Mhz on the processor back then-- I remember a 4.77Mhz PC vs. 6Mhz AT had a huge price difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 You could say similar for A8 games on the ST - practically any fullscreen smooth h-scrolling game. Just look at h-scrollers on the ST - most run in a smallish window, and even then they often jump 4 pixels at a time. Sure, the 68000 CPU is a generation and a half ahead of the 6502. But the sound subsystem is a jump backwards. And don't bother bringing MIDI into the equation, practically nobody I know who had an ST used it. Graphically, the 1st gen ST was a disappointment. Page aligned screen origin plus kludgy bitplane arrangement does not make for a gaming machine. TBH, what rescued the system was raw CPU grunt. Although it only managed to bring the system to parity or slightly above existing 8-bit machines, but lagged significantly compared with the likes of Amiga and the Genesis/Megadrive and SNES. ... As enchanted land shows, smooth 8 way pixel by pixel scrolling with many many colours via DLI type palette swap effects is very very possible on a stock STFM...not Atari's fault a lot of people weren't as talented as some groups like TCB is it? ... Bullcrap. It's being done in software at more CPU cost than A8. You shouldn't need people hacking their monitor frequencies in a cycle-exact manner to reduce CPU cost. SYNC scrollers-- "Self-destruct Your New CRT" scrollers. Given rate of crashing on ST and other machines at the time with unstable OSes, I would say those games should come with a WARNING like cigarette boxes. Would you rather play A8 Gauntlet with smoother scrolling or ST Gauntlet 1? hmmm guess what 99% of the world would choose as the better game, and as 'better' is subjective then the majority wins... Looking at just scrolling, I'll take the A8 scrolling. Better is not subjective if you compare one to one the hardware aspects. The ST can replicate the A8 player missiles in its sleep....the C64 vs ST was the real problem and always prevented many a C64 owner buying one. Worse sound, much more powerful sprites to replicate in software...16 fixed vs 16 any colours on screen... No the ST can neither replicate C64 sprites nor A8 sprites as both can be spread out all over the full overscanned display using only a few cycles. That's comparing one to one. And ST doesn't have a sleep mode. We did this to death in the Atari vs Commodore thread but at 160x200 resolution the C64 slam dunked the A8 every time with 16 colours almost any char block on screen, massive amounts of multiplexed sprites and a superior (to the ST and A8) sound chip. As the C64 was the biggest selling computer of all time obviously C64 arcade/action games mad owners (rightly) holding back on a purchase. ... Well, you are speaking off-topic with your C64 drivel (troll bait). As beaten to death in the thread, A8 hardware can put out more colors than C64 in 160*200 but games usually didn't employ GPRIOR mode 0 techniques or horizontally re-using colors. And why just stick to 160*200, why not 192*240, GTIA modes, and other graphics features of A8. But still I'd rather play ST Gauntlet 1 than C64 Gauntlet 1 (which is light years ahead of the monochromatic rubbish on A8 palmed off as Gauntlet already). Ditto if Rescue on Fractalus/Koronis Rift/Eidolon were ever done on the ST it would be superior to the C64/A8 fact. Star Raiders could have been programmed a lot better on the ST but is still as good (but different style) to the A8. All Magnetic Scrolls adventure games (Pawn/Guild/Jinxter etc) are and always will be superior on the ST to the C64/A8. Encounter is not as good as Backlash, ST Mercenary rocks...Space Harrier on ST/A8....Lotus II on ST vs any A8 racing game etc etc. ... Stop with the excuses. Either you compare hardware one on one (like I did) or you compare games as they are and NOT draw any conclusion about the hardware from them. I can also make excuses regarding A8 games being suboptimal as well for color useage and speed. I am actually struggling to think of an A8 game that would slamdunk the ST version...which this thread is implying by the A8 wolves barking up no? I am open to suggestions of course, but honestly I can't think of one at this moment in time. Because you can't read. You mentioned some yourself. I only collect the games I like and from that Boulderdash and Joust that I recently played will slamdunk the ST versions. Now tell me the excuse that if ST had turned the monitor sideways and set starting video addresses, it would have had a better hscroll in boulderdash. Personally the blitter wasn't essential, a 16mhz CPU and better sound would have worked fine for most games programmers (not marketing men or flame war producing fanboys quoting hardware statistics of course)...rewriting code for a blitter is a huge task....tweaking VBL timings for a 16mhz CPU is lunchbreak stuff for any seasoned ASM coder No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. Where do I start Last to first...like I said...regarding the PC automatically having better games with each successive machine purchase Vs STFM and STE upgrade having no effect on your existing games catalogue. The Blitter in the original Amiga chipset is akin to a 70mhz 68000 (Byte magazine quote from 1985 issue pre-release benchmarks for A1000 Vs ST and Macintosh), so even the ST's less sophisticated implementation must be half that. The actual point was...nobody used the blitter, to recode a game to accomodate a blitter is a major task...so it's like having a Ferrari V8 running on 1 cylinder only... You're taking things out of context. Regardless, you can't build a 70Mhz 68000 at that time. 8Mhz was their peak at the price they targetted. And a blitter helps since it's DMA-based and there's no instruction fetching going on. ... is why PC gaming has successfully weathered the constant upgrade...because those shitty routines IN SOFTWARE get faster when you swap out your ISA 386DX 40mhz for a Pentium 66mhz PCI setup with ZERO CODE CHANGES. Do you load a special version of Doom for PCI and ISA? No didn't think so ... Huh! That agrees with my statement that it's the I/O that's the limitation. You upgraded the I/O bus going from ISA to PCI. Boulderdash? Clearly it is possible to do that and then some on an ST if written by some people as talented as The Care Bears as seen in my video of Enchanted Land posted... As I said, compare games as they are or compare hardware one on one. No excuses. The enchanted land you posted was skipping and jerky on my machine-- perhaps a Youtube issue. ...not raster split parallax but full dual playfield 2x screen bandwidth) in Enchanted Land...I don't think so somehow. joust? Are you having a laugh? LOL ... You must have played Joust in pause mode. It looks good but plays terrible on ST with shearing, flickering, etc. As for hardware/games coding talent issues I have yet to see an A8 platform game as fast AND colourful as Monsterland, a shootemup as busy and colourful as Salamander. Face it the A8 has too many restrictions even compared to a C64 which is why programmers left the A8 in droves and fell in love with VIC-II less compromising features. The only good thing the A8 had was it's unusable 256 colour palette for standard 2D arcade games, Player Missile = rubbish, CPU advantage of some 0.25mhz in reality is no substitute for hardware supported features of ALL 16 colours on screen and 8 large sprites per 20 or so scanlines. If you ask me is the A8 better, then probably not, is it an advanced design for a 1979 machine? Yes! ... It's both-- advanced and better. I am the opposite case-- I used to use C64 in my schools and went for the A8 and have never looked back. But how does that prove superiority-- if some people switch. Some people just like to experience different platforms. You have said your drivel of 256 colors being unuseable too many times; some people never learn. It's IMPOSSIBLE to port any shaded artwork to C64 without making it look like crap. You can use 40+ colors/scanline in your almighty 160*200 mode. CPU is at 79% faster for many things unless you are stuck in your almight 160*200 mode and port over a C64 game to A8. Creativity is more important in how well you can use the A8 sprites. Please keep the C64 stuff out of here for now-- check msg #10979 on C64 vs. A8 thread and see if you can deny any of the items. Joust uses A8 sprites pretty well better than ST does its software sprites. A8 players versus software blitting...erm...clearly in Enchanted Land not only is the 68000 + shifter moving the entire screen of 320x200 AND some 64 or so colours but also doing a full screen scroll of the 2nd overlaid full screen parallax of the second playfield as well... ... Bullcrap-- perhaps using Self-destruct Your New CRT (SYNC) technique. This means effectively at almost every cycle the ST is moving 640x400 ie TWO 320x200 sized screens worth of information. Even with player/missile AND soft sprites AND hardware scrolling theoretically it is not possible in the A8 chipset bandwidth to shift that amount of data. Sometimes hardware can not exceed software, this is such a case. And again something like player missiles is useless for some screen objects...like Outrun style games where Lotus II is doing a half decent job. ... You're nuts. It only takes a few cycles to fill up the screen with sprites on A8 including both overscans. ST cannot do this even within a FRAME time. Remember that lower resolutions help the A8 as well since it can do full-screen with less data moves. A frame on ST is 320*200*16 = 32K or 16K words; times by 60 = 1Megawords; each 68K read/write cycle is minimum of 4 cycles; you need 8Mhz to just move a 320*200*16 image during a frame time using full bandwidth of the memory bus. But since you claim 64-colors and since you still need to do bit-shifts and instruction fetches, it means ST cannot update entire 320*200*16 within a frame time. A8 vs ST Gauntlet 1...so you'd rather have really shitty looking 1970s graphics move smoother? It is not better...that's like saying a £20,000 car is better than a £40,000 car just because it has nicer looking alloy wheels. The game as a whole IS the comparison, clearly the A8 graphics don't even look like Gauntlet, more like a VCS game with 50% improvement in resolution. A8 Gauntlet is terrible, it would be better for the machine if it didn't exist.........someone should remake it ASAP So on graphics, sound, and vertical scrolling ST Gauntlet is superior and yet because the horizontal scrolling lags sometimes it is inferior to the A8? LOL ... You're generalizing from one game Gauntlet. Some games like Joust prefer smoother motion than looks. As I said, you made a MISTAKE thinking ST joust is superior by playing in pause mode. You have to play in live mode. Speaking of VCS, no one has answered my posting of VCS game that takes less time on A2600 than on ST. See attached picture. Poppycock, sync scrollers (and just about any trick on any machine with standard TV output based chipsets) are not doing anything your CRT tube is not designed to do, they are only doing things your ST is not supposed to be able to do. I just transferred Enchanted Land to floppies and ran it on 3 STs, none of them crashed so it can't be that 'bad' a routine No, I said OS is unstable so it's possible that anytime it can crash and leave your CRT in limbo doing things not intended to do and in some cases it may not even handle the quick switching they are doing with 50/60Hz for a few cycles. The risk is there. Your analogy is like saying "I just smoked 3 cigarettes and I didn't get lung cancer." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 Using sync scroll code gave a real boost to scrolling ( especially vertical scrolling - horizontal still had the 16 pixel limitations ) - It's a pity that it wasn't more widely available in games earlier. Also it's not killing CRT monitors, it's just an unforeseen use of the hardware in the same way as the GPRIOR=0 hack on the 8 bit. The STe should have been the original ST though - although I agree with oky2000 that a faster 68000 would have made up for a blitter more that anything else... ( Imagine if it had been at 10MHz 68000 at launch , the increased clock would have supported 512 pixels/16 colours using full overscan ) You can't compare it to GPRIOR=0 since that's perfectly safe and useable even in BASIC like the color clock shift in Gr.10. Frequency changing is known to destroy monitors as I know it did on CGA-based PCs. I don't agree making it 10Mhz is better than having a blitter. Amiga had all sorts of accelerators but the blitter still helped out as it's DMA-based... more in my next reply. The frequency changing syncscroll hacks on the ST dont actually change the frequency of hsync/vsync - they just trick the shifter into displaying more data in the borders, so it's not dangerous. 10MHz was just a comment - it would have increased the pixel rate allowing a 512x200 screen with 16 colours without slowing the cpu down at all. A blitter would have been preferrable , but it's more silicon to design - 10MHz 68000's were available in 84/85 and would have been just as easy to design for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 i don't see why switching 60hz at the borders would kill monitors as 60hz is already allowed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syfo-Dyas Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 (edited) I'm going to have to side with the Jay Minor hardware. Yes, the St was faster, provided more colors, sharper pixels, etc., but at the same time, the ST line of computers didn't really begin to smooth out till about the STe or TT era of it's life span. Of course we've got the Falcon which was absolutely amazing, but let's be frank. The Atari 8-Bit was based upon the technology of Jay Minor, the Amiga was again designed by Jay Minor. This is why the Atari 8-Bit and the Amiga seem to have so much in common as opposed to the Atari 8-Bit and the ST. The ST was thrown together by a group of designers in the middle east somewhere as a quick attempt to compensate for the Amiga, being built by Commodore, who bought out Jay Minor due to Atari's un-willingness to offer him more money when he wanted it, etc. Like the PC which was also designed over night and rushed into production, it took the ST a while to work out it's bugs and short comings, where as the Amiga and Atari 8-bit were made with love over a long period of time with serious dedication. This has all probably been covered in this thread, but I've not taken the time to read through it all. Edited December 20, 2009 by Syfo-Dyas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 (edited) No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. The 640x480 comment doesn't make much sense inless you're taliking 16 colors... Standard VGA cards didn't have enough ram to support a 256 color display at that resolution. (highest possible is 640x400 single buffered in "mode X") Nearly all VGA games either used 320x200 mode 13h (single buffering only) or other resolutions utilizing "mode x" often 320x240 (square pixels with double or tripple buffering possible), or occasionally (much less common) other resolutions like 400x300 (also square pixels and could support double buffering) or 512x384 (highest 4x3 screen using square pixels, only single buffered with standard VGA's limit of 256 kB) Again, with 13h and 320x240 "mode x" (with up to tripple buffering) being the most common, with many games supporting both. (and later DOS games including those along with higher resolutions, including ones only possible on XGA/SVGA cards like 640x480) What I am referring to is the first STs did not offer much better resolution & color depth than that was on the PC with an EGA card. I have played games in EGA mode and a ST version of the same game was not much better. Atari under Jack Tremial was trying to insert the ST into the business market but did not seem to invest in getting software development for the ST. The PC was already becoming a stable for a personal computing not because of video games, but all the useful application software on the market for it. Already in 1985 there were dozens of word processors, spreadsheets, database, and all other types of software that made the PC more attractive. From the start, the PC was easy to upgrade and modify, add memory, faster CPU, and swap out cards. The ST had everything soldered to the motherboard and typical of Tremial expected people to buy a whole new computer for something better. You cannot take a ST at 8MHZ and convert to a Falcon without desoldering chips. Most of the PC clones, even a electronics novice can swap out the graphics card. The difference doesn't come in terms of color depth or resolution (some EGA games even used the 640x350 mode, though 320x200 was common), but the color palette available, the ST has a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors), EGA has 6-bit (64 colors) to select from, I think it might even be limited to the CGA palette only in the common 320x200x16 color mode. So a huge difference. Also the ST may have had a rather modest sound chip, but still a good deal better than a PC speaker and even slightly better than the PC Jr. or Tandy 1000's in some ways (similar square wave generators but the ST's has envelope control). And PCs were more expandable in general than the console based STs (granted ISA was limiting), but the chips were not soldered into the ST, at least many (like the CPU) weren't, but socketed rather (which is the reason for the problem in some early models requiring reseating), so replacing components wouldn't be that difficult. (rather like an Amiga 500) Expanding the RAM on the 520ST does require soldering, but that's a lot more specific than what you mentioned 10MHz was just a comment - it would have increased the pixel rate allowing a 512x200 screen with 16 colours without slowing the cpu down at all. A blitter would have been preferrable , but it's more silicon to design - 10MHz 68000's were available in 84/85 and would have been just as easy to design for. By the mid 1980s even 12.5 MHz 68000s would be available, but probably a lot more expensive than an 8 MHz one, 10 MHz might be doable, but certainly more expensive, but definitley simpler (and possibly cheaper) than designing and adding a blitter. (plus, with software only, you can more easily upgrade with improved performance on faster processors without losing compatibility either -it would take a good while to exceed an actual hardware blitter in performance though -exept in things like 3D where the blitter wouldn't help much) I'm going to have to side with the Jay Minor hardware. Yes, the St was faster, provided more colors, sharper pixels, etc., but at the same time, the ST line of computers didn't really begin to smooth out till about the STe or TT era of it's life span. Of course we've got the Falcon which was absolutely amazing, but let's be frank.WTF??? More colors? The ST was thrown together by a group of designers in the middle east somewhere as a quick attempt to compensate for the Amiga, being built by Commodore, who bought out Jay Minor due to Atari's un-willingness to offer him more money when he wanted it, etc."in the middle east" Atari;s "unwillingness to offer more money" Where are you getting this stuff? It was Atari Inc who provided a loan to Amiga in a deal that gave them rights to use th ehardware for a game console and a full computer a year later. The amiga guys had never really wanted to associate with Warner/Atari Inc in general, they did it out of necessity an dhave been looking for a way out, which CBM provided. Jack Tramiel later discovered the broken deal after he acquired atari's consumer properties and formed atari corp in 1984. He used that as grounds to sue Commodore over the debacle. (which also provided leverage against commodore's claims of TTL/Atari Corp. using CBM designs) Like the PC which was also designed over night and rushed into production, it took the ST a while to work out it's bugs and short comings, where as the Amiga and Atari 8-bit were made with love over a long period of time with serious dedication. This has all probably been covered in this thread, but I've not taken the time to read through it all. Umm Atari Inc screwed up pretty badly with the 1200XL and then the holiday season of 1983, which gave commodore th eopening they needed to really get ahead with the C64, which in turn pushed things over the endge with Atari's instability, resulting in the vidro game crash and the ensuing mess. Hell, if Atari had managed to get something more like the 600 and 800XL out instead of the problematic 1200XL and follow through the end of 1983 without the halt, they might have been able to stay ahead od commodore, maybe even avoid the gaming crash if they were careful (Morgan was already starting work on reforming the company -that was the main reason for the halt in late '83). Even with the crash, strong computer sales could have counterd that much more than historically. Especially in UK and Europe (the ST and Amiga's strongerst markets), the Atari 8-bit computers never had a really signifcant market share or decent pennetration in general. (compared to C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, etc) Edited December 21, 2009 by kool kitty89 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 When the ST was released in 1985, it was inferior to the Amiga and not much better than the PC or MAC. By the time the TT030 & Falcon became available, PCs with VGA graphics and higher processor speeds were became more popular. This is pure drivel. What the hell are you talking about? The PC in 1985 was CGA...4 colour crap and 4 fixed super gaudy colours like cyan yellow and magenta all running on pathetic ADLIB sound or even WORSE PC speaker (like a Sinclair/Timex computer!) the PC was slamdunked by the C64 even AFTER the Amiga was launched in 1986 haha Defender of the Crown on C64 is better than ugly ugly PC beeping EGA rubbish please! The Mac wasn't half the computer the ST was...it was a ZX81 with a 68000 CPU...pure rubbish and overpriced to boot. And yet both cost 200-300% MORE than an STM and SM124 and 1mb drive. Better OS, faster CPU, cheaper, much more colourful, actually had some sound and sample playback capability in games (play ST Gauntlet 1 on A8 and PC EGA before complaining, it's a classic example of what even moderately competent but ambitious programmers can achieve..and is almost as good as the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version with some optimisations in the h-scroll routines!) What I am referring to is the first STs did not offer much better resolution & color depth than that was on the PC with an EGA card. I have played games in EGA mode and a ST version of the same game was not much better. Atari under Jack Tremial was trying to insert the ST into the business market but did not seem to invest in getting software development for the ST. The PC was already becoming a stable for a personal computing not because of video games, but all the useful application software on the market for it. Already in 1985 there were dozens of word processors, spreadsheets, database, and all other types of software that made the PC more attractive. From the start, the PC was easy to upgrade and modify, add memory, faster CPU, and swap out cards. The ST had everything soldered to the motherboard and typical of Tremial expected people to buy a whole new computer for something better. You cannot take a ST at 8MHZ and convert to a Falcon without desoldering chips. Most of the PC clones, even a electronics novice can swap out the graphics card. Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. The 640x480 comment doesn't make much sense inless you're taliking 16 colors... ... You weren't being cool Koolkitty when you replied. Standard VGA has a 640*480*16 so the figure 150K reflects that. And the point was CPU speed won't help increase your frame rate given the ISA I/O limit for VGA. So a 50Mhz 486 w/VGA card (one common configuration at the time) still was stuck at updating 2Mbytes/second. Later the VLB/PCI buses came in to ramp up the I/O speed although ISA architecture (and speed) remains up to this day for some devices like keyboard (60h/64h), timers (40h..43h), gameport (201h), some integrated sound cards (220h..22fh), serial ports (3f8h..3ffh), floppy drives (3f0h..3f7h). They increased speed of VGA/parallel ports to PCI speeds (3c0..3df, 378h/278h). Standard VGA cards didn't have enough ram to support a 256 color display at that resolution. (highest possible is 640x400 single buffered in "mode X")... I think only up to 360*480*256 was doable on standard vga cards whereas the other modes didn't work on all VGA cards. Now if you had cycle-exact video-synched timing on PCs (like Copper on Amiga), you could have modified the palette every few pixels and generate a 640*480*262144 mode on standard VGA but I guess some things remain unique to certain machines (Amiga and A8 in this case). And PCs were more expandable in general than the console based STs (granted ISA was limiting), but the chips were not soldered into the ST, at least many (like the CPU) weren't, but socketed rather (which is the reason for the problem in some early models requiring reseating), so replacing components wouldn't be that difficult... I think what he meant was it wasn't as expandable as PCs were. It was like a Mac-- closed architecture but not as bad as Mac as it didn't require modifying the phosphers in the built-in monitor to add color or drilling holes in the machine to get the cover open. By the mid 1980s even 12.5 MHz 68000s would be available, but probably a lot more expensive than an 8 MHz one, 10 MHz might be doable, but certainly more expensive, but definitley simpler (and possibly cheaper) than designing and adding a blitter. (plus, with software only, you can more easily upgrade with improved performance on faster processors without losing compatibility either -it would take a good while to exceed an actual hardware blitter in performance though -exept in things like 3D where the blitter wouldn't help much) ... One point was that ST had to be cheaper to try to compete with what's out there. Even Mac didn't use a 10Mhz 68000. And if you are going to add the faster 68K later on, mine as well add the blitter. Software that did stuff based on cycle-exactness isn't going to work the same unless they know the processor speeds. It's not like Amiga where the Copper remains synched even with 68K upgrades. I'm going to have to side with the Jay Minor hardware. Yes, the St was faster, provided more colors, sharper pixels, etc., but at the same time, the ST line of computers didn't really begin to smooth out till about the STe or TT era of it's life span. Of course we've got the Falcon which was absolutely amazing, but let's be frank.WTF??? More colors?... Yeah, ST had more colors than A8 but less shades. What he meant about Jay Minor is that he knew how to do the following in a cheaper way which Tramiel engineers didn't: (1) Getting more than 8 shades [plus4, C16, (C32?), C64, C128, Atari ST, etc.] (2) Getting more than 3 audio channels (3) Overscanning (how in the world do they display stuff in the border!) (4) Overloading keyboard with joysticks (nobody will ever use both!) (5) Video-synched clocks/timing supported in hardware (WSYNC/Copper/etc.) (6) Hardware Scrolling etc. Hardware scrolling has been known since the Dead Sea scrolls. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). Careful with that barrel.. I'm really not sure how much more scraping its bottom can take.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). Careful with that barrel.. I'm really not sure how much more scraping its bottom can take.. Don't think low-resolution and char modes are useful-- check out the following demo. CURTAIN2.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 When the ST was released in 1985, it was inferior to the Amiga and not much better than the PC or MAC. By the time the TT030 & Falcon became available, PCs with VGA graphics and higher processor speeds were became more popular. This is pure drivel. What the hell are you talking about? The PC in 1985 was CGA...4 colour crap and 4 fixed super gaudy colours like cyan yellow and magenta all running on pathetic ADLIB sound or even WORSE PC speaker (like a Sinclair/Timex computer!) the PC was slamdunked by the C64 even AFTER the Amiga was launched in 1986 haha Defender of the Crown on C64 is better than ugly ugly PC beeping EGA rubbish please! The Mac wasn't half the computer the ST was...it was a ZX81 with a 68000 CPU...pure rubbish and overpriced to boot. And yet both cost 200-300% MORE than an STM and SM124 and 1mb drive. Better OS, faster CPU, cheaper, much more colourful, actually had some sound and sample playback capability in games (play ST Gauntlet 1 on A8 and PC EGA before complaining, it's a classic example of what even moderately competent but ambitious programmers can achieve..and is almost as good as the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version with some optimisations in the h-scroll routines!) What I am referring to is the first STs did not offer much better resolution & color depth than that was on the PC with an EGA card. I have played games in EGA mode and a ST version of the same game was not much better. Atari under Jack Tremial was trying to insert the ST into the business market but did not seem to invest in getting software development for the ST. The PC was already becoming a stable for a personal computing not because of video games, but all the useful application software on the market for it. Already in 1985 there were dozens of word processors, spreadsheets, database, and all other types of software that made the PC more attractive. From the start, the PC was easy to upgrade and modify, add memory, faster CPU, and swap out cards. The ST had everything soldered to the motherboard and typical of Tremial expected people to buy a whole new computer for something better. You cannot take a ST at 8MHZ and convert to a Falcon without desoldering chips. Most of the PC clones, even a electronics novice can swap out the graphics card. Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). EGA was a WORSE selection of 16 colours than the C64 let alone any 16/512 per scanline you could get on the ST with Spectrum512 or Quantum Paint etc even in the early days. Secondly EGA was rubbish for games or ANYTHING CREATIVE, sound was on the ZX81/Spectrum level at best, the OS (DOS or Win v1 or V2/286) was pathetic and didn't even have a logical file explorer like Amiga/ST/Mac/GEOS...ANYONE ELSE that maps files into physical location on desktop folders/devices, the 8086 was a piece of crap of a CPU too....slightly better than an 8bit Z80...not much else really. In fact the stench of staleness when opening a brand new PC was unbearable from anyone with a technological knowledge even of basic levels. The reason the PC was popular with some people was one of two reasons... 1. The boss wanted you to take work home for things like Lotus 123 or Dbase etc etc (can't be helped...company should pay for it!) 2. Dumb people who haven't a clue and payed more for inferior hardware because they didn't have a clue (no sympathy from me) You can argue all you wan't but only a butt licking corporate monkeys working an extra 4 hours at home after leaving the office or DOS fanboys would argue the PC was a better machine in 1985. Even the C64 had advantages over the PC until the 90s (better sound, much longer filenames, better scrolling, better OS in GEOS) the god damn C64!!! Is any of this sinking in yet?? As far as 640x400 in mono being less of a useable screen mode for business than 640x350 in 16 colours (usually in 80 column charmode because these were text based DOS application programs for industry standard...GEM and Windows was nowhere on PC compared to DOS applications like Lotus/Dbase/Wordperfect etc, I fail to see how it is worse. Give me the GEM based 'compatible' ST applications at 20% the price of the 'colourful' PC dominators every time...and most people with braincells n double figures would agree. The ONLY reason PCs survived is because of the huge corporate companies would not retrain staff to use something other than Wordperfect blah blah, and dumb small business people who went and bought them because they were 'serious' machines.....and they were....a seriour piece of crap Everyone is entitled to a machine they like, but sorry no intelligent person would even attempt to argue the PC was on a level playing field with the Amiga or ST or Mac EVER...so keep your subjective thoughts to yourselves when discussing technically superior machines. And that's before you even talk about the new breed of business/serious software like Midi studio related packages or DTP, both of which the PC couldn't really handle unless you threw 3x the cost of an Amiga/ST setup towards the task many years after the SLM804 laser was launched too. As for a slow OS (whatever that means compared to Windows V1/2/3 then all you have to do is run TurboST.ACC...and bang! Much improved screen refresh on 1st Word Plus not exactly rocket science and doesn't require a single screw to be removed from your ST Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 When the ST was released in 1985, it was inferior to the Amiga and not much better than the PC or MAC. By the time the TT030 & Falcon became available, PCs with VGA graphics and higher processor speeds were became more popular. This is pure drivel. What the hell are you talking about? The PC in 1985 was CGA...4 colour crap and 4 fixed super gaudy colours like cyan yellow and magenta all running on pathetic ADLIB sound or even WORSE PC speaker (like a Sinclair/Timex computer!) the PC was slamdunked by the C64 even AFTER the Amiga was launched in 1986 haha Defender of the Crown on C64 is better than ugly ugly PC beeping EGA rubbish please! The Mac wasn't half the computer the ST was...it was a ZX81 with a 68000 CPU...pure rubbish and overpriced to boot. And yet both cost 200-300% MORE than an STM and SM124 and 1mb drive. Better OS, faster CPU, cheaper, much more colourful, actually had some sound and sample playback capability in games (play ST Gauntlet 1 on A8 and PC EGA before complaining, it's a classic example of what even moderately competent but ambitious programmers can achieve..and is almost as good as the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version with some optimisations in the h-scroll routines!) What I am referring to is the first STs did not offer much better resolution & color depth than that was on the PC with an EGA card. I have played games in EGA mode and a ST version of the same game was not much better. Atari under Jack Tremial was trying to insert the ST into the business market but did not seem to invest in getting software development for the ST. The PC was already becoming a stable for a personal computing not because of video games, but all the useful application software on the market for it. Already in 1985 there were dozens of word processors, spreadsheets, database, and all other types of software that made the PC more attractive. From the start, the PC was easy to upgrade and modify, add memory, faster CPU, and swap out cards. The ST had everything soldered to the motherboard and typical of Tremial expected people to buy a whole new computer for something better. You cannot take a ST at 8MHZ and convert to a Falcon without desoldering chips. Most of the PC clones, even a electronics novice can swap out the graphics card. Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). ... 1. The boss wanted you to take work home for things like Lotus 123 or Dbase etc etc (can't be helped...company should pay for it!) ... Those are serious apps whether in text mode or graphics mode. I think MS-Works used graphics mode to do bold, italics, graph previews, etc. They could mix and match between text and graphics mode to optimize the speed although they couldn't split them on the same screen like A8/C64. As far as 640x400 in mono being less of a useable screen mode for business than 640x350 in 16 colours (usually in 80 column charmode because these were text based DOS application programs for industry standard...GEM and Windows was nowhere on PC compared to DOS applications like Lotus/Dbase/Wordperfect etc, I fail to see how it is worse. Give me the GEM based 'compatible' ST applications at 20% the price of the 'colourful' PC dominators every time...and most people with braincells n double figures would agree. ... Right, ST did have a better GUI at the time than PC and it had standard sound whereas some PCs had adlib cards. But PC had hard drives and floppies that were more robust than Amiga and ST and also cheaper. Yeah, so you buy a cheaper ST but then spend a ton on getting a hard drive and printer whereas PC peripherals were cheaper and readily available. I'm talking about serious stuff here not games. Mac was too expensive as well for serious stuff and also used nonstandard add-ons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. The 640x480 comment doesn't make much sense inless you're taliking 16 colors... ... You weren't being cool Koolkitty when you replied. Standard VGA has a 640*480*16 so the figure 150K reflects that. And the point was CPU speed won't help increase your frame rate given the ISA I/O limit for VGA. So a 50Mhz 486 w/VGA card (one common configuration at the time) still was stuck at updating 2Mbytes/second. Later the VLB/PCI buses came in to ramp up the I/O speed although ISA architecture (and speed) remains up to this day for some devices like keyboard (60h/64h), timers (40h..43h), gameport (201h), some integrated sound cards (220h..22fh), serial ports (3f8h..3ffh), floppy drives (3f0h..3f7h). They increased speed of VGA/parallel ports to PCI speeds (3c0..3df, 378h/278h). This is where I will address this issue rather than editing the other on ad infinitum to hopefully get the point of my comment about a 16mhz ST being better than an ST for the good of the ST community and overall ST market share (not the gadget lovers, tech spec obsessed purchasers) Right I started off the comment about the 16mhz ST as opposed to the blitter enhanced STE being a better solution (and also a 12mhz 68000 as an interim step too etc BEFORE the A500 came out) The reason I stated this is because someone asked the question why did PC sales never suffer from upgrades alienating customers but things like AGA and Falcon updates from Commodore and Atari DID? And my answer was simple...the PC does EVERYTHING in software, scrolling, blitting, parallax, hell even sound with that pathetic PC speaker but in this instance that doesn't help. So...you have a 286 16mhz machine with a VGA card of some description.....3 years later you sell it and get a machine with a 486 and either EISA or Vesa Local Bus card.....that same crappy game you were playing on your 386 = Bandying technobably speak about xyz specifications (although ISA was overclocked by about 50% compared to the XT standard of 81) is of no consequence, the WHOLE POINT WAS if you had a VGA game the graphics were ALREADY in 256 colours. From this point on every successive generation of machine from 386 to Quad Core seems to have faster and better graphics card bus connection AND more powerful CPU. THIS combined with the fact ALL PC GAME ENGINES WERE 100% SOFTWARE BASED from the time of 520ST==>Falcon means that new PC = faster/smoother game. Spout specs all you like but the simple fact is little johnny playing Wing Commander on his 286 shelves the game because it is as slow and choppy as the CD32 version and then a year an a half later on his 486 with PCI or VESA local bus will see a massive improvement, ditto with Doom ditto with Zool 2....Ditto with Street Fighter II ..... capish? When you run A500 copy of Street Fighter II on an A4000 what is the improvement? None! When you run ST street Fighter II on an STE or Mega STE or TT or Falcon what is the improvement? None. Looks just as shit...plays just as shit. VGA was only important because it used 256 colour graphics, as opposed to EGA games which will always look worse than Amiga/ST/C64 versions....hence the significance of VGA being used from 89 onwards more and more....has nothing to do with ISA/PCI/AGP/VESA/EISA blah blah just means that games can be played with improvent forever. Formula One GP 2 by Microprose is a classic example...run it on a Pentium 166mmx...then run it 3 years later on a Pentium 3 1.2Ghz with AGP graphics...did Geoff Crammond have to update F1GP2's code for you to see the improvements? Nope. as it is already in 256 colour mode he has no need to. And that my friends is why the PC was adopted in the 90s....you didn't need to have a software house pay programmers to rewrite your old DOS VGA games to improve their speed/playability...it happened automagicamally as soon as you ran it on your shiny new machine BECAUSE PC GAME ENGINES ARE 100% SOFTWARE BASED and are not either frame locked to any CPU frequency or locked to any specific bus/chipset bandwidth which may exist in the machine at time of launch UNLIKE EVERY OTHER MACHINE AT THE TIME. This is both the PCs greatest strength and its greatest weakness (inefficient code results many a time with the attitude of...'wait 6 months for ATI/Nvidia to launch their new GPUs etc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 (edited) When the ST was released in 1985, it was inferior to the Amiga and not much better than the PC or MAC. By the time the TT030 & Falcon became available, PCs with VGA graphics and higher processor speeds were became more popular. This is pure drivel. What the hell are you talking about? The PC in 1985 was CGA...4 colour crap and 4 fixed super gaudy colours like cyan yellow and magenta all running on pathetic ADLIB sound or even WORSE PC speaker (like a Sinclair/Timex computer!) the PC was slamdunked by the C64 even AFTER the Amiga was launched in 1986 haha Defender of the Crown on C64 is better than ugly ugly PC beeping EGA rubbish please! The Mac wasn't half the computer the ST was...it was a ZX81 with a 68000 CPU...pure rubbish and overpriced to boot. And yet both cost 200-300% MORE than an STM and SM124 and 1mb drive. Better OS, faster CPU, cheaper, much more colourful, actually had some sound and sample playback capability in games (play ST Gauntlet 1 on A8 and PC EGA before complaining, it's a classic example of what even moderately competent but ambitious programmers can achieve..and is almost as good as the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version with some optimisations in the h-scroll routines!) What I am referring to is the first STs did not offer much better resolution & color depth than that was on the PC with an EGA card. I have played games in EGA mode and a ST version of the same game was not much better. Atari under Jack Tremial was trying to insert the ST into the business market but did not seem to invest in getting software development for the ST. The PC was already becoming a stable for a personal computing not because of video games, but all the useful application software on the market for it. Already in 1985 there were dozens of word processors, spreadsheets, database, and all other types of software that made the PC more attractive. From the start, the PC was easy to upgrade and modify, add memory, faster CPU, and swap out cards. The ST had everything soldered to the motherboard and typical of Tremial expected people to buy a whole new computer for something better. You cannot take a ST at 8MHZ and convert to a Falcon without desoldering chips. Most of the PC clones, even a electronics novice can swap out the graphics card. Yep, ST used technology that was already out there. They just made it cheaper. In fact, EGA had 640*350*16 whereas ST had 640*400*2 so word processors, spreadsheets, etc. were more colorful on PC but games had more accurate color on ST due to larger palette. You also have to remember that EGA had char modes as well so the text modes which was more used in those days was MUCH FASTER on PC than ST. That's another item where A8 has edge over ST (low resolution and char modes). ... 1. The boss wanted you to take work home for things like Lotus 123 or Dbase etc etc (can't be helped...company should pay for it!) ... Those are serious apps whether in text mode or graphics mode. I think MS-Works used graphics mode to do bold, italics, graph previews, etc. They could mix and match between text and graphics mode to optimize the speed although they couldn't split them on the same screen like A8/C64. As far as 640x400 in mono being less of a useable screen mode for business than 640x350 in 16 colours (usually in 80 column charmode because these were text based DOS application programs for industry standard...GEM and Windows was nowhere on PC compared to DOS applications like Lotus/Dbase/Wordperfect etc, I fail to see how it is worse. Give me the GEM based 'compatible' ST applications at 20% the price of the 'colourful' PC dominators every time...and most people with braincells n double figures would agree. ... Right, ST did have a better GUI at the time than PC and it had standard sound whereas some PCs had adlib cards. But PC had hard drives and floppies that were more robust than Amiga and ST and also cheaper. Yeah, so you buy a cheaper ST but then spend a ton on getting a hard drive and printer whereas PC peripherals were cheaper and readily available. I'm talking about serious stuff here not games. Mac was too expensive as well for serious stuff and also used nonstandard add-ons. I suspect you are doing this deliberately, the ST had one floppy drive supplied either built in or supplied as a package...with the ST/STM so only a 2nd drive was ever a cost and as you can only use 2 floppies on the ST and PC (unlike the Amiga which could have 4). As for HDD maybe you could spend $100-150 for the same hard drive capacity sure BUT the PC one was slower than a DMA unit on an ST and remember the PC is already costing 2-3x as much as the ST in the first place usually and don't forget you STILL had to buy DOS AND WINDOWS AS WELL FOR $300ish a pair And printers? What the hell are you gibbering on about...a printer is a printer....there is no 'special' ST printer apart from the SLM laser (which was less than half the cost of the cheapest non-Atari laser printer) all other printers were centronics parallel standard for BOTH so yeah again ST slamdunks your 'business machine' Like I said in mid 80s...only an idiot would buy a PC or a butt licking work obsessed type....take your pick MS Works is Windows only and much later than 1985 ST launch era of Wordperfect and Lotus 123..more like 90s. Even during Windows v3/95 era MS Works and MS Office were only just becoming a standard...for the old days you are thinking of Microsoft Write...which is an utter piece of crap (and you can get it for the ST also written by Microsoft...wonder why it didn't sell well on the ST lol could it be because it was the worse choice for the ST? hmmmmm) and Wordperfect 6.0 being the first graphical version of an industry standard WP which arrived early 90s (and at which time Amiga Wordsworth and Final Writer at 10% of the price and 90% of the features was the way to go for home use not corporate money to burn type cigar smoking fools). I digress, the point is that you clearly have no experience of PCs at the time (mid 80s) or the software you had to struggle with to use) as there is NO graphical software worth a damn on a PC in the mid 80s which is why people paid so much for a Mac NOT to experience DOS in the mid 80s There is NO advantage of having a char mode except for DOS command lines....no 16 bit application software worth a crap runs in a text mode...never has and never will....it's all intuitive GUI and anything before that is for programmers only or unlucky employees who had to use what the dumb dumbs in control purchased for the employees to use. GEM/Mac OS/Workbench are not trivial events you know...they are what intelligent or creative people genuinely wanted and if they had a choice would use in preference to DOS based apps....DOS was useless for everything except well...disk operations edit: Remember that from the time of the C64 to the time of the PS3...a fixed hardware solution at the start of its cycle is superior to a PC....then half a century later (if you don't 'upgrade' to a new version of winblows) the same apps/games are miraculously as good as 5 year old tech on a fixed platform. Simple as that but PC will always lag behind the cutting edge. Edited December 21, 2009 by oky2000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 No, blitter is still better than doing it all in software. You have this misunderstanding that CPU speed alone can make up for lack of all other hardware. Let me give you an example-- 16-bit ISA VGA cards barely can muster 2MBytes/second using the fastest instructions REP MOVSD. Now even if you double the processer speed, you still won't get any faster. The I/O limit has been reached. So if you wanted to scroll a 640*480 screen in software, you have to update 150K for each frame or 150K*60 = 9MBytes/second so it's IMPOSSIBLE to do smooth scrolling on an ISA VGA in software regardless of how fast your CPU is. The 640x480 comment doesn't make much sense inless you're taliking 16 colors... ... You weren't being cool Koolkitty when you replied. Standard VGA has a 640*480*16 so the figure 150K reflects that. And the point was CPU speed won't help increase your frame rate given the ISA I/O limit for VGA. So a 50Mhz 486 w/VGA card (one common configuration at the time) still was stuck at updating 2Mbytes/second. Later the VLB/PCI buses came in to ramp up the I/O speed although ISA architecture (and speed) remains up to this day for some devices like keyboard (60h/64h), timers (40h..43h), gameport (201h), some integrated sound cards (220h..22fh), serial ports (3f8h..3ffh), floppy drives (3f0h..3f7h). They increased speed of VGA/parallel ports to PCI speeds (3c0..3df, 378h/278h). This is where I will address this issue rather than editing the other on ad infinitum to hopefully get the point of my comment about a 16mhz ST being better than an ST for the good of the ST community and overall ST market share (not the gadget lovers, tech spec obsessed purchasers) Right I started off the comment about the 16mhz ST as opposed to the blitter enhanced STE being a better solution (and also a 12mhz 68000 as an interim step too etc BEFORE the A500 came out) The reason I stated this is because someone asked the question why did PC sales never suffer from upgrades alienating customers but things like AGA and Falcon updates from Commodore and Atari DID? And my answer was simple...the PC does EVERYTHING in software, scrolling, blitting, parallax, hell even sound with that pathetic PC speaker but in this instance that doesn't help. So...you have a 286 16mhz machine with a VGA card of some description.....3 years later you sell it and get a machine with a 486 and either EISA or Vesa Local Bus card.....that same crappy game you were playing on your 386 = Bandying technobably speak about xyz specifications (although ISA was overclocked by about 50% compared to the XT standard of 81) is of no consequence, the WHOLE POINT WAS if you had a VGA game the graphics were ALREADY in 256 colours. From this point on every successive generation of machine from 386 to Quad Core seems to have faster and better graphics card bus connection AND more powerful CPU. THIS combined with the fact ALL PC GAME ENGINES WERE 100% SOFTWARE BASED from the time of 520ST==>Falcon means that new PC = faster/smoother game. Spout specs all you like but the simple fact is little johnny playing Wing Commander on his 286 shelves the game because it is as slow and choppy as the CD32 version and then a year an a half later on his 486 with PCI or VESA local bus will see a massive improvement, ditto with Doom ditto with Zool 2....Ditto with Street Fighter II ..... capish? When you run A500 copy of Street Fighter II on an A4000 what is the improvement? None! When you run ST street Fighter II on an STE or Mega STE or TT or Falcon what is the improvement? None. Looks just as shit...plays just as shit. VGA was only important because it used 256 colour graphics, as opposed to EGA games which will always look worse than Amiga/ST/C64 versions....hence the significance of VGA being used from 89 onwards more and more....has nothing to do with ISA/PCI/AGP/VESA/EISA blah blah just means that games can be played with improvent forever. Formula One GP 2 by Microprose is a classic example...run it on a Pentium 166mmx...then run it 3 years later on a Pentium 3 1.2Ghz with AGP graphics...did Geoff Crammond have to update F1GP2's code for you to see the improvements? Nope. as it is already in 256 colour mode he has no need to. And that my friends is why the PC was adopted in the 90s....you didn't need to have a software house pay programmers to rewrite your old DOS VGA games to improve their speed/playability...it happened automagicamally as soon as you ran it on your shiny new machine BECAUSE PC GAME ENGINES ARE 100% SOFTWARE BASED and are not either frame locked to any CPU frequency or locked to any specific bus/chipset bandwidth which may exist in the machine at time of launch UNLIKE EVERY OTHER MACHINE AT THE TIME. This is both the PCs greatest strength and its greatest weakness (inefficient code results many a time with the attitude of...'wait 6 months for ATI/Nvidia to launch their new GPUs etc) Point being that Lotus II and Gauntlet 1 are 100% improved on a 16mhz 68000...which was for sale as an add-on board even within 18 months of the ST's launch by 3rd party companies. Sure the magic words 'blitter' and 'hardware pixel scroll' look great on your boxes next to an Amiga with the same words on the box BUT nobody really recoded stuff for the STE so what was the point? Had Atari gone for a 12mhz and then 16mhz machine between 12 and 24 months of launch (so before the A500) the SAME GAMES would have run a lot better and a lot closer to an Amiga (still superior to a Mac 1 or PC EGA) AND NO SOFTWARE COMPANY WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR A SINGLE MINUTE OF TIME OR A SINGLE PENNY OF MONEY TO BE SPENT TO MAKE THEIR GAMES RUN BETTER ON THE NEW 16Mhz ST....so just like the PC then really (and this would not have worked for Commodore, unless they found a way to automatically speed up ALL copper/blitter/PCM sound hardware...which is impossible so the effect is limited to 10% of releases using 3D graphics...the other 90% of Amiga games either not working or looking the same as a cheap yellowed 3 year old A1000 when a new 16mhz machine is launched) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 The reason I stated this is because someone asked the question why did PC sales never suffer from upgrades alienating customers but things like AGA and Falcon updates from Commodore and Atari DID? And my answer was simple...the PC does EVERYTHING in software, scrolling, blitting, parallax, hell even sound with that pathetic PC speaker but in this instance that doesn't help. I think it's kinda the opposite: The ST and the Amiga suffered from too little changes in the architecture and not too much. That's why many developers only developed for the stock machine and didn't consider any change at all and also never considered to use any kind of OS API. Also PCs don't do everything in software. In fact they do much more in hardware than Amiga/ST ever did. There's a GPU which has vertex shaders, pixel shaders etc. There's soundcards doing own mixing and there's network cards being half-intelligent. And then there are a lot of weirdo CPU extensions which are sometimes used, sometimes not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 (edited) I don't think anyone here is really saying the Atari 520ST is a bad computer. One reason why the PC is successful is that it maintained backward compatibility throughout its history. Commodore, Atari, and Apple were notorious for switching from their 6502 based machines in favor of 68000 based machine. Granted it was a much better CPU, but could not execute 6502 code (directly). They could had gone for 65816 or another 16bit version of the 6502. It would have been more expensive for these companies to make more advance computers backward compatible with their 8-bit counterpart. Apple blundered with the IIGS. What is need is not just make the 6502 16bit, but keep improving the technology as did the 80x86. Keep improving speed, add floating point operation, manage more memory, multibus, etc. These companies would had also make audio & video chips with legacy support for the original modes. I know some on here may say one Windows version has issues running stuff from with older versions, DOS, Linux, but that would be an OS/Microsoft issue, not a problem from the CPU. A Pentium 4 or Athlon can execute code written for the original 8088 at a bit faster speed now. Edited December 22, 2009 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reaperman Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 (edited) I think it's all a bit like comparing a cereal box watch to an automatic. Sure the cereal box watch is easier to read, keeps better time, and costs $0.50 to make, but does that necessarily make it 'superior' to the automatic? Edited December 22, 2009 by Reaperman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 (edited) The 640x480 comment doesn't make much sense inless you're taliking 16 colors... ... You weren't being cool Koolkitty when you replied. Standard VGA has a 640*480*16 so the figure 150K reflects that. And the point was CPU speed won't help increase your frame rate given the ISA I/O limit for VGA. So a 50Mhz 486 w/VGA card (one common configuration at the time) still was stuck at updating 2Mbytes/second. Later the VLB/PCI buses came in to ramp up the I/O speed although ISA architecture (and speed) remains up to this day for some devices like keyboard (60h/64h), timers (40h..43h), gameport (201h), some integrated sound cards (220h..22fh), serial ports (3f8h..3ffh), floppy drives (3f0h..3f7h). They increased speed of VGA/parallel ports to PCI speeds (3c0..3df, 378h/278h). You were talking games, which makes the 640x480x16 color mode moot. With 320x200x256 colors you can get 30 fps with a 2MB/s limit. (and isn't 16-bit ISA limited to 5.3 MB/s? -which would allow 320x240x256 color at 60 FPS easily -or even 72 Hz if supported) One point was that ST had to be cheaper to try to compete with what's out there. Even Mac didn't use a 10Mhz 68000. And if you are going to add the faster 68K later on, mine as well add the blitter. Software that did stuff based on cycle-exactness isn't going to work the same unless they know the processor speeds. It's not like Amiga where the Copper remains synched even with 68K upgrades. That doesn't mean you can't offer both (or all 3, with 8, 10, and 12.5 MHz versions), and not necessarily at release either, but as updated standard. (eventually 16 MHz on the MEGA) With theis emphesized, softtware designers could cater to varying CPU speeds as well. (I personally think the sound and color capabilites were more important to upgrade to approximate/exceed VGA+Soundblaster standards -even a more modest enhancement like the TT shifter's 256 colors out of 4096 and up to 320x480x256 colors -though even a 320x240 or 320x200x256 indexed from 12-bit RGB could have been enough had it been standardized by '88, along with higher res 16-color modes, perhaps higher 4-color, and mono modes) (4) Overloading keyboard with joysticks (nobody will ever use both!) ??? Flight sims perhaps? (unless that's sarcasm) Spout specs all you like but the simple fact is little johnny playing Wing Commander on his 286 shelves the game because it is as slow and choppy as the CD32 version and then a year an a half later on his 486 with PCI or VESA local bus will see a massive improvement, ditto with Doom ditto with Zool 2....Ditto with Street Fighter II ..... capish? When you run A500 copy of Street Fighter II on an A4000 what is the improvement? None! When you run ST street Fighter II on an STE or Mega STE or TT or Falcon what is the improvement? None. Looks just as shit...plays just as shit. VGA was only important because it used 256 colour graphics, as opposed to EGA games which will always look worse than Amiga/ST/C64 versions....hence the significance of VGA being used from 89 onwards more and more....has nothing to do with ISA/PCI/AGP/VESA/EISA blah blah just means that games can be played with improvent forever. Formula One GP 2 by Microprose is a classic example...run it on a Pentium 166mmx...then run it 3 years later on a Pentium 3 1.2Ghz with AGP graphics...did Geoff Crammond have to update F1GP2's code for you to see the improvements? Nope. as it is already in 256 colour mode he has no need to.Actually I think Wing Commander is a poor example, it's one of the few PC games that's very timing sensitive: not only does it play slowly with insufficent cpu resourse, but will play too fast on faster processors (I think 33~40 MHz being optimum -I don't think a 386 vs 486 would matter in terms of speed -thugh I'd immagine 486 framerate would be better, not positive though as I've only played the DOS version via DOSbox) There was a later win9x re-release (with upgraded audio as well) which solved that problem though. (and the Amiga version should have been FAR better, it seems like they didn't make good use of the blitter if any at all, the Sega CD version used the graphics ASIC very well though, and even the SNES version managed to be less choppy somehow) The reason I stated this is because someone asked the question why did PC sales never suffer from upgrades alienating customers but things like AGA and Falcon updates from Commodore and Atari DID? And my answer was simple...the PC does EVERYTHING in software, scrolling, blitting, parallax, hell even sound with that pathetic PC speaker but in this instance that doesn't help. I think it's kinda the opposite: The ST and the Amiga suffered from too little changes in the architecture and not too much. That's why many developers only developed for the stock machine and didn't consider any change at all and also never considered to use any kind of OS API. Also PCs don't do everything in software. In fact they do much more in hardware than Amiga/ST ever did. There's a GPU which has vertex shaders, pixel shaders etc. There's soundcards doing own mixing and there's network cards being half-intelligent. And then there are a lot of weirdo CPU extensions which are sometimes used, sometimes not. I agree, they needed to update the standards much sooner, AGA was far too late, and by then already behind XGA/SVGA, both needed to approximate or exceed VGA standards at or shorly after introduction (MCGA foreshadowed this), as above of couse. Sound on the Amiga was quite competitive with standards up to the early 90s, but ST needed an upgrade sooner. (even just an FM synth chip, maybe even offer a low-cost add-on using the midi port) As for software rendering, he was speaking in context of games up to the mid 90s, before hardware accleration started becoming popular. (ie up through Quake and Tomb Raider on DOS) Everything was software rendered up to that point, entirely CPU dirven and usually adhering to 1987 VGA standards (occassonally exceeding that with 640x480x256 colors) and almost never rendering above 256 colors. (usually 320x200, 320x240, or less often 640x480, occasionally the odd 400x300 or 512x384 as well -Quake offered a wide range of resolution in various combinations of 320/360/640 widths and 200/240/350/400/480 heights along with 800x600, 848x480, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 even, though all in 256 color mode) Edited December 22, 2009 by kool kitty89 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Careful with that barrel.. I'm really not sure how much more scraping its bottom can take.. I'm going to say that the bottom fell out of this ridiculous unimaginably pedantic 'discussion' about 20 pages or so ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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