HiroProX Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 I was merely attempting to rebut the notion that an buying an Amiga was "loyal to something" Designer loyalty. I never cared at all about Atari or COmmodore. To me, Jay Miner was The Man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) The Amiga floppy drive drawing power from the computer did little to ameliorate Amiga power-supply issues. As well, the ST doesn't have those issues. I should think the ST and it's power supply and the floppy with its power supply, while indeed bulky, are wholeheartedly more elegant and less offensive than the power supply solution of your Amiga 500. Let's be honest here.. There wasn't really a power problem with the Amiga 500 and an external floppy or 2. The 500 PSU had plenty enough power for the A500, an extra 512M and an extra floppy. (I never had 2 external floppies hooked up to mine for an extended period, but it never gave me problems for ..er.. disk backup sessions..). Now, if you got a sidecar expansion with HD/RAM (or just HD, those old SCSIs ate AMPs), the standard Amiga PSU wasn't really up to par. You "could" do it with some, but you were risking problems. However, the good sidecars came with their own power, or you could buy a larger PSU. I bought a "Bigfoot" PSU when I got my sidecar HD for my 500. I don't have anything against the ST method either. I think both solutions can work great. I will admit, putting the power switch ON the PSU for the Amiga was really stupid. I love my Amigas, don't get me wrong. And it wasn't catastrophic. It was just really stupid. Since everyone I knew used a power strip, it wasn't a big deal... Just a really stupid design. Also, the PSU for the 1200 was weak. Too weak for the system. It was good for a 1200 and an external floppy, but everyone I know who had any kind of expansion for it used an A500 PSU or some other external. When I got my 1200 recently, the guy said "It doesn't have the original PSU. It has an A500 one. Sorry." I was like.. "Well, OK I suppose I'll still take it." desiv p.s. Kudos on the use of the word "ameliorate" tho! Love that word. It isn't used enough! Oh, did I mention the on/off switch on the Amiga PSU was a dumb idea? Edited January 21, 2010 by desiv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian1 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 Sorry Atarian1 that you feel the way you do, but I was looking at this rollout ST system as I would the rollout Amiga 1000 back in the day and conversely right here and right now. This particular ST setup is crippled beyond belief comparatively. Its OS is frustratingly weak and the 360kb drive is somebody's idea of a bad joke. Sorry, but you usually get what you pay for in life, but spending upwards of $100 or more (today) on a DS/DD ST drive is not my idea of a good value. If people think this was a good deal back then - great, that's your prerogative. I just don't see the value here, especially today when so many others have suggested I get a different ST system for simple cost reasons. Nice change of subject. It's not "crippled" if you actually give it a try, but it's obvious that you won't give it a try. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 I was merely attempting to rebut the notion that an buying an Amiga was "loyal to something" Designer loyalty. I never cared at all about Atari or COmmodore. To me, Jay Miner was The Man. Like Miner vs Shivji Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 I've measured the power draw of my Amiga 500 (1 meg) and standard 1040ST/FM system. The ST, surprisingly, uses somewhat more power. I'd be surprised if hanging 2 floppy drives off an Amiga and powering them from the system would have any significant impact. And, +1 to the stupid power switch on the 500. Just as annoying as the rediculous placement of the joystick ports on the ST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 Designer loyalty. I never cared at all about Atari or COmmodore. To me, Jay Miner was The Man. Like Miner vs Shivji And what did Shiviji design before the ST? (it wasn't the C64...) Was he involved with the VIC 20 at all, or the PET line? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) Its all to do with da games KK, there were probably more games for the st/e and amiga (pre 1200) then there were serious 'heavyweight' apps Can't find anything on Shiras Shivji apart from the fact he was some project manager or research scientist with commodore before jumping ship and working for atari (he also worked for tandon apparently) Perhaps the book home computer wars by Michael Tomczyk might shed some light on the subject edit, according to the above book, two possibilities exist, senior engineer or research engineering manager, apparently he'd been with cbm since the calculator days, left briefly and came back after Peddle left Edited January 21, 2010 by carmel_andrews Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 Project Managers often know Jack Shit about technical stuff - they're forte is interpersonal relations and getting teams of people organised and working together to achieve a goal. Games vs Apps - wouldn't surprise me if it was 20:1 or more on both machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) So you use an Amiga for surfing the web, then? What OS and browser are you using? What other applications do you use the Amiga for? Yep, sure do. I just sold an A1200 with an 030 processor that was even capable of surfing. I used it with both a 56k PCMCIA card AND a PCMCIA network card when I got high-speed. Today I use my A2500 with its 060 processor, Deneb USB card and USB Ethernet dongle. Both OS 3.1 and 3.9 are up to the task, but I've used 3.9 now since the early 2000's. For browsers, I use iBrowse, AWeb and Voyager. For mail and Usenet, I have YAM. TCP/IP stack is Miami and it's even SSL enabled. Same with iBrowse and now AWeb. I have an FTP client too called AmiFTP. Other things besides minor surfing (since the internet is quickly becoming an extremely disorganized, ugly and messy CSS/Java/PHP, etc. shitstorm and some sites either don't work or look very pretty on this stuff), is word processing & DTP (FinalWriter/Copy, ProWrite & Pagestream). I also use it to catalogue my vast record collection via FinalData along with some misc. music programs that aid in MIDI in and out of my Casio keyboard. Also use ImageFX and DeluxePaint to import and edit .jpgs. I wouldn't want to be totally reliant on my Amiga's for ALL modern things, but this platform, its followers and developers have simply done an excellent job of keeping up. There's so much modern hardware out there that truly makes the computer relevant again. The Deneb USB card is one such product. But anyway, it would be an interesting experiment to try to get along with just my A2500. I think I could *almost* do it today if it weren't for lack of better browsers and maybe printer support. I have a nice Canon all in one machine that I haven't been able to use as a scanner yet. It's USB of course and that's one of the hangups. Drivers for some of this stuff via USB is not (or probably ever will be) up to total modern spec. Still, amazing what truly is "plug and play" through the Deneb card and the Trident/Poseidon software. I should think the ST and it's power supply and the floppy with its power supply, while indeed bulky, are wholeheartedly more elegant and less offensive than the power supply solution of your Amiga 500. LOL! For sure, but that particular setup is 'special'. Not a normal A500 P/S scenario. It works out excellent actually because of the beefier supply and the fact you can hook all sorts of other goodies to it. But yeah, you can always hide that damn thing behind your desk or wherever (I did). lol BTW: Any ST users use their computers for surfing and such? Which browsers do you use and are any CSS compatible? Have you tried this browser yet? If so, how well does it work? http://highwire.atari-users.net/ Edited January 21, 2010 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 Designer loyalty. I never cared at all about Atari or COmmodore. To me, Jay Miner was The Man. Regardless of position on any of these threads, there was *much* to admire about Jay Miner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 And, +1 to the stupid power switch on the 500. Just as annoying as the rediculous placement of the joystick ports on the ST. Just note thats not all ST's. The original 520ST, the Mega ST, Mega STe, TT's, and STacy's joystick placements were fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 LOL! For sure, but that particular setup is 'special'. Not a normal A500 P/S scenario. It works out excellent actually because of the beefier supply and the fact you can hook all sorts of other goodies to it. But yeah, you can always hide that damn thing behind your desk or wherever (I did). lol That was something that always turned me off about the A500 (which I never owned) and the A1200 (which I did). That external P/S with the switch on it instead of on the computer unit itself. Of course, you could just hook it up to a powercenter - thats what I did for my 1200. BTW: Any ST users use their computers for surfing and such? Which browsers do you use and are any CSS compatible? Have you tried this browser yet? If so, how well does it work? http://highwire.atari-users.net/ There are several apps for 'Net use: Newsie - newsgroups and e-mail, Mymail - e-mail, and several apps for ftp, telnet, etc. Highwire and CAB both work okay, but AFAIK, no they don't support Flash, Java, Shockwave, and the more modern features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 If the PSUs for the a500 were bad, then the PSUs for the 1200 were an abomination, you couldn't add anything to an a1200 if you stuck with the stock PSU, you had to get a purpose built PSU (made using low end PSUs from PCs) before you could add anything to a 1200 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) If the PSUs for the a500 were bad, then the PSUs for the 1200 were an abomination, you couldn't add anything to an a1200 if you stuck with the stock PSU, you had to get a purpose built PSU (made using low end PSUs from PCs) before you could add anything to a 1200 The stock A1200's power supply IS weaker than the A500's, but it could still power an 030 accelerator card with ram and an external disk drive. Good news is though that you can simply plug in an A500 power supply directly without modification to the A1200. And not sure why the hate for the power switch on the power supply. It was just as easy and convenient to have it sitting behind the desk or beside the machine. I never had a problem with the config anyway. Maybe if you were extremely short on desk space, maybe. Edited January 21, 2010 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogstar_robot Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 We too grew up "poor", but I worked, saved and waited to purchase the things I really wanted. Did I have an ST or an Amiga in '85? Hell no, but I wasn't going to compromise as I knew what I really wanted thanks to many months of research and found that the Amiga machine was what I was really after. Big deal if I had to wait 2 years to get one either. This is a life lesson that so few people today are willing to compromise on - being the credit card consumers we are. lol I was in RemoWilliam's boat as well and had a similar setup. I spent a year saving up to get that machine and sold some of my A8 gear to get a 24-pin printer later which is far from being a superficial "credit card consumer". At the time, I had gotten to see and play with an ST at a friend's house and appreciated various ways it was an upgrade over my 800XL. All I knew of Amigas was what I saw in the magazines. I appreciated that the Amiga appeared to be step up in some ways but I didn't have that same chance to get to know one personally. Even if I had gotten the hots for an Amiga I really WOULD have had to wait another year to have one. As it was, most upgrades to my 520STFM were out of reach too. Unless you were fortunate enough to have some sort of paying job or indulgent relatives, computing in the 80s was a hard hobby to have on a 15 year old's pocket money. It was perfectly rational to decide the ST was capable and affordable and buy on that basis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 (edited) If what you say is true then save2600 I guess ntsc 1200's used less leccy then PAL 1200's, as when I upp'd me 1200 with an 030 card with 32meg ram (using the stock 1200 psu) as well as a pcmcia scsi adapter the machine kept crashing out on me every few minutes (i think my 1200 came with an internal HD), I was told by some authorized commodore dealer that stock 1200 psu's are next to useless if you plan to add anything to the system...hence why i had to buy the purpose built psu Ultimately, both companiers failed because they failed to 'grow up', i.e whilst both companies, along with the likes of apple, sinclair etc helped build the inital computer market, after the various management changes in Atari/commodore in 1984, both companies continued like nothing had happened (i.e business as usual) The problem both companies had was, the computer market had started to develop beyond people simply wanting a games computer that could run some serious apps (non games) The other problem was, was that neither company had the personnel that knew how to sell computer technology to big businesses (or even the sme markets or smb markets to our american friends), and to users of serious applications like music, dtp, creative arts and desktop video etc... hence my point in the previous post about 'its all about da games' Also remembering that their 16 bit systems etc were being pitched at the same markets as their 8bit offerings, is it no surprise as to why the likes of apple and the pc walked away with the non games market carved up between them...Perhpaps if both Atari (under tramiel) and commodore (under the legions of in-out managers that gould brought in) had read the signs early on, like in the originial 'home computer wars', both companies upscaled (16/32 bit) products might have been better received by those publishers prominent or active in the non games applications market That is ultimately why both companies failed...they didn't read the script and didn't adapt at all to the changing market, the only thing that i would give tramiel credit for at atari was that he did a better job at 'internationalising' atari's non US presence then warners did...building up Atari's presence overseas did more to keep atari going then any of it's products (a trick that tramiel learned from his days/time at the helm of commodore) Edited January 21, 2010 by carmel_andrews Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 If what you say is true then save2600 I guess ntsc 1200's used less leccy then PAL 1200's, as when I upp'd me 1200 with an 030 card with 32meg ram (using the stock 1200 psu) as well as a pcmcia scsi adapter the machine kept crashing out on me every few minutes (i think my 1200 came with an internal HD), I was told by some authorized commodore dealer that stock 1200 psu's are next to useless if you plan to add anything to the system...hence why i had to buy the purpose built psu The HD is probably what brought your system over the edge. I ran my system with an external HD kit (with ribbon cable coming out the back!) that had its own power. I also only had 8mb of RAM and a 40mhz 030. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Yes, but what do Computer Chronicles think about the issue!!!! http://www.cosmolearning.com/documentaries/the-computer-chronicles-anthology-1985/26/ desiv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Yes, but what do Computer Chronicles think about the issue!!!! http://www.cosmolear...hology-1985/26/ desiv Oy! Those guys were, errmm.... "great"... lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Can't find anything on Shiras Shivji apart from the fact he was some project manager or research scientist with commodore before jumping ship and working for atari (he also worked for tandon apparently) Perhaps the book home computer wars by Michael Tomczyk might shed some light on the subject edit, according to the above book, two possibilities exist, senior engineer or research engineering manager, apparently he'd been with cbm since the calculator days, left briefly and came back after Peddle left OK, I knew he was a long-time Commodore employee, and whether he was actually a cheif/senior engineer (as he was appointed as with TTL) or a manager would have significantly different implications. (of course, he could have been an active engineer at one point and moved up to management later) Also, remember that both the VIC-20 and C64 chipsets were developed by MOS, so if he was involved at all, it would likely have been in a management position. (or involved in portions of the design other than the fundamental chipset -ie other than VIC, VIC-II or SID) Again, perhaps he was involved with designing some computers from the PET series. And isn't it Shiraz? Project Managers often know Jack Shit about technical stuff - they're forte is interpersonal relations and getting teams of people organised and working together to achieve a goal.Yes, but that's only speculation whether he was in a management or active engineering position. (or had been an active engineer, but moved into management later on -and then became active again at TTL and Atati Corp.) Games vs Apps - wouldn't surprise me if it was 20:1 or more on both machines. Even on the PC games made up a pretty hefty portion of the software for it. (less so in the mid 1980s, but much moreso by the late 80s, and growing proportionally larger thereafter) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Sorry Atarian1 that you feel the way you do, but I was looking at this rollout ST system as I would the rollout Amiga 1000 back in the day and conversely right here and right now. This particular ST setup is crippled beyond belief comparatively. Its OS is frustratingly weak and the 360kb drive is somebody's idea of a bad joke. Sorry, but you usually get what you pay for in life, but spending upwards of $100 or more (today) on a DS/DD ST drive is not my idea of a good value. If people think this was a good deal back then - great, that's your prerogative. I just don't see the value here, especially today when so many others have suggested I get a different ST system for simple cost reasons. Nice change of subject. It's not "crippled" if you actually give it a try, but it's obvious that you won't give it a try. yep, he is quite wrong,STat roll out worked, so did the o/s/ Ameoba A1000 had all sorts of issues,especially being crash happy,being a commodore product didnt help either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Google trends can be interesting: http://www.google.com/trends?q=amiga%2C+atari&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Looks like atari is fast becoming a 'non brand', if anything is to be extrapolated from the last link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted January 23, 2010 Share Posted January 23, 2010 Atari is just Infograme's new label, along with the rights to a lot of old Atari property. (from several companies) The fact that their name is Atari Inc. just confuses things more... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+poobah Posted January 23, 2010 Share Posted January 23, 2010 Looks like atari is fast becoming a 'non brand', if anything is to be extrapolated from the last link Or you could be misinterpreting data.... "amiga" is spanish for "female friend" Note the large number of searches coming from Brazil and Mexico 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.