Re: Grandson of Flame-O-Rama

[irsman@iastate.edu (Ian Schmidt)]

[Sorry sports fans, this is a perfectly conventional reply...my brain hurts
too much after scanning this to MiST it, although there may be 'guest flames'
in spots :)]

In article <2q1f7v$sql@jadzia.CSOS.ORST.EDU> dp02@Lehigh.EDU (DANIEL
PERLBERGER) writes:

>I will try to address each of the points you made.  First of all, when I was
>referring to if the GS was all powerful, it was a figure of speech.  People
>wrote to me claiming it was as good as a 386 40 or even a 486 Dx...so what I
>was saying is if it was that great (with 80's technology), then it would have
>never been canceled and it would have been supported

Tell that to people who bought a Quadra 900 only to have it discontinued less 
than 6 months later.

>                                                     ..but since it was not,
>therefore it sucks and the companies knew it.

Huh?  This is the most lame-assed attempt for logic I've ever seen.

>                                              And you can claim all you want
>about a IIGS being faster than a 386...but I know from experience that that is
>just B.S.   I have argued that with people, so I will just say that a 16-bit
>computer running at 12 MHZ (very comparable actually to a 16-bit 286 running
>at 12MHZ) is not going to be as fast as 32-bit 386 running at any clock rate.

Sorry bud, there's something called cycles per instruction and pipelining.
Take a CPU architecture course and report back to me.  Directly comparing MHz
across completely different CPU families is totally meaningless, although it's
a favored tactic of Sega.

>Next, you complained about me changing processors.  Don't you ever understand
>when I am talking in a non-literal sense.  I was discussing if a IIGS had a 30
>MHZ expansion board..that it would still be restrained by its 16-bit
>architecture and it would not even come close to a comparable clock speed 33
>MHZ 386 dx.  That was my point, sorry if I confused you or something..I'll try
>writing in shorter sentences next time for ya.

<Beavis> Huh huh huh huh m huh huh huh uhuh.  Oh dear lord!
<Butt-head> This guy is, like, a dumbass or something.

>                                                 As far as what I called
>"fictional" companies.  Again, I did not mean that literally..I was poking fun
>at how no one outside of your little IIGS fantasy world knows about these
>little specks of dust that call themselves companies.

They're still making perfectly good quality useful software.  Unix on the GS
is nothing to sneeze at.

>                                                       I know even when I
>owned my IIGS I could find no software...

There were over 500 GS titles published by companies you've probably heard of
thru 1990 or so, including Sierra, Accolade, Electronic Arts, Taito,
WordPerfect, Passport Designs, Broderbund, Software Toolworks, Activision, and
Interplay.  If you couldn't find software between 1986 and 1990 for the GS,
you just weren't trying.

>                                          so I don't but it that

<Butt-head> Huh huh, hey Beavis, this guy speaks English even worse than us.
That's like cool or something.
<Beavis> Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh.  He sucks, let's go look for some naked
chicks! 

>                                                                 all of these
>magical, wonderful companies exist..since I remember the frustration of
>finding even one bit of software for my IIGS.  It really sucked when I saw my
>friends getting anything they wanted for their PC's.  Then, you started to
>bust on PC software Technology like the advanced NT.  Win NT is a breakthrough
>in GUI, multitasking environments.  Unlike you blindly claim, on a proper
>machine (at least 16 Meg of Ram, big big big hard drive , and probably at
>least a DX2 or Pentium), it is virtually uncrashable.  That has been
>documented.  I read an article once that was called "Is the NT really crash
>proof?"  It talked about how well it guarded against one of its multitasked
>programs going down.

There have been documented cases of NT crashing at the login prompt without
even a user moving the mouse or touching the keyboard or anything, as well as
crashing doing mundane things like dragging and resizing windows.  Mail
sander@rush.cc.edu for the whole story on how badly NT sucks from an admin
assistant's point of view.

>                     NT also has preemptive multithreadibility, and the
>unique ability to work with two or more processors.  Which allows on processor
>to work on one task, and the other to work on another task.

This isn't unique at all.  Unix has done it for over 10 years, and OS/2
multiprocessor support is in beta right now.

>                                                            NT is not a
>desktop GUI, it is made for workstations.  SO no, it is not an example of bad
>programming..it is of the highest quality when used correctly.

Uh-huh.  Mail Scott like I said above...

>                                                               YOu can not
>even start to claim that PC products are going to be any less than 1000 times
>better than IIGS products.  Too much money and quality time is spent with PC
>products.

More money and more time almost always means lazier programmers and bloated,
glacial software.  I use PCs and Macs most every day, and both systems suffer
from horrible software, although the Mac is generally better at the
application level and worse at the system software level (MacTCP is without a
doubt the worst piece of shit ever unleached on the marketplace.  I had to
reboot 10 times in less than 50 minutes due to MacTCP choking recently).

>          Also, when I said that the IIGS would die from PC software...again
>it not said literally.  My point was that if the IIGS could run PC software
>(let;s say I raise my magic wand and make the iIGS completely PC compatible),

>then it still could never run the processor-intensive programs made for the
>PC.  It would bog down...it could never handle it..that was my point.  To

Of course.  A large majority of PCs out there can't handle them either.  Try
running NT (or hell, Windows 3.1) on anything less than a 486DX2/66, and then
marvel at how OS/2 2.1 is usably fast on even a 386SX.

>justify this, just look before at my comments about 16-bit vs. 32-bit.  ONce
>again I will say generously, a IIGS running at 12 MHZ can be loosely compared
>to a 286 12MHZ.

Once again, I will say that you, sir, are an idiot of the stupidest order.

>                Also, the IIGS coul never handle the Video output of such PC
>programs.  The IIGS does a measely 4-bit color...pathetic.  Instead of using
>the IIGS to draw wwith...I shoud use my old 64 color crayon set and get more
>colors out of it.

Ahh, but the GS allows palette splitting, so you can have 16 palettes of 4-bit
color, much like how the Genesis and Super NES consoles work (The Sega has 4
4-bit palettes for 64 colors, the SNES 16 for 256 colors).  The GS therefore
can display 256 onscreen colors without breaking a sweat, and with very
inexpensive hardware.  Software hacks allow up to 3200 onscreen colors for
near-photo-realistic images, but of course that doesn't count in your world :)

>                  Of course you're gonna say .."no, the IIGS has 4096 colors
>possible"..but I say who the hell cares...the PC has a standard 262144
>colors..and most today come with 16.8 million.  And you want ot talk about
>sound...please be my guest!

*boom-thud* Ian Schmidt, *the* IIgs sound authority, is now holding court.
Prepare to be dazzled, oh mortal ones...

>                              The IIGS of course has a better standard sound
>config than any PC.  Pc has a 1 voice little cip inside and the IIGS has a 15
>voice chip inside.

Bzzt.  The IIgs has a 32-oscillator Ensoniq DOC chip.  In PC terms, that's
32-operator wavetable synthesis capability, very similar to the Gravis
UltraSound card.

>                   But most Pc's are upgraded very cheaply to much much much
>superior sound than a IIGS.  Fm Sound production like the IIGS is obsolete.

The GS has no FM sound source anywhere in it, unless you count the old IIe
compatibility speaker-twitcher hack.

>THe IIGS has this one single MONO (don't even claim Stereo cause I know it
>isn't!)

Bad news, not only am I claiming stereo, but I'm claiming 8 independant output
channels, because that's what the chip can do.  Sorry to rock your world that
way, I know it must hurt.

>       sound chip...the inexpensive 16-bit sound cards of today blow away the
>IIGS little sound.  They have 16-bit CD quality sound, 44.1 MHZ playback,
>direct SCSI hookup to any multimedia CD-ROM player, actual SOFTWARE SUPPORT
>fully utilizing these cards (unlike the IIGS which never had any software that
>ever used its limited capabilities), some have wavetable synthesis, etc.

The GS is fully wavetable capable, and can play samples at rates far in excess
of 44.1 kHz.  As for software support we have just off the top of my head:

Music Construction Set
Music Studio
Jam Session
MasterTracks Jr and MT Pro
MusicWriter
synthLAB / MIDISynth
SoundSmith
NoiseTracker GS
MODZap
soniqTracker
shellPlay
System 6.0's Sound CDev
DeskTracker
MegaTracker

>The last thing I think was about upgrading.  The 386 is not upgradable
>directly to a 486.  Those other non-Intel companies come out with cheap
>upgrades; however, they do not match the quality of true 486 computers.  Intel
>386's (33dx or 40dx) are better than an upgraded 386.  But what you claimed is
>false.  Think about it. Why would someone upgrade when all they are keepin on
>theirold machine is the case?

PC users do this all the time.  I know a lot of people who have 286 cases
which they took the motherboard out of and put in 386/486/P5 boards.

>                              Apple would have to charge basically the same
>amount as for a new IIGS.

No, Apple would have to charge the amount for a IIgs motherboard, which they
did. 

>                           The answer is that you are wrong...

No, the answer is that YOU are wrong.

>                                                               the IIE upgrade
>did not replace the complete motherboard...It was an UPGRADE not a
>replacement

Yes it does replace the complete board.  I've seen it done.  I've read the
service documentation for the procedure.  You get a new motherboard, a new
back panel, and a nice sticker that says "IIGS" to replace the "IIe" one :)

>The microprocessor was replaced and basically it was an addon board that
>superceded the 8-bit bus and made it IIGS compatible.  Get you facts
>straight...your IIGS, like I said, is nothing mroe than an upgraded 8-bit
>computer.  My PC is not.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.  The PC is too.  The GS was a motherboard swap
from the IIe, and the P5 is one from an 8088.

>                         There is no way of upgrading the 8088 to a 386 or
>486..no matter what you do.

Yes there is, see above.

>                            The IIGS is just an updated form of late 70's and
>early 80's Technology.

Yes, and so are the PC, Mac, and a lot of other machines.  When you get
right down to it, all computers made today are based on the 1940s Von Neumann
architecture, including the Pentium.

>                        The PC of today did of course come from the early
>8088's ..but it was completely changed (but still keeping it backwards
>compatible).  For instance, the 8086 had a mere 29000 transistors on it...the
>486 today has 1.2 million..and the pentium has 3.1 million.  The more
>transistors it has, the more functions it can perform.  The 386 has 275000
>transistors, while the 286 has 134000 transistors.  Here's a simple test..how
>many does the IIGS have?  Well, I left you with something to think about.

Number of transistors does not directly translate into additional
functionality.  Take an introductory logic design course.  The ISA bus slots
btw are == to the ones found on the 8088, with the 16-bit '286 extension.
Either way, not completely changed...an original PC Monochrome Display Adapter
will work in an Pentium's ISA slot.

>Have a great time playing your Apple II software on your IIGS...I have to go
>do some real work on a real computer...something you wouldn't know about.

Ooh, the stinger.  That's so cool, huh-huh.  
-- 
Ian Schmidt / irsman@iastate.edu / irsman@cs.iastate.edu
"The look in your eyes as you head for the door is a cold fire" - Neil Peart