Re: New IIgs owner.

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Roy Miller <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:

>Blake Patterson wrote:
>
>> supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>>
>> > The Apple IIGS is most similar to the Amiga 1000 in the C= world.
>> > It doesn't have a 68000 processor but in every other aspect, it is
>> > more Amiga-like than C64-like.  The ideal memory range of the
>> > IIGS is 4MB to 8MB of memory which is direct accessed, not
>> > page flipped.  The IIGS also has a display palette of 4096 colors
>> > up to 3200 of which can be used in a display at once.  The sound
>> > chip was the most advanced in its time - 32 channel wavetable
>> > synthesis (the oscillators are doubled up for higher quality sound
>> > resulting in 16 voices if you use the OS tools).
>>
>> The video / graphics situation with the IIgs makes it more like an
>> Atari ST than an Amiga.
>
>The first ST had fewer on screen colors at 320x200 than the GS did at 640x200.
I think the GS, in the
>color and sound department was roughly in the same league as the first ST and
first Amiga, but let's face
>it, the 65816 at 2.8 mhz is blown away by the 68000 at 8 mhz.

There was a time when I could have spent the entire day arguing the
point but I no longer have the time to waste on such luxuries.  ;-)

Suffice to say that I have used an Amiga 500 before and the IIGS'
processor is not nearly as slow as its Mhz will lead you to believe.
Sort of similar to how the Athlon XP processors are faster than
much higher clocked Pentium 4's.

Graphics I might agree with what you are saying.  The Amiga had
the edge on the other two though when it came to MOVING
graphics thanks to a blitter chip.  Sound, however, is another
matter.  There is no way either the Atari ST or the Amiga 1000's
built in sound can be anywhere near comparable to the advanced
sound of the IIGS in its day.  The IIGS had a professional sound
chip of its day inside.  How many channels did the ST and the
Amiga have?  How was the wavetable synthesis of either (hint:
there was a hack job that allowed the Amiga to do some
wavetable synthesis but that halved its already meager voices
compared to the IIGS).  And external sound you ask?  Sure,
the Atari ST had MIDI but the IIGS serial port accepted MIDI
boxes designed for the Macintosh.  I bought one myself for my
IIGS.  The IIGS also had a full suite of notation and MIDI
software for composing.

Give credit where credit is due.  The IIGS was a milestone in
computer sound.  I liked the Ensoniq chip so much that when
I found Creative sound cards with more advanced versions of
the same technology (Audio PCI), I bought them for all my
PCs.