Fair enough.In the same way I suppose, that the Jaguar had a 16MHz 68K on board.
Officially, it was because many Atari (and Sega, Mac and even Amiga) developers were already highly familiar with the 68000 it provided a familiar starting point and coding envronment, while the custom 32-bit RISC processors ('Tom' and 'Jerry', for some licensing reasons) could handle all the audio and graphics, many developers used the 68K for familiar and well-established purposes like controlling AI and whatnot.
In a 1994 interview, Darryl Still (Head of Atari UK marketing) maintained that the 68000 in the Jaguar was '...there to read the Joystick ports.'
/Atari historian blog
(,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 1:07,
archived)
Officially, it was because many Atari (and Sega, Mac and even Amiga) developers were already highly familiar with the 68000 it provided a familiar starting point and coding envronment, while the custom 32-bit RISC processors ('Tom' and 'Jerry', for some licensing reasons) could handle all the audio and graphics, many developers used the 68K for familiar and well-established purposes like controlling AI and whatnot.
In a 1994 interview, Darryl Still (Head of Atari UK marketing) maintained that the 68000 in the Jaguar was '...there to read the Joystick ports.'
/Atari historian blog
a lot of bollocks got spoke in those daysunfortunately before the days of the internet all we had to go on was drivel written in magazines, and people in marketing well... they "say things" that's never going to change
remember, the megadrive had "blast processing" whatever the hell that was meant to be :D
oh.. there was some computer back in the day sold as having 65K of ram! because you know.. 65536 bytes....
world of bollocks :D
jaguar died before it's time, as did other stuff
would be nice to see what kind of serious abuse some of the fell by the wayside gear can really do
(remember, the megadrive had "blast processing" whatever the hell that was meant to be :D
oh.. there was some computer back in the day sold as having 65K of ram! because you know.. 65536 bytes....
world of bollocks :D
jaguar died before it's time, as did other stuff
would be nice to see what kind of serious abuse some of the fell by the wayside gear can really do
discomeats This canoe,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 1:22,
archived)
let's be fair now.Whilst all this bollocks was being written ( and read by the likes of you and I ) The Amiga just quietly got on with doing it properly.
True multi-tasking and dedicated chip architecture. Pains me still to see how the best thing that could have happened in home computing was so spectacularly fucked up.
Imagine a RISC based Amiga today running any OS you throw at it with a fraction of the clock cycles needed by today's monsters.
ah *nostalgias*
(True multi-tasking and dedicated chip architecture. Pains me still to see how the best thing that could have happened in home computing was so spectacularly fucked up.
Imagine a RISC based Amiga today running any OS you throw at it with a fraction of the clock cycles needed by today's monsters.
ah *nostalgias*
Pasanonic 's been known to cause insanity in laboratory mice,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 1:28,
archived)
oh god, careful what you say about amigas manthe amiga scene is filled with batshit insane people :D
tho it seems that risc based computers are slowly starting to appear, so who knows, someone might port aros to one of them
(tho it seems that risc based computers are slowly starting to appear, so who knows, someone might port aros to one of them
discomeats This canoe,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 1:31,
archived)
There are......PowerPC based accelerators for the amiga, and the AmigaOne motherboard had G3 and G4 options.
I never had an Amiga until recently, my folks bought me an STe back in 1993 (and my dad had been using an ST since 1986) and I've got loads now, I even have a Falcon030 (with DSP for 50KHz 16-bit hardware audio sampling and real-time filters). But I was always impressed by my mate's Amiga 1200, with its stock 12MHz clock but built in IDE interface and HAM-8 mode. And that multi-tasking has yet to be bettered by modern hardware and software.
Even the Amiga's OCS/ECS/AGA chipsets have their roots in the Atari 400/800 design, with the TIA/GTIA chip and Player/Missile graphics (crude hardware sprites) ... the GTIA was a dedicated CPU in its own right (well, not CPU by definition, but at least a co-processor) with its own assembly language (Display Lists) which meant you could mix two or three different screen resolutions, trivially - High res score / health displays, with a low-res high-colour (up to 127 colours per screen) playfield in the middle... And the POKEY chip, while not quite a full analogue synthesiser-on-a-chip like the four-year later SID chip, was a good sounding four channel (opposed to the SID's three channels) square-wave + noise chip.
(,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 1:54,
archived)
I never had an Amiga until recently, my folks bought me an STe back in 1993 (and my dad had been using an ST since 1986) and I've got loads now, I even have a Falcon030 (with DSP for 50KHz 16-bit hardware audio sampling and real-time filters). But I was always impressed by my mate's Amiga 1200, with its stock 12MHz clock but built in IDE interface and HAM-8 mode. And that multi-tasking has yet to be bettered by modern hardware and software.
Even the Amiga's OCS/ECS/AGA chipsets have their roots in the Atari 400/800 design, with the TIA/GTIA chip and Player/Missile graphics (crude hardware sprites) ... the GTIA was a dedicated CPU in its own right (well, not CPU by definition, but at least a co-processor) with its own assembly language (Display Lists) which meant you could mix two or three different screen resolutions, trivially - High res score / health displays, with a low-res high-colour (up to 127 colours per screen) playfield in the middle... And the POKEY chip, while not quite a full analogue synthesiser-on-a-chip like the four-year later SID chip, was a good sounding four channel (opposed to the SID's three channels) square-wave + noise chip.
I have two Jaguars......I even had the Jaguar CD peripheral until I left it on overnight playing "Fear Factory" and burned out the drive motor.
Jaguar Demos exist, but were always limited because the decryption codes for Jaguar ROMs was only released fairly recently.
Songbird productions are producing some new Jaguar games, like Battlesphere.
Also: www.dhs.nu - one of my favourite Atari hang-outs - just check out some of the intros/demos that are being put out for Stock falcons - Sure, there's the CenTurbo 68060 accelerator, and 68882 upgraded falcons, but there's loads of stuff for stock falcons, and even stock STs from 1985, doing bump-mapping and textured tunnels and whatnot? At 8MHz and only a 16/512 colour palette, with audio as well (the ym2149 was never great at playing samples, although the STE fixed this)... bloody amazing stuff.
(,
Tue 14 Apr 2009, 2:04,
archived)
Jaguar Demos exist, but were always limited because the decryption codes for Jaguar ROMs was only released fairly recently.
Songbird productions are producing some new Jaguar games, like Battlesphere.
Also: www.dhs.nu - one of my favourite Atari hang-outs - just check out some of the intros/demos that are being put out for Stock falcons - Sure, there's the CenTurbo 68060 accelerator, and 68882 upgraded falcons, but there's loads of stuff for stock falcons, and even stock STs from 1985, doing bump-mapping and textured tunnels and whatnot? At 8MHz and only a 16/512 colour palette, with audio as well (the ym2149 was never great at playing samples, although the STE fixed this)... bloody amazing stuff.