The Falcon030 Vs The Amiga1200 - Malcolm Ramage

[pixelpusher]

Biggest disadvantage of the Falcon compared to the Amiga 1200 however was its price (double of the Amiga).

Hmm, I'm not sure about this - maybe it depended on location?

When I bought my first Atari Falcon 030 it was $799.00.

Same year, when I bought an Amiga A1200 it was $599.00.

Hardly double here. That was both machines with no hard drive,
2 megs of RAM on the Amiga and 4 megs on the Falcon.

Thanks.

When I bought it from ATARI in 1992 it was 2300 DM (excluding the video adapters and special scsi cable you needed to connect to existing gear). Exclude the VAT (at that time 14%) and consider the exchange rate (you got about $0.69 per DM) and you're at $1392 for the 4 MB + 30 MB hd variant you needed to do anything with MultiTOS (and development on it). That config was already a real step back speed-wise to the TT (and at that time it was still usual to get massive speed-gains with every new generation of computer).

[MegaSTEarian]

My upgraded Amiga 1200, with an 68030 running at 28MHz with 16MB Ram is slower, when running resolutions equal to or higher than 640x480 is very slow compared to stock Falcon with 14MB RAM running the same or higher resolutions.

Possibly a software setup issue?

I had read somewhere that the access to the Amiga 1200 chip ram is 16bit but I have not confirmed it.

CPU access to ChipRAM on A1200 is 32-bit as is Lisa the gfx chip. Some DMA devices, e.g. Blitter, Paula etc are still 16-bit

Amiga OS or hardware has limits to partitions access which kinda block both the disk partitions size or the partitions number.

Fixed decades ago.

There have been new file systems able to access more than the limit (cannot recall it) and quite a few gigabytes per partition. My experience is that the file system is not working well.

Fixed decades ago. FFS with AmigaOS 3.1.4+ is much better and PFS3 or SFS even better. Today FAT32 and NTFS are also fully supported (with a custom ROM)

Maybe my Amigas need recap.

You just need to update the software on them?

Morning. Running Amiga OS 3.2.2, roms are 3.2 though.
I installed a 32GB SSD (ide or with ide to sata), 64GB SD(following the directives and best practices), 64GB SSD. FFS is not properly reading files on the big partitions properly (file associations are lost and not registering even after re-registration). While looking around for a possible solution what I saw was mixed feedback. For some it worked flawlesssly, others like me had to use small partitions and pray a bit whenever the computer started.

[alexh]

Running Amiga OS 3.2.2, roms are 3.2 though.

Shouldn't matter. You should have the latest FFS.

I installed a 32GB SSD (ide or with ide to sata), 64GB SD(following the directives and best practices), 64GB SSD. FFS is not properly reading files on the big partitions properly (file associations are lost and not registering even after re-registration).

Registering and re-registration are not AmigaOS terms so I don't quite understand what you mean.

I personally don't use the internal A1200 Gayle IDE interface anymore (I have a PiStorm32 lite and it's uSD HDD is 100x the A1200 IDE speed) but when I did, I'd use similar sized devices (via an IDE->SD bridge similar to this one) sometimes with the newer FFS but mainly with PFS3 AIO and I had no issues. My A1200 was not recapped.

When using the A1200 Gayle IDE interface and Kickstart 3.1 you had to set DMA MASK to 0x1FE00 when you partitioned your drive in HDToolbox to avoid a bug in the ROM. I don't know if that is fixed in 3.14+ but I always use that setting even today.

While looking around for a possible solution what I saw was mixed feedback. For some it worked flawlesssly, others like me had to use small partitions and pray a bit whenever the computer started.

Hardware incompatibility? The A1200 internal IDE is PIO-0 and pre-dates the official IDE spec. Some IDE adapters particularly PATA->SATA adapters were only tested on PCs and only on the last UDMA133 version of IDE spec and sometimes do not meet the spec for PIO-0. Switch to a different bridge? The majority of A1200 users that are still using onboard IDE use cheap IDE->CF bridges and branded SANDISK CF cards.

P.S. We've gone off topic, Admin - maybe move this to another thread?

[Darklord]

When I bought it from ATARI in 1992 it was 2300 DM (excluding the video adapters and special scsi cable you needed to connect to existing gear). Exclude the VAT (at that time 14%) and consider the exchange rate (you got about $0.69 per DM) and you're at $1392 for the 4 MB + 30 MB hd variant you needed to do anything with MultiTOS (and development on it). That config was already a real step back speed-wise to the TT (and at that time it was still usual to get massive speed-gains with every new generation of computer).

So the difference was *where* you bought it then.

The $799.00 figure I posted included 4 megs of RAM but no hard drive. I believe
this was possibly a "special" from the dealer I used because other places sold the
1 meg of RAM/no HD version for $799.00.

The A1200 I bought here was only $200 less with 2 megs of RAM and also no
hard drive.

<shrugs>

I'm also curious about the "30 MB hd variant". I never saw that option here in the
US. The only options I found were no HD, 64 MB HD and 84 MB HD. IIRC, Atari did
actually upgrade the 64 MB version to 84 MB for the same prices, as time went
along (like early 1993 maybe?).

Thanks.

[Dan1975]

"Like the Falcon, initial marketing had suggested a 1MB base machine, but also like the Falcon, no actual shipped machine had this amount of memory"

My Falcon did. Wasn't long before I upgraded to 4meg though.

[pixelpusher]

[...]

I'm also curious about the "30 MB hd variant". I never saw that option here in the
US. The only options I found were no HD, 64 MB HD and 84 MB HD. IIRC, Atari did
actually upgrade the 64 MB version to 84 MB for the same prices, as time went
along (like early 1993 maybe?).

Thanks.

Hmm, good point (and memories might fool me with that detail, as Google tells me 65 MB was the min spec too). Would have to look into my parts bin to see if I still have the original drive (as it was replaced pretty quickly with a bigger 3rd party 2.5" IDE drive at that time).

[stephen_usher]

Here's an advert from the UK for the Falcon in November 1992, so as to get a price point.

rm_92_11-57.jpg (290.89 KiB) Not viewed yet

And here's a Silica Systems advert for the Amiga A120 from about the same time.

image67-1.jpeg (462.86 KiB) Not viewed yet

So, a Falcon030 with 4MB RAM and 65MB hard drive was £899.99 inc. VAT and an Amiga A1200 (020 CPU and 2MB RAM) and 85MB hard disk was £599.

A 40MHz GVP 030 accelerator with 4MB RAM would have cost £379 inc. VAT plus another £129 for the 68882.

amiga-accellerator-hard-drive_big.jpg (317.48 KiB) Not viewed yet