Another contribution to the Archimedes
Debate.
By Phillip Miller.
I have read with extreme interest the
letters by M.T.Farnworth and Steven
Flintham about the 'Arc vs BBC debate'.
I feel that it is about time to add
some sanity into the forum. I am the
owner of many computers including an
Arc A3000, two BBC B's, both variously
configured, one with a 32016
co-processor; and a PC 386SL portable
(which I use for most of my work at the
moment).
I have been programming computers since
about the age of 7 when I started on a
humble ZX81, which wasn't too bad
considering that it only had 1K of
memory, upgradeable to 16K which
enabled you to fully address
EVERYTHING. So, there were no
multitasking WIMP, WYSIWYG things in
those days, but for the software that
could be written on the machine, it was
adequate. In 1983 I was the proud
owner of a BBC B, which was fantastic
compared to the ZX81, with 32K of
memory, most of it accessible and with
COLOUR!!!
In 1990 I got the Arc, about which I
was enraptured - a 800K floppy
disk-drive and 4096 colours to play
around with, 32 bit addressing. Ah!
slight problem. It was too bloody
difficult to use half of the stuff.
Basic was fine, but compared to 6502,
ARM was a minefield of rubbish.
However, the SYS commands and easy
access to the WIMP via Basic V made the
computer useful. Notwithstanding, the
benefits of the Arc were 1Mb RAM (which
had to be upgraded to 2MB to be of any
use whatsoever), multitasking operating
system - yes, let's run paint, edit and
draw together. Very useful...HMM, NOT!
OK., I've got two hands, but only one
mouse.
Joking aside, however, the multitasking
is only a con anyway, there is ONE
processor, ONE keyboard, ONE VIDC,
etc., all it is is timesharing of
resources, and allocating of memory
between them. The consequence of this
is that when you run something that
needs multitasking, like a ray-tracing
program (like QRT which incidentally
was written for the PC originally),
then whatever you are using in the
foreground moves along at a snail's
pace.
So what did Acorn do, they bring out an
ARM 3 with a 1K cache on the chip, (Big
wow! Most PCs have 128K caches, which
do much more effectively the job of
allocating resources) and then the
software writers take hold, masses of
Computer Concepts programs which
decrease your memory to about 16K for
putting your pictures in. So you buy
an A5000 with 4Mb RAM and an 80Mb hard
drive and then you're in business. Ah,
sorry, not many businesses use these
computers do they?
Which would you buy if you were a small
company needing about 6 computers - 6
A5000s, setting you back about `1,700
apiece, or the top of the range PC
33Mhz 486DX with 105Mb hard drive, SVGA
monitor for `1200? I know that the
companies that I work for (while I'm
not studying law) don't buy Arcs. And
that is not for want of trying: I
encourage people to buy Arcs if I can,
but then they say BUT ****ing hell,
that's another six grand it'll cost me
if I do that. After that, they want to
know what software they can run.
Microsoft Windows, Lotus 123, all these
sort of programs. Whack that under
your Archimedes PC emulator and you
might as well buy an Amstrad 1512 for
`250 including EGA monitor for the
speed advantage the latter will give
you.
So, what am I driving at? That the PC
is better than the Arc. Well, not
necessarily, it depends what you want
it for, how much money you have to
spend, how much time you want to spend
programming your computer, what your
compatibility needs are. Industry
standard databases, such as Superbase
and DBase for the PC are far superior
to anything I've seen on the Arc.
Excel as a Spreadsheet is about 30
times easier to use than the Arc based
ones. Microsoft Word for Windows has
to be the best wordprocessor on the
market for any computer. It's idiot
proof! Even my 81 year-old grandmother
can use it. If she gets stuck, she
presses F1 and the computer displays on
the screen how to do what she was
trying to do.
My recommendations:
If you want to program a nice computer,
use an Arc with Basic.
If you like machine code, and
impressing your friends with your Hello
World program running so fast that you
can't see it, use ARM.
If you like practical programming in
machine code, use a beeb. If you want
to be brilliant, take your Arc and hide
for a year and learn assembly that way.
Alternatively use a compiler and take
the sweat out of it.
If you want to write WIMP programs, use
Visual Basic on the PC, you don't have
to write hardly any code to get it to
do brilliant stuff.
If you want money for your programs,
write for PCs.
If you want to tell your friends the
truth about purchasing computers, don't
get them to buy an Arc because Acorn
have lost something when they went from
Beebs to Arcs, you can make a beeb
brilliant, you can only make an Arc a
little better.