Ocean Machine by The Black Lotus (Atari Falcon version)

[r8qt7]

amiga is fucked *hehe*

[porcorosso81]

As a die-hard Amiga fan, I have come here to show that not everyone is as ignorant as people like JasperAbraxxious. I have no problem stating that the Falcon is a great machine, and does outperform the Amiga 1200 in most cases. The 030 and DSP are a strong combination, ideally suited for audio and graphics applications. For me, it's the only Atari computer besides the 800 series which is interesting, and I'd surely love to grab one some day.

[mynameisleeyesitis]

Wow I don't believe the bullshit that comes out of Amiga plebs!

Trying to argue that Any Amiga > Falcon = Fail.

[JasperAbraxxious]

Definitely. Anyone who does not agree with you (this is mynameisleeyesitis we are talking about after all) = Fail.

Comedy..... thy name is YouTube. :)

[surfitlive]

@mynameisleeyesitis

More people know/used Amiga. I only recently learned of Falcon.

Nice Machine, but Again Atari failed to do what Commodore did with C64 and then Amiga Line did.

So the Amiga really is > Falcon.

By out of box "specs" the Falcon looks better. Take a Current Mac/PC you get the same.

BUT my Amiga can run circles around those MORE powerful PCs in mulittasking, Video/audio SYNCING properly EVERYTIME. Bootup time. Ease of use, Drive/space efficiency and FUN!

[surfitlive]

@mynameisleeyesitis

You sound like the 'AMiga plebs' you mention when you say quote "Any Amiga" > Falcon = Fail.

Cause if you say 'ANY' AMiga then I can pull out a PPC accellerated version A4000 tower or a SAM604x model. then you would go back 2your argument that the Falcon was the competition for the A1200 only! NOT the A4000 etc...

Look it was a nice machine but having the universe's FASTEST/Best Submarine in the DESERT doesn't help.

Amiga wins due 2 usability/software availabilty

[mynameisleeyesitis]

@surfitlive Commodore never released any ppc amigas so they arent real amigas (when comparing to an falc at stock config you must talk about amiga on stock config)

Sure ur ppc amiga might be all this and that like you say, but my cheaper linux laptop is more powerful and more functional. Howevr its not a real amiga and im not talking about my falcon with even a ct60, just talking about stock.

Stock falcon beats a stock a4000 tower in most ways. Falcon wins cos its more fun to use and interesting

[blade004]

@mynameisleeyesitis I think it's time for us old Commodore & Atari users to finally grow up and accept that no matter what machine you deem as being better (many times it's completely preferential based on what you use the machine for or what you are used to or perhaps even it was your "first" 16 bit computer) it was probably THE greatest time in Computing history, along with the 8 bit scene previously.

Whether you are Atari or Commodore, WE were there and we have a common bond ;)

[blade004]

@mynameisleeyesitis I was a Commodore only guy during that time (almost bought an Atari STFM instead in 1990 but opted for an Amiga 500) but it was such a great time reading all the Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, Acorn Archimedes, PC...etc.. program and game reviews in magazines like ACE :)

Now what do we have? Apple & Microsoft and small Linux niche all pretty much using the same hardware. It was a unique time for us, let's remember it for it's greatness :)

[hankillo1]

@mynameisleeyesitis JAJAJJAJA,yes and atari never released any ct60 for the falcon.You only see what you wanna see :)

[mynameisleeyesitis]

@hankillo1 neither did commodore ever release any amiga which could play media like mp3 files straight out the box :/ Damn right I see what I wanna see.

[hankillo1]

Falcon has two things better than amiga,its DSP and the sdr memory .Even so there are sound cards like delphina whith dsp for amiga and the A4000 can use acelerators with 64 bits memory.

Another matter is (but I am not sure), i dont think that falcon could mount an a ppc card with a 16 bits bus , becouse the neck of bottle.

[vlgtube]

Falcon has not SDR memory, there was not SDR memory.

[vlgtube]

Wrong. Falcon has not better DSP. It has DSP at all and it was not only a extensio like Delfina DSP. It was standard with such powerfull professional tool like CUBASE AUDIO. So with F040 you can imagine how it could be, even APPLE could be beaten. I talk about possibilities and not only from my point of view. I know Atari system well and i know what it can do. For example My F030 50Mhz with only 256k colors still could more than Amiga with 040, even with 16bit bus. Thats a fact!

[JasperAbraxxious]

The Falcon was a very nice machine (I have to do something with mine, got it out the other day and the case has started to yellow, ugly olive drab colour!), but the dsp was the only thing it had to better the new aga amigas. Unfortunately, the flexibility of Paula meant that it made little difference. Videl has a smaller colour palette than aga and had lower screenmodes. Remember the cpu bus bottle neck? Not good, although not as bad as once thought. Nice machine though.

[Szeki28]

Beautyfull work!

I have more AMIGAS and 1 FALCON.

Falcon: Thank you TRAMIELS!

Amiga: Thank you JAY!

The most powerfull computers all over the world.

And that's it...

[D6Film]

Great demo, I saw it on Amiga, and it's good to see it on Falcon as well :) respect for old good TBL :)

[sopalen]

stunning! just stunning :)

[alex76gr]

Respect for the old good Amiga competitor.

[EvilFranky]

Don't be so foolish.

Take off the blinkers please, and appreciate what the Falcon was...a superior machine to the A1200.

[JasperAbraxxious]

Lol, what do they say about 'da Nile? :)

I own an Falcon, and several Amigas (and Sts, and Ste' etc etc). The A1200 was technically superior to the Falcon OVERALL. The Falcon had a better sound system (although almost nothing exploited it) and had a faster cpu... but the cpu was crippled by a 16 bit bus! AGA ran circles around Videl, Kickstart 3.1 was better than TOS (name suits it) and Workbench 3.1 was better than MultiTos.

Overall, the Amiga 1200 was superior.

[EvilFranky]

'The Falcon had a better sound system but almost nothing exploited it' Cubase Audio and a plethora of Demos and Games.

It means nothing that you own a multitude of systems, it does not qualify you as unbiased.

Your right, the 16-bit DATA BUS was a horrendous decision by the designers, but from what has been revealed is that this was due to originally using a 68000 and changing to a 68030 last minute.

Even with it's 16-BIT BUS it was FASTER than the A1200 32-bit BUS.

[JasperAbraxxious]

* sigh * - I remember these conversations almost verbatim. :)

[1] - 100% of Amiga software utilised the standard sound system. .01% of Atari St, Ste and Falcon software utilised the Falcon sound system. Simple math huh?

my not being in either the "amiga camp" or "atari camp" makes me unbiased...next.

Because of the 16bit bus blunder, a cpu that was considerably more expensive than the a1200's 020 ended up running only slightly faster... and in some cases SLOWER (random mem fetch ops).

[EvilFranky]

You can *sigh* all you like.

The Falcon was NOT an ST compatible, it shared next to no ST architecture! Very very few ST games ran on the Falcon. FACT - 100% of Falcon software used the Falcon sound system.

16 or 32-bit BUS does not matter, what matters are FACTS. The Falcon was computationally faster than an A1200, regardless of expense or the odd operation (I have no idea about mem fetch ops figures).

If you are unbiased then it must be that you are ill informed.

[JasperAbraxxious]

Lol, I think it is obvious who is biased. :)

FACT - the Falcons 100% of software was in the region of .01% of St/Ste software - ie there was sweet FA! That was my point. No one gave a rats anus about the Falcon and almost no one bothered to purchase one, let alone publish software for it.

Yes, the FACTS are that due to bad design the Falcon was a fraction faster than the A1200 (raw number crunching), but had a less responsive OS so 'felt' slower... at double the price. :)

Nice 1 Atari.

[EvilFranky]

I am not biased. Amiga's were great computers, they had their place in history just like Atari's. But there is too much misinformed info about the Falcon online, with people knowing little but trying to argue a lot.

Software companies only disregarded the Falcon once Atari abandoned it. There was a lot of software/games in development. Saying no one cared is ridiculous. They were excited by the additional power of the 030 and DSP combo.

[EvilFranky]

You are now also changing your mind with regards to your sound system argument.

Your point was that ST/STE/Falcon software didnt use the Falcons sound system. I proved this wrong and now you are arguing that you meant that there wasn't a lot of Falcon software to take advantage of the power.

In either argument you are wrong. You had the best of the best in Cubase Audio (why would you need anything else?), plus a multitude of trackers, wave form editors, MP2 & MP3 players and ACE tracker!!!

[JasperAbraxxious]

Just to put this to rest...lets do the checklist countdown! :) Gfx - A1200 Sound - Falcon Os - A1200 Expandability - A1200 Software - A1200 Cpu - Falcon * Build quality - A1200 Midi - Falcon I count 5 to 3, I hope I didnt miss anything. * Speed comparisons of the day showed that whilst the Falcon had the edge in maths, the 16bit bus crippled it so badly that some memory operations were SLOWER on the Falcon than the A1200. Overall it would work out to be slightly faster.

[EvilFranky]

What on earth are you talking about???

GFX - A1200. Please explain.

OS - A1200. Atari MiNT is a good OS fast and responsive, with proper memory protection.

Expandability - A1200. The Falcon has an expansion port too, not sure what you mean by this.

Software - A1200. Undoubtedly, but this was not the argument, it was about hardware. Amiga guys always come back with this one when they are on the back foot of an Atari/Amiga discussion.

[EvilFranky]

Build quality - A1200. Neither here nor there in this discussion. Again this was supposed to be about hardware, standard for standard.

As for your speed comparisons statement. Faster is faster at the end of the day. Whether it is 1% or 100%.

SCSI was in abundance when the Falcon was released. Silly of you to try and use that AGAINST the Falcon, surely having something is better than not having it and then needing it. Why did all those SCSI cards come out for Amiga?

[EvilFranky]

How did you come to the conclusion about VIDEL Vs AGA?

VIDEL is a fully programmable graphics chip. Resolution and colour depth (up to 16-bit Hi Colour) are dependant only on output device and pixel clock of the VIDEL.

Only advantage I know of in AGA is the dual playfields and other upgraded OCS/ECS features. Great for games of course.

Interested to hear what advantages you believe it had, as HAM was next to useless unless displaying static images.

[JasperAbraxxious]

Simple - it was better... I believe almost everyone accepts that. :)

Fidel had a chunky mode, and some of its modes were faster (only high palette modes ie 256 colours)... AGA had more screenmodes, higher resolution, larger palette, HAM (even if only for static screens - jpeg viewing etc, kicked the Falcons arse) etc etc.

Falcon had the edge in 3d texture mapping... but then from about 030/50 upwards a software chunky to planar conversion was better again, so it didnt really matter.

[EvilFranky]

Didn't see this yesterday.

I'm talking to a brick wall. At least accept my facts about the Falcons hardware before trying to argue back. Again I stress VIDEL was only limited by output device and pixel clock for how high a resolution it could display. So AGA did NOT have MORE screenmodes.

Larger palette is a moot point as not really noticeable unless viewing pictures with obvious gradients. And the 16-bit mode was far more versatile and could be used as a desktop colour depth if needed.

[EvilFranky]

As for JPEG viewing I'll think you'll find the Falcon was far better at that and If you did own one you would know this. I enjoyed viewing and editing photos in a desktop application while using the 16-bit colour mode and using the DSP to decrunch the JPEG's leaving the 030 to do other stuff.

I'm sure decoding JPEG's on a standard A1200 was absolutely dreadful.

As for the last point, your now not comparing standard for standard and the Falcon could throw 3D around in 16-bit colour, no C2P...

[JasperAbraxxious]

Besides, you are comparing the flagship Atari system of '92/'93 to the low end Commodore system of the same time.

Why not compare the Amiga 4000/030 (Commodores mid level system, not the 040) to the Falcon? That would be comparing apples with apples would it not? Cost wise at least (Falcon was far more expensive than the A1200).

Scsi was on the way out (of being mainstream), A1200/A4000 had IDE. KS/Wb3.1 vs Tos/MultiTos? Mutitasking? Resolution? Upgrades? Keyboard quality? Ill stop now. :)

[EvilFranky]

You clearly know nothing about the Falcon and I'd even go as far as saying you DO NOT own one and only said that to look unbiased.

Falcon was £499, A1200 was £399. Falcon was targeted at A1200 not A4000, hence the price. The cancelled Falcon 040 was to compete against A4000.

Low end Amiga was A600!

Falcon has IDE!!!!

Keyboard quality?! Oh please, grasping at straws with that one.

Atari OS had proper memory protection, and has UNIX roots.

Rez - I already said VIDEL was fully programmable.

[hankillo1]

Dont you remember the A4000 030 ?you should compare the falcon with it ,and not with the 1200.

And in this comparation the falcon blows away

[EvilFranky]

I dunno how many times I'll have to repeat this...

The Falcon 030 was made to compete with the A1200 not the A4000. Hence the price.

A1200 £399

Base Model Falcon £499

The A4000 - 030 was also released a YEAR after the Falcon 030.

[mynameisleeyesitis]

@EvilFranky Yea but, the falcon still kicks its bottom.

[surfitlive]

@mynameisleeyesitis I get 101,000 Google hits for 'Atari Falcon' 101,000 for 'Amiga A1200' 742,000 for 'Amiga 1200' More GAMES/SOFTWARE/expansion hardware for AMiga. Lower COST for Atari but limited choice. Falcon Wiki page is 2 down scrolls long w/2links. A1200 6 down scrolls long w/10links. The Layout &co-processors(BLiTTER)of the Atari is a BITE of Amiga w/a little more muscle than stock. Except theDSP.That is a good upgrade,though Paula has held up2many generic chips over years.

[vlgtube]

Oh, you were sure that your amiga isbetter than atari, and now you must face the truth. Bad for truth.

mind, a4000 great machine indeed, but even that was not good as Falcon030 in some areas. But hey, look at unreleased Falcon 040 specification, with new powerful Video processor and fast ram. It would be Amiga killer even A4000 for sure. Iit wont happen but maybe you would get Falcon040 too.

[hankillo1]

You can not talk about things that WOULD BE.Commodore wanted to release the AAA new amigas based on 68060 procesor as well, but it didnt.Even so :

A4000 32 bit bus VS falcon 16 bit

A4000 25 mhz bus speed vs falcon 16 mhz

A4000 030 25 mhz cpu speed vs falcon 16 mgz

A4000 pallete 16 million vs falcon 256000 colours

A4000 workbench VS falcon TOS :)

[vlgtube]

No i dont.

And as you comapre , Falcon is realted to A1200 not A4000. A4000 competitor was Falcon040 50Mhz, 32 bit bus 50Mhz, with 24bit color, 64bit fastram, desktop or tower case etc. With DSP and other goodies it could really kicks ass. Even Amiga with AAA. 060 is not the matter as you can put 060 to 040 socket. The matter is BUS, Memory Control Unit and RAM. And of course GFX.

[karadok666]

@hankillo1 Comparing the A4000 to Falcon 030 is ridiculous. The Falcon was the competitor to computers like A1200 class. So what do you want?

[mynameisleeyesitis]

@hankillo1 LOL mp3s on your a4000?

lmfao ameoba fanboy suck it.

[JasperAbraxxious]

Wow, you need to come out of your cave more often..... my A500 plays Mp3s (A530/50).

My A1200 does it easily (BLizzard 060) and my A4000 does it incredably easily (060/ppc).

But, obviously the little old Falcon was the only system able to do that tight?

Doofus...

[mynameisleeyesitis]

Gladly I havent had to spend money on accelerators to play mp3.

I dunno how much you spent on those amigas but I only spent about £50 over the years on my Falcon.

[mynameisleeyesitis]

@JasperAbraxxious LMFAO

son you crack me up

ROFLMFAO

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHH­AHAA

HAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

lmfao

hahahahhaha

my god i cant believe it!

(and clearly you don't own a falcon, or you wouldn't even try and make that argument)

[HumanMachineOfHate]

Absolutely awesome, i really love the atmosphere made out of the music of this demo! It´s just brilliant!

Great port, but i just own a Falcon030 with PhantomS Accelerator. Yet i still have the Videos to watch and maybe MiKro makes something for a standard Falcon030 these days...

[d0us]

Brilliant work!