Some Other Alternative? But of course!

@ storng.bare.durid: "Would that the powers that be would junk x86 in all its guises .... and give us some other alternative."

Um, we were headed that way once upon a time. But Someone... Killed... It... ALl... D-E-A-D...

With the Motorola 68XXX processor and the custom-built "blitter" chip that to this day Intel is apparently unable or unwilling to reproduce on its own, the old multi-tasking o/s-equipped Amiga Personal Computer series R-O-C-K-E-D the world. (Remember?)

To this day, I dearly wish I had kept mine. Even though at 14 screaming MHz clock, the A500 is a slug by today's gigahertz-driven Intel standard. But you want cool operation? Then build it to be EFFICIENT!

I do miss both my original A1000 and the A500 that superseded it. I was only able to keep the video monitor as things sorted out. (It still works just fine; I still use it on the VCR/DVD test/repair bench.)

Sidebar: Yes, I still salvage, repair and re-home my made-serviceable VCRs. So deride me if needs be; my Old School viddy-buff friends just love it. (Not much cash there, but a GREAT bartering-chip, that.)

So bring back the Blitter Chip - and start doing Block Memory Transfers to the video display hardware all over again! Heck, with a blitter-chip on board one can blap entire screen-fulls of graphic content straight into one's face all at one gulp - at a full video frame per two or three clock cycles max - again! The x86 "chipset" is truly *incomplete* without it imho.

Commodore f***ed the Amiga right up. Intel did the rest and swore he Nevver Done Nuthin'.

Murderers.