I just had a quick count of what is needed to manage a graphics application on the 16/32 bit machines I've been playing with. The startup library contains exactly what is needed to leave the OS, get a working fullscreen display, wait for the vertical sync, swop the screen buffers and return to the operating system without killing other applications or causing a crash.
These are the results at the moment.
Amiga - about 120 lines of 68000, although a copperlist is needed on top of that, but that's application specific.
Atari ST - about 90 lines of 68000
Acorn Archimedes - 25 lines of ARM.
RISC OS is nice like that, you just ignore the operating system apart from a couple of calls to swop buffers, pick a screenmode and check for input and it restores itself afterwards.
The Amiga has the most heavyweight startup library, but even in the small example code I've knocked together I've saved more than the 30 lines difference between the ST and the Amiga (along with the associated rastertime).
It's a damn shame the Arc was so underrated, it gives the ST a bit of a kicking, although it falls short of the Amiga. Quite a respectable second place I reckon.
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