05 March 2021, 01:02 | #121 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: NY / USA
Posts: 290
|
Quote:
|
|
05 March 2021, 05:21 | #122 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Melbourne/Australia
Posts: 4,400
|
Lack of investment in the brand and lack of vision mostly.
The CDTV also really hurt them financially and put paid to any more innovative computers. |
05 March 2021, 09:38 | #123 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,918
|
It's really impressive how Commodore was seemingly NOT interested in making more money from their products just because they didn't understand their own business and market. Just have a look at the A1200: it came with a lowly 020 and no fastmem. Yes, it was a cheap and attractive package, good value for the price (where Amiga once was premium quality for a premium price). But why did Commodore put a CPU on the PCB and not on one of a variety of expansion boards with differently clocked 020s and 030s and varying amounts of fastmem? They saved a dollar for the daughterboard connector and at the same time gave away the entire business that Phase5 et al took over building accelerator boards which ultimately led to almost anyone having a useless and paid for 020 CPU in their A1200s. Commodore could have offered a few basic configurations like 020, 020+fastmem, two speed steps of 030+fastmem at a good margin and have left the in-betweens and low-cost competing boards to other companies.
|
05 March 2021, 10:09 | #124 |
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Northampton/UK
Posts: 525
|
Remove the expensive PCMCIA, make room inside for a cd-rom (optional upgrade), add half a meg of fast, and bodge a HD floppy. That's the bare minimum improvement it would need.
Ideally, the whole chipset should have been overhauled in '91. But they hired the guy who did the PC Junior, one of IBM's biggest failures. |
05 March 2021, 11:24 | #125 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Cardiff, UK
Age: 51
Posts: 2,871
|
That's because Commodore initially REFUSED to have ANY mention of the name "Amiga" in relation to the CDTV, even refused sellers to stock it in the same place as the Amiga computers, but to treat it like a kind of premium CD player or VCR instead. It's like they were EMBARRASSED of the Amiga. Dumb fucks!
|
05 March 2021, 11:50 | #126 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,295
|
One more thing: the Amiga is quite capable of a "textmode", by using Blitter and Copper the right way:
http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/CharMode Quote:
|
|
05 March 2021, 12:20 | #127 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Cardiff, UK
Age: 51
Posts: 2,871
|
Why didn't you mention it before then, Gorf?
|
05 March 2021, 12:50 | #128 |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,295
|
Because the whole "textmode" talk was misleading:
the problem never was text vs. gfx but the lack of a flicker free higher resolution - and while it certainly did hurt the market performance a little bit, it was probably not the biggest problem .... After we pointed all that out in this thread, I thought it might be nice to mention this specific software, that shows the flexibility of the custom chips. |
05 March 2021, 14:01 | #129 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Cardiff, UK
Age: 51
Posts: 2,871
|
I always thought that "textmode" meant stuff like the BBC Micro's "Teletext" mode, or indeed, any of the 8-bit computer systems of the 1980s that had character-based graphics (which I think was ALL of them). Obviously, the PC's textmodes were the same sort of thing, a holdover from the 8-bit days that was finally killed off with Windows XP. Heck, even PC boot-up screens and BIOS settings systems don't use textmode anymore.
|
05 March 2021, 14:35 | #130 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: NY / USA
Posts: 290
|
Quote:
Amiga did have nice office software for sure, but easy ledger and only a very small handful of accounting products really took them out of the game. Your points are very solid with Radio Shack, great points. They did hit the home market hard where I live. They did fill a void that the pc market had and bought time for the rest of the industry to catch up. Resolution and text limiting it's productivity/business success, I don't think I really believe it was a material reason. If you run easy ledgers, a decent accounting software on a 1080 in lower resolution it works fine, easy to read and enough room to do your job. It would have been nice to have a scan doubled high resolution 31khz option in 85, but Commodore was their own worst enemy with the Amiga and that is imho the reason I'm still using my A3000 from 91 and not something else... Last edited by matt3k; 05 March 2021 at 15:00. |
|
05 March 2021, 15:33 | #131 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,584
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
05 March 2021, 15:57 | #132 |
0ld0r Git
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Cornwall, UK
Posts: 1,581
|
Heck, back in the Eighties....
The Amiga was a True Pre-Emptive Multi-Tasking Computer. It's operating System was designed around a cut down version of UNIX. Bad marketing up to the demise of C= let them down & Bill ended up getting his way. Windows 3.1 was absolutely poop compared to Workbench. Nothing in it's day came close in any manner & it got tarnished by the PC users as a Gaming Machine. - It did that better than anything on the market at the time as well.... Nothing wrong on the Amiga with DTP, Office based programs, Graphic Manipulation, 3D Modelling or Gaming on my WB2.0 A3000. That Pizza Style Desktop is still a powerhouse in it's own right today. The BBC used A2000's with Genlocks for their Weather Reports on the News. & the next time you watch the original "Jurassic Park", remember the Amiga did all the Wire-Frame animation because nothing came close for smoothness on a 15Khz signal. Faster computers were used to render the detailed Skin's. Perhaps it didn't Thrive as much as it should have done, but above all, it was "Fun Computing" & still is! Still Love my PC with SLI 1080 Ti's for Fragging, but it can't Scroll Pinball Fantasies & others like a Real Amiga can. |
05 March 2021, 22:30 | #133 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2021
Location: United States
Age: 52
Posts: 67
|
Quote:
However, even with this, it would have had to deal with the 640x200 limitation but I think this would have helped quite a bit. |
|
05 March 2021, 23:33 | #134 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,584
|
Quote:
Let's face it - if the Amiga had simply been IBM compatible it could have been hugely popular in the US, but without it there was no chance. So what did Commodore do wrong with the Amiga? They didn't put an x86 CPU in it. They filled it up with advanced hardware and software that wasn't IBM compatible. They promoted its multimedia features and intuitive multitasking OS. All stuff that 'nobody' in the US wanted. If only they had just stuck to making PC clones! |
|
05 March 2021, 23:37 | #135 | |
J.M.D - Bedroom Musician
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: los angeles,ca
Posts: 3,529
|
Quote:
|
|
06 March 2021, 00:59 | #136 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2021
Location: United States
Age: 52
Posts: 67
|
Quote:
The problem, is that Commodore didn't fill the Amiga with advanced hardware in all cases. It was objectively inferior when it came to do doing the work most people in 1985 were using computers for (word processing, spread sheets). Mac went with a high resolution monochrome graphics display and the PC users could choose between monochrome (and crisp text) or EGA if they wanted color and crisp graphics (most businesses were still monochrome). It's not about what people "wanted". We keep going around in circles. What, theoretically, would someone DO with an Amiga 1000 in 1985? What, specifically, are you multitasking? What, specific, multimedia feature (outside of games) would you be doing with the Amiga that could earn you a living in 1985? 1986? I went from Amiga to OS/2 so you're preaching to the choir about appreciating advanced features. But as a productivity device, the Amiga team made some mistakes because they saw it as a game machine that could do home computing -- which would have been fine if it had been half the price (imo). |
|
06 March 2021, 01:01 | #137 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,295
|
Quote:
it should be possible as well (with some adjustments) to run it on several bitplanes (one after the other). That should give you tiled color-graphics. The autor of this package invented this method for his Sinclair QL emulator and used it there as well: http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/QDOS4amiga1 Source: http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/QDOS4amiga2 |
|
06 March 2021, 01:17 | #138 |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,295
|
the Mac classic had a max resolution of 512x350 - that are 179k pixels
the A1000 (NTSC - non interlaced) has 704×242 - that are 170k pixels So I guess because of 5% more pixels the Mac was "high resolution" and the Amiga was not? |
06 March 2021, 02:16 | #139 |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2018
Location: Ireland
Posts: 674
|
The argument of resolution from '85 is nonsense. I dont know of any PCs using a high res 400+ vertical resolution at this stage.
The PC was a neanderthal in comparison to the Amiga that year, ive still to hear a relevant argument for the PC. The Amiga did play catchup with the PC with ECS in terms of resolution but the problem was and from this thread is PC software compatibility which Commodore did try to address with bridge cards. Why they didnt campaign for this moving forward and have them reasonsbly priced is beyond me. |
06 March 2021, 09:53 | #140 | |
Amiga Fanatic
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Age: 53
Posts: 180
|
Quote:
Last edited by marcfrick2112; 06 March 2021 at 09:54. Reason: I can't type... |
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1 | drHirudo | Nostalgia & memories | 826 | 10 March 2022 15:02 |
Is it true the Amiga nearly DIDN'T use RGB for colour? | Foebane | Amiga scene | 14 | 28 June 2018 02:12 |
Best Amiga pinball game that Digital Illusions *didn't* make | PixelsAtDawn | Nostalgia & memories | 30 | 05 December 2017 02:43 |
Why game companies didn't make better games for Amiga | ancalimon | Retrogaming General Discussion | 35 | 17 July 2017 12:27 |
New Amiga one & Os4 thoughts | sewerkid | Amiga scene | 7 | 01 December 2002 17:31 |
|
|