Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by hammer

I have recycled my 16-bit PCMCIA WiFi and Ethernet laptop cards for A1200, but they were not major system sellers in the 1991-1994 time period.

Indeed. This stuff is mostly great in hindsight.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

That is debatable, isn't it?
The original design was a classic engineers-around-the-lunch-table doing napkin math and napkin drawings back in 1979... I'd expect them to continue designing #3 as a computer...

As usual the actual story is a bit more complicated. The original 'engineers-around-the-lunch-table doing napkin math' meeting was between Activision game developer Larry Kaplan and Pokey chip designer Doug Neubauer. Kaplan had just seen the NES at the June 1982 CES, and thought they could design a better games console. They then contacted Jay Miner, who at the time was doing chip design for Zymos. The idea was that Jay Miner would design the chipset for their games console, and Zymos would manufacture them (Zymos specialized in ROM chips, so they were a natural for making the game cartridges too).

For venture capital they turned to millionaire financier O. W. Rollins, who then hired Dave Morse (a vice-president at Tonka Toys) as the CEO. He was interested in electronic games and had previously had discussions with Nintendo over marketing their NES through Tonka - but management wasn't interested.

So that was three founders of Hi-Toro who wanted to make a games console.

However, back in 1979 Jay Miner and co-worker Joe Decuir - who were working for Atari - pitched the idea of a powerful 68000 based computer to replace the Atari 800. But Atari management wasn't interested. Then Miner (along with most of the engineers) quit after Atari failed to pay the bonuses promised to them.

So although Jay Miner was hired to make a games console, he really wanted to make a souped up home computer.

For the Lorraine they plainly picked up the design again (and adjusted it), but I still can't imagine they themselves believed in it being able to function usefully as a console with only 32K ram - that is 320x200x4 blowing 100% of it away.

The original plan for the games console was to use a 6502 running at 4MHz, with up to 64k of fast static RAM. That would be more than enough RAM because code and data is stored in the cartridge ROM. With appropriate custom chips this system would blow away the NES and the C64.

However Kaplan left the company to work with Nolan Bushnell, so Jay Miner contacted his former colleague Joe Decuir to replace Kaplan, and they began working on a different concept that would still be an excellent games machine but also have a keyboard and disk drive, and be powerful enough to program games on - ie. a home computer like Jay originally wanted.

After Kaplan left Neubauer did too, so they also hired Ron Nicholson who was a chip designer at Apple. Now there were three guys who wanted to make a computer, and one (Dave Morse) who wanted to see something that could do 'cartoon style' graphics. And the name they chose for this machine was 'Amiga'.

So although the original plan was for a games console, this soon changed to being a home computer with both powerful graphics hardware and the ability to develop software on it.

By the time Commodore bought the Amiga design it already had a multitasking GUI OS, which made it far more than a games machine. It was the ultimate home computer, and customers expected to do a lot more with it than just play games.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

As usual the actual story is a bit more complicated. The original 'engineers-around-the-lunch-table doing napkin math' meeting was between Activision game developer Larry Kaplan and Pokey chip designer Doug Neubauer. Kaplan had just seen the NES at the June 1982 CES, and thought they could design a better games console. They then contacted Jay Miner, who at the time was doing chip design for Zymos. The idea was that Jay Miner would design the chipset for their games console, and Zymos would manufacture them (Zymos specialized in ROM chips, so they were a natural for making the game cartridges too).

For venture capital they turned to millionaire financier O. W. Rollins, who then hired Dave Morse (a vice-president at Tonka Toys) as the CEO. He was interested in electronic games and had previously had discussions with Nintendo over marketing their NES through Tonka - but management wasn't interested.

So that was three founders of Hi-Toro who wanted to make a games console.

However, back in 1979 Jay Miner and co-worker Joe Decuir - who were working for Atari - pitched the idea of a powerful 68000 based computer to replace the Atari 800. But Atari management wasn't interested. Then Miner (along with most of the engineers) quit after Atari failed to pay the bonuses promised to them.

So although Jay Miner was hired to make a games console, he really wanted to make a souped up home computer.

The original plan for the games console was to use a 6502 running at 4MHz, with up to 64k of fast static RAM. That would be more than enough RAM because code and data is stored in the cartridge ROM. With appropriate custom chips this system would blow away the NES and the C64.

However Kaplan left the company to work with Nolan Bushnell, so Jay Miner contacted his former colleague Joe Decuir to replace Kaplan, and they began working on a different concept that would still be an excellent games machine but also have a keyboard and disk drive, and be powerful enough to program games on - ie. a home computer like Jay originally wanted.

After Kaplan left Neubauer did too, so they also hired Ron Nicholson who was a chip designer at Apple. Now there were three guys who wanted to make a computer, and one (Dave Morse) who wanted to see something that could do 'cartoon style' graphics. And the name they chose for this machine was 'Amiga'.

So although the original plan was for a games console, this soon changed to being a home computer with both powerful graphics hardware and the ability to develop software on it.

By the time Commodore bought the Amiga design it already had a multitasking GUI OS, which made it far more than a games machine. It was the ultimate home computer, and customers expected to do a lot more with it than just play games.

Prove Amiga's non-gaming scene can sustain Commodore. You already have non-legacy-Amiga games approaches from Amithlon(X86)/MorphOS(PPC)/AmigaOS 4.x (PPC) failed in the market. There's a good chance that the users who stayed with Amiga and upgraded with non-price competitive CPU (e.g. 68060, PowerPC) and SVGA (RTG) solutions are not too concerned about mainstream games and they are a tiny minority from about 5 to 6 million Amiga install base.

The British Amiga magazines (e.g. CU Amiga, Amiga Format, Amiga Computing) have many full-feature applications on cover disks and CDs and these tactics weren't able to hold the millions of Amiga users on the Amiga platform.

Commodore UK and British Amiga magazines attempted to hold the line before dropping from the mainstream markets. Escom purchased Commodore (not including Commodore Semiconductor Group) in 1995 and went bust in 1996.

FYI, 3DO has a 32-bit multitasking and real-time OS with a fully featured abstraction layer.

The 3DO OS is a fully-featured 32-bit multitasking and real-time operating system written specifically for the 3DO by NTG. Developers *must* use the OS for a variety of reasons, the main one being to maintain compatibility with all 3DO consoles and future next-generation 3DO consoles.

The OS is loaded from an application's CD when the system starts up, and is not in the consoles ROM. Contrary to rumors, there is no way to bypass the OS and "hack" directly on the hardware.

The 3DO OS consists of two parts:
1. A multitasking kernel with drivers for peripherals, a complete file system, and support for physical storage.

2. Several software "folios" that provide a link between application software and the 3DO hardware, and are designed to allow software compatibility as new versions of the hardware are developed. The following six subsystems make up the entire "Portfolio" of 3DO OS system calls:

The Decompression Folio: supports software and hardware decompression of audio and video data.
The Math Folio: performs many of the high level calculations.
The Graphics Folio: provides access to the 3DO's cel and display subsystems for doing graphics effects and animation. The effects include warping, transparency, lighting effects, anti-aliasing, and texture mapping.
The 3-D Folio: system code for creating 3-D effects and doing complex calculations.
The Audio Folio: supports the creation and manipulation of sound effects and music. This includes proprietary algorithms called "3D audio imaging" that create the illusion of sound coming not only from the left and right, but front and back (when wearing headphones). These algorithms can also produce Doppler effects and reverberations.
The File System Folio: manages the file system.

Reference
https://users.polytech.unice.fr/~buf...do_faq2.4.html

Unlike the Amiga games, programmers are not allowed to "kick-the-OS" with 3DO.


For 3DO M2, "Japan Inc" tapped Panasonic to not compete against fellow Japanese Sony, Sega, and Nintendo.



[ Show youtube player ]
3DO's Operating System, 3DO Portfolio's abstraction layer is fully featured. Microsoft purchased the company that designed 3DO MX which led to the original Xbox.

The 3DO hardware itself was designed by Dave Needle and RJ Mical (designers of the Amiga and Atari Lynx), starting from an outline on a restaurant napkin in 1989.

3DO team's mistake is the quadrilateral 3D system.

https://wccftech.com/xbox-one-archit...stinguishable/
Xbox One has RTOS (Real Time Operating System) hypervisor which hosts the other two OS i.e. full full-fledged Windows 8 and stripped-down/optimized Windows 8. Microsoft's Xbox RTOS is not yet offered to the general Windows PC market.

The Amiga was a 1980s gaming desktop computer and I didn't change my habits between the Amiga and my current gaming PC i.e. gaming 1st and non-gaming 2nd. If gaming wasn't the 1st priority, I would switch to the Mac platform.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed. This stuff is mostly great in hindsight.

I ditched my PCMCIA WiFi card when Emu68's WiFi Pi WP2 driver was released.

I need to figure out MacOS's side. Purpose: for more Mac 68K games. I'm loading my 64 GB micro-sd card with games.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by hammer

I ditched my PCMCIA WiFi card when Emu68's WiFi Pi WP2 driver was released.

Yes, but PCMCIA is great when you have a more traditional accelerator like a Blizzard 1230.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by hammer

Microsoft purchased the company that designed 3DO MX which led to the original Xbox.

So Xbox have some genetic imprint from the Amiga. OMG

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, but PCMCIA is great when you have a more traditional accelerator like a Blizzard 1230.

...and your wifi driver is in alpha and regularly locks up the whole Amiga when uploading large amounts of data...

Still using my CF card here, even with SMB2FS and FTPMount.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Dunny

...and your wifi driver is in alpha and regularly locks up the whole Amiga when uploading large amounts of data...

Really? Wow, that sucks Glad I have a wired Ethernet card.

Originally Posted by Dunny

Still using my CF card here, even with SMB2FS and FTPMount.

SMB2FS is nice, though.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Audio was a dealbreaker for me. Not only the 4 channel limitation, the software was also bottleneck. There was only Protracker (and its clones) and Octamed, all trackers and with the same 4 channel limit. There was also only one proper audio editor. There was only one audio tool for one slot, eg. no competition for Octamed - only Octamed.

Expanding the audio hardware for Amiga (1200) was nonexistence and if I'd get some mystical AHI thingy, there was no proper software to support it.

It seems you missed some software/hardware. There is an Amiga hardware database available you can check what exists for A1200. Most sound cards are for the clock port. Sound cards are mainly to deliver 16 Bit 44/48kHz, not multichannel. For multichannel you need CPU power because they are mixed by it.

AHI was/is quasi the default sound system on Amiga. Nothing mystical about it. It also supports Paula, not only sound cards. I use(d) it with Paula driver. With AHI you (can) get multichannel. There is also a 14 Bit driver available (best with calibration) that can give you a better quality then 8 Bit. There is a long thread about this topic here. It gives around 11-12 Bit.

Is there even modern 8 channel trackers for Amiga?

They exists for a long time now. OctamedSoundStudio and DigiboosterPro 2.x for example. The main problem for multichannel was/is enough CPU power. The faster the better (on any system). ROM in fastram will also help. With 68040/40 you (I) can get up to 16 channels 44,1 kHz without DSP. It depends a bit so you might get only 14 or 12 channels without quality loss. 68030/50 should get around 8 channels. 68060 will give you more channels then you need. Further you can reduce mixing frequency to get more channels but quality loss in return.

Quick search resulted with Digibooster and Milkytracker, which both supports more than 4 audio channels.. but with not A1200 since there are no audio soundcards for it.

DigiBooster 3.1 system requirements:
AmigaOS 3:
Minimum:
68020, Harddrive, 8 MByte Fast-RAM, Workbench 3.0, MUI 3.8, AHI 4.x, screenmode 640x480.
Recommended:
AmigaOS 3.x, 68060/50 MHz, 16 MByte Fast-RAM, graphics card, soundcard.

DigiBoosterPro 3.x started around 2010-2011 and the target were high-end systems. If I remember right 68060 could be already not fast enough. If you want DigiboosterPro on 68k systems use the latest 2.x version. A 1.x version exists the has only 8 channels.

Milkytracker is a port and needs some more resources and not available in the '90.

You don't need a sound card because Paula is supported. So an A1200 with fast 68k is enough. Sound cards are optional.

[sokolovic]

For a sound specialist, Mikidi doesn't seems very aware about the Amiga sounds capacities or how sounds rendering works on a computer. Thanks for all the precision there, since I'm not a sound specialist myself.

[Mikidi]

Originally Posted by hammer

Don't confuse the earlier MED and OctaMED.

Octa means 8.

The first version with the name OctaMED was released in 1991.

Sounds good on paper. Using Octameh with accelerated A1200 with more
than the 4 audio channels sounded rubbish. It was there, but it was unusable.

There are archives of 4 channel .mods but where are the archives for
8 channel Octamed tracks? or even Oktalyzer tracks?

The only good thing about Octameh having 8 audio tracks is that you could
use is a hard fact argument 30 years later on Amiga forums.

Originally Posted by sokolovic

For a sound specialist, Mikidi doesn't seems very aware about the Amiga sounds capacities or how sounds rendering works on a computer. Thanks for all the precision there, since I'm not a sound specialist myself.

Just pointing out that making music with A1200 was limited to .mods.
Other music ways with A1200 was too expensive, narrowed and did not make any sense.
A1200 was solid disappointment with the audio side, you dont have to be an expert to see that.

[Mikidi]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Again A1200 disappoints.

Besides having 80s audiochip and not Doom, A1200 (and CD32) did not have EA's NHL series.

16bit Megadrive did.

[Mikidi]

Originally Posted by daxb

You don't need a sound card because Paula is supported. So an A1200 with fast 68k is enough. Sound cards are optional.

Ok thanks got it. To upgrade audio on A1200, you have to pay at least another A1200 worth of money.

Audio quality sounds way worse than Cassette even before recorded to Cassette, I guess nowadays there is some lofi hiphop, punk or vaporwave aesthetics in it.

[pixie]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Ok thanks got it. To upgrade audio on A1200, you have to pay at least another A1200 worth of money.

Audio quality sounds way worse than Cassette even before recorded to Cassette, I guess nowadays there is some lofi hiphop, punk or vaporwave aesthetics in it.

Finally... someone gets it!!

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Audio quality sounds way worse than Cassette even before recorded to Cassette, I guess nowadays there is some lofi hiphop, punk or vaporwave aesthetics in it.

You can't say that, Paula sound is perfectly clear but with her own aesthetics since day one, and a good one in my opinion. It's Chip tune and it always was, no need to be in 2024 to realize it.

Perhaps you're thinking of the sound quality in the context of long digitalizations? In this case, yes, it was unusable to do some serious work on it.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Ok thanks got it. To upgrade audio on A1200, you have to pay at least another A1200 worth of money.

Or you buy a much more expensive PC and still have to invest into an additional sound card.

Audio quality sounds way worse than Cassette even before recorded to Cassette, I guess nowadays there is some lofi hiphop, punk or vaporwave aesthetics in it.

[ Show youtube player ]

This is re-digitized from real analog output and encoded to mp3 and uploaded to YT - I think good old Paula deserves an apology from you!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Prove Amiga's non-gaming scene can sustain Commodore.

Nothing can sustain Commodore. Commodore is dead. Dead because Jack Tramiel stormed out when he couldn't get his way. This was a good thing because we got the Amiga from it, particularly the awesome A1200. But to get it, Commodore had to suffer. Without that suffering they would have produced something different - probably closer to the ST or the C65.

You already have non-legacy-Amiga games approaches from Amithlon(X86)/MorphOS(PPC)/AmigaOS 4.x (PPC) failed in the market.

It wasn't because fans weren't impressed with the games. They failed because Commodore was dead and the Amiga was a retro computer. Why would you want an 'Amiga' that wasn't an Amiga? To use an OS that wasn't designed for modern hardware? To play those few games that didn't appear on the PC (but easily could)? The 'NG Amiga' route failed because most Amiga fans wanted to keep using the machines they loved - with everything that implies.

There's a good chance that the users who stayed with Amiga and upgraded with non-price competitive CPU (e.g. 68060, PowerPC) and SVGA (RTG) solutions are not too concerned about mainstream games and they are a tiny minority from about 5 to 6 million Amiga install base.

A tiny minority yes, but this didn't represent the average Amiga user. Like other home computers the Amiga was always desired for more than just playing games. 200,000 thousand copies of AMOS sold tells us that many fans were interested in creating games (and other software) as well as playing them. That's not an insignificant number. The demo scene and PD distributions like Fred Fish and Aminet also shows us that many people were using their Amigas to create stuff right from the start.

And nobody had a 68060 or PPC. That didn't come until well after Commodore was gone, and the few that did mostly had 'big box' Amigas like the A3000 and A4000. They were a tiny minority, but there were many others who didn't go to such extremes.

The British Amiga magazines (e.g. CU Amiga, Amiga Format, Amiga Computing) have many full-feature applications on cover disks and CDs and these tactics weren't able to hold the millions of Amiga users on the Amiga platform.

With nobody making Amigas anymore this isn't surprising. Publishers of expensive applications knew the (small) market for them would dry up rapidly, but they might generate a bit more interest by making their products available to people who previously couldn't afford it. This definitely did keep many Amiga fans on the platform.

In 1992 Amiga Format was the most popular 'male interest' magazine in the UK, selling up to 200,000 copies per month. By the end of 1999 that had dropped to 11,000 copies, which is pretty amazing considering that no Amigas were produced after 1996 and no new model had come out in 7 years.

200,000 copies equates to ~1 in 10 users buying the magazine (assuming ~2 million Amigas sold in the UK, Australia and New Zealand). 11,000 copies suggests ~100,000 Amiga users remaining in 1999. If Commodore had survived beyond 1994 there would have been more.

FYI, 3DO has a 32-bit multitasking and real-time OS with a fully featured abstraction layer.

Did it also come with a GUI, keyboard, mouse, floppy drive, printer port etc.? With a price of $699.99 for a pure gaming machine vs $399 for an actual computer, the 3DO wasn't likely to attract many Amiga fans.

3DO's Operating System, 3DO Portfolio's abstraction layer is fully featured. Microsoft purchased the company that designed 3DO MX which led to the original Xbox.

But the Xbox ran Windows with DirectX as the abstraction layer, which made a lot more sense than using 3DO's proprietary OS.

The Amiga was a 1980s gaming desktop computer and I didn't change my habits between the Amiga and my current gaming PC i.e. gaming 1st and non-gaming 2nd. If gaming wasn't the 1st priority, I would switch to the Mac platform.

That's just you. Many of us got an Amiga specifically because it wasn't only a gaming machine - just as Jay Miner intended.

Looking back at my own history with microcomputers, it was never just about games. My first machine was a kit using the RCA 1802 CPU, a hex keypad and 64x48 pixel display. You might think that with no text display it was only good for games, but I bought it to learn how microcomputers worked. Though I did enjoy playing games on it, I soon started experimenting with other stuff like serial ports, speech synthesis and EPROM programming. Then I designed my own computer using an MC6800 and MC6847. It also had a full size keyboard. I did not play any games on this machine.

When the price of the ZX-81 dropped to $99 I bought one because I wanted to learn BASIC. I did play games on it, but did a lot of other stuff too - including connecting an IBM mainframe hard drive to it. Then I got a (second hand) ZX Spectrum. I played games on that too, but spent more time programming etc. When the Amstrad CPC664 came out I bought one with the monochrome monitor because I wanted the higher resolution for programming. I used it to cross-develop programs for other Z80 based systems.

I extensively hacked the hardware of all the machines I bought because I enjoyed doing it. Their limitations were a positive for me, because it meant I could have fun improving them.

The A1000 was the first machine I bought that had everything I wanted built in, so I concentrated on the software development side. And I played games too of course, just like I did on every platform that had games. But that wasn't my primary reason for getting it.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Nothing can sustain Commodore. Commodore is dead. Dead because Jack Tramiel stormed out when he couldn't get his way. This was a good thing because we got the Amiga from it, particularly the awesome A1200. But to get it, Commodore had to suffer. Without that suffering they would have produced something different - probably closer to the ST or the C65.

It's assuming that it was the only way to have the A1200. In another time line they could have built it some time before, survived, make a profit and so launch the CD32 with a bit of more power. Then again succeed enough and so we will have the next CD32 models (CD32+ and CD64-3D) which were planned and so, more joy.

Please try to stop to be narrow minded and self repetitive, it really painful.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Ok thanks got it. To upgrade audio on A1200, you have to pay at least another A1200 worth of money.

I think you are exaggerating cost - simply it was not high demand on audio card for A1200.

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Audio quality sounds way worse than Cassette even before recorded to Cassette, I guess nowadays there is some lofi hiphop, punk or vaporwave aesthetics in it.

Paula is comparable in quality to Fairlight CMI - in ECS and AGA (as A1200) Paula with proper usage can easily outperform Fairlight CMI in terms of quality and speed. Probably you was too young and without technical knowledge to properly use Paula as HQ audio source.
With some HW modification audio quality can be way better (analog signal path is designed for average customer not for music use)

[Mikidi]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Paula is comparable in quality to Fairlight CMI - in ECS and AGA (as A1200) Paula with proper usage can easily outperform Fairlight CMI in terms of quality and speed. Probably you was too young and without technical knowledge to properly use Paula as HQ audio source.
With some HW modification audio quality can be way better (analog signal path is designed for average customer not for music use)

This might be cool and all with A500 in 80s, but in 1992 the PC scene was doing the HQ stuff.
Cant make chocolate candy from poo and by poo, I'm referring the custom Paula audio chip which was already old af in A1200.