Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by logo

Amiga 1200 was so great ! My favorite Amiga computer of All Time.
I was disappointed by the OCS/ECS owners who could but refused to buy AGA machines.
I hope now you enjoy the modern computer world we get, without any Amiga, because it's the result of your choice. Don't blame the Amiga 1200 for something you chose ! 30 years later, maybe it would be time to face the reality...

LoL, and in what reality Amiga could've survived without gigantic architecture shift just because more ppl would've bought A1200?

[logo]

Originally Posted by Promilus

LoL, and in what reality Amiga could've survived without gigantic architecture shift just because more ppl would've bought A1200?

LoL, noone can say and you neither !


Only thing I know for sure: not enough sells was the best way to kill the Amiga quickly and it did.

[huggy70]

The home computer era was on its last legs. The A1200 was one of the last of its kind and nothing could have stopped that. There where only 2 directions left: console and big box.

The commodore big box amigas were hopelessly overpriced and didn't have the sexiness factor in design like the later apple products

With CD32 Commo tried but it was too little too late...

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by logo

LoL, noone can say and you neither !


Only thing I know for sure: not enough sell was the best way to kill the Amiga quickly and it did.

Sure I can. 68k was EOL by that time with focus going to AIM (PPC) and you know it. So even if Commodore did survive Amiga as we know it would not. Deal with it already.

[paul1981]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Amiga 1200 was too weak. Should had come with at least 28mhz 030, 2mb fast ram, chunky mode and hard disk to stay compettitive and be able to run Doom

The A1200 predates Doom, so Commodore would also need a time machine.

[logo]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Sure I can. 68k was EOL by that time with focus going to AIM (PPC) and you know it. So even if Commodore did survive Amiga as we know it would not. Deal with it already.

Amiga isn't a CPU. With more money Commodore would have been able to select another CPU. From Coldfire to PPC or PA-RISC, all kinds of moves were possible. You're not able to come back in the past and to create a fork in the timeline, are you ? Your comment is hypothetical only. Deal with it !

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by logo

Amiga isn't a CPU. With more money Commodore would have been able to select another CPU. From Coldfire to PPC or PA-RISC, all kinds of moves were possible. You're not able to come back in the past and to create a fork in the timeline, are you ? Your comment is hypothetical only. Deal with it !

Sure it isn't. It's 68k oriented chipset and OS. Delete 68k from the equation and what you get? So... now you've made some arguments:

Coldfire - not a directly compatible processor. New OS and existing apps would either lag behind 060 or need recompilation. In the end CPUs were considered lowend as V4 which had at least some compute power was released when desktop computers reached twice or thrice the speed. Including PPC. And of course development stopped with V5 made for single customer. Dead end.

PPC - entirely new architecture and it was developed when Commodore went bankrupt. Let's just revise how well it went. First H&P and P5 did create hybrid design. Then they were supposed to create real native PPC OS and hardware. It did took them a lot longer than expected. P5 went bankrupt. Several "amiga" ppc models were introduced afterwards with the newest badass platform is based on pretty old PPC core and costs as much as the newest and most badass x86 gaming PC. Yay! Another dead end!

PA-RISC - another one entirely incompatible platform which was supposed to be x86 killer and ended up pretty much dead in 2005. Yet another dead end!

It's obviously great amiga community has such zealous fanboys, if only more ppl were using less reason and more emotions choosing their hardware...

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Apple were just lucky. Steve Jobs nearly killed the company with his wacky ideas - they fired him just in time. Then Apple screwed up mightily and Jobs just happened to have what they needed. It still wasn't enough. Only Microsoft's greed saved them.

But hey, imagine if Jobs had joined Commodore instead! Then the Amiga 500 might have turned into this:-

Say what you will but that's one sexy phone.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Say what you will but that's one sexy phone.

I would buy it in a heartbeat.

My Samsung Galaxy A01 Core doesn't have the stuff that AMIGAphone500 has. 20 years into the 21st century and they can't even give me a frick'n notepad!

I bet it wouldn't randomly get stuck on and drain the battery in 5 minutes without warning either.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by paul1981

The A1200 predates Doom, so Commodore would also need a time machine.

A company needs to think future as well and not expect the 2d old same to dominate gaming for centuries

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

A company needs to think future as well and not expect the 2d old same to dominate gaming for centuries

They saw Wolfenstein 3d before the A1200 was released but it was too late for design changes. But probably the reason for why CD32 got C2P in Akiko.

If you look at design vs parts cost, it would cost very little to throw in a faster CPU, yes it cost a few more buck but very little R&D needed, but then they would also have needed fast ram and that combo maybe pushed it over the treshold… But technically, a 28 MHz 020 + some fastmem would had run Wolfenstein just fine and the maybe ppl would have been less dissapointed ;-)

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

They saw Wolfenstein 3d before the A1200 was released but it was too late for design changes. But probably the reason for why CD32 got C2P in Akiko.

If you look at design vs parts cost, it would cost very little to throw in a faster CPU, yes it cost a few more buck but very little R&D needed, but then they would also have needed fast ram and that combo maybe pushed it over the treshold… But technically, a 28 MHz 020 + some fastmem would had run Wolfenstein just fine and the maybe ppl would have been less dissapointed ;-)

Note that in november 1993 (before Doom release), ID Software said in an interview in French magazine Joystick that they were in discussion with "Amiga" to licence Wolfenstein 3D for a CD32 conversion.

So Commodore wasn't totally clueless.

http://obligement.free.fr/articles/itwidsoftware.php

[desiv]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

So Commodore wasn't totally clueless.

I suppose that depends on who you are talking about at Commodore. ;-)
(sorry)...

Although that is after the A1200's release, so it wouldn't have helped there.
Depending on how early they were talking, it's possible that was too late for the CD32 design even, although if those discussions happened early enough, they might have possibly been a partial driver for Akiko...
No, as I read it (well, Google Translate there), this was after the CD32 was finalized...
So, interesting, but too late to affect either machine's abilities...

[Megalomaniac]

How much would a PC capable of running Wolfenstein 3D have cost in late 1992 though? Was it realistic to expect a £400 A1200 to be capable of it? Maybe it could have been 28Mhz and fastRAM for £5-600, but could games designed around such hardware be feasible from floppies? Add a hard drive and you're into the £6-700 range, which is probably more than people were willing to pay, at least until there was software to use it? I wonder if putting a 68000 on alongside the 68020, for compatibility and a potential 40-50% speed boost if programmers used it, would have made more sense? Would there be technical issues with that?

And how outdated would a budget 1992 PC have been by Christmas 1994? By that time the A1200 was cut off by Commodore's demise and the lack of new users that year, but it was just starting to hit its stride, with stuff like Super Stardust, Banshee and Pinball Illusions, and getting things like UFO and Bloodnet first (and more colourful and faster). Obviously the Playstation and Saturn did things a stock A1200 realistically couldn't, so it wouldn't've truly lasted, but we know there would have been more fun to be had before we had to upgrade or move on. I never had an A1200 in its heyday, but I was a bit jealous of people who did.

[sokolovic]

IMO, the only thing the A1200 was lacking is a 40Mb HD as standard. This is what was asked by american developpers to continue supporting the Amiga.
The users would have added more ram quickly after that, to avoid launching games by a command line on boot and to benefits some extra speed.

A500 example showed that the ONLY thing the vast majority of Amiga users were keen (and able ) to do is adding extra ram by the trapdoor. .

[desiv]

I just wish Commodore would have put a SIMM socket or two on the board for Fast RAM addition.
I wouldn't think that would have increased the cost too much and would have made at least adding some Fast RAM an affordable option for more...
Even those 8M Fast RAM cards were outside my price range back then after getting the 1200.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

They saw Wolfenstein 3d before the A1200 was released but it was too late for design changes. But probably the reason for why CD32 got C2P in Akiko.

If you look at design vs parts cost, it would cost very little to throw in a faster CPU, yes it cost a few more buck but very little R&D needed, but then they would also have needed fast ram and that combo maybe pushed it over the treshold…

But technically, a 28 MHz 020 + some fastmem would had run Wolfenstein just fine and the maybe ppl would have been less dissapointed ;-)

Technically Wolf 3D could run on a stock A1200 with hard drive. With 1MB FastRAM it would run well, which was proved by Szilard Biro with Wolf4Amiga. This port actually runs fine on a stock A1200 - including full music and sound effects - just a bit slower.

So the problem with Wolf 3D wasn't the hardware, just a lack of will to do a proper port. id ignored the A1200 because there weren't enough users to justify the effort. They couldn't even be bothered producing an SNES port after being given a US$100,000 advance to do it!

Wolfenstein 3D

Imagineer bought the rights for the game, and commissioned id to port the game to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for a US$100,000 advance. The team was busy with the development of Doom, plus their work on Spear of Destiny, and ignored the project for seven or eight months, finally hiring Rebecca Heineman to do the work. She made no progress on the port, however, and the id team members instead spent three weeks frantically learning how to make SNES games and creating the port by March 1993. This version was written in C and compiled in the 65816 assembly language, making use of binary space partitioning rather than raycasting in order to give it speed.

Another machine that didn't get it was the Sega Mega Drive, though it was proven to be possible by a homebrew version that was released in 2021. This uses a dithering effect similar to Dread, and looks pretty good in 32 colors!

[ Show youtube player ]

Further proof that a stock A1200 could do it is this Wolf 3D level using the Dread engine, proving that it could have been done on the A500 too!

[ Show youtube player ]

What all this proves is that in 1992 the A1200 was quite capable of hosting awesome games. The real problem wasn't the hardware, it was lack of talent and willingness to rise to the challenge. This might have been different if more A1200 were sold, which means the most important thing was to get it out ASAP. The only real failure of the A1200 was not releasing it sooner. A year earlier texture mapped 3D was just a curiosity and affordable PCs weren't as powerful, so the A1200 wouldn't have been disappointing and would have had a good user base by the time Wolfenstein 3D arrived.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

How much would a PC capable of running Wolfenstein 3D have cost in late 1992 though? Was it realistic to expect a £400 A1200 to be capable of it?

Yes. Not as well as a PC costing 3 times as much, but you could always upgrade it with FastRAM and perhaps a faster CPU if you weren't happy with the stock machine's speed. By 1994 you could buy a RAM board with 1MB for ~£90 and a 28MHz 030 board with 1MB for £188.

For context, Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the SNES, Acorn Archimedes, Apple Macintosh, and Atari Jaguar in 1994, the 3DO in 1995 and the Apple IIGS in 1998. So by the time other platforms got it the cost of upgrading your A1200 to play it better wasn't onerous.

Maybe it could have been 28Mhz and fastRAM for £5-600, but could games designed around such hardware be feasible from floppies?

Yes. Wolf 3D needed a hard drive because PCs had them, but a floppy drive based game with similar content could easily have been produced. The Faery Tale Adventure - released way back in 1987 - had over 17000 'screens' that were loaded in real time with hardly noticeable pauses. The A1200 with its wider display DMA bandwidth can load and decode data off floppy disk with less CPU usage.

Add a hard drive and you're into the £6-700 range, which is probably more than people were willing to pay, at least until there was software to use it?

Hard drive prices were coming down, and Commodore themselves had the A1200HD/40 which was a good price (and a pretty good Seagate drive too. Pity the later 120MB version wasn't so good). And you could have lots of fun with floppies while saving up to get a hard drive. That was the beauty of the A1200, you didn't have to front up with the dosh to get everything at once.

I wonder if putting a 68000 on alongside the 68020, for compatibility and a potential 40-50% speed boost if programmers used it, would have made more sense? Would there be technical issues with that?

Pointless. For full compatibility you would also need a KS1.3 ROM and 'Ranger' memory. The 68000 would be of no benefit speed-wise without major hardware changes. Better to patch games that weren't compatible or just accept that a few wouldn't work. Keep your old A500 to play them!

And how outdated would a budget 1992 PC have been by Christmas 1994? By that time the A1200 was cut off by Commodore's demise and the lack of new users that year, but it was just starting to hit its stride, with stuff like Super Stardust, Banshee and Pinball Illusions, and getting things like UFO and Bloodnet first (and more colourful and faster).

A budget 286 or 386SX PC was looking pretty sick by 1994. By that time PC developers had had enough of catering to the low end and wanted to push the envelope the lazy way - by specifying a PC more powerful than what people typically had. They expected you to buy a new one if you wanted to play their latest games. Then Windows 95 came out and suddenly you needed the most powerful PC you could get your hands on, and that trend never stopped.

But this was not the home computer way. We expected to buy a machine and use it for many years with minimal upgrades. The Amiga was for those of us who didn't want to be constantly buying new computers just to keep up. Home computer developers enjoyed trying to get more out of existing hardware rather than taking the lazy way out, a trend that has also continued until today. Some of us are just getting into it 30 years later!

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Technically Wolf 3D could run on a stock A1200 with hard drive. With 1MB FastRAM it would run well, which was proved by Szilard Biro with Wolf4Amiga. This port actually runs fine on a stock A1200 - including full music and sound effects - just a bit slower.

So the problem with Wolf 3D wasn't the hardware, just a lack of will to do a proper port. id ignored the A1200 because there weren't enough users to justify the effort. They couldn't even be bothered producing an SNES port after being given a US$100,000 advance to do it!

ID made the Jaguar versions of Wolf 3D and Doom themselves so the lack of potential users didn't bothered them. There was certainly not any lacks of user on the SNES, yet they took their time, for technical reasons.
And these technical reasons are also why they didn't made an Amiga port : they were thinking the Amiga just could'nt do it.

[Promilus]

Every successful project comes from careful consideration... how much time and money to invest into a project. How big will be the reward... SNES was not a platform of choice for id due to insufficient performance, despite the fairly large userbase. FX did solve some problems but in the end SNES DOOM is made by 3rd party and uses different engine whatsoever. AFAIK all Jaguar, 32X and Saturn ports were recently heavily improved when ppl actually learned how to write on those platform efficiently. Amiga required special coding AND reward for that wasn't so big due to miniscule number of AGA users back then. So there was absolutely no point in doing Amiga port by id. But even if they did it would not translate to more money for Commodore... most likely it would only mean more money for Phase5 or other turbo makers. And even less of the usual "economical" argument Bruce throws left and right. And it the end it would have changed nothing.