02 November 2019, 16:54 | #41 | |||
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,414
|
Quote:
Quote:
The idea of offering a pro machine was the right one - but it lacked crucial pro features and was therefore overpriced. For the midrange machine: A cost reduced A1000 with a second floppy drive bay, ROM instead of the piggyback board and a inbuild slot for more RAM would have been a winner. The "Rejuvenator" or the GBA are showing, that is it not a hard thing to do - should have been easy for a billion dollar company. For this A1000CR Commodore should have provided a "sidecar" with Buster and ZorroII slots. Quote:
|
|||
02 November 2019, 18:03 | #42 |
Banned
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Vienna/Austria
Posts: 84
|
When I look back to Amiga 500 times.
0.5 MB additional RAM and second floppy was enough. Amiga 500 was so good so nobody need any other extesion for it. |
02 November 2019, 18:06 | #43 |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,414
|
|
23 November 2019, 18:22 | #44 |
Insider
Join Date: Nov 2019
Location: Paris
Posts: 85
|
I sold my Amiga 500 in 1993 or 1994 and bought ab 486 DX 33 instead with 4 MB memory and 340 MB harddisk from seagate to play Origins Strike Commander. I got 250 Euro for my Amiga and paid 3500 for my PC. 2 years later I changed everything for an 486-DX4-100.
|
24 November 2019, 17:43 | #45 |
Shameless recidivist
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Duluth, Minnesota (USA)
Age: 38
Posts: 265
|
The big thing that 386 systems offered that no stock Amiga did (and almost no accelerators, either!) was the option for high-speed cache RAM on the motherboard. Of course, the later 680x0s had L1 cache right on the CPU, but it wasn't until the 040 that there was more than a tiny bit of it; the 386 has no L1 cache, but most decent 386 boards gave you the option for anywhere from 64KB up to even 512KB if you wanted to drop the money on it. That makes a significant difference in performance.
|
25 November 2019, 13:58 | #46 | |
C= and Amiga aficionado!
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Italy
Posts: 325
|
Quote:
Textured 3D games were starting to become a thing in the early '90s (Wing Commander immediately comes to mind, not to mention DOOM) and the Amiga suffered a lot when comparisons were made to the PC world. By the way it's not like PC developers were eager to develop on the Amiga in the first place and that of course made things worse. |
|
25 November 2019, 14:56 | #47 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Norfolk UK
Age: 43
Posts: 433
|
I see the original post took an unexpected turn I felt the Amiga was still very competitive with the 386 scene at the time and that I was not missing out in any great way. The LucasArts adventures like Monkey Island 2/Fate of Atlantis were making their way to the Amiga still and relatively comparable despite the lack of VGA and hard drive.
For me the PC started to move further away from my A500+ when the 486 came into town in a more mainstream way. Things like UFO Enemy Unknown which ran nicely on it, Doom etc. just seemed to be out of reach. I remember being envious of an uncle that had a 486 running knowing the Amiga was lagging when I first saw it. |
25 November 2019, 17:15 | #48 |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Scunthorpe/United Kingdom
Posts: 2,053
|
I had an A1000, my friend had a 386.
I was blown away by Ultima: Underworld and was quite, quite jealous of the PC - he had a monitor with crisp pixels, my A1000 ran on a 14" colour portable via RF. But that Adlib MIDI music was bloody awful as were the spot-effects. X-Wing and TIE Fighter were pretty bloody cool also. MIDI music sounded bad though. Platform games were awful. Controls felt wrong, scrolling was atrocious, again sound was utter shit. I would have liked to get a PC at that point if I could have afforded it (no chance) but only to accompany my A1000, not to replace it. |
25 November 2019, 17:58 | #49 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Dublin, then Glasgow
Posts: 6,374
|
Eh? One of the big advantages the PC of the era had was a hard drive more or less as standard. So games and software could be installed and you didn't have to deal with endless floppy swapping. That's exactly why the first thing I added to my Amiga when I got it was a hard drive.
|
25 November 2019, 18:40 | #50 | |
Zap´em
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Germany
Posts: 604
|
Quote:
|
|
25 November 2019, 18:46 | #51 |
C= and Amiga aficionado!
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Italy
Posts: 325
|
|
25 November 2019, 19:27 | #52 |
Zap´em
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Germany
Posts: 604
|
*MOST* of the programs are NODOS, nitpicker. From my old disk boxes I could install like 10%. Even DOS programs are hard to install because they use unique libraries or have other restrictions that prevent them from installing to a harddisk.
|
25 November 2019, 19:31 | #53 |
C= and Amiga aficionado!
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Italy
Posts: 325
|
That's more accurate.
Still doesn't make an hard drive for the A500 "useless" as you claimed before. |
25 November 2019, 19:39 | #54 |
Retro Gamer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Underworld
Age: 51
Posts: 4,069
|
Second this...
Played all of those from HD on A500+ back in the day before whdload and jtd: * Civilization * Colonization * UFO: Enemy Unknown (x-com) * Syndicate * The Settler * Sim City * Burntime * Monkey Island 2 * Indiana Jones and Fate of Atlantis * Beyond the steel sky * Chassmaster 2000 * Simon the Sorcerrer There were few other games, but those were major games I've used 20MB HD for. I remember thinking of upgrading HD just to be able to have them all loaded at the same time, but reasoned that it is better to upgrade to A1200 - it was cheaper to get IDE HD instead of SCSI. (had no idea that you could use XT IDE mode in it) Quite few games had installer, but mostly it would be removed when game were hacked. http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_hd=yes Last edited by Anubis; 25 November 2019 at 19:48. |
25 November 2019, 19:46 | #55 |
Zap´em
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Germany
Posts: 604
|
I stand my ground. Why would I get a harddisk for my A500 because I can run 10 programs on it. And the rest not. And in fact many times you would need an A500+ because you need more chip memory when you start programs from harddisk.
I did try all this. Like I said 10%. Too little and hence USELESS. |
25 November 2019, 19:53 | #56 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: sthlm
Posts: 226
|
thats if you want to run whdload?
Native game installers dont need 2 megs of chipram right? |
25 November 2019, 19:54 | #57 | |
Retro Gamer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Underworld
Age: 51
Posts: 4,069
|
Quote:
My cousin who also had A500 at the time, and actually had it before me, had no idea how to use Workbench just because he never had a reason to use it. It was far more than 10 games, plus a lot of other stuff I found on cover disks at the time. From application programs, probably most used was DPaint, x-copy and OctaMed. From what I remember, this might be off a bit, most games would work, but some would work better if you had more memory. For example, Colonization would load more music/sound files if you had 1.5MB instead of 1MB. Sam was with Settler iirc. |
|
25 November 2019, 19:56 | #58 |
Zap´em
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Germany
Posts: 604
|
No you would often have problems with programs that use just a few kilobytes more chip memory when starting from harddisk, just enough kilobytes more that they won't run on a basic A500 anymore, even when started from CLI and not Workbench.
Last edited by Zak; 25 November 2019 at 20:06. |
25 November 2019, 19:58 | #59 |
C= and Amiga aficionado!
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Italy
Posts: 325
|
Well, of course everyone is entitled to have his own opinion.
And I personally did the same back then: didn't bother to purchase an HDD for my A500 (mostly because I felt it was too expensive) But it was the very first expansion I got for the A1200; issues were more or less the same (it's not like software houses were pushing for DOS-friendly games all of a sudden) yet I believe it would be hard to label an HDD as useless anyway. Again, just my opinion... likely also slightly biased because I didn't use the Amiga just to play games. |
25 November 2019, 20:06 | #60 | |
Retro Gamer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Underworld
Age: 51
Posts: 4,069
|
Quote:
It was worth getting one, if you could afford one at the time. I remember some game, but can't remember what game it was, that strongly recommended HD install in manuals. Was it x-Com or Boddy Blows? IIRC it was because of frequent disk changes. |
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
1992-98 ex-Amiga developers DOS games | nobody | Retrogaming General Discussion | 5 | 31 October 2017 20:03 |
Amiga C compilers from 1991-1992 years | Dr. MefistO | Coders. General | 0 | 15 May 2016 12:01 |
beating Populous | demoniac | support.Games | 8 | 17 December 2015 02:39 |
A game featuring a beating heart as a boss? | Cauterize | Looking for a game name ? | 2 | 13 January 2010 22:31 |
The One for Amiga Games 43 (Apr 1992) pages 74-77 | mk1 | AMR suggestions and feedback | 3 | 02 February 2009 07:01 |
|
|