What spec would the A1200 had launched with if it was up to YOU

[Predseda]

4MB FAST onboard. Thats all.

[tom256]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Is there any significant speed difference between 020 and 030 with same amount of Mhz?

Not much, around 10%. Modern turbo card with EC020 and fast memory can be equal or faster than 030 accelerator from 90's.

[Bren McGuire]

if it was up to me and if i knew people would be like this 30 years later i would not have released anything because these threads is just sad to see

[pixie]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Should have been launched without a disk drive and just a CD-ROM drive, floppy games are simplistic, hard drives are expensive, CD-ROM solves this problem and negates the need for either given the disk drive port on the machine.

And it could make it attractive to software houses in a time where cd roms where hard to copy

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Yeah, a lot of new machines were coming out in the early 90s and they had more advanced PCM synthetizers (SNES, Neo Geo, Atari Jaguar, Sega CD, etc.) Heck, the FM Towns from 1989 had a Ricoh RF5c68

Yeah, even the Gravis Ultrasound (for PCs) came out in 1992. 32 hardware channels with forward/bidi looping, free stereo panning, volume ramping and 16-bit sample support. Paula was quite outdated at the time, for sure.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by pixie

And it could make it attractive to software houses in a time where cd roms where hard to copy

And since your both seem to have only games in mind, best selling it without a keyboard as well, no?
Oh wait, we got this: it is called CD32

For me and may others at the time the reason for buying an Amiga was that is was NOT just a gaming console, but a full fledged general purpose computer with an advanced preemptive multitasking operating system capable of running all kinds of creativity and productivity software.

The first thing (the few) people were buying for the CDTV was an external floppy drive - later this was even included in the package…

[sokolovic]

A cd rom only computer is probably the worst idea ever among everything listed here. How do you save your works on this kind of machine ?

[redblade]

Sell A600HD with 68010 CPU @ 12MHz CPU with 512K RAM @ Slow RAM Location but FAST RAM with a empty slot available for people who are good with soldering Irons.

If the machine was released at the same time in 1992.

Pay the extra $2USD per 1000 for the 68EC020FG25 maybe clocked at 21.xMHz Or half clocked to 24.xMHz.

Made available with CD32 Joypad and Street Fighter II (Not shitty US GOLD version) by CAPCOM bundle.

More ASM examples on how to use AGA at launch.

CBM advertise external RAM expansion with Motorola 56K DSP for tracker heads that could also be used as a low speed modem.

[tarr]

Real hardware sprites, six or eight audio channel and faster CPU for 3d games.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

A cd rom only computer is probably the worst idea ever among everything listed here. How do you save your works on this kind of machine ?

Not defending the idea of a CD only A1200 (aka CD32) but to be fair, he didn't say "remove the external floppy connector" ;-)

[MortenSkov]

I agree with Bruce that launching the A1200 in 1991 would be a massive boost.

If I just stay with the premise of the original post the A1200 should have launched in 1992 with 60mb hd - 3.5 inch, so the case should probably be slightly larger, but it would help keep the price down - and 1 or 2 mb of fast memory to take full advantage of the 14.2 mhz 020.

Oh, and the CD1200 should be ready to launch alongside the CD32 when it launches in the fall of 1993 - or 1992, if we get Bruce in charge. ;-)

[Havie]

Definitely needed 2mb of fast ram - 4mb overall would have helped game developers as well as doubling the speed of the 1200 from launch.

And as lots of games companies seemed unable to make games with music and sound effects (have no idea why - even the ST with it's weedy sound chip did better sometimes) - an upgrade to the sound - 8 channels?

Hard disk would have been nice - there obviosuly were had disk models but they weren't the base standard.

But perhaps we are thinking about this the wrong way.

What if you keep the 1200 basic model as it (we have seen that it's really not too shabby when programmed by an enthusiastic committed programmer) and they also released other models not just based on having a hard disk but with an 030 processor as an official pack.

If this system - 030, hard disk 4mb memory was a high end option, I wouldn't have been surprised if this eventually became the preferred one (as long as the bug games companies made their games for it - Doom anyone). Yes, it would have been expensive but cheaper than the equivalent PC and we have seen that people spent money to play games (and they still do).

[grond]

HD-floppy drive, 020 CPU without fastmem on daughterboard (upgrade boards and upgraded baseconfigs would then be available later on), no RF modulator, no PCMCIA, 3.5" IDE connector with 40MB harddisk in a slightly larger case. Possibly internal connector for a scandoubler.

Assuming AGA was up for enhancements, 32 bit blitter, chunky 8bit mode, no update to sprite engine compared to ECS, 16 bit audio 4ch or 8bit audio 8ch, panning, wider transfer from floppy to avoid half-speed spinning when using HD floppy disks.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by MortenSkov

I agree with Bruce that launching the A1200 in 1991 would be a massive boost.

If I just stay with the premise of the original post the A1200 should have launched in 1992 with 60mb hd - 3.5 inch, so the case should probably be slightly larger, but it would help keep the price down - and 1 or 2 mb of fast memory to take full advantage of the 14.2 mhz 020.

Oh, and the CD1200 should be ready to launch alongside the CD32 when it launches in the fall of 1993 - or 1992, if we get Bruce in charge. ;-)

An Amiga 1200 with 2MB fastRAM and a 20MB hard disk in 1991 would've been pretty great, just in time for important games like Wolfenstein 3D, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, etc.

[buzzybee]

Commodore should have defined a controller standard by 1992 at the A1200 release. They should have taken care of a capable mass storage device with capable copy protection, and should have killed the Chip-Mem bottleneck.

So, the ideal A1200 of 1992 would have been launched with a quality 6-button controller, 2 MB Chip, and 1 MB Fast-Mem, and a built-in CD-ROM drive.

Additional stuff like more Paula channels, more hardware sprites, chunky pixel mode, etc., would have been welcome. But only if appropriately implemented and easy to handle for game developers. As is, the AGA chipset feels like it is bolted onto the existing hardware, and therefore it takes much more effort to get comparable results to other platforms.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

Yeah, even the Gravis Ultrasound (for PCs) came out in 1992. 32 hardware channels with forward/bidi looping, free stereo panning, volume ramping and 16-bit sample support. Paula was quite outdated at the time, for sure.

Gravis Ultrasound

Computer Gaming World in 1993 criticized the UltraSound's Sound Blaster emulation and lack of native support in games, stating that "it is hard to recommend this card to anyone other than a Windows MIDI musician"

$200 for a card with iffy compatibility and lacking support in games.

I'm all for improvements to Paula so long as they don't cost an arm and a leg. But the idea that it was outdated compared to the very latest (announced in October 1992) top-of-the-line PC sound card is silly.

However PC sound cards did have one thing the Amiga didn't - synth sound. An OPL3 chipset should have quite cheap and easy to put in the Amiga, along with a mixer with panning. I would pull each channel out of Paula separately so they can be panned. With 4 channels of digitized sound plus 18 channels of synth sound it would exceed the capabilities of the vast majority of PC sound cards without costing a fortune.

[UltraNarwhal]

Same specs but with ability for 128 16 colour hardware sprites of 8x8 - 64x64, a rear expansion port (like C64) to allow cartridge based games and peripherals.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Gravis Ultrasound$200 for a card with iffy compatibility and lacking support in games.

I'm all for improvements to Paula so long as they don't cost an arm and a leg. But the idea that it was outdated compared to the very latest (announced in October 1992) top-of-the-line PC sound card is silly.

However PC sound cards did have one thing the Amiga didn't - synth sound. An OPL3 chipset should have quite cheap and easy to put in the Amiga, along with a mixer with panning. I would pull each channel out of Paula separately so they can be panned. With 4 channels of digitized sound plus 18 channels of synth sound it would exceed the capabilities of the vast majority of PC sound cards without costing a fortune.

The YMF262 was released in 1990 as Wikipedia says, and it would've been way too recent for Amiga 1200. Plus the developers didn't take full advantage of its FM Synth capabilities, instead they just used it for lazy MIDI conversions, so I'd argue an OPL2 chip would've been just fine

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

@pandy71
The magic of the Alice chip, like the Agnus before, was the precomputed ROM lookups. You couldn't fit Alice and Lisa on the same chip until 1998 and a die shrink alone couldn't do it.

This was discussed at the 1998 Amiga DevCon in St. Louis. The only way to get Alice small enough to fit was to reduce the bus width to 8 bits for the blitter and compensate by octupling the clock speed instead of merely quadrupling it.

I don't see ROM LUT's in Alice schematics - largest block is IMHO barrel shifter (and to be honest i don't see need for any ROM to perform Blitter functionality) and technology present this time allowed for 1 million + transistors - definitely aggregated - and i've heard many weird stories - some of them sounds bit silly. Definitely VLSI and HP has capability to put 1 million transistors on chip there.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Gravis Ultrasound$200 for a card with iffy compatibility and lacking support in games.

Issue was inability developers to provide proper GUS support.