Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[graffias79]

I loved my 1200 and used it to get online throughout the 1990s. I'm glad that I could add a new CPU & FAST RAM via the trapdoor effortlessly. The PCMCIA port was an amazing idea and forward thinking on the part of Commodore. These days I'm thankful for it because I can add a compact flash drive or network card easily.

There were only a couple of things I wished for back in the day; I hoped that the serial port could handle faster speeds when using 64+ color screen modes, and I think that any Amiga after the A3000 should have had an Amber chip onboard and an HD15 monitor connector by default. That would have simplified a lot of things to do with the graphics.

Edit: I forgot to add that there was one buzzword that I heard from just about EVERYONE where I grew up (small midwestern town in the United States) when it came to owning a computer. "IBM Compatible". I think it was drilled into everyone's head that computers needed to be "IBM Compatible". You could sell them the most overpriced underpowered turd but they would have been happy as long as it was "IBM Compatible".

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by graffias79

Edit: I forgot to add that there was one buzzword that I heard from just about EVERYONE where I grew up (small midwestern town in the United States) when it came to owning a computer. "IBM Compatible". I think it was drilled into everyone's head that computers needed to be "IBM Compatible". You could sell them the most overpriced underpowered turd but they would have been happy as long as it was "IBM Compatible".

Tbh it was pretty important, IBM ruled the roost back then hardware wise, and the IBM was synonymous with compatible software and hardware, it’s no wonder people demanded it, comparable with people wanting Microsoft Windows for their new PC to get the most software support.

[Kyle_Human]

Disappointed? No, not at all.

A lot of people in this thread think that the 1200 was rubbish, saying stuff like some cheap 386 could beat it. That wasn't true at all.

A bare 386 system with 2MB ram and no hard disk and no monitor and no sound card does nothing except waste space. You have to add at least the first two to have a working computer as VGA doesn't use a TV set, and floppy-only PCs didn't exist anymore in 1992. So it's at least twice the price of an entry level 1200, and still has no sound. To get a PC that beats it in all areas you have to spend a lot of money. Even in 1995 in the UK 486DX2 computers were thousands of pounds.

Some others would say the 1200 wasn't as impressive as 500 was when it was new. But the 500 was also more expensive at launch than the 1200 was. The 500 only really took off when it got much cheaper. 1200 in 1992 was aimed at a lower market segment than the 500 originally was, so it's design and features were appropriate.

The only things I would change about the 1200 are relatively minor, and only mattered in the early days.

- 2.5" hard drive was a gamble on parts prices and they lost, so should've been 3.5" instead.

- The springy linear keyboard is annoying, so should've been mitsumi's tactile KPQ switch instead.

- They should've had a ram expansion card ready at launch, (or a small motherboard cache,) and they should've sold some more expensive packs with them and hard drives already fitted + probably some voucher to get a discount on monitors.

Those three things don't matter in 2020, as we all have CF cards, 030 turbo cards and keyboard adapters. So on the whole I'm totally happy with it. I like that it's more capable than A500 was, smaller on the desk (with no A520 modulator hemorrhoid either), and keeps its expansions inside the case instead of in a big sidecar.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Old_Bob

Well, for me, that happened as soon as I got my Fast RAM board. It's fair to say I was rather surprised at just how crippled even a 14mhz CPU was when stuck with Chip RAM only. As others have stated, it really should have had Fast RAM as standard. And, for not much more than the price of a burger at McDonalds, a 28mhz CPU.

That, along with AGA graphics makes the thing far more of a generational step, as opposed to merely an increment over ECS.

B

Exactly, I hated it when it came out, because you know, we were looking at the Atari Falcon and that one had 030, DSP, more RAM.. But I bought one anyway after a while.. and it sure didn't feel revolutionary over the A500... BUT.. the moment I got a Blizzard 1220 + a small HDD then "bang", I was in love with it.

[Kyle_Human]

The Falcon was a paper tiger though, right from day one.

I understand the impulse behind the Falcon and the 1200 though, it's the same as any new generation in a platform war.

Atari saw that the Amiga's success came from being the most powerful for only a slight increase in price. Commodore saw that the ST's success came from being less powerful but cheaper. So each company tried to compete in the other's area, Atari with a powerful computer and Commodore with a cheaper one.

For the A1200 it goes okay, people might go "oh I wish it could do X, I wish it could do Y" but they could afford it so they bought it. The falcon does everything in the world supposedly, but the price is way too high. Hundreds of pounds more than A1200 for a mere 1MB ram machine.

Frankly the way that the falcon tries to be a wonder machine doesn't make sense and makes it unsuitable for basically every market. If you've got a 1MB model for game playing 12 year olds, then why drive the cost up with two different hard drive controllers he won't use?

Or if it's for a professional user, why is it in the STE case when the TT/MSTE case is already there and much more practical? Does the professional enjoy the spongy STE keyboard or dismantling the whole computer just to add ram? Does a professional think it's great the OS still needs a third party VDI?

This isn't even counting the weird falcon stuff like the internal speaker, the timing bug, how underclocked it is, the wrong audio in/out levels...

In comparison, Commodore gave us A1200, A4000-030, A4000-40, A4000T. There's maybe too big a gap between 1200 and 4000-030, but it's a nice logical progression, each model has clear purpose. The low end model is cheap, it doesn't have so many features, but the features it has are all sensible ones and they all work properly. It easily welcomes expansion and upgrades with the trapdoor slot.

So the falcon was never a worry, and if A1200 could do everything falcon promised to do, you couldn't afford one anyway.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

The Falcon was a paper tiger though, right from day one.

I understand the impulse behind the Falcon and the 1200 though, it's the same as any new generation in a platform war.

Atari saw that the Amiga's success came from being the most powerful for only a slight increase in price. Commodore saw that the ST's success came from being less powerful but cheaper. So each company tried to compete in the other's area, Atari with a powerful computer and Commodore with a cheaper one.

For the A1200 it goes okay, people might go "oh I wish it could do X, I wish it could do Y" but they could afford it so they bought it. The falcon does everything in the world supposedly, but the price is way too high. Hundreds of pounds more than A1200 for a mere 1MB ram machine.

Frankly the way that the falcon tries to be a wonder machine doesn't make sense and makes it unsuitable for basically every market. If you've got a 1MB model for game playing 12 year olds, then why drive the cost up with two different hard drive controllers he won't use?

Or if it's for a professional user, why is it in the STE case when the TT/MSTE case is already there and much more practical? Does the professional enjoy the spongy STE keyboard or dismantling the whole computer just to add ram? Does a professional think it's great the OS still needs a third party VDI?

This isn't even counting the weird falcon stuff like the internal speaker, the timing bug, how underclocked it is, the wrong audio in/out levels...

In comparison, Commodore gave us A1200, A4000-030, A4000-40, A4000T. There's maybe too big a gap between 1200 and 4000-030, but it's a nice logical progression, each model has clear purpose. The low end model is cheap, it doesn't have so many features, but the features it has are all sensible ones and they all work properly. It easily welcomes expansion and upgrades with the trapdoor slot.

So the falcon was never a worry, and if A1200 could do everything falcon promised to do, you couldn't afford one anyway.

Ye, now with the benefit of hindsight and dissecting the inner workings of the Falcon we know it too was crippled. (Although I seem to remember price dropped sharply not long after launch after Atari decided to abandon it...)

And I've accepted the strategy Commodore had which was to basically create affordable machines and then let people upgrade later. I was a student at the time and surely appreciated the low price of the A1200.

It's just that, surely, when the 1200 was designed they already had a clear vision for the CD32, and that one was a console the majority of people wouldn't upgrade, so all devs would develop games for the lowest common denominator which is the slow base config and not some upgraded A1200.

Some years ago I was wondering about having 1.5 ChipRAM + 0.5MB FastRAM. Now, far from everyone agreed it would have been a good idea, but just maybe not the stupidest move either. The devs would probably have come up with good ways to exploit the fast memory.
Even the unreleased Xbox Series X has RAM that comes in 2 different speeds.

Now of course, none of the above is relevant anyway, other shit got in the way C< so... but for a brief moment in history we could have had slightly better launch games.. or something..

[Kyle_Human]

Consoles aren't as fixed and non upgradable as you think.

I mean, yes MegaCD or 32x was idiocy. But the N64 and Playstation had a ram expansion and dualshock respectively that they managed to get in everyone's hands a few years into the systems' lives. They did it by bundling them in later packs, and bundling them with a game that required it.

Although that's moot anyway in CD32's case because it was never going to last long enough to have a perfect dark or ape escape.

To be honest the CD32 was rubbish, it was selling well but if commodore survived to the playstation's launch it would've cratered, and probably taken a lot of commodore's (positive) reputation with it too.

When the Amiga strategy depended on putting a real computer in the hands of adolescent gamers, a dedicated Amiga console is the enemy within.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

Consoles aren't as fixed and non upgradable as you think.

Clearly, this is not what I implied in any way. ;-)
My point was that devs go for the lowest common denominator to reach the biggest possible number of sales. And normally all games release in the early life of a console target the out of the box hardware. And the CD32 had no cheap/obvious upgrade path that could be bundled with games in the future.
So it was doomed to get whatever the A1200 was getting + CD music to make use of the storage space and the music playing capability.

But hey, once the TF360 is released
[ Show youtube player ]
someone will probably put a plastic case around it with a Quake sticker, put Quake /autoboot on a CF card on it and sell it as Quake for the CD32 on ebay. Performance worries - no more

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

I mean, yes MegaCD or 32x was idiocy. But the N64 and Playstation had a ram expansion and dualshock respectively that they managed to get in everyone's hands a few years into the systems' lives. They did it by bundling them in later packs, and bundling them with a game that required it.

Although that's moot anyway in CD32's case because it was never going to last long enough to have a perfect dark or ape escape.

To be honest the CD32 was rubbish, it was selling well but if commodore survived to the playstation's launch it would've cratered, and probably taken a lot of commodore's (positive) reputation with it too.

When the Amiga strategy depended on putting a real computer in the hands of adolescent gamers, a dedicated Amiga console is the enemy within.

Yea.. Anyway, the CD32 demise story is its own topic and as much as I enjoy speculating what ifs, its already found in numerous threads here in the forums.

[Kyle_Human]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

The CD32 had no cheap/obvious upgrade path that could be bundled with games in the future.

a fastram cart and a controller that isn't crap seem obvious to me

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

a fastram cart and a controller that isn't crap seem obvious to me

The main purpose of the big expansion port was to put an FVM module in there... or something like an SX32 to turn it into a 1200. Neither one of those was cheap. At the time, a memory expansion for the custom 182-pin expansion slot would not come cheap in the way we think of adding rumble pack to N64 controller.. I think its safe to say they didn't design it to be easily or cheaply upgraded back then. The even removed the PCMCIA which would have at least in theory given the option of cheap memory expansion. In reality of course PCMCIA memory would be too slow to boost performance which was my initial argument.

[Kyle_Human]

No, instead it would've come cheap in the way that adding ram to the n64 came cheap.

It would've been cheaper, because the cd32 would've only survived as a low end pauper's console. Four megs of normal ram isn't going to be as pricy as 8mb of weird n64-exclusive quasi rambus, and everyone bought that addon.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

No, instead it would've come cheap in the way that adding ram to the n64 came cheap.

It would've been cheaper, because the cd32 would've only survived as a low end pauper's console. Four megs of normal ram isn't going to be as pricy as 8mb of weird n64-exclusive quasi rambus, and everyone bought that addon.

It always was the cheapest CD machine at the time, in 1993;

CD32 - £300
Mega-CD + Megadrive - £410
Philips CD-i - £500

Import Machines
NEC Turbografx - £500
Panasonic 3DO - £700
FM Towns Marty - £800

Hence why sales were quite good upto the announcement of Commodores bankruptcy.

But don’t forget, like any previous console by Commodore (C64GS, CDTV) these were side projects to the main line of computers which generated the most of their revenue, they weren’t intended/they never expected them to sell millions, but rather generate extra revenue using existing technology.

Of course people like David Pleasance are going to sell it for all its worth (but they knew they were in trouble by then) but in reality selling a few hundred thousand of these machines was all that was to be expected of them.

The CD32 as a ‘console’ was designed to last 2-3 years max, adding expensive ram expansions was only for the few that wanted to expand, you cant compare 1997-98 N64 Ram prices with 1992-3 prices, the prices had huge changes through the 90s, its like comparing a 512gb sd card price in 2015 to 2020!

[sandruzzo]

even if at the beginning they were cheap, they would soon be overtaken by PCs, both in terms of price and performance

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

even if at the beginning they were cheap, they would soon be overtaken by PCs, both in terms of price and performance

Why must you compare a CD32 with a PC!? And even if you must, the price of a PC was NEVER cheaper than a CD32 or anywhere near it!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

So it was doomed to get whatever the A1200 was getting + CD music to make use of the storage space and the music playing capability.

You say that like it was a bad thing. To us A1200 owners the idea that new Amiga games might target the CD32 only was not a nice thought. OTOH, being able to use the A1200 to develop CD32 titles was a plus. So we didn't want the CD32 to be much more advanced than (read 'incompatible with') our machines.

When I got a CD32, what was the first thing I did? Plugged in a keyboard and mouse, made a floppy drive interface and installed the drive inside the case. Now it was virtually the same as a stock A1200 with a CD drive. If I hadn't been able to do that the CD32's appeal would have rubbed off quickly.

If Commodore had survived then games would have continued to be produced on CD ROM for both machines, which would have been a good thing. Since CD writers and 'gold' disks were very expensive back then, it would have helped to reduce piracy and keep the Amiga games market going.

But hey, once the TF360 is released...

To be honest I'm not enthused, and not just because I no longer have a CD32. I would rather see what the CD32 could do with upgrades that might have been affordable back in the day, and which more people today could replicate. How would it have faired with say, 4MB of FastRAM?

[indigolemon]

You mean like the TF328 that preceded the TF330 and TF360? It makes the CD32 a heck of a lot more useable.

[golem]

I had an A500 in 1990 and was late to the game, not until 1998, getting an A1200 (although I had wanted one for several years). The things I remember getting it are, without a hard drive, the long boot time from floppy in comparison to the A500. I thought mine was faulty for this reason. Also I had my A500 set up all nice and toasty with a custom boot floppy into a terminal csh shell. I tried to get the 1200 working like this but I was living in the past and I had to learn the 1200 works best booting into Workbench. Having a hard drive for the first time on a mig was also a revelation.

[Kyle_Human]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

But don’t forget, like any previous console by Commodore (C64GS, CDTV) these were side projects to the main line of computers which generated the most of their revenue, they weren’t intended/they never expected them to sell millions, but rather generate extra revenue using existing technology.

As I already said I'm aware of that, and I also said it was a bad idea that would only damage their reputation when people who'd bought one realized this.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

The CD32 as a ‘console’ was designed to last 2-3 years max, adding expensive ram expansions was only for the few that wanted to expand, you cant compare 1997-98 N64 Ram prices with 1992-3 prices, the prices had huge changes through the 90s, its like comparing a 512gb sd card price in 2015 to 2020!

You miss the point, I was talking about if the CD32 was still on the market contemporary with the N64 and Playstation. 1997 ram prices are perfectly comparable to 1997 ram prices, because they are the same ram prices from the same year.

Remember that I said that if it was still around in those years, it wouldn't be a competitor, but a low end alternative.

In 1997 in real life this market for a low end alternative was represented by SNES and Megadrive. I think CD32 could have had a strong showing if it was deliberately and consciously marketed towards the people who were buying those and only those.

After all CDs cost pennies to press, which increases the profit on each game sold, and a CD32 with a little 2MB fast ram cartridge plugged in the back is going to wipe the floor with a Megadrive in raw performance.

I reiterate. Positioning CD32 as a short shelf life cash grab is a bad idea. Trying to pass it off as a N64 competitor is also a bad idea. Selling it to parents who balk at the cost of a Playstation is an excellent idea.

[sandruzzo]

cd32 was a very genius things to do, but it's power, and above all , lack of support from developers, was a nail in the coffin

[AmigaHope]

The CD32 didn't even need 2M of fast RAM. just a *SINGLE MEG* of fast RAM would have given plenty of room for code to run in. Make the CPU 28Mhz (an inexpensive part as another poster has mentioned), and you suddenly have a console with 4X the performance for maybe a 10% price increase.

Still not a competitor with the Saturn or Playstation, but at least we wouldn't have those youtube reviews today wondering why the games aren't any better than on Megadrive.