Atari Explorer and the Tramiels

[Fred the Fop]

A big Atari boster am I. I really like the old stuff.
Check this out. Imagine reading the article about the Tramiels..and being one of those toads.

http://www.atari-explorer.com/articles-Tramiels.html

[Fred the Fop]

Catch your eye.....

[RCK]

nice website

[Antiriad]

Nice article, but i have some points to raise...

Its almost of Hollywood proportions, but Jack Tramiel would buy Atari, CBM's former competitor, and begin building a rival to challenge the very company he founded.

It challenged...and failed.

The Atari ST was an advanced, feature rich personal computer when it was launched. It had been received with critical acclaim, and initial sales were strong, enabling Atari Corp to prove itself to the market place and end users. It changed the perception of the

Atari brand, and critically, was launched ahead of the more expensive Commodore Amiga, and at a better price/performance point in comparison to the Apple Macintosh and IBM compatibles.

Neglects to mention how superior the Amiga actually was... funny that, i mean! The ST didnt even have a built in floppy drive when it was launched! Even when they put one in it was a single sided DD one! And its dire 8bit Yamaha sound chip? Pleeeease...

After all, the PC isn't radically different to the ST, Amiga or Apple platforms of old, and is overly complicated in its design, especially to new users. It was much easier to use an ST for the first time, and was less intimidating in its approach, compared to
today's PC.

Excuse me? The ST and PC may have been similiar (thanks to Tramiel nicking bits to create the fudge that was the ST) but the Amiga was blatently not! And interesting to note how he fails to compare the STs ease of use to the Amiga? Perhaps that would raise the issue that the ST's OS was a load of **** compared to even Workbench 1.3!

Atari did have success with the ST, that cannot be denied. Europe in particular became the cash cow, and Germany became Atari's single biggest market. But the PC manufacturers marched on, as prices continued to fall and big business' wanted to standardise their IT systems. The Multi-tasking PC was the computer of choice for most companies by the end of the 80's, and this was also helped along by Intel and Microsoft.

Multi Tasking PC???? In circa 1990??? What a load of ****!!!

If Atari had carried its fight from the launch of the ST, and concentrated on a more aggressive long-term strategy, perhaps it could have carved an Apple-like niche in the market. What pains end-users of the ST the most, is knowing that the platform was viable from day one, and it had a strong presence in many areas, specifically as a home computer, as a cost effective DTP platform and especially in the music industry where it held an enviable position as the music computer of choice.

No....from day one the Commodore Amiga surpassed the Atari ST in EVERY respect. And the music industry was its ONLY strong presence...the Amiga dominated gaming and video production by comparison, the Amiga had a much higher chance of carving a Apple like niche in the market than the ST ever did.

I wouldn't say that any of the Tramiel family were selfish in the running of Atari, they did deliver good products with affordable price tags, and although its easy now to criticise what are historical facts, you must still admire what they successfully

achieved and ultimately what they "tried" to achieve. Commodore left the stage long before Atari, as did many other companies that shared the cut-throat world of consumer electronics both as partners and competitors to each other.

Excuse me? Atari went bust only a year later! As much as most of this article is a good analysis of Tramiels failed business practices,
the ST preaching aspects of it are laughable...

Now, i love the Atari ST, but ill always know the Amiga kicked it butt! And then some!

[Twistin'Ghost]

I haven't looked at the site yet, but after reading the above quotes from Antiriad's visit, I think I'll pass on the propaganda brainwash re-write of history.

My fav part is where it described ST domination in Europe until the takeover of multi-tasking PC's. One day, it's all Atari, the next day it's the PC. I was around during these years and the Atari's presence was flimsy in every single department except for audio production (and only because of that stupid MIDI port than anyone could have bought for the Amiga or PC back then for lunch money). The screens I have seen of said audio production software looked 320x200 resolution anyhow, so how advanced could it have really been? Sounds like the software just played slave to MIDI keyboards, which is nothing but the 68000 crunching numbers. The ST's domination in that department had nothing whatsoever to do with anything unique to that machine.

Just had to set the record straight. I'm not carrying a torch for Amiga vs. ST rumbling at all, I just hated seeing the facts twisted around back then, and it bugs seeing the spin in 2003. The Amiga has always had to take beatings from the PC crowd for this and that (albeit, unfairly), so seeing ST geeks doing this will always be a sore spot for me.

[manicx]

Originally posted by Twistin'Ghost
The screens I have seen of said audio production software looked 320x200 resolution anyhow, so how advanced could it have really been? Sounds like the software just played slave to MIDI keyboards, which is nothing but the 68000 crunching numbers. The ST's domination in that department had nothing whatsoever to do with anything unique to that machine.

The answer to that is full updated versions of Cubase + the high res 640*400 B/W resolution that worked a dream with Cubase. Don't forget that the best you could get from an Amiga was the runty 640*256 because when you were trying to put the resolution up to 640*512 you needed psychological help.... So three thing:

1) In built Midi Ports for free
2)Software that supported the midi ports and especially full updated versions of cubase
3)Hi-res flicker-free resolution

I still have my STE, and if somebody asks me to use a PC those days for some Midi work, I will laugh. I will simply set up my STE, boot up from floppy and make him eat his hat....

[Fred the Fop]

What can an Atari or Amiga do that a PC cannot? What's the incentive to use an older computer to mix music?
I am only asking not starting an arguement. I am not versed in Midi/mod/music mixing software.

[manicx]

Originally posted by Antiriad
[B]
Neglects to mention how superior the Amiga actually was... funny that, i mean! The ST didnt even have a built in floppy drive when it was launched! Even when they put one in it was a single sided DD one! And its dire 8bit Yamaha sound chip? Pleeeease...

The ST was release nearly 1.5 years before the Amiga. I can't understand what's wrong with the external floppy disk drive. Three things to mention:

1) ST 720/1.44 floppy drive works a dream with PC floppy disks and vice versa. Just have a look to PacifiST, the old ST emulator for the PC that could read ST FDs!!! Neither to mention how easy it is to convert a ST/MSA image from the PC to the ST.

2)The Amiga has an external PSU. Is this a disadvantage?

3) YM2149 delivered its job really well. It was the whole ST architecture that lacked, not the sound chip. Don't forget that the ST could play 4ch mods but that was down to clever programming not to make the CPU go bananas. Basically, I've seen some routines that could play 4096 colours with scrolling while you are listening to 4ch music on the ST and the CPU is no more than 50% loaded....

4) (Ok I cheated!!! ) The ST was running at nearly 1MHz faster. Vector graphics were moving a lot faster and 99% of 3D graphics back then were vectors...

Perhaps that would raise the issue that the ST's OS was a load of **** compared to even Workbench 1.3!

TOS was a lot better than WB1.3. After all how many of us actually used WB1.3? It was useless in those floppy disks. The ST had the OS in ROM, and unfortunately that was the way to go. But instead, Amiga Vs Atari wars didn't let people to see clearly what was usefull and what was not. We only got used to the WB with A1200s and the cheap IDE HDs...

No....from day one the Commodore Amiga surpassed the Atari ST in EVERY respect. And the music industry was its ONLY strong presence...the Amiga dominated gaming and video production by comparison, the Amiga had a much higher chance of carving a Apple like niche in the market than the ST ever did.

True, but that domination of the gaming industry is also the Amiga's curse. It was considered by most as a gaming machine and with the arrival of Super Nintendo, everyone who was just lazy MF gamer, sold his Amiga because he couldn't play games. All us, who still use Amigas, are here because we took REAL computing to another level...

The point is that even though I have been part of the ST/Amiga wars, when I look back then I see too similar computers and sadly, two very similar companies. Stretegically speaking, they both sucked. What they both lacked, was to see the actual communities behind the computers and try to fullfil their needs. All they tried to do, was to increase revenues by selling the same old computer at a time where technology and R&D was moving forward at a fast pace.

The purpose of this post is not to cause wars, it's just here to highlight that both machines had strong and weak points, but one thing is for sure. I loved the market back then simply because it was more mature, more fun and most important, a hell more creative...

[manicx]

Originally posted by Frederic
What can an Atari or Amiga do that a PC cannot? What's the incentive to use an older computer to mix music?
I am only asking not starting an arguement. I am not versed in Midi/mod/music mixing software.

A good answer is to reverse the question:

What can the PC do that an Amiga/Atari cannnot? What's the incentive to use a 1000+ Euros/Dollars/GBPs instead of an old computer that costs no more than 30 Euros to find today?

[Twistin'Ghost]

As much as I disagree with your previous post comments, I just don't have the time to debate with you. (TOS a lot better than WB1.3? You've lost your mind...) Hopefully, someone else will hold you accountable.

Originally posted by manicx
What can the PC do that an Amiga/Atari cannnot? What's the incentive to use a 1000+ Euros/Dollars/GBPs instead of an old computer that costs no more than 30 Euros to find today?

Erm I know what the PC can do...it can recycle the same game genre for more than a decade with mere adjustments made to the clumsy beta core, re-package it, re-sell it, regurgitate it, and captivate millions in the process. Amiga and ST games were cursed by being varied, unique, fun, imaginative and innovative. Hence the death of the 16-bit workhorses. (sigh)

[Antiriad]

ManicX, the A1000 was released at the same time as the Atari ST. It was the A500 was released 1.5 months later. And why would you want to use PC disks? The Amiga could store more data on them as well.

An external PSU is an advantage in my books, if the the thing blows up, you could just buy another. If the ST's one did it would be a major headache due to its integration.

The YM chip was perfectly suitable for the Amstrad CPC - an 8Bit computer. Not for a supposedly 16bit one. The Atari ST is more 12bit in all honesty when you compare it to the Amiga's stereo sound.

And TOS was blatently worse than OS1.3! Please! Workbench1.3 had features that were only incorporated by Atari into 2.06TOS 6 years later! An inbuilt OS is also a disadvantage - far too rigid, having your OS on floppy is a lot more flexible. People may criticise the Amigas poor HD support but going SCSI was a better bet than the bizarre contraption called an Atari ST hd.

The Amiga's dominance of the gaming industry was actually what kept it going and what effectively killed of the ST. Its nothing to be ashamed of.

I agree that both Atari and Commodore were as inane as each other and both their 16bit machines had strengths and weaknesses, but the Atari ST had way more.

P.S. I was an Atari ST "user" between my Amstrad 464 and Amiga 1200, so dont think i hate them or anything

[FromWithin]

Damn, just can't stop myself from replying.

Originally posted by Frederic
What can an Atari or Amiga do that a PC cannot? What's the incentive to use an older computer to mix music?

Amiga...Bars & Pipes. Greatest sequencing software ever created. You won't understand what I'm talking about unless you get in there an use it. It's unlike any other sequencer. (fromwithin.com/liquidmidi).

The other reason is timing. The Amiga and ST can provide much better MIDI timing due to the software layer being much closer to the hardware than having to kludge through Windows or MacOS. Timing is especially good with Bars&Pipes on the Amiga which uses an interrupt from a hardware audio channel to maintain accurate timing, no matter how much load the CPU is under (B&P was designed to also be used in conjuction with video and other time-based media, so it was very important not to lose sync). The unfortunate side-effect of this is that due to slight hardware variations, 120bpm may actually end up being something like 120.3bpm. It just depends on the Amiga it's running on.

Originally posted by manicx
1) ST 720/1.44 floppy drive works a dream with PC floppy disks and vice versa. Just have a look to PacifiST, the old ST emulator for the PC that could read ST FDs!!! Neither to mention how easy it is to convert a ST/MSA image from the PC to the ST.

But that is because of the cheap drive controllers in PC floppies. It's like saying that a word processor that can only read and write MSWord files is better than another Word processor that has got many more features but saves its own file format. Compatible does not equal better. If PCs had adopted Amiga drive controllers at some point in their history, there would be no argument because then PCs would be able to read any disk format.

Originally posted by manicx
2)The Amiga has an external PSU. Is this a disadvantage?

No because it's much easier to replace a PSU, and also keeps the heat outside the casing.

Originally posted by manicx
3) YM2149 delivered its job really well. It was the whole ST architecture that lacked, not the sound chip. Don't forget that the ST could play 4ch mods but that was down to clever programming not to make the CPU go bananas. Basically, I've seen some routines that could play 4096 colours with scrolling while you are listening to 4ch music on the ST and the CPU is no more than 50% loaded....

So what you are saying is that the ST was as good at the Amiga because it could play four channels of samples and display 4096 colours while using 50% of the CPU, while the Amiga could do the same thing using 0% CPU? A definite flaw in your logic there...the YM2149 was an abomination and another example of the off-the-shelf nature of the ST.

Originally posted by manicx
4) (Ok I cheated!!! ) The ST was running at nearly 1MHz faster. Vector graphics were moving a lot faster and 99% of 3D graphics back then were vectors...

Unfortunately, back then Amiga games were ST ports (especially 3D stuff). The Amiga could line-draw with the Blitter asynchronously, but I don't think anybody ever used it. BTW, the Amiga was at 7.09MHz (PAL) or 7.16MHz (NTSC) because it had to be divisible by the clock speed of the Blitter (28.37516MHz PAL, 28.63636MHz NTSC).

Originally posted by manicx
TOS was a lot better than WB1.3. After all how many of us actually used WB1.3? It was useless in those floppy disks.

Oh dear. There is a lot more to the Operating System than Workbench. You should be talking about Kickstart1.3, not WB1.3. The Amiga had the OS in ROM (except for the software-loadable ROM on the 3000 and 1000 which came on kickstart disks). The workbench libraries etc were on disk. The OS also uses jump tables in RAM which by default point to the ROM, this meant that the OS was easily patched in software (that's what SetPatch does on later Workbench versions) to fix problems and allow updates. It also had proper preemptive multi-tasking. The TOS GUI was derived from the old GEM OS by Digital Research (from 1983) - it was another thrown-together component. All told, Kickstart1.3 was an amazing operating system for the time. It provided a windowing and gadget system, independent draggable screens, multiple screen resolutions on the same display, a command-line interface, named devices and volumes (instead of the stupid A: B: C: system), and no file extensions (hooray!) Far ahead of most operating systems of the time. And using it from floppy was fine, especially when doing command line stuff as you could put everything into the RAM disk on boot-up and then not need the floppy again. You didn't need anything on the disk to get the CLI up without the workbench running in the background. It seems to me that you never did any real work with your Amiga back then.

Originally posted by manicx
All they tried to do, was to increase revenues by selling the same old computer at a time where technology and R&D was moving forward at a fast pace.

I agree with the revenues issue (Commodore didn't seem to realise what they had with the Amiga and spent tons of cash making Commodore PCs instead of putting all that money into Amiga research), but disagree with the R&D issue. The Amiga was released in 1985, and yet PCs only started to approach equivalent functionality when Windows95 was released. Even the Mac has never had a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS until OSX.

Originally posted by manicx
The purpose of this post is not to cause wars, it's just here to highlight that both machines had strong and weak points

Just one last comment here about the strong and the weak points: I can only think of one single advantage that the ST held over the Amiga, and that was having built-in MIDI ports, which was a stroke of genius. This was not a technical advantage (the standard Amiga serial port supports any baud rate, obviously including the MIDI output baud rate of 31250), but an issue of convenience. You didn't have to spend an extra £25 on the MIDI interface and musicians bought an ST because built-in MIDI ports screamed "I'm good for music, honest!" at them. Cubase was, and still is, a dreadful piece of software for MIDI sequencing. These days, it's great for recording audio tracks and adding effects, but the MIDI editor is pretty much the same as the ST version, i.e. very rudimentary.

Aah. That's better.

[Antiriad]

Thank you for putting it better than i could!

[Twistin'Ghost]

@FromWithin
I LOVE IT! That's what I was hoping for. Not only did you cover every detail that I would have, but you went way beyond my scope. I've never mucked around with MIDI, so it all looks the same to me. I have heard megabytes of praise for B&P Pro, but by not using it proper, I never could fairly evaluate it. Likewise with modern PC audio software, I use Cool Edit Pro rather than Cakewalk, etc. because it's more akin to what I am familiar with in a real recording studio environment.

And I never considered the 68000's clock speed having to be divisible by the blitter! It seems you know your Amiga as well as you know your music (I really like what I have heard from your band, especially "These Days" and "From Within", but I suspect the full version of "A Notion" is prime stuff, as well!)

[Shadowfire]

Originally posted by Twistin'Ghost
@FromWithin
And I never considered the 68000's clock speed having to be divisible by the blitter!

only because Commodore chose to use a synchronous cpu/custom chip clock design. they clocked everything from the 28.XXXX mhz crystal, divided it by 4 for the cpu, divided it by 40 for the PIA's (8520's), and divided it by 8 for the custom chipset (including Denise video output). If they wanted NTSC timings they used one crystal, if it was a PAL machine they used a slightly slower crystal.

grrr, I'm trying to remember if the custom chips were clocked at 7 or 3.5mhz. something is telling me that everything on the RGA bus (paula/denise/agnus) was 3.5mhz, not just Denise. haven't looked at the schematics in 10 years. something about the 68000 typically only wanting to access memory every other clock cycle.

the upshot is that a PAL display mode generated by an NTSC machine isn't quite exactly PAL, and an NTSC display generated by a PAL machine isn't quite NTSC (because the crystal frequency is wrong). but they're pretty close.

of course back then everyone did synchronous chipset designs (it was cheaper than an asynchronous design), zorro-3 was the first real break from that (at least for the expansion bus).

[Fred the Fop]

I don't undertsand much of what youse are saying because it requires a thorough familiarity with the intricacies of hardware.
So I'll dumb it down by saying The Tramiels are slobbish toads who sucked ass.

[Fred the Fop]

Oh Yeah and Atari St had Super Sprint and Oids.
Aaaahahahhah! :welcome

[manicx]

Originally posted by FromWithin
Damn, just can't stop myself from replying.



But that is because of the cheap drive controllers in PC floppies. It's like saying that a word processor that can only read and write MSWord files is better than another Word processor that has got many more features but saves its own file format. Compatible does not equal better. If PCs had adopted Amiga drive controllers at some point in their history, there would be no argument because then PCs would be able to read any disk format.

Assumptions make me laugh. If this and if that. In case of a broken Amiga drive what do you do these days and how much do you pay? What about Kylwada and Catweasel. You should also contact Eyetech and ask them to make some 1.76 drives for you. They may even be able to find 4-5 in eBay. Things is that PCs rule the world...

So what you are saying is that the ST was as good at the Amiga because it could play four channels of samples and display 4096 colours while using 50% of the CPU, while the Amiga could do the same thing using 0% CPU? A definite flaw in your logic there...the YM2149 was an abomination and another example of the off-the-shelf nature of the ST.

Seems you are a fast reader and you miss important parts in posts. I said that the whole Atari architecture was lacking not just the soundchip. It seems that some people want to argue all time.

Unfortunately, back then Amiga games were ST ports (especially 3D stuff). The Amiga could line-draw with the Blitter asynchronously, but I don't think anybody ever used it. BTW, the Amiga was at 7.09MHz (PAL) or 7.16MHz (NTSC) because it had to be divisible by the clock speed of the Blitter (28.37516MHz PAL, 28.63636MHz NTSC).

Have you wondered why they were Atari ports? Now here's a question for you. I personally know Steve Camber of the Infogrames glory and Yak, and they both answered this in the past, but I leave this to you to speculate....

Oh dear. There is a lot more to the Operating System than Workbench. You should be talking about Kickstart1.3, not WB1.3. The Amiga had the OS in ROM (except for the software-loadable ROM on the 3000 and 1000 which came on kickstart disks). The workbench libraries etc were on disk. The OS also uses jump tables in RAM which by default point to the ROM, this meant that the OS was easily patched in software (that's what SetPatch does on later Workbench versions) to fix problems and allow updates. It also had proper preemptive multi-tasking. The TOS GUI was derived from the old GEM OS by Digital Research (from 1983) - it was another thrown-together component. All told, Kickstart1.3 was an amazing operating system for the time. It provided a windowing and gadget system, independent draggable screens, multiple screen resolutions on the same display, a command-line interface, named devices and volumes (instead of the stupid A: B: C: system), and no file extensions (hooray!) Far ahead of most operating systems of the time. And using it from floppy was fine, especially when doing command line stuff as you could put everything into the RAM disk on boot-up and then not need the floppy again. You didn't need anything on the disk to get the CLI up without the workbench running in the background. It seems to me that you never did any real work with your Amiga back then.

Oh dear! Such a long statement and you make a runty assumption at the end, once again. WB 1.3 was a very capable OS. Thing is, that since I was working in a TV station back in '88 (getting 3 euros a day!), doing all the video titling stuff, I came across WB1.3 in its full glory, and this is INSTALLED in a HD! WB was simply unusable from floppies. You wanted to format a floppy disk and you had to boot from floppy and wait 1 minute to boot up. You wanted basic file operations and it was the same. That's why people developed tools that were booting faster and were doing this things better. I remember, most of my friends back then, never bothered booting WB from floppy to do anything at all. They all had a floppy disk called EGA Team with tools and utilities.

To be honest, WB1.3 was much better than TOS, BUT TOS delivered its purpose more efficient and effectively than WB1.3. It was booting in seconds, provided basic funtions for 16bits, and was more easy to use. Atari was also more open minded in delivering multi-languange support for it. I was hired by them in 1990 and developed a Greek ROM. Also bear in mind that ST could boot TOS from floppy as well.

As I said, WB 1.3 was brilliant if you had a HD, but with the release of A500 WB 1.3 was cursed to remain an unexplored OS to most. I was lucky to have that work back then. I apparently collected enough money to buy me the HD for the A500 (an Alpha Data if I am not wrong).

I agree with the revenues issue (Commodore didn't seem to realise what they had with the Amiga and spent tons of cash making Commodore PCs instead of putting all that money into Amiga research), but disagree with the R&D issue. The Amiga was released in 1985, and yet PCs only started to approach equivalent functionality when Windows95 was released. Even the Mac has never had a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS until OSX.

C'mon, R&D sucked. You speak about R&D in the 80's but where the hell was R&D when they released A500+, A600, and CD32? They even released A1200 in 92 whereas this machine should have been developed and released at least 3 years earlier... They totally lost the plot in exactly the same way Atari did. that's why they lost the game. They never saw the rise of 3D graphics...

Just one last comment here about the strong and the weak points: I can only think of one single advantage that the ST held over the Amiga, and that was having built-in MIDI ports, which was a stroke of genius. This was not a technical advantage (the standard Amiga serial port supports any baud rate, obviously including the MIDI output baud rate of 31250), but an issue of convenience. You didn't have to spend an extra £25 on the MIDI interface and musicians bought an ST because built-in MIDI ports screamed "I'm good for music, honest!" at them. Cubase was, and still is, a dreadful piece of software for MIDI sequencing. These days, it's great for recording audio tracks and adding effects, but the MIDI editor is pretty much the same as the ST version, i.e. very rudimentary.

Aah. That's better.

My main point, and excuse me if I am bit rough, is that some people lost the meaning of home computing. The meaning of home computing is to have a computer that is fun, brings creativity and helps you in office works at home. As I said, I have been a part of the Atari Vs Amiga wars back then, but after 13 years I laugh! Why? Because both computers were excellent, they both delivered its purpose and they both died mainly because they were fighting each other rather than developing their own strategy against the real opponent called Microsoft. So who cares if YM2149 was infrerior to Paula? I could play games and listen to some music and have a laugh! Who cares if the graphics were better in Amiga games? I did have laugh playing computer games... Same goes for serious software. Both computers served their purpose in that. The ST had the highres monitor that helped him fight against the PCs and Macs and Amiga only did this with AGA Amigas (I almost cried when I saw 640*512 in DbPal in my A1200 and the 1940 in 93).

To sum up, I laugh when people show up to say Amiga was better because.... or ST was better because... I still have my STE, my A1200 and my A4000 and I still use every single one of them to have a laugh. I just wish, Amiga hardware could sell a bit cheaper in eBay so I could buy a PPC card as my wage here in Greece in crap ! Anyway, I do hope that this post clarifies that I do love both the ST and the Amiga and I do have excellent memories with both. I try to be real and not think just Amiga or Just ST just like some people do 13 years after the great wars. I do believe that these people should grow up because we have 2003!

[manicx]

Originally posted by Antiriad
The Amiga's dominance of the gaming industry was actually what kept it going and what effectively killed of the ST. Its nothing to be ashamed of.

You are not serious up there are you? In my opinion, Amiga died at a period where excellent serious software was coming out but no games at all. You admit that games and Amiga are interrelated notions but you forgot that Amiga died with the rise of the VGA PCs. Basically most PC gurus remember Amiga as a gaming machine. I once brought my A4k in the office where people didn't know Amiga had Workbench. They just wondered why the hell this computer died. My answer was "Because jerks like you never bothered to go to the shops and try one". Needless to say that they almost killed me, but that was the truth! FFS!!! For me, Amiga didn't live long enough because of the gaming industry, but because of the hardcore fans who insisted of using Amigas regarding the problems they were facing... How the hell can you explain releases like Payback, QII, Hell Squad etc after 2000? This is just mad!

[Antiriad]

The Amiga, - like the Atari ST failed to crack the mass business market in the mid eighties which was the intention of both companies to achieve as IBM and Micro$oft had already sown up the market.

With this sad failure, both machines were left to re-invent themselves with niche markets (music and video production) and games only.

As such, the ST bit the dust first as the Amiga's hardware was superior and so was the better gaming machine.

If the Amiga hadn't been forced to become a major gaming machine (when it could do so much more) it would have died along with C= in the late eighties as anyone familiar with the companies profit margins at the time will testify.

So i repeat: gaming kept the Amiga alive in the short term, but the price was the misconception of it as a mere console with a keyboard.