If commodore had $$millions in `92, would the amiga still be around?

[MOS-6581]

Calgor nailed it. Commodore just did not invest in the Amiga as it should have done. It ignored the advice and wisdom of Jay Miner and the Amiga team. If they followed their advice, like releasing a machine similar to the A2000 straight from the start, who knows how well the Amiga could have done.

I bet a lot of business types took one look at the Amiga 1000 and scoffed. No internal expansion slots, or space for an internal HDD ruled it out for serious office use. Who is going to take a machine like that seriously when all these crappy IBMs had it from day one?

Having all those boxes coming out of the sides for expansion was so fucking stupid. Didn't anyone learn from the TI 99/4A? Worse still, it took over a year for the A2000 to arrive with no upgrades whatsoever!

The A500 saved the Amiga, and typically Commodore milked it for all it was worth for 4 years! Commodore should have been bankrupted by 1990, so it was sheer dumb luck they lasted till 1994. The same goes for Atari, they milked the 520ST FM for over 5 years!

[Pyromania]

@MOS-6581

Very true, if Commodore (Irving Gould) was this lazy with Amiga they should have just made money licensing the Amiga chipset and OS to other companies. At that time the market might have just embraced such licensing and would have given Commodore money to keep the original Amiga team together to create updates to the chipset and OS. Laying off the original team hurt Amiga R&D for years.

Originally Posted by SoulSeekerUSA

I miss the old Amiga days. I spent more on my Amiga then than I did on my current Power House PC. With hardware and all I think I had around $4,000 invested. But worth every penny!

Same here. I still have my Amigas. I think C= should have used 24 or 32 bit video boards instead of the AGA or attempted AAA chips. Ran the software through them at higher resolutions. Sound cards for higher quality sound.

[NovaCoder]

Yes they made some very strange descisions over the years...it would have been great to have been a 'fly on the wall' in some of those board meetings

I'm suprised they bothered including AGA in the 4000 because it was already out of date. They should have just got a third-party to make a RTG card and sold it with that instead.

[StarEye]

The Amiga could've been the standard today instead of the PC of today. Though Commodore ignored the Amiga, not because they didn't have money, but because they were dumb. So if they had a healthy economy back then, they would've spent it on other stuff than the Amiga. They just didn't believe enough in the Amiga - and they marketed it mainly as a console, a toy.

[TCD]

The first mistake was to wait with the A500 till 1987 and not release in late 1985/early 1986...
Anyway, the Netscape idea is just ridiculous Internet 'boxes' were maybe the biggest fail of computer gadgets ever, so...

[Anakirob]

Anyway, the Netscape idea is just ridiculous. Internet 'boxes' were maybe the biggest fail of computer gadgets ever

Maybe if one of those 'boxes' could function as a computer and already had a large range software available, like an Amiga would have, it would have been a different story.

I must concede, probably not. As the availavle internet services at the time were generally too slow and/or expensive. Both the technology to get on-line and the ISP's.

But I wouldn't say it's ridiculous. Improbable, yes, but only in retrospect.

And even then, who's to say things would not have been different had there been another big computing platform in the recent development of technology.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Anakirob

But I wouldn't say it's ridiculous. Improbable, yes, but only in retrospect.

Well Retrospect is the only perspective that's left, ain't it? Unless someone found that damn Delorean...
Pushing a (nearly) 10 year old hardware with a browser? Really don't think so in retrospect

[Anakirob]

If you were to attempt it today it would of course be a 'netbook' not a 'netbox'. And I doubt you'd be using a 10 year old chipset. Does the Efika? Does the Sam?

[TCD]

So the Amiga would have become the first 'netputer'? Anyway, just wanted to point out that it 'might' not have saved Commodore either, even if they have gone that road.