Challenging the A3000

[grelbfarlk]

As someone who had a CDTV when they were new, as neat as I found the system everyone complained about the caddies. Too bad C= never released the CDTV-II which had a tray.

It seems like always they got things half right, CDTV looks like stereo gear that would fit in an entertainment system=GOOD. Used caddies which no one wants=BAD. CD32 comes around, it doesn't look like A/V gear, shaped more like a console=Ok. Bad because you can't just slot it in with your other AV gear because the top has to be accessible=bad.

And for people who keep suggesting things that machines when released should have stuff that hadn't been invented yet, I agree! The A3000 should have had a Voodoo card and a 68060 and USB3 and Firewire, oh and TOSLink I/O, and a G4. Not to mention a couple Holographic Storage Cube slots and Tetryon emitter/receiver and a Neutrino radio (for future proofing).

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

And for people who keep suggesting things that machines when released should have stuff that hadn't been invented yet ...

No one did in this thread.

All the things, me and others suggest, where already invented and/or available for other computers.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

As someone who had a CDTV when they were new, as neat as I found the system everyone complained about the caddies. Too bad C= never released the CDTV-II which had a tray.

I knew there was a CDTV with drawer CDROM, just mentioned the wrong one is all. Kept coming back to me that CDTV did have drawer and thought must of been CDI. So CDTV II was the one!

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

And for people who keep suggesting things that machines when released should have stuff that hadn't been invented yet, I agree! The A3000 should have had a Voodoo card and a 68060 and USB3 and Firewire, oh and TOSLink I/O, and a G4. Not to mention a couple Holographic Storage Cube slots and Tetryon emitter/receiver and a Neutrino radio (for future proofing).

Not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic here or not? Nevertheless, creating better Amiga's that never was and never will be, is just good forum banter. Besides as almost perfect as the A3K is, there is always room for improvement. Even if they could of give us an A3K with PCI and PPC people would still want more and never be satisfied.

In the end, us human beings shall never design and build the perfect machine: "AI ROBOTS" < or will we?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

Best thing about those Quadra's was the 040 and PPC compatibility and upgrade. Now if only Commodore had realised this for the A3K ! You want to argue about price, just check how much they were asking for Quadra systems back then.

Well ... my A3000 is very compatible to a 68060 and a PPC 604 - it even has both running

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Well ... my A3000 is very compatible to a 68060 and a PPC 604 - it even has both running

My A4000 has a 68060 and a G4, lets see Apple do that to a Quadra! (I'm sure somebody has, don't answer that).

I did try an 060 adapter in a Quadra, it didn't boot, tried both an LC and full.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

My A4000 has a 68060 and a G4, lets see Apple do that to a Quadra! (I'm sure somebody has, don't answer that).

I highly doubt that there is a way to run both CPUs at the same time with any version of MacOS.
At least I did not hear yet of such a thing.

I did try an 060 adapter in a Quadra, it didn't boot, tried both an LC and full.

Probably some equivalent to the 68060.library missing there.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I highly doubt that there is a way to run both CPUs at the same time with any version of MacOS.
At least I did not hear yet of such a thing.



Probably some equivalent to the 68060.library missing there.

Yeah that's true, I guess Apple style the 040 just goes to sleep while the new CPU takes over.

Well in theory with the LC version without the FPU the main incompatibility shouldn't have been a problem. From what I read the guess is that there is 040 specific code in the ROM that crashes on the 060. Don't know it was just a drunken Saturday night attempt.

Sorry for the derail, back on topic A3000 is a good and fine machine-I wish I had one, but I just keep assembling A4000s for some reason.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Yeah that's true, I guess Apple style the 040 just goes to sleep while the new CPU takes over.

Well in theory with the LC version without the FPU the main incompatibility shouldn't have been a problem. From what I read the guess is that there is 040 specific code in the ROM that crashes on the 060. Don't know it was just a drunken Saturday night attempt.

Sorry for the derail, back on topic A3000 is a good and fine machine-I wish I had one, but I just keep assembling A4000s for some reason.

strange, since there are many reviews of successfully emulating a Mac on a 060 Amiga .... it probably works better with older ROMs.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Gorf

strange, since there are many reviews of successfully emulating a Mac on a 060 Amiga .... it probably works better with older ROMs.

Yeah, I assume it's because Fusion or Shapeshifter is patching the ROM or not directly executing the code in it as I have ripped the ROM for use on the Amiga and it works with an 060 there.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

CD32 comes around, it doesn't look like A/V gear, shaped more like a console=Ok. Bad because you can't just slot it in with your other AV gear because the top has to be accessible=bad.

Two years later the Sony Playstation comes around and uses the very same "top loader" mechanism.
... and Sony sells over 100 million units of the PS1 alone!

No: whatever CD-loading-mechanism the CD32 could have used - that was not the issue here.

It was a) a little bit too late and more important b) it had no way to control the software released for it.
So C= would have had no chance to earn money via licensing - and that is what the console business is all about after all.

[grelbfarlk]

I just really preferred the look of the CDTV, I think by far the best looking Amiga ever (next to the Walker of course ).

No the look of the CD32 wasn't the problem, underpowered and lack of software or an abundance of shovelware were the biggest problems, not to mention the company going broke.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

No the look of the CD32 wasn't the problem, underpowered and lack of software or an abundance of shovelware were the biggest problems, not to mention the company going broke.

i mentioned the lack of power some posts back here ... sadly true.

I think by far the best looking Amiga ever next to the Walker of course

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Only with ECS Agnus - with OSC there was no way to have more than 512k ChipRAM.

The ECS agnus was a very popular upgrade, except for model A owners, who were stuck with the skinny A1000 Agnus. Snif.

"FastRAM" over ZorroII is slow. It is OKish for a 7MHz 68K but is horrible for anything faster, starting with a simple 14Mhz hack.

Thats why CPU and RAM should have been sitting on a cpu-board in this slot from the first version on.

Yep, in a stock 68k system the problem doesn't exist and in a faster system the RAM comes on the CPU board, unless the user bought a shit CPU board without local RAM. The user should have saved more for something decent, the importance for accelerator mounted RAM was well known already back in the day.

The CPU didn't sit in the CPU slot in the model A, they fitted some RAM on there, because the extra 512k wouldn't fit on the motherboard before they did the more integrated model B.

Can you elaborate, please?

- better signal integrity in the CPU slot and Zorro II bus
- proper CPU slot that allows you to plug in turbo cards that actually take over the system, you had to remove the 68k from its socket when adding turbo cards to the model A.
- extended video slot
- support for the fat agnus

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Jope

Thats why CPU and RAM should have been sitting on a cpu-board in this slot from the first version on.

The CPU didn't sit in the CPU slot in the model A, they fitted some RAM on there, because the extra 512k wouldn't fit on the motherboard before they did the more integrated model B.

Exactly. That is why I wrote the above sentence.

- better signal integrity in the CPU slot and Zorro II bus
- proper CPU slot that allows you to plug in turbo cards that actually take over the system, you had to remove the 68k from its socket when adding turbo cards to the model A.

There should have been no CPU on the mainboard at all ...
(The German A2000 was supposed to work with a 68010 and the coprocessor slot was initially exactly that: a slot for the 68451 MMU.)

- extended video slot
- support for the fat agnus

And intoduced a faulty Buster (see "buster tower")

They were slower than the (first) A2000, because of the missing fast ram.

The video slot is still not in line with a Zorro slot, but yes it got some additional signals

[MigaTech]

You would think that the A3K should of been more popular than it was, considering it could contain a bridgeboard which allowed the system to emulate IBM/PC's, offering the best of both Worlds. Yet it wasn't, in fact that side of it never really took off! Now why?

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by eteP

I had an A3000 around 1994-98 and sold it to get an A1200+Blizzard PPC. That system was really unstable in comparison to my old rock solid A3000. Sold the A1200 also after a couple of years and migrated to using PCs with Linux. When I got struck by the Amiga-bug again recently the A3k was clearly the system to get first!

That's my story in reverse

My towerized A1200+BlizzardPPC+Bvision was also really unstable. It was nice to play games like Doom and Quake at good framerates and there were some mandelbrot toys but that was really the only advantage.
But to have this speed you had the mess with powerup! and Warpup (and in the beginning the reboots needed to switch between the two) and the joy of sudden guru's or the spontanous loss of the firmware in the flash.
The A3000 is rock solid.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

My towerized A1200+BlizzardPPC+Bvision was also really unstable. It was nice to play games like Doom and Quake at good framerates and there were some mandelbrot toys but that was really the only advantage.
But to have this speed you had the mess with powerup! and Warpup (and in the beginning the reboots needed to switch between the two) and the joy of sudden guru's or the spontanous loss of the firmware in the flash.
The A3000 is rock solid.

Yes you are correct, I also found that the PSU had to be perfect not just in offering the right power but make and model. Also overheating was a massive issue with PPC cards, specially the 040's as they demand more power and run hotter. Those attempting to overclock their boards can also cause major problems.

Personally, I do not think the PPC card was every happy in an A1200 original case. Placing it in a Towered system with good ATX PSU and adequate cooling makes a massive difference. Software control with PPC has always been a nightmare, that stated, when it does comply let the excitement and fun begin!

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

You would think that the A3K should of been more popular than it was, considering it could contain a bridgeboard which allowed the system to emulate IBM/PC's, offering the best of both Worlds. Yet it wasn't, in fact that side of it never really took off! Now why?

ok, the issue of the bridgeboards, the ISA-slots and the Sidecar - starting with the last:

The A1000 Sidecar was kind of a mistake. It came very early after C= acquired Amiga, and was almost a full PC in an ugly case next to the beautiful A1000.

It did send the wrong message: "the Amiga is not good enough on its own, it needs support of a real PC."

Also the money, resources and energy to develop this Sidecar could have been spend much better in advertising, A1000 cost reduction and so on.


In the A2000 the mostly unused ISA slots take a lot of space on the motherboard. And even worse: the ZorroII slots are banned to the far end - that makes simple expansion boards more expensive to produce, at least if they need IO-ports:
You somehow need to come to the back, by ether making a full size board or adding cables...

This carries on in the A3000/A4000 doughter-boards, that needed to be full-side themselves to stay compatible.

While having the video-port in-line with the Zorro-slot is very convenient for some cards, the majority does not need that feature (which could be provided eg. by positioning it the other way around or by providing a video-port right next parallel to Zorro)

There where two kinds of bridgeboards that would have made more sense in the early days: a Z80 card and a C64 card.

CP/M on the Zilog Z80, was still quite popular and had a lot of software to offer. There was a Z80-module for the C64 and the C128 came with a Z80 on board.
The advantage: it was no real competition! while giving the A1000 access to more office software from the start, it would have clearly been a temporal solution. A booster for the A1000 to take off, but no permanent parasite.

Same would have been true for a C64-card. It was the best selling home computer and had many fans. Many did upgrade to an Amiga eventually, but such a card would have helped the transition and convinced many more to stay with Commodore.
C= would have had everything they needed in house to produce such a card..
(and they would have made even more money by selling these 1571 floppy drives ...)

These both solutions, would have send the message, that the Amiga is superior, but if you want to use your old 8bit software, we are going to help.
And both solutions would have been much more affordable, than a PC card.


This all leads to the A3000 and why it did not take over the world

because C= did not provide a proper upgrade path, customers looked elsewhere and so did developers and in the end there was not enough professional software available.
So most potential customers for a workstation, as the A3000 was, could not justify to buy one... the UX version was a very good idea but came too late (again).

Also C= was extraordinary stupid once more by declining a deal (twice) with SUN to provide an entry level Sun-workstation based on the A3000.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Also C= was extraordinary stupid once more by declining a deal (twice) with SUN to provide an entry level Sun-workstation based on the A3000.

Now I didn't know about this? How stupid can you get ? Why did they NOT take these deals ?

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

You would think that the A3K should of been more popular than it was, considering it could contain a bridgeboard which allowed the system to emulate IBM/PC's, offering the best of both Worlds. Yet it wasn't, in fact that side of it never really took off! Now why?

If you were just looking for a PC, why would you buy an Amiga, then fit it with extra hardware just to do more or less what you could do with a PC out of the box? More complexity and more cost just to get a simple job done. By this time the PC was pretty much standard in the workplace, driving costs down and becoming mainstream. For example, this article from February 1990 lists an A2000 (which was 2 years old at that stage) with a bridgeboard for just under $5000 It doesn't say the specs of the CPU, but given the 2386 wasn't launched until after that, it can only really be a 286. Just after that, there's a piece about a 486 workstation with a price of $5260. For less than $300, you can go from a 286 to a 486... What company is going to choose an Amiga in that situation? And next down the list is a basic 386 PC for $1895. Again, which company is going to choose a 286-based Amiga over a 386-based PC for over $3000 less? The only people buying Amigas like that were for Amiga-specific jobs (e.g. developing Amiga games) or doing video or graphics work. Not mainstream, and certainly not for doing exclusively PC work.