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

[mrbob2]

Just wondered, would the amiga still be around now or would it have eventually morphed into a pc but with Amiga OS instead of generic PC`s with windows?

Back in the day when commodore went bust and we basically saw the death of the amiga, like the spectrum, c64, bbc and every other computer, i often wished it could be rescued somehow.

Now i realise that is was never meant to last. A keyboard with everything built in was never going to compete with a PC. Which was basically a bunch of components made by specific companies, all specialising in thier stuff, sound cards, ram, processors etc Instead of 1 company doing them all like commodore.

I guess to be where the PC is you need to have had billions i.e bill gates so maybe the end was inevitable regardless.

[humble worm]

If grandma had mustache she would be grandpa - but this is just my opinion

[Hobbe]

See it like this. By the time the game Doom came out, the highest-end PC could run it at full speed with every setting turned on to max. The highest-end Amiga, source port provided, would have barely displayed a thumbnail slideshow.

Amiga was years ahead of it's time, and years behind the PC's time, so even if Commodore had been loaded, they would have been forced to rebuild everything from scratch to somehow mimick the performance PC's had achieved, effectively killing the Amiga by turning it into an antithesis of itself.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Hobbe

See it like this. By the time the game Doom came out, the highest-end PC could run it at full speed with every setting turned on to max. The highest-end Amiga, source port provided, would have barely displayed a thumbnail slideshow.

You mean like max brightness? Okay, there was a Hi-Res / Lo-Res setting and I get the idea.

I second HW's opinion

[Hobbe]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

You mean like max brightness? Okay, there was a Hi-Res / Lo-Res setting

And screen size (made a HUGE difference in 80386's) sound number, etc

[alexh]

Commodore UK had $$ in 1994 and it didn't last too long.

I doubt they would have still been in business... they couldn't make their mind up if they wanted to be a games platform or a business platform. Trying to satisfy both meant a middle of the road solution for both which satisfied neither.

[Charlie]

I think there could be an interesting paradox here:

Safe to say everyone here has a soft spot for the Amiga & wishes it could have continued into the present...
...if only C= had remained viable.

But, if you look @ what C= was developing when they went under it's obvious they were intending to move a loooong way from the Amiga as we understand it...
...so if C= had continued the Amiga would probably have gone AND been forgotten as it was superseded. No EAB, no Amiga scene.

Strangely we appreciate and remember the Amiga because it died.

[mfletcher]

Wasnt one of the problems that the Amiga faced was rampant piracy? Werent devs moving off the platform to the PC because of falling sales?

[Zetr0]

to be honest, any developer whom claim Piracey as thier move from one platform or another is lying through thier teeth!

piracey is rampant in and on all platforms, the reason they may change platforms is more lucrative deals to be made in different markets.

Piracey is a buzzword / Catch All for Industry to fobb off people about thier REAL reasons.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Charlie

I think there could be an interesting paradox here:

Safe to say everyone here has a soft spot for the Amiga & wishes it could have continued into the present...
...if only C= had remained viable.

But, if you look @ what C= was developing when they went under it's obvious they were intending to move a loooong way from the Amiga as we understand it...
...so if C= had continued the Amiga would probably have gone AND been forgotten as it was superseded. No EAB, no Amiga scene.

Strangely we appreciate and remember the Amiga because it died.

In a way, I'm glad the Amiga was put out of its misery in 1994 - especially with the clowns who ran Commodore at that time. The best years for the Amiga were the late 80's early 90's imo...

Nowadays if the Amiga was still around it'd just turn into a glorified Intel based PC - pretty much like a Mac i'd imagine (the mac went to PPC and then, look at it now.... Intel... ) and that wasn't what the Amiga was about...

P.S. I'm in noway slating UAE - I think that's a great piece of software and will help preserve the real hardware

Wot a legacy it's left behind though.. the hardware is still incredibly cool and the demos that were released on the miggy still amaze me more than anything todays hardware could manage....

[ImmortalA1000]

The problem was two fold...

1. Business customers would never adopt a non PC standard EVER, think of the training for engineers and staff and think of the costs of redesigning networks etc. Hell even IBM couldn't crack it with PS/2 architecture and OS/2 operating system.

2. Commodore pissed away their advantage of Daphne Agnus Paula for nearly a decade AND stuck with a 68000 for over half a century.

The A500 and A2000 are essentially the same as the A1000 which is a 1985 design! And the A3000 was not really any better than the A2000 + 16/25mhz 030 C= cpu card inside. FAIL.

Meantime the PCs were getting...faster and faster CPUs EVERY YEAR, then 16bit sound cards, then 256 colour 640x480 graphics blah blah. Cost didn't matter, Amiga lost the technical advantage some time around the A2000--->A3000. So you are non standard, not faster, and perceived as a games machine/toy despite being a superior serious computer thanks to the OS. Damage was done nothing anyone could do would have saved Commodore by the 90s.

However...at it's launch I think the A4000/040 was more powerful than an equivalent PC CPU wise...certainly the Amiga A4000 128mb card came well before any such 128mb PC. Well that's what the AF review stated or was it CU Amiga. Price was also sky high too...most Amiga buyers wanted a 'bargain'

End of the day RJ Mical and Jay Miner and co gave the world the most advanced (compared to its rivals) machine anywhere, it made the Macintosh look like the overpriced piece of shit it was and the PC the C64 level competitor NOT Amiga competitor that it was. Commodore pissed it all away anyway....and by 1990+ though there should have been an affordable 28mhz 020 (020 and 030 doesn't really make much difference to performance really and a 28mhz 020 would have made the cut better for the bean counters) 256 colour on screen 16bit 4 channel DAC equipped machine, and in a beautifully built and elegant case (not the pig ugly 'melted' A500 or the 'no styling at all' A2000 hunks of shit they put out) The A500 didn't even have a TV modulator built in...where did all the money go? They would have been better off sticking to a new cost reduced motherboard in the original A1000 case!

Anyway once Windows 95 launched the party was over for EVERYONE. If a business could still run DOS based hardware AND enjoy W.I.M.P. environment it was all that was needed. Didn't matter if it was a pathetic kludge of an OS it existed and the staff could use it quicker than DOS and CHEAPER than a complete paradigm shift of office equipment from PCs to either Amigas or IBM PS/2 or anything else out there like Macs.

And we all lived happily ever after....well after Steve Jobs or Bill Gates has injected you with some serious narcotics so you don't notice how boring and pathetic computers are to use today

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Strangely we appreciate and remember the Amiga because it died.

The Amiga isn't dead!

[AmigaBoingBall]

Do you think we would have stylish retail stores that sell only Commodore products if Commodore stayed around?

[TCD]

Yeah, with flying pink elephants and stuff

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Ironclaw

The Amiga isn't dead!

You grant me a wish, Djinny?

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

You grant me a wish, Djinny?

Of course. What is your wish?

[Cammy]

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

Amiga is still around today, despite Commodore going bankrupt.

"would it have eventually morphed into a pc but with Amiga OS instead of generic PC`s with windows?"

No, Commodore were already selling Intel PCs under the Commodore name, they had no need to stick the Amiga name or OS in them.

And by the way, DOOM runs fine on my 030 A1200 with AGA, full screen. Maybe it would need the postage-stamp view to run on a 68000, but Amigas had 030 and 040 accelerators available for years before DOOM came out. Just because most of you decided to spend your money on a PC rather than an accelerator for your Amiga just to play DOOM doesn't make the Amiga any less capable of running such a game. Add a graphics card and it'll run even faster without needing to use C2P conversion.

Commodore failed when they tried to enter the PC market while leaving Amiga Research and Development behind. Had they focussed more on the Amiga and given us another revolutionary machine like the original, we might have something decent to use as an alternative to the shit we have to choose from these days.

[Hobbe]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Just because most of you decided to spend your money on a PC rather than an accelerator for your Amiga just to play DOOM doesn't make the Amiga any less capable of running such a game

The first Amiga port came out like 7 years later. Not that they had a choice

[exoticaga]

Everyone i knew and myself hoped for a pc amiga, one that was inline with the specs or better of the pc of its day. Able to use all the cheap devices and not be locked. And sure it could of been bothe games and bussiness as pc's are today. C knew this but had bad management or other worries not able to do it.

Look at all the amigas that got put into a tower 'pc like'. I'm sure then there was many amiga user wanting a pc amiga. But they knew that the cheaper pc graphics and more could never be used in such a setup, while never able to afford amiga graphics cards. Little wonder many many amiga users jumped boat to a pc and cheap pc devices. The end was nigh for the amiga.

I wonder if Bill Gates probably could of been in there somewhere. Who was behind the amiga buyout was it gates money in a secret deal. A deal that no one knew Gates was masterminding to ensure victory for windows os. He must have thought of it. Or if the amiga did start to sell pc amiga pcs, would have been a thorn in his side to contend with.

[NovaCoder]

No, they would have wasted any money they had on 'failed projects'

Originally Posted by Hobbe

See it like this. By the time the game Doom came out, the highest-end PC could run it at full speed with every setting turned on to max. The highest-end Amiga, source port provided, would have barely displayed a thumbnail slideshow.

Amiga was years ahead of it's time, and years behind the PC's time, so even if Commodore had been loaded, they would have been forced to rebuild everything from scratch to somehow mimick the performance PC's had achieved, effectively killing the Amiga by turning it into an antithesis of itself.

Actually as a PC user who played Doom when it was first released back in 93, I remember it ran really well on my mid-range PC. That was why DOOM made such an impact, you didn't need to have a super-duper PC to play the thing

Quake 1 on the other had was different, you really did need a high-end machine (at the time) to play the thing at a decent frame-rate.

Interesting fact. When Jay Miner was asked in the late eighties if he would have done anything differently when he designed the original chipset he said that he wished he'd realised that colour depths were going to improve rapidly and had opted for a chunky video chipset rather than the planar. If this had happened (eg they had gone with Chunky) then the Amiga could have done Doom in it's sleep and may even have got an official port in a timely manner