Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[daxb]

From day one or later/earlier?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

It seems that Commodors' mission was destroying Amiga...

They could have not bothered buying Amiga Inc and let Atari kill off Amiga in half the time!

[sandruzzo]

Ok, A1200 was allmosto totally crap, but if you look carfully OCS chip-set, it seems to me an unfinished project. If we think about 2 incredible pitfall: chip-sets' register and trap door ram under bitplane dma scheduling! Come on! Or commodores' engenieers drunk to much beer, or like I said, was unfinisched project.

With that fixes, copper could allmost doubling it's instruction rates, especially if it and blitter hey had been able to access to drap door ram. And this fixes don't seems to me to much costy...

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by daxb

From day one or later/earlier?

I think after a while, since instead try to design a better Amiga they didn't nothing new, but ECS, another crap Chip Set

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Ok, A1200 was allmosto totally crap, but if you look carfully OCS chip-set, it seems to me an unfinished project. If we think about 2 incredible pitfall: chip-sets' register and trap door ram under bitplane dma scheduling! Come on! Or commodores' engenieers drunk to much beer, or like I said, was unfinisched project.

With that fixes, copper could allmost doubling it's instruction rates, especially if it and blitter hey had been able to access to drap door ram. And this fixes don't seems to me to much costy...

My god, such blasphemy against the Amiga's perfect, flawless design!!

In all seriousness, though, I'm sure every computer and console design of the 1980s and 1990s had shortcomings and flaws. I've heard even certain PC configurations to this day can have severe bottlenecks, so this "streamlining and efficiency" aspect is never truly going to be achieved.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Ok, A1200 was allmosto totally crap, but if you look carfully OCS chip-set, it seems to me an unfinished project. If we think about 2 incredible pitfall: chip-sets' register and trap door ram under bitplane dma scheduling! Come on! Or commodores' engenieers drunk to much beer, or like I said, was unfinisched project.

With that fixes, copper could allmost doubling it's instruction rates, especially if it and blitter hey had been able to access to drap door ram. And this fixes don't seems to me to much costy...

Personally, I think the A1200 is a great machine once you know how to exploit it properly. To say the machine is "almost totally crap" and then to provide wisdom of hindsight to the engineers that built the machine is at the very least a right load of bollocks in itself and those "pissed drunk engineers" as you put it have brought joy and happiness to thousands of people across time - give them and the machine some respect (maybe you should start programming it).

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Personally, I think the A1200 is a great machine once you know how to exploit it properly. To say the machine is "almost totally crap" and then to provide wisdom of hindsight to the engineers that built the machine is at the very least a right load of bollocks in itself and those "pissed drunk engineers" as you put it have brought joy and happiness to thousands of people across time - give them and the machine some respect (maybe you should start programming it).

Wot he said.

I mean, seriously - aside from those who were rich as hell, how many people powered up their A1200s and though "well this is a pile of crap" instead of getting down to some serious AGA gaming?

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Personally, I think the A1200 is a great machine once you know how to exploit it properly. To say the machine is "almost totally crap" and then to provide wisdom of hindsight to the engineers that built the machine is at the very least a right load of bollocks in itself and those "pissed drunk engineers" as you put it have brought joy and happiness to thousands of people across time - give them and the machine some respect (maybe you should start programming it).

Actually, I thought the guy was trashing the A1200 and talking crap about the A500 as well, because he said "OCS". It wasn't easy to tell, with his broken English and everything.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Actually, I thought the guy was trashing the A1200 and talking crap about the A500 as well, because he said "OCS". It wasn't easy to tell, with his broken English and everything.

I'm pretty sure the gist of that part of his post was that the A500/OCS was 'unfinished' because A500 trap door RAM was as slow as Chip RAM (due to them sharing the same bus) and that the chip set registers were on the same bus as Chip RAM. Which means they were also slowed down.

Of course, in reality the A500 was essentially a heavily cost cut A1000 with minor changes. This was needed as the A1000 was reportedly really expensive to make and as such couldn't be offered at an appealing price point for mass market sales (which is what Commodore wanted/needed - they wanted the Amiga to be the next C64 and were losing money because of the A1000's low sales at the time). The trap door RAM slot was one of those changes and as I understand it, the reason it works the way it does is because it was much, much cheaper to do it this way compared to what Sandruzzo suggested.

Plus, if you really wanted fast memory the side slot of the A500 already offered this option. It's just that everyone who expanded their A500 elected to use the cheaper trap door memory.

Later revision A500's actually can access trapdoor memory through the chipset (making it essentially chip RAM), though the processor doesn't understand this (due to how the memory is mapped) and as such still reports it as fast RAM. This is why the Indivision ACA500/ACA500+ could give you 1MB chip RAM without altering anything on the main board. But this is merely cosmetic - you can write programs accessing 1MB of chip memory on any A500 with the correct Agnus and board revision (i.e. all with revision 5+ I think).

Though obviously you'd lose compatibility with the older A500's if you do so, which is probably why no one did this.

As for the registers, I'm not a hardware engineer so I may have this wrong. But as I understand it, what Sandruzzo asks for here would've essentially required two busses on the A500 board: one for the registers, one for chip RAM. Well that or have a 'double ported bus' such as used by VRAM. These things might be possible, but would be rather expensive.

The real irony here being that the A1200 trap door slot fixed all of these things as well as essentially remove most of the chip RAM slow down when using higher numbers of colours in games, but he still doesn't like it

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Actually, I thought the guy was trashing the A1200 and talking crap about the A500 as well, because he said "OCS". It wasn't easy to tell, with his broken English and everything.

At least I know 2 Languagges. I don't know what about this forum: I'm talking about a machine, and I'm personally attacked even though I dont do this.

Is there any speech limitation? We're talking about a machine, come on! So stop this silly, stupid, bullshit about me.

And I repeat a1200 bullshit machine, oops sorry, missed opportunity. OCS unfinished project. Ocs, by the way, isn't pure 16bit, since audio is 8 bit, color palette 12-bit...

P.s. even though, I'm talking about this on Amiga, I still love this machine.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

And I repeat a1200 bullshit machine, oops sorry, missed opportunity. OCS unfinished project. Ocs, by the way, isn't pure 16bit, since audio is 8 bit, color palette 12-bit...

OCS is fully 16 bit. Every DMA access by either the CPU or chipset fetches 16 bits at a time. Including the Audio and bitplanes. By your standard there was not a single 16 bit console or computer.

As for the A1200: you don't have to like it, but calling it 'bullshit' is... Well.. Bullshit.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by roondar

OCS is fully 16 bit. Every DMA access by either the CPU or chipset fetches 16 bits at a time. Including the Audio and bitplanes.

As for the A1200: you don't have to like it, but calling it 'bullshit' is... Well.. Bullshit.

I call it Bullshit, not because it is, just for "fun",I hope you're not taking my word to the letter. It left me down a lot first time I've seen it, I allmost cryed. I could not belived it: after A500, commodore made that "thing"?

Btw, I my opinion 16bits fetches don't mean fully 16bit machine. Don't get my wrong, like 68000 which is 16/32 bit processor.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

I call it Bullshit, not because it is, just for "fun",I hope you're not taking my word to the letter. It left me down a lot first time I've seen it, I allmost cryed. I could not belived it: after A500, commodore made that "thing"?

Like I said, you don't need to love it. But I personally think you're being really harsh here. It certainly wasn't what I felt when I got my A1200, I was extremely happy. It was so nice and fast and had all that memory, plus it had the marvels of AGA graphics which were a pretty big step up. It also had a hard disk built-in, that was awesome!

Got even better when I found out that putting more memory and a faster processor in the A1200 was much cheaper than doing so for the A500.

Btw, I my opinion 16bits fetches don't mean fully 16bit machine. Don't get my wrong, like 68000 which is 16/32 bit processor.

Like I said, by your definition there has not been any 16 bit home computer or console. Well, until the Playstation era that is. The MegaDrive and SNES don't do 16 bit graphics or audio either. Nor does the NEO GEO.

Your definition is, IMHO, far too strict. Only systems everyone calls 32 bit actually qualify under your rules. And personally, I don't buy that a Playstation is a 16 bit machine.

[sandruzzo]

@roondar

I think in the surface A1200 back in the day seems a good one, but when you start to do stuff on it, it's heavily limits start to show, and that, when A1200 stop to seems a good one.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

At least I know 2 Languagges. I don't know what about this forum: I'm talking about a machine, and I'm personally attacked even though I dont do this.

I agree, you’re due an apology over that comment.

I think you just need to choose better meaning words, when you call a machine totally crap/useless it can come across as offensive (especially when you come across people like me who have invested a lot of time in the machine).

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

@roondar

I think in the surface A1200 back in the day seems a good one, but when you start to do stuff on it, it's heavily limits start to show, and that, when A1200 stop to seems a good one.

Well, I didn't experience it like that at all. It was so much nicer to use for me than the A500. Even before I put in the Blizzard 1230MK IV. But if that's your opinion then that's fine - we don't all have to agree .

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I agree, you’re due an apology over that comment.

I think you just need to choose better meaning words, when you call a machine totally crap/useless it can come across as offensive (especially when you come across people like me who have invested a lot of time in the machine).

I'm gonna do my part, and I hope, others people here, will do the same. I hope thta er're here beacuse there is something that bring us thogheter, and not otherwise.

I never, and I repeat never personally attacked someone here, nor even occasionally

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by roondar

Well, I didn't experience it like that at all. It was so much nicer to use for me than the A500. Even before I put in the Blizzard 1230MK IV. But if that's your opinion then that's fine - we don't all have to agree .

I was talking about lack of horse power on Blitter and Copper. 68020 and 2 mb of ram were really good! But a little bit of "fast" mem on standar A1200....

[chb]

Originally Posted by roondar

I'm pretty sure the gist of that part of his post was that the A500/OCS was 'unfinished' because A500 trap door RAM was as slow as Chip RAM (due to them sharing the same bus) and that the chip set registers were on the same bus as Chip RAM. Which means they were also slowed down.

[...]

As for the registers, I'm not a hardware engineer so I may have this wrong. But as I understand it, what Sandruzzo asks for here would've essentially required two busses on the A500 board: one for the registers, one for chip RAM. Well that or have a 'double ported bus' such as used by VRAM. These things might be possible, but would be rather expensive.

I think Sandruzzo is wrong here (if I understand him correctly) - copper writes to hardware registers take exactly as many dma cycles as are needed to read the two words for address and value from memory. The writes to the internal registers do not take additional dma slots. I do not see any way to do this faster (apart from having some kind of sequential mode to fill e.g. color registers without specifying every address). He's right about CPU writes, as they are blocked by dma like any other write to chip mem, but that's such an insignificant case... and putting the copper on an extra memory bus (and then have again another bus for fastmem) would have been complete nonsense, as for almost all applications (even games) copper speed is not critical.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

At least I know 2 Languagges. I don't know what about this forum: I'm talking about a machine, and I'm personally attacked even though I dont do this.

Is there any speech limitation? We're talking about a machine, come on! So stop this silly, stupid, bullshit about me.

P.s. even though, I'm talking about this on Amiga, I still love this machine.

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I agree, you’re due an apology over that comment.

I think you just need to choose better meaning words, when you call a machine totally crap/useless it can come across as offensive (especially when you come across people like me who have invested a lot of time in the machine).

Apologies, Sandruzzo, I was hasty in describing your English as broken. Sorry.