What if the Amiga had been an audio/video card for PCs?

[Rotareneg]

I had recently watched a video ( [ Show youtube player ] ) that included a PC soundcard that used a SID chip on it which got me thinking: Why not a retro soundcard with Paula on it? That quickly lead to the title question:


What if, instead of being an entirely new computer and operating system, the Amiga had been a combined audio/video card for PCs?


I'm thinking something along the lines of an ISA card with the custom chips and 256 kB of ram on it, with some empty sockets to expand it to at least 512 kB.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Rotareneg

What if, instead of being an entirely new computer and operating system, the Amiga had been a combined audio/video card for PCs?


I'm thinking something along the lines of an ISA card with the custom chips and 256 kB of ram on it, with some empty sockets to expand it to at least 512 kB.

The Amiga chipset was designed to work with a Motorola 680x0 CPU, how are you going to get it to work with an Intel CPU?

[Rotareneg]

Originally Posted by Foebane

The Amiga chipset was designed to work with a Motorola 680x0 CPU, how are you going to get it to work with an Intel CPU?

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear: I didn't mean "rip the chipset out of an Amiga as it actually existed and stick it in a PC." I meant, just as a thought experiment, "what if the Amiga chipset was designed from the beginning to be part of a PC expansion card." Instead of an Amiga 1000 coming out in '85, Commodore releases an "Amiga multimedia card" or whatever it might have been called as an expansion card for PCs.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Rotareneg

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear: I didn't mean "rip the chipset out of an Amiga as it actually existed and stick it in a PC." I meant, just as a thought experiment, "what if the Amiga chipset was designed from the beginning to be part of a PC expansion card." Instead of an Amiga 1000 coming out in '85, Commodore releases an "Amiga multimedia card" or whatever it might have been called as an expansion card for PCs.

Funnily enough, I thought of starting a thread a week or so ago along the lines of: What if the Amiga chipset was based on an Intel 8086-based CPU?

[idrougge]

There would have been one thread about it on vogons.org.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What if the Amiga chipset was based on an Intel 8086-based CPU?

Then the Atari ST would have won hands down.

[gimbal]

I don't see how that would have sold. The Amiga as it was designed was literally your friend, a friendly looking machine very capable at doing audio-visual things like gaming, art and sound engineering. A machine for the family, not (merely) a machine for the office.

It wasn't just the hardware that sold the Amiga, it was the entire package deal.

[Mikerochip]

Well, some of the other systems that were available as PC Addon cards, like the 3DO, https://www.neogaf.com/threads/3do-b...e-labs.765719/

The megadrive, https://segaretro.org/Mega_PC and such, seemed to make no difference to the success of the platform. The megadrive was still a success, the 3DO still a failure.

There was a simple (in hardware terms) atari ST card too, the Gemulator, basically a set of TOS roms on an ISA card. The Janus ISA card I think had a full 68000 processor and TOS.

It's hard to dig up info on either of those any more, but they didn't seem to hurt or help the sale of Atari's at all.

Here's a nice article:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/352654...mputer-hybrids

[Hewitson]

The difference is, the Megadrive was not designed as a PC add-on. The Mega PC was designed as a PC which could play Megadrive games and it was released several years after the Megadrive.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Rotareneg

I had recently watched a video ( [ Show youtube player ] ) that included a PC soundcard that used a SID chip on it which got me thinking: Why not a retro soundcard with Paula on it? That quickly lead to the title question:


What if, instead of being an entirely new computer and operating system, the Amiga had been a combined audio/video card for PCs?


I'm thinking something along the lines of an ISA card with the custom chips and 256 kB of ram on it, with some empty sockets to expand it to at least 512 kB.

your wish was granted long ago... shame it never saw the light of day (there must be some prototypes out there with this picture on BBoAH).

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.co...uct.aspx?id=41

It is pretty rare to spread the Amiga hardware to anther computer family, when Amiga is a full family of computers, that rivalizes in its market.

[Seiya]

maybe didn't change nothing because it required a business management that Commodore and and the Companies that came afterwards did not seem to have