What if things had gone differently?

[BSzili]

In true Amiga fashion there seems to be increasing fragmentation. Now we have at least 3 "what if" threads running concurrently, and I fear people's attention will be too divided to keep the momentum if this continues. One once popular thread that ran for a 150+ pages is already falling behind because of this trend

I'd like to take a more holistic approach to this problem, and ask the question: what if things had gone differently? What should have people done to achieve this? What would have been the outcome? Let's prove the naysayers wrong and prove that we can unite under the banner of hindsight!

[dreadnought]

Finally, a one true what-if thread to rule them all!

Trying to have a valiant stab at answering this question for the ages, I think that if things have gone differently, in the long run the outcome would be pretty much the same.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by BSzili

Let's prove the naysayers wrong and prove that we can unite under the banner of hindsight!

Captain Hindsight approves this message!

[Samurai_Crow]

Graphics.library needed a chipset enhanced replacement.

SpritePorts that hold each sprite image would replace vsprites and simplesprites both by generating a Bitmap structure. Once there, if one wants to use the blitter on a SpritePort, it's just a matter of passing that Bitmap struct to create RastPort.

SortCop() would replace MrgCop() using a position header in the CopperNode structure. That structure will contain fully-encoded copper moves generated by macros. Copper skips are pretty useless and should be reserved for manual bypass mode, as should copper based blitter waiting.

QBlit() and the corresponding dequeue interrupt should have been rewritten in Assembly so they can stack push only the registers actually used and retrieve them at the end. C compilers just push and pop all registers to the stack indescriminately. What a waste!

[Dunny]

Hmmm.

I think the A1200 would have come out in 1990 at the latest, and cost about £100 so I could afford it. HDD would be a £10 investment, and a Blizzard 1230/IV with 32MB of RAM would be a similar price, so I could get one the following month.

After that, I'd be pretty happy so no need to go any further.

[Cris1997XX]

The Amiga should've died, officially, in 1992. Just no ECS, AGA, whatever. Only memory upgrades count

[grond]

Originally Posted by BSzili

I'd like to take a more holistic approach to this problem, and ask the question: what if things had gone differently? What should have people done to achieve this? What would have been the outcome? Let's prove the naysayers wrong and prove that we can unite under the banner of hindsight!

I wouldn't have married the woman I married and wouldn't have to work any more. Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

[TEG]

Originally Posted by grond

I wouldn't have married the woman I married and wouldn't have to work any more. Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

She don't like the Amiga or what?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grond

I wouldn't have married the woman I married and wouldn't have to work any more.

You are right: I did not marry the woman you married, and now I do not have to work anymore!

Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

definitively between 1200 - 1150 BC: the collapse of the Bronze Age

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by BSzili

<SNIP>
I'd like to take a more holistic approach to this problem, and ask the question: what if things had gone differently?
<SNIP>

This is really the only aspect I can't see covered, and fragmented over many threads on various forums.

Nobody really talks about what would Commodore be like by the end of the 80s if in 1984 Jack Tramiel had for half a decade been selling

<$199 C64
<$80 Plus/4 type machine with rubber keys
<$500 travelling salesman's dream of the portable Commodore LCD.
<$25 64k RAM expansion for the C64 to counter the 128k rivals

You don't need to have an I.Q. of a genius to see that line-up would have put Commodore right at the top, the most successful computer company outside the world of PC compatible $1000+ segment.

(remember C16/Plus/4 games are only crap generally because 16kb isn't enough, x116 or x232 would have to be shelved and never put on the market. Just compare Commodore MAX games with C64 if you think I am wrong).

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by grond

<SNIP> Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

Easiest question of all to answer, the Calculator Wars with TI putting C= on the brink of bankruptcy. It's doubtful Gould would have got his claws into Commodore had TI not screwed the market with stock dumping retail priced calculators at below manufacturing costs any other company had to fund.

There is evidence Tramiel was held back by Gould even in 82/83 and if anything by Jan 84 Commodore would have been even more of a juggernaut crushing it's rivals in the sub $500 segment. It's obvious all the crap products come after that infamous meeting at the CES Show.

For the best possible scenario you need Jack expert control at the helm of Commodore whilst taking full advantage of his wholly owned MOS and Eagle Pitcher LCD manufacturing entities to do to the home/small business computer market what TI did to the calculator market during the Calculator Wars.

Who knows if after a great 1984 trading that Commodore wouldn't have been the ones to bring a $600 512k 8086 IBM PC compatible onto the market first (which is why Amstrad outlive Commodore, sweet FA to do with sales of anything other than the PC1512 which set them up financially for a decade).

Maybe in 10 years time I will make a movie about what that world would be like in 1989 using AI text to video tools lol

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by grond

Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

I would bet for 1980, when the dirty dozen started designing the ibm pc 5150.

[grond]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

(remember C16/Plus/4 games are only crap generally because 16kb isn't enough, x116 or x232 would have to be shelved and never put on the market. Just compare Commodore MAX games with C64 if you think I am wrong).

I don't think so. The 264 series lacked SID and sprites which made even simple games slow.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by grond

I don't think so. The 264 series lacked SID and sprites which made even simple games slow.

x264 (Plus/4 with chiclet rubber keys) was going to be $80, the nearest rival is the £225 Amstrad CPC 464.

TED = VIC-II - SPRITES.

You still get fast character mode screens rivals don't have, you still get sub-pixel hi-resolution hardware scroll registers even for multicolour mode screens AND you get a CPU speed to rival MSX/ZX/CPC Z80s to boot. All the low budget rivals had to do software sprites and software scrolling, which is why half the Amstrad arcade games have a small screen.

TED is fine for Atari 400/800 or VCS style SFX. It's not like $200 Timex/Sinclair owners were dancing around their bedrooms to game soundtracks and at least the sound comes out of a decent speaker in your TV and not something in the case like rivals (Electron/CPC/rubber key Spectrum/Timex).

I presume such an erroneous comment is because you don't know what proper plus/4 games are like. e.g. Pets Rescue, carTED etc etc or what computers below the C64 RRP were like let alone that cost twice what Jack and Shiraz had decided the RRP of the x264 was going to be.

[AestheticDebris]

The cuts to the hardware in the 264 range might have made sense if the machine has actually been low cost. Once it became obvious it was going to end up costing more than the C64 the whole project should've been canned. Releasing made no sense at all.

What people have achieved with it is pretty cool though.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

This is really the only aspect I can't see covered, and fragmented over many threads on various forums.

Nobody really talks about what would Commodore be like by the end of the 80s if in 1984 Jack Tramiel had for half a decade been selling

<$199 C64
<$80 Plus/4 type machine with rubber keys
<$500 travelling salesman's dream of the portable Commodore LCD.
<$25 64k RAM expansion for the C64 to counter the 128k rivals

You don't need to have an I.Q. of a genius to see that line-up would have put Commodore right at the top, the most successful computer company outside the world of PC compatible $1000+ segment.

At first I thought you were being ironic, but...

(remember C16/Plus/4 games are only crap generally because 16kb isn't enough, x116 or x232 would have to be shelved and never put on the market. Just compare Commodore MAX games with C64 if you think I am wrong).

No, it's not just that. The machines are crap because they don't have sprites and SID sound, making them less than a C64 as well as incompatible. Fatal mistake. The idea was crap from the start - produce a cheaper incompatible shadow of the C64 to compete against the ZX Spectrum etc. But that was silly. The Spectrum was popular because it was better than what came before it, not worse.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by grond

I wouldn't have married the woman I married and wouldn't have to work any more. Now I only need to find the point in time where things started to go wrong...

I would have married the woman I didnt marry so I could have a proper divorce.

Things started to go really wrong somewhere between Italy90 and USA94.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

x264 (Plus/4 with chiclet rubber keys) was going to be $80, the nearest rival is the £225 Amstrad CPC 464.

TED = VIC-II - SPRITES.

Take away sprites and you lose a major advantage of the C64 over the CPC.

You also fail to see what the CPC was about. It wasn't just games. It had a high resolution mode that did 80 column text, and a sharp monochrome screen option than only cost £199. The floppy drive addon was much faster, more reliable and easier to use than Commodore's drive, and the next year it was built into the machine (CPC664). The bitmapped graphics were easier to use, more colorful and sharper than the VIC-II (the C64 had washed out blue on blue text to hide 'jail bars' caused by interference inside the VIC, and its composite output made many color combinations unusable). The CPC also had a much better BASIC that could actually be used for more serious stuff. The keyboard was also better, with proper cursor keys and a numeric keypad.

Finally the CPC reduced clutter and improved reliability by having the tape drive built in and the power supply in the monitor. This made it more attractive to adults who weren't computer nerds and wanted a machine that was simple to set up and use - Alan Sugar's 'truck driver'.

You still get fast character mode screens rivals don't have, you still get sub-pixel hi-resolution hardware scroll registers even for multicolour mode screens AND you get a CPU speed to rival MSX/ZX/CPC Z80s to boot.

And you get yet another architecture that would take time to be properly exploited - too much time. The industry wanted fewer platforms to support, not more.

I presume such an erroneous comment is because you don't know what proper plus/4 games are like. e.g. Pets Rescue, carTED etc etc or what computers below the C64 RRP were like let alone that cost twice what Jack and Shiraz had decided the RRP of the x264 was going to be.

Pet's Rescue was released in 2018 and carTED in 2019. You see the problem here? They certainly do show off what TED was capable of, only 30 years too late. And although they are impressive considering TED's limitations, they don't surpass what the VIC-II and other chips were capable of with much less effort.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Who knows if after a great 1984 trading that Commodore wouldn't have been the ones to bring a $600 512k 8086 IBM PC compatible onto the market first (which is why Amstrad outlive Commodore, sweet FA to do with sales of anything other than the PC1512 which set them up financially for a decade).

Commodore launched its first PC clone, the PC-10, in April 1984. In 1987 the PC-10 sold for $559 + monitor (can't find the original price as it was initially only sold in Germany). In 1987 they produced a cut-down 'home' version called the PC-1. It came with 512k RAM, CGA and Hercules video, RGB and RF outputs, and sold for $519 without monitor.

Commodore Computing International July 1984:-

Commodore to rival IBM

Commodore could well become IBM's major PC plug-compatible rival according to sources quoted in the independent IBM magazine, PC...

American analysts and software houses say that Commodore's position is strengthened significantly by the recent deal with Bytec for the rights to IBM compatible technology used in the Hyperion, together with the agreement with Intel to second source the 8088 chip. The article concludes with a prediction that Commodore will undercut IBM's prices by 40-50 per cent.

In response to this article Commodore's marketing manager, John Baxter, comments:
"The industry is increasingly recognizing that Commodore's competitive strength lies in its policy of being totally self-sufficient in manufacturing. We have demonstrated our ability to outstrip all competitors in other segments of the market and it's clear that independent observers now see us as poised to repeat that process in the PC sector."

[TCD]

And there we go.