What spec would the A1200 had launched with if it was up to YOU

[eXeler0]

Its 1991 and you are head of the development of the next Amiga models. One of these will be the A1200 aimed at the lower end of consumer market and it has a targeted release date of late 1992.
What do you do differently compared to what commodore actually produced.
Write the specs of this hypothetical Amiga 1200 and motivate your choices.

Of course I also let my "Amiga Oracle" GPT answer to this hypothetical scenario:
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The Oracle's reply:
--------------------------------------------
Hypothetical Amiga 1200 Specifications

CPU: Motorola 68EC030 at 25 MHz
Motivation: A balance between cost and performance. The 68EC030 is a cost-reduced version of the 68030, lacking a MMU (Memory Management Unit), which isn't crucial for a consumer-level machine. The bump in clock speed from the actual A1200's 14MHz 68EC020 offers a noticeable performance boost.

RAM: 2 MB Chip RAM, expandable to 4 MB + 2 MB Fast RAM included, expandable to 8 MB
Motivation: The inclusion of Fast RAM by default would significantly improve performance, especially for more demanding tasks and games. A base total of 4 MB RAM (2 MB Chip + 2 MB Fast) would make the system more versatile out of the box.

Graphics: Enhanced AGA Chipset
Motivation: Retain the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) but with slight improvements for better video output quality and possibly a slight increase in the number of on-screen colors to further solidify its edge in graphics.

Storage: 2.5" IDE interface with a 120 MB Hard Drive included
Motivation: While keeping costs in check, including a modest-sized hard drive as standard would greatly enhance the user experience, making the A1200 more attractive for a broader range of applications.

Expansion: Improved expansion capabilities
Motivation: Including a more accessible expansion port for RAM and possibly a CPU upgrade. This would allow users to easily enhance their system as needed.

Operating System: Workbench 3.0 with enhancements
Motivation: Workbench 3.0 was a solid base, but offering some additional refinements and optimizations would make the system more efficient and user-friendly.

Price Point: Slightly higher than the actual A1200, but offering significantly better value
Motivation: The improved specs would justify a somewhat higher price, but it would still need to be competitive in the consumer market.


Rationale Behind the Choices:
The chosen CPU offers a good compromise between cost and performance, making the system faster without being prohibitively expensive.
Including Fast RAM as standard addresses one of the significant limitations of the actual A1200.
A hard drive as standard, even a small one by today's standards, would significantly enhance the system's capabilities and appeal.
Improved AGA chipset would keep the Amiga 1200 competitive in the rapidly evolving graphics landscape of the early 90s.
The slightly higher price point might be a risk, but the enhanced capabilities would offer better value, making it an attractive proposition for a wide range of users, from gamers to hobbyists and beyond.

In this alternate universe, the hypothetical A1200 might have given Commodore a stronger foothold in the early 90s computer market, potentially altering the company's trajectory during that pivotal period.
-------------------------------------------------------------------(end of reply)

So the reply was pretty well grounded, but some aspects of it were probably a strtetch, like 2MB Fastmem and 120MB HDD.
I agree mostly, but realistically, it would need to be something like a 60MB HDD, and probably 2MB Chip, 1MB Fast and CPU could have been a 25MHz (or 28) EC 020.

[eXeler0]

If someone wonders about the price, I asked that too..

"What do you estimate the launch price of this machine would have been in late 1992?"

--------------------
Amiga Oracle GPT:

Estimating the launch price of this hypothetical Amiga 1200 with enhanced specifications in late 1992 requires considering several factors, including the cost of components at the time, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and the need for Commodore to maintain a profit margin. Let's break it down:

CPU (Motorola 68EC030 at 25 MHz): This would be more expensive than the 68EC020 used in the actual A1200. However, as a cost-reduced version of the 68030, it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive.

RAM (2 MB Chip + 2 MB Fast, expandable): Memory prices in the early 90s were significant, and doubling the RAM would add to the cost.

Enhanced AGA Chipset: Slight improvements to the chipset would incur additional R&D costs, but wouldn't drastically change the manufacturing cost.

Storage (120 MB Hard Drive): In 1992, hard drives were still relatively expensive. A 120 MB drive would be a considerable addition to the cost.

Expansion Capabilities & Operating System Enhancements: These would add some cost, but mostly in R&D.

Manufacturing and Distribution: These costs would be somewhat consistent with the original A1200, though the inclusion of a hard drive might slightly increase manufacturing complexity.

Profit Margin and Market Positioning: Commodore would need to balance making a profit while keeping the price attractive to consumers.

The original Amiga 1200, released in 1992, was priced around $599 in the United States. Given the enhancements proposed, particularly the inclusion of a hard drive and the more powerful CPU, it's reasonable to estimate a 20-30% increase in cost.

Therefore, a realistic launch price for this hypothetical Amiga 1200 might have been in the range of $750 to $800. This price would position it above the entry-level market targeted by the original A1200 but would offer significantly better value and performance, potentially attracting a broader spectrum of users, including more serious hobbyists and semi-professional users.

This price estimation is speculative, of course, but it's based on a rough calculation of the costs and market conditions of the early 1990s.
--------------------------------- (End of reply)

I thiunk it estimated the price fairly good, but then you can ask if that was too high for the typical A1200 buyer?

[Samurai_Crow]

The Budgie bus controller should have been a cache controller for AGA. Adding page-fetch look-ahead buffers to the Copper and Blitter DMAs would have as much as quadrupled their bandwidth, allowing their clock speeds to be quadrupled as well. This would have boosted the Copper-chunky hack to 320×240 using overscan on NTSC with 12 bits per pixel color depth.

[Reynolds]

In short, FPU, 4/8MB chip ram, better IDE port, 2x PCMCIA, KS upgraded accordingly.

[Amigajay]

I think adding faster CPU’s and more RAM is always a cop out and what PC companies did where cost was not an issue on the whole.

As i’ve always said the A1200 was decent upgrade to the previous years A500+ for the same money, BUT had it a much improved blitter, copper, paula chip then the differences would have been greater and more noticeable for the public and people wanting to upgrade. Other than the custom chips, a HD floppy disk drive to encourage more PC ports and less cuts to be made to games. And finally a 6 button pad as standard to encourage developers to use more buttons and get other pad/stick developers to follow the new standard.

These changes imo would negate the biggest downfalls and complaints of the time and allow faster platform games and beat em ups to be developed which were the biggest news of 91/92.

[Daedalus]

Adding anything to the existing spec would have increased the cost of an already expensive computer. Yes, it would have been nice to have lots of RAM and CPU power, but realistically far fewer would have been bought, resulting in even fewer games and programs to take advantage of it. As has been pointed out numerous times before in numerous similar threads.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Adding anything to the existing spec would have increased the cost of an already expensive computer. Yes, it would have been nice to have lots of RAM and CPU power, but realistically far fewer would have been bought, resulting in even fewer games and programs to take advantage of it. As has been pointed out numerous times before in numerous similar threads.

Not necessarily - if you integrate all chips into 1 (Alice+Paula+Lisa) this could be cheaper - speeding was also possible (by creating legacy DMA slot mode and adding new cycles with for example dynamic allocation, also using internal 32 bit bus would work, FPM support is just address comparator). It was possible if HP/LSI technology used (Lisa). Those modifications create bridge between OCS and new AGA tech.

[Samurai_Crow]

@pandy71
The magic of the Alice chip, like the Agnus before, was the precomputed ROM lookups. You couldn't fit Alice and Lisa on the same chip until 1998 and a die shrink alone couldn't do it.

This was discussed at the 1998 Amiga DevCon in St. Louis. The only way to get Alice small enough to fit was to reduce the bus width to 8 bits for the blitter and compensate by octupling the clock speed instead of merely quadrupling it.

[Paulee_Alex_Bow]

I’d have kept the A1200 stock apart from one difference - move 1MB to Fast RAM to speed things up.

I’d have also released an A1000+ like several sources stated, in an Apple LC style Pizza box, this one would have a built in hard drive, and an ‘030, and MIDI PORTS

[Samurai_Crow]

Re:fast RAM and CPU upgrades
Accelerators came out soon with full 030's and SIMM sockets anyway. That wouldn't require any intervention by Commodore. For actual AGA improvements, the cache controller Budgie would've solved more problems longer.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Re:fast RAM and CPU upgrades
Accelerators came out soon with full 030's and SIMM sockets anyway. That wouldn't require any intervention by Commodore. For actual AGA improvements, the cache controller Budgie would've solved more problems longer.

The obvious push-back here is that it makes a lot of difference for devs whatever the machine can do out of the box as opposed to whatever is available in the after-market... (Hopefully the idea of Consolizing this was already in their heads, so CD32 would have also had this hardware, minus the HDD)

I think this would have been doable:
Faster CPU, say 25/28MHz 020
2MB Chip + 1MB Fast in SIM Socket, supporting up to 8MB. Just swap the SIM, (they did this with A4000.)
40MB HDD as smallest standard.
AGA+ (full 32-bit Blitter / Copper)
Paula, double the number of channels to 8 should have been easy already by the time they did ECS.

No PCMCIA, no built in RF-shield. these two things would have saved a few bucks. Sell it with PSU sold separately. A500 owners could reuse the A500 PSU.
Let's say this spc would have added $150 to the price at launch but would probably drop fast a year later...

[Karlos]

The AGA specification should have required the inclusion of 1MB minimum of Fast Ram so that the CPU could run at it's full potential. No AGA machine should ever have been allowed to market without it. People go on about the appearance of full 030 boards but this was an extra cost equivalent to the base machine itself for some specifications.

It's unrealistic to ask for more than that out of the box, really, unless we are indulging pure fantasy.

[Lineof7s]

Originally Posted by Paulee_Alex_Bow

I’d have kept the A1200 stock apart from one difference - move 1MB to Fast RAM to speed things up.

I’d have also released an A1000+ like several sources stated, in an Apple LC style Pizza box, this one would have a built in hard drive, and an ‘030, and MIDI PORTS

What, no "Paula 2" chip or anything? Heck, even a "Paula+" that optionally let one pan the four channels anywhere on the stereo spectrum would have been nice.

[Retro1234]

The PCMCIA did turn out to be one of the best features ever. Maybe not so much at the time.

[tom256]

-one SIMM PS/2 socket would be game changer because of cheap upgrades
-HDD 3.5 bay
-CPU EC020 21Mhz or 28MHz or socketed 030 with divider to choose frequency.
-PCMCIA was obsolete back then
-eventually build in scandoubler+ff

[CCCP alert]

Well done Chat GPT, well done lol a 120mb 2.5inch hard drive in 1992, even if it existed, probably cost as much as an A1200

I believe Commodore gave developers a choice, 2mb RAM or high density A4000 floppy drive with 1mb RAM. By a majority vote we got 2mb RAM and 880k disk drive.

Should have been launched without a disk drive and just a CD-ROM drive, floppy games are simplistic, hard drives are expensive, CD-ROM solves this problem and negates the need for either given the disk drive port on the machine.

[Samurai_Crow]

I would rather have kept the PCMCIA for Ethernet controllers and wireless, eventually.

As for the SIMM socket for Fast RAM, not if it came at the expense of a belly-slot. Don't underestimate how cheap Commodore could get with base configurations. Having a Fast RAM card removable but standard in the belly-slot as stock would have been great enough.

[StevenJGore]

I think 1MB or 2MB fast RAM and a HDD would have put the retail price of the A1200 at about £600, i.e. double what I paid for mine.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

a 120mb 2.5inch hard drive in 1992, even if it existed, probably cost as much as an A1200

My 120MB 2.5" HDD in 1993 cost £250. That was considered a good price at the time, and it included installation (i.e. taking my A1200 to the shop for it to be fitted).

[Old_Bob]

28mhz CPU, minimum. An EC030 would be nice. But, if we're penny pinching, there's a buck or two and change to be trimmed off the BOM if we opt for EC020. Along with a socket for the FPU on the board.

2mb Fast RAM. No getting around this, if we want to take maximum advantage of a fast CPU, this is an absolute must.

These two changes don't strike me as being too much of a departure from the machine we actually got. I don't suppose they would add too much to the price of the thing?


Some things that might require a bit more design effort and investment dollars might be... stretching the blitter logic out to 32 bits along with a hike up to 14mhz. More hardware sprites and an updated Paula with additional sound channels and support for HD floppy disks. While I'm wishing, I'll chuck in a DSP3210.

I guess I might also try twisting Motorola's arm a bit to see if they might supply an EC020 or 030 clockable at 56mhz.

B

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Its 1991 and you are head of the development of the next Amiga models. One of these will be the A1200 aimed at the lower end of consumer market and it has a targeted release date of late 1992.
What do you do differently compared to what commodore actually produced.
Write the specs of this hypothetical Amiga 1200 and motivate your choices.

Of course I also let my "Amiga Oracle" GPT answer to this hypothetical scenario:

Ignoring the silly AI crap...

I wouldn't change the hardware at all. What I would do is move the launch date forward to late 1991. This could happen because I would have delivered the AA chipset when Gould was expecting it, in mid 1991.

I would have told Dave Haynie to forget the DSP chip and just concentrate on getting the A3000+ going with AA. The 50 development machines would be sent to major developers in mid 1991, so AA titles could be available on the A1200's launch or soon after.

I would also work closely with 3rd party manufacturers to encourage them to make FastRAM boards and accelerator cards. By mid 1992 you would see fast 030 and 040 accelerator cards with on-board SCSI or IDE for an external CD-ROM drive. RAM boards might also have this interface.

1991 was Commodore's best year, with the A500 selling more than ever. But this would not last much longer. Having the A1200 out in late 1991 or even early 1992 would keep the ball rolling while I developed the AA+ plus chipset, to be released in late 1992. This would have all the things people thought should have been in AGA - chunky graphics, faster blitter, more sound channels, HD floppy, buffered serial port. The expansion bus would be running at 14MHz like the A1200, but the CPU to ChipRAM interface would also run at 14MHz rather than 7MHz.

By the time this machine was out numerous 3rd party RAM boards and Accelerator cards would already have been produced for the A1200. These would work with the A1200+ too, so 'early adopters' could trade in their their old machine for a cheap upgrade.