Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Did any good ones exist?

WD177x series disk controller i believe.. basically look at the controllers the BBC B used.

[sandruzzo]

Many things on Amiga 500 and 1000 seems be rushed. Since Amiga was kind of computer and not only consolle games, some thing with less more money should be added:

- a little bit of fast ram
- more dma slots to have Ham in Hi-res
- blitter capable of multy blitting without cpu aid
- async copper, and better design move instruction were once you've load register on copper, then with only one word you could load the data and change register with offest.
- horizontal and vertical flip for both sprites and bobs.

[alewis]

Originally Posted by ajk

When the Amiga came out (the A1000) in 1985, it was hardly a budget computer though. It was quite expensive and advertised as a multimedia system, for audio, graphics design and other productivity and of course games too.

Later on the A500 could be considered a budget computer, although it still wasn't that cheap when launched.

Actually, the A1000 was a budget computer compared to likes of Kaypro and Compaq 286s at the time. From the August 1985 issue of PCW, which had the first A1000 review, here are two 286s

Kaypro 286i
Intel 80286 CPU 6MHz
512KB RAM
Single 1.2MB floppy
No hard disk
6 16bit AT slots
2 8bit XT slots
serial and parallel interfaces
Colour graphics card
Price £4136 (!!!)

Compaq 286
Intel 80286 @ 6 or 8MHz
256KB RAM
Single 1.2MB floppy
same expansion slots
No price finalised

BBC Model B 32MB RAM - £339. With single disk drive £420
Sony 10 Word Processor 'from £2595 inc printer" plus VAT @15%
Olivetti M24 16bit 8086@8MHz, 128K RAM £1499 plus VAT @15%

Guy Kewney's article on the A1000 opened with "I'm sure I'm in for a terrible disappointment with the Amiga, because no computer could quite live up to the effect this one has already had on me... it does multi-tasking. It has colour. It uses a mouse and icons. Its fast. It has plenty of storage. And it costs around $1200 in the US without display but including one disk"

"In perspective
The Amiga, at $1500 for a colour system, is obviously going to be a business system first and foremost"

It was budget compared to a 286 in 1985. It was budget compared even to a word processor. It was only "costly" compared to the leading 8bit 'home micro-computers" of the time.

[plasmab]

BBC B was 32Kb ram, not 32MB

[alewis]

Originally Posted by plasmab

BBC B was 32Kb ram, not 32MB

Fingeritus on my part, trying to use an iPad for writing is not recommended.

[Juz400]

Crikey!
Thinking of a BBC B with 32MB of RAM in the 1980`s
The familiar paving slab with red keys would have become a patio!

[Foebane]

I was just thinking of that, a 32Mb BBC Micro! HOT DAMN!

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I was just thinking of that, a 32Mb BBC Micro! HOT DAMN!

Amiga with 32 MB RAM in 1985 would be even hotter. But according to memory prices in 1985 from http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm it would have costed 32*300 = 9600$ for the memory alone (Not that expensive for business, but still not for home use). Also add that the need for 68010 or even 68012 and the price would go over 15000$ for a complete system, so it would be fit only for business use.

[Glen M]

Biggest mistake made..... easy....

Not selling Amiga to David Pleasance.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by plasmab

WD177x series disk controller i believe.. basically look at the controllers the BBC B used.

That's what the ST used. I don't see in what way the ST handles disks better.

[plasmab]

Standard file format, standard drives and an off the shelf chip. Rolling your own disc controller and is madness. I guess they had a better file system planned but the OFS was a rush job at the last minute.

[Foebane]

One thing: Direct Memory Access. Modern PCs have it, yet only one type of memory is required. The Amiga pioneered DMA (or was at least one of the first) and yet it required two or even three types of memory at least. Why?

[Juz400]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Standard file format, standard drives and an off the shelf chip. Rolling your own disc controller and is madness. I guess they had a better file system planned but the OFS was a rush job at the last minute.

Buying an off the shelf chip and drive could have been easier and cheaper to start with but when you are fabbing your own chips would that have been cheaper once you go over 100k units?
Were there licencing issues?
If you use the off the shelf, would you have to licence the code from WD to read/write to the format in your OS?
CBM didnt like to spend money on that sort of thing

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Foebane

One thing: Direct Memory Access. Modern PCs have it, yet only one type of memory is required. The Amiga pioneered DMA (or was at least one of the first) and yet it required two or even three types of memory at least. Why?

I think it's actually relatively clever - each separate section of memory is capable of DMA independently, which means that SCSI controllers can DMA directly into fast RAM while the chipset DMAs directly into chip RAM, for example. Doing it that way meant two things: first, the custom chipset were simplified and therefore cheaper. Mainboards were also cheaper without needing a full 32-bit address bus to every chip. And second, the limited bandwidth of standard memory buses of the time wasn't a complete bottleneck. Of course, the downsides were that chip RAM was never increased beyond 2MB, but an entire system of chip RAM would be far, far slower than the equivalent expanded Amiga.

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Foebane

One thing: Direct Memory Access. Modern PCs have it, yet only one type of memory is required.

Not strictly true once you consider that PC graphics cards have their own video memory, which could be considered roughly equivalent to the Amiga's chip memory. (OK, in more recent years onboard graphics chipsets use a portion of main system memory instead of their own memory on a separate bus - and this is precisely why their performance is poor.)

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

Not strictly true once you consider that PC graphics cards have their own video memory, which could be considered roughly equivalent to the Amiga's chip memory.

EXCELLENT point, never realised that until you pointed it out!

[sandruzzo]

Amiga Lacked of enought memory cycles to show Ham6 in hires

[ruinashiro]

Ham6 in hires happened all the time. Including sliced ham/dynamic ham in ~736x520 or whatever the overscan settings were for hires at the time.

Or do you mean in video motion?

[ Show youtube player ]

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

Ham6 in hires happened all the time. Including sliced ham/dynamic ham in ~736x520 or whatever the overscan settings were for hires at the time.

Or do you mean in video motion?

[ Show youtube player ]

I know it, but I was talking about Ham6 with 6 planes, since Amiga was labeled as home computer.

[McTrinsic]

Wow.
Is that Demo available somewhere?