Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[turrican3]

I wasn't disappointed at first,
But after a year, iwas still waiting for an aga shocking game like a sotb in 256 colours with everything 2x better than sotb 1 but nothing happened and even more scary, you had good games like second samurai, brian the lion and the difference with the a500 version were too little !!!
But i still in the course because i was waiting for announced incredibles games like ... heu sorry i don't remember the names, you know all dos games around 1993-1994, then commodore f...ed and it was the end. But not for me, it was too late i bought an amiga 4000 and i stay to 2002 something like that, perhaps more.
I was happy with my a4000, browsing internet was very fast and the power of a 060 50mhz combined with a light OS like the workbench did the job.
When i was comparing the speed of this OS vs win 2000 or millenium i was in paradise with a 060, really.
resumed : 1st i was happy 2nd disappointed by the games 3rd happy with a powerfull a4000, what help me is that i had the money at this time to buy an A4000 without that i would have go away for a long time, i think.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Minuous

To be fully compatible, it would have to have run the same software. How do you propose Commodore should have achieved that!?

They could have put an X86 CPU on a board, maybe some local RAM so it had a chance at being fast. Then I don't know put some ISA slots in so you could actually use one of the Amazing ISA VGA and sound cards if you wanted. Even make it like a ... sort of a bridge over to the ISA bus, on a board? Nevermind, that's totally impractical and would never work.

[sandruzzo]

A little bit of "fast ram" would have suffice. Even faster "chip" would have done the job, but Aga. Some fixes on Copper and Blitter would have been like a candy! Come on, full 32bit 14mhz machine in the 1992 would have been not so expensive, and not so bad!

[Minuous]

@turrican3:

Sure, they could have had a bridgeboard-like hardware emulation, but that would have added massively to the cost of the machine, for something that would be of use only to certain users. As well as necessitating a different form factor of course.

[malko]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

[...] But you missed the biggy - Backslash! That's the standard separator for file paths, right? Why did Amiga choose / instead - nobody uses that! [...]

The '/' key was broken on Bill Gates' keyboard, so he used the most similar one...

Originally Posted by Hewitson

[...] "Ed", is still to this day, one of the best text editors I have ever used. [...]

+1 (but we should not forget vi on others platforms)

Originally Posted by Hewitson

[...] Arexx is a part of the OS. Which versions of Windows come with Visual Basic? Oh that's right, none.

+1 (since 1990 with AmigaOS2). For the one wanting to compare ARexx with VB, they could also try to compare the disk space used by ARexx and VB... For the fans, there is always VBA .

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Rexx

From memory, ARexx was implemented on the Amiga following a partnership with IBM. Commodore transferred some technology from AmigaOS (the multi-tasking not to name it) to OS/2* and IBM gave in exchange Rexx. Unfortunately, IBM was never very strong in supporting the software (except maybe the OS400) and gradually abandoned OS/2 despite being better than Windows.

*and as everyone knows that OS/2 was mainly developed by Microsoft at IBM's request, it means that Microsoft had access to the multi-tasking technology of the AmigaOS at that time...

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

"However I won't sit back while lies and misconceptions about the Amiga continue to be promulgated."

He's right you know.

Your posts have been filled with misinformation and falsehoods. Now, I don't know why this is, so don't take this personally. Could be you really do believe all these things (for whatever reason). But that doesn't make them true in any way, nor does it really matter.

What matters is that these systems are very old and a lot of factually incorrect information is spread about them already. As such it's useful to try and provide a more accurate representation of what happened.

---
Note that this is not about the A1200 being perfect, it wasn't. There were compromises and some were not that great. The machine would've really benefited from a 1MB chip/1MB fast split (or alternatively having chip RAM run at CPU speed rather than half of it).

But for me it was such a breath of fresh air.

I liked my A500, but I loved my A1200. It was so much better in many ways - it had enough memory to actually use multitasking all the time, it had a much nicer UI and OS in general, it was nice and fast in comparison to the A500 and expanding it was so much easier and cheaper. Plus, it had easy to add hard disks - which was extremely nice. Now, AGA was a nice improvement that is IMHO underrated (getting 256 colours on screen was a big deal at the time - everybody kinda forgot about that), but the rest of the package is what made me love it.

Moving to the PC after the A1200 sucked. It made me realise all the more just what had been lost with Commodore going bankrupt.

Originally Posted by malko

From memory, ARexx was implemented on the Amiga following a partnership with IBM. Commodore transferred some technology from AmigaOS (the multi-tasking not to name it) to OS/2* and IBM gave in exchange Rexx. Unfortunately, IBM was never very strong in supporting the software (except maybe the OS400) and gradually abandoned OS/2 despite being better than Windows.

This is most likely an urban myth. Amiga's AREXX was not developed by anyone at Commodore and was already available before Commodore licensed it from the independent developer.

I don't remember his name of the top of my head, but I'm sure someone here knows.

Edit: got it, it was written by William S. Hawes back in 1987 and had nothing to do with IBM. Commodore licensed it from him. Don't know what they actually traded with IBM.

[Retro1234]

I secretly work for Microsoft

The way you two put it Commodore couldn't have done anything else and we're already dead according to you two Commodore couldnt afford anything so that's that, Amiga was dead straight from the oracles posts.

All I said was a bit more support for PC data types and now we're talking about software compatibility with PC? and 5.25" Disks

Sorry I'll go back to using the best OS ever Workbench 1.3 and type all my messages with ED

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by malko

+1 (but we should not forget vi on others platforms)

vim is far superior to any other text editor on the planet.

[Hewitson]

I would never argue that WB 1.3 sucked. I would still to this day, despite its shortcomings compared to modern OS's, say that 3.1 is the best operating system ever created.

Absolutely flies even on the slowest Amigas. Fits on 6 double density floppy disks and is probably even smaller than MS-DOS, despite having a fairly sophisticated GUI. Uses almost zero memory, fantastic multitasking capabilities, datatypes, commodities and other cool features, it's just an amazing piece of software.

[demolition]

These threads are like standing in the local market square next to a bench with a group of alcoholics who all have very strong opinions about what is wrong with the world, what the politicians should really be doing etc.. They never seem to realize that their discussion is going nowhere.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

All I said was a bit more support for PC data types and now we're talking about software compatibility with PC? and 5.25" Disks

Some compatibility extensions wouldn't have hurt, as long as they are implemented non-intrusive to the rest of the OS.

During the 80s and 90s neither PCs were the the leading force in hardware nor Microsoft in software. There was absolutely nothing which I wished to have in my Amiga. There was some key software which made PCs suitable for the office, that's all. On the other hand, I didn't see a single PC in my University, when I left it 1995. We wrote our thesis with LaTeX.

When I think about it, I am happy that the Amiga development stopped at some point and Commodore died. Imagine Amiga would have survived and transformed into another crappy PC. The Amiga community wouldn't even exist!

[Dunny]

While the Amiga had pre-emptive multitasking pretty much from the get-go in AmigaOS, Windows didn't get it until Win95. They didn't actually make it stable until the non-corporate versions of NT came out (Win2k, XP).

Win3.11 used cooperative multitasking. Rather than the OS putting the brakes on an application and allowing other apps to take control for a slice of time, Windows 3.11 relied on the applications gracefully allowing other apps to run. So if you had an application that sat there grinding away at some lengthy calculation or somesuch, other apps (including Windows itself) didn't get a look-in; a total freeze up of the system.

If the application caused a segfault or an exception then you would never get your desktop back.

Windows didn't catch up with Workbench/AmigaOS for more than a decade and even then it was bug-ridden right up beyond Windows ME.

Whether or not there were better bundled apps (word, notepad et al) is a completely different matter and substantially nothing to do with the underlying operating system's quality or fitness for purpose.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Dunny

While the Amiga had pre-emptive multitasking pretty much from the get-go in AmigaOS, Windows didn't get it until Win95. They didn't actually make it stable until the non-corporate versions of NT came out (Win2k, XP).

While OS/2 had other issues, I believe it also had proper preemptive multitasking much earlier than Windows?


You could also run NT as a consumer if you wanted something stable with proper multitasking. Since it wasn't targeted consumers, using it for games was uphill, but NT 4.0 was a very nice OS otherwise.

[mcgeezer]

I think what killed off Commodore was they simply didn't have an answer for developers on the rife piracy that was going on, so when the SMS, SNES and Megadrive came along with their cartridge games it must have seemed like a nice clean slate for them as regarding piracy and money to be made so it's no wonder that developers went to those platforms. To copy the games of the consoles Mam's and Dad's had to fork out more money for hardware add-ons like the Super Magic card...but where I lived these things were not well known about.

A platform is only as good as the developers that are willing to support it.

Along with that... a developer has to work much harder to get the same results out of an A1200 than they do to get the same results out of one of those consoles because they have so many of the components baked into the hardware for making 2D games, in the end... gamers compare the Amiga as a games console and don't take into account the other attributes that make the machine what it is.

I wasn't disappointed when I got my A1200, I felt fortunate as in 1992/1993 I was earning £30 a week and still managed to afford it.

They were great times.

[malko]

Originally Posted by roondar

[...] This is most likely an urban myth. [...] it was written by William S. Hawes back in 1987 and had nothing to do with IBM. Commodore licensed it from him. Don't know what they actually traded with IBM.

Today, while searching for info about ARexx, I have seen that this topic has been already discussed (but without being resolved) in another EAB thread. I will post my 2 cents there.

[ferrellsl]

Originally Posted by Dunny

While the Amiga had pre-emptive multitasking pretty much from the get-go in AmigaOS, Windows didn't get it until Win95. They didn't actually make it stable until the non-corporate versions of NT came out (Win2k, XP).

Win3.11 used cooperative multitasking. Rather than the OS putting the brakes on an application and allowing other apps to take control for a slice of time, Windows 3.11 relied on the applications gracefully allowing other apps to run. So if you had an application that sat there grinding away at some lengthy calculation or somesuch, other apps (including Windows itself) didn't get a look-in; a total freeze up of the system.

If the application caused a segfault or an exception then you would never get your desktop back.

Windows didn't catch up with Workbench/AmigaOS for more than a decade and even then it was bug-ridden right up beyond Windows ME.

Whether or not there were better bundled apps (word, notepad et al) is a completely different matter and substantially nothing to do with the underlying operating system's quality or fitness for purpose.

My apologies for blowing your false narrative, but Windows NT 3 had pre-emptive multitasking as early as 1996, along with process separation, memory protection, virtual memory and multi-user capabilities. It was rock solid for office, home desktop, and server use. The Amiga never had any of those features, and it still doesn't, not even under OS4. Being able to run mission critical applications made Windows NT the choice for most corporations. I'm sorry but the Amiga was never a choice for anyone other than gamers who occasionally needed to draft a letter or spin up a spreadsheet or for graphics and video designers. It was unstable as hell and one bad behaving app easily brought down the entire OS. Your claim that Windows wasn't stable until Windows 2000 was released is a bold faced lie. I helped field Windows NT in 1996 across the US Dept. of Defense and we never had any stability problems with NT 3 nor NT 4.

On my Amiga, I recall constant crashes due to memory fragmentation, and when it wasn't crashing, I'd get out of memory errors due to the same issue even though the OS would report several megabytes of free RAM. It was free alright, just not in large enough contiguous chunks to start another app or to keep working the apps I'd already opened and was working in. This did not improve with later versions of the OS either because the kernel was essentially never improved upon.

If AmigaOS was so great then someone needs to explain why it's been relegated to fanatical hobbyists as a play-toy rather than being used to run mission critical applications at the office and elsewhere.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by ferrellsl

If AmigaOS was so great then someone needs to explain why it's been relegated to fanatical hobbyists as a play-toy rather than being used to run mission critical applications at the office and elsewhere.

Funny you should mention mission critical:
http://www.polyphoto.com/upchug/AEcastro.html

[DofD]

One of those telemetry Amiga 2000's actually showed up on eBay last year with a certificate of authenticity from NASA. The price wanted for it was out of this world though.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

The way you two put it Commodore couldn't have done anything else and we're already dead according to you two Commodore couldnt afford anything so that's that, Amiga was dead straight from the oracles posts.

I can't speak for others, but that is not entirely correct.I've pointed out several times that the A1200 could've been somewhat different and that may have been better. It's just that overall I think they did a good job with the system, given what could be achieved.

All these fanciful scenarios such as "add full PC compatibility", "make it a 68030@50MHz with 4MB but keep it cheap", "use AAA/a much better chip set/add a DSP", "make it a pizza box with expansion slots", etc, etc, etc... They were simply not realistic. Commodore did not have AAA, the DSP integration on the A3000+ was never finished and no one would've bought the A1200 if it had been as powerful as some desired as the price would've gone way up.

It's just a budget Amiga, there's only so much you could expect. And IMHO, what we got was pretty good. It was actually significantly more powerful than the A500/A500+/A600. But then, I'm the odd one out. I never felt AGA was all that bad. It was mostly just poorly utilised and didn't speak to the imagination of game developers as much as the easier to program for consoles (with their way lower piracy) did.

All I said was a bit more support for PC data types and now we're talking about software compatibility with PC? and 5.25" Disks

If that was all you had said, I'd never have responded the way I did. But we both know that is not at all what you said - you said a great deal more than that and added a whole bunch of stuff that happened to be false or misleading. Which is the only reason I responded the way I did.

But whatever, I don't feel like repeating this argument. People can read for themselves.

Originally Posted by demolition

These threads are like standing in the local market square next to a bench with a group of alcoholics who all have very strong opinions about what is wrong with the world, what the politicians should really be doing etc.. They never seem to realize that their discussion is going nowhere.

You do realise you're one of the alcoholics in this scenario, right? Have another beer with us

Originally Posted by ferrellsl

My apologies for blowing your false narrative, but Windows NT 3 had pre-emptive multitasking as early as 1996, along with process separation, memory protection, virtual memory and multi-user capabilities. It was rock solid for office, home desktop, and server use. The Amiga never had any of those features, and it still doesn't, not even under OS4.

Amiga OS has pre-emptive multitasking and had that from day one. It has process separation and had that from day one. It also has virtual memory support since the last version of 4.0 (released in 2006).

The only real problem with the OS is the lack of memory protection. And it is indeed a problem. But that doesn't change the fact that your list is not correct, three out of the five things you name are available on the current version.

It was unstable as hell and one bad behaving app easily brought down the entire OS.

It was not unstable as hell, you could easily run it for days or weeks on end without a reboot or any problem. Have done that multiple times, no problem. And yes, I do mean while it's actually doing stuff - not just 'being up'.

As for badly behaving apps bringing down the entire OS... That was pretty much par for the course in 1992. Windows* at that time was actually worse as it could not just be brought down by running badly behaving apps, but also by merely running one of the 1000's of incompatible (but otherwise correctly behaving) DOS apps or opening 'too many' correctly behaving Windows apps at the same time. DOS wasn't any better, a bad app would bring the system down.

Consumer Windows didn't (mostly) fix the issue around badly behaving apps bringing down the system until the release of Windows 2000. Note that Windows NT (which did also mostly fix this) was not yet available when the A1200 was released. Hardly a resounding win for Microsoft, then: their stuff was objectively worse in this regard at the time the A1200 launched.

*) For clarity: Windows NT was not yet out at this time, so this is about Windows 3.

On my Amiga, I recall constant crashes due to memory fragmentation, and when it wasn't crashing, I'd get out of memory errors due to the same issue even though the OS would report several megabytes of free RAM. It was free alright, just not in large enough contiguous chunks to start another app or to keep working the apps I'd already opened and was working in. This did not improve with later versions of the OS either because the kernel was essentially never improved upon.

You do know that people here actually used Amiga OS for years on end, don't you? It was not nearly as unstable as you claim and certainly did not have 'constant crashes'. Memory fragmentation could be a problem, but it was mostly theoretical. In the real world it almost never caused actual problems, even when using your Amiga for a very long time without rebooting (all the while opening and closing different applications). This was in part due to changes Commodore had made to the memory allocation system for version 3.0, which allowed apps written with the new system in mind to mostly bypass the problem.

On the topic of kernal improvements:

In Amiga OS 4.0+ the memory fragmentation problems have been fixed because they changed how the kernel allocates and deallocates memory completely and added support for both virtualized memory and memory paging.

If AmigaOS was so great then someone needs to explain why it's been relegated to fanatical hobbyists as a play-toy rather than being used to run mission critical applications at the office and elsewhere.

I can guarantee you that if Microsoft went out of business today, that in 2045 the same would apply for all forms of Windows.

[Hercules]

Amiga was a great machine. Its demise was all the custom hardware was hard soldered onto the board unlike today's PC's where you can just upgrade your video hardware by slotting in a graphics card.

Another downfall; no memory protection meaning chances of crashes when a program writes to memory it writes over something else.

One thing they did get right was the zorro 2 / 3 autoconfig standards designed by David Haynie. It thanks to this why PC's back then had ISA standard that we see to this day in PCI express.