what do you regret about the amiga ?

[Muzkat]

I wish it had hung around and become a genuine competitor to IBM PCs.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Really?

Yep, although I've recently bought another 1200 for the first time since 1994.

I guess with the 500 being my first love its kind of nostalgia more than anything.
The 1200 was technically the better machine and paved the way for getting more out of the Amiga.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

I'd much rather sit and play no games at all, than play them slower and with borders.

I was quite happy to play the PAL games when I didn't know any better, but after seeing an NTSC machine in action I couldn't enjoy them anymore. I'll never understand why the hardware developers didn't include a switch to select between 50/60hz, I guess they thought we didn't deserve to be able to play our games properly.

[alkis21]

Originally Posted by Simmo76

No regrets, just a wonderful happy time playing (and copying...) games with my mates.
If had gone on longer/forever, I may well feel the same way about it as I now do peecees - an annoying, necessary, corporate evil...!
As it stands the Amiga is a (slightly too) short but sweet time of my life, filled with memories of great games and good times.
Sorry, but what's to regret about that?

Well said, mate.

[stainy]

Selling my maxed out A1200

[edd_jedi]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I was quite happy to play the PAL games when I didn't know any better, but after seeing an NTSC machine in action I couldn't enjoy them anymore. I'll never understand why the hardware developers didn't include a switch to select between 50/60hz, I guess they thought we didn't deserve to be able to play our games properly.

Ironically at the time I didn't have a TV that could accept a 60hz SCART signal, so the options were to either pay it via SCART in black and white, or use some contraption I can't remember the name of that basically converted it back to RF, thus defeating the point of it I think I just preferred the look of the NTSC console, cartridges and controllers, rather than noticing the extra speed or full screen goodness (which on a 4:3 TV wasn't THAT much of a chore.)

Slightly off topic, but it does annoy me when you play a PAL console on a modern 16:9 TV, so the image still has black borders and is even MORE squashed!

[protek]

<P>The A500+ or at least the A600 should've come with 020 by default. The A500+ should've had onboard SCSI or IDE.</P><P>&nbsp;</P><P>Gould should've not had fired Thomas Rattigan and hired Mehdi Ali instead.</P>

[Ian]

Buying a cd32 and believing the lies lol

[tin]

That C= didn't push it into business more. Think about it why have we all ended up with wintel PCs? Cos that's what everyone uses at work. Pushing business and home/games at the same time wouldn't have been too hard, and volume would have made the 4000 cheaper. Finding some decent people and writing a little set of business apps was all that was required (yeah ok perhaps C= would be no good at that!! )

Also C= should have had a dedicated business area that made custom Amigas for expensive. Something like what Prevue, Scala, DraCo etc did, but in house and supported, and perhaps even used for propping up those companies with their. The expensive part would have supported it financially, assisted development of the lower end and the kind of businesses that used the end products would have swallowed the premium.

ofc I also regret what the myraid companies after C= did with the brand and product. Escom could have even sat back and pushed £100 more expensive A1200s for a year, and even they might even still be around.

[dJOS]

The lack of a business push by C= is a major beef for me too, I've seen pics of C= offices full of IBM PC compatibles!

I do think a big part of the problem was not upgrading the graphics capability of ECS and AGA (not to mention killing AAA) to support native 30khz sync.

C= could have also had a massive revenue stream by making Amiga Multimedia boards for PC's but instead Creative labs dominated this market with their SandBlaster range!

[slaapliedje]

My regret would be that Nolan Bushnell got burned out.

This is going back before the birth of the Amiga, and is a theory I'm working toward, but to summarize.

Nolan Bushnell was burned out managing Atari, sold it to Time Warner. Time Warner decided to try to push the 2600 for much longer than it should have (sound familiar to Commodore and the A500?), Jay Miner wanted to start working with 68000 processors and TW told him that they were too expensive, so ended up leaving Atari as did Nolan Bushnell, which as part of his contract couldn't do anything in the computer/video game business for 7 years.

Then of course Jack Tramiel was pushed out of Commodore, bought Atari from TW, and then had the Amiga company pretty much by the nuts... then in sweeps Commodore, who as it turns out didn't really know what the hell they just bought, and figured it was good enough for 10+ years and kept the engineering team back.

But as far as hardware goes, the whole 2mb chip ram limitation is what I think needed to be changed. Would have improved AGA a butt load, and by then in the A4000, it had SIMMS, that could have allowed it to expand more. They even have the jumper there... just useless because of the limitation in the hardware...

slaapliedje

i rann skullmonkey bbs under handle s.n.s i met some awsome ppl bippym maj and his gf rattle snake steve clack kryton leon and destiny . pippa who who ran dark domain what i miss most about the amiga is the ppl i met and spoke to and the endless nights of the modem making awful sounds
i miss steve clack , phoe , and tbh just the fun of it all


love s.n.s
big respect to all that called skullmonkey bbs
fluffynet and niki for making maxs bbs pro
though he could of gave it to me instead of giving it free two days after i paid for it

[turrican3]

Commodore should have done in a rush an extension for the amiga with 1 meg of fast mem with a 3d co-pro like the megadrive SVP or nintendo super fx...
It could have help the amiga to stay in the competition and the amigans could have wait the next amiga generation.

[Hodor]

Don´t get into programming during that golden age of computers. For someone who started with a Sinclair ZX-81 it´s a shame to have ignored all the possibilities of coding.

What a pity!

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by flax

i rann skullmonkey bbs under handle s.n.s i met some awsome ppl bippym maj and his gf rattle snake steve clack kryton leon and destiny . pippa who who ran dark domain what i miss most about the amiga is the ppl i met and spoke to and the endless nights of the modem making awful sounds
i miss steve clack , phoe , and tbh just the fun of it all


love s.n.s
big respect to all that called skullmonkey bbs
fluffynet and niki for making maxs bbs pro
though he could of gave it to me instead of giving it free two days after i paid for it

miss the BBS scene too! (I can't remember who I dialled back then - mainly local ones so if I ever come across a flux capacitor I'll go back in time and give you a call (@28,000bps))

BBS days were just simple and not full of the nonsense we have now

[Unknown_K]

I regret Commodore/Amiga didn't live into the PPC era. Mostly because I want the 68K models to be cheaper, which they would be if there were PPC models for "users". Anything 68040 is kind of pricey.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

miss the BBS scene too! (I can't remember who I dialled back then - mainly local ones so if I ever come across a flux capacitor I'll go back in time and give you a call (@28,000bps))

BBS days were just simple and not full of the nonsense we have now

i've just thought of something else I regret.

I regret that i joined the scene towards the end of the Amiga's life. I would have liked to have been around when the Amiga was at its peak say in the early 90's. I did own an Amiga from 1990 onwards but I didn't become a scener till about 93/94.

[lordofchaos]

What do you regret about the Amiga ?

That it became a victim of complacency and failed to capitalize on its initial success.

[mc6809e]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

What do you regret about the Amiga ?

That it became a victim of complacency and failed to capitalize on its initial success.

It didn't have much initial success mostly due to the release of the Atari ST.

They had a huge inventory of A1000s that they expected to clear in months but it didn't happen because the ST siphoned away customers. I remember the buildup to the release of the 1000. There was so much excitement. Byte had a special story touting all the A1000's features. But when the ST appeared early, though, it froze many buyers and pulled away others that wanted an inexpensive 68K machine.

And the ST was a very inexpensive 68K machine. It really is amazing how low they got the price and how quickly they developed it. Where the Amiga team used every trick to get power and speed from their machine, the ST engineers used every trick to economize.

Had Commodore competed only with the PC and Mac, they might have succeeded, but they were forced to fight with Atari over a market the was already considered the enthusiast/economy market. Commodore never had time to relax. Money that could have gone into R&D just wasn't there. It was in the pockets of Atari.

The purpose of the ST was to kill the Amiga and satisfy Tramiel's desire to punish Commodore, and it succeeded in the end.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by mc6809e

It didn't have much initial success mostly due to the release of the Atari ST.

They had a huge inventory of A1000s that they expected to clear in months but it didn't happen because the ST siphoned away customers. I remember the buildup to the release of the 1000. There was so much excitement. Byte had a special story touting all the A1000's features. But when the ST appeared early, though, it froze many buyers and pulled away others that wanted an inexpensive 68K machine.

And the ST was a very inexpensive 68K machine. It really is amazing how low they got the price and how quickly they developed it. Where the Amiga team used every trick to get power and speed from their machine, the ST engineers used every trick to economize.

Had Commodore competed only with the PC and Mac, they might have succeeded, but they were forced to fight with Atari over a market the was already considered the enthusiast/economy market. Commodore never had time to relax. Money that could have gone into R&D just wasn't there. It was in the pockets of Atari.

The purpose of the ST was to kill the Amiga and satisfy Tramiel's desire to punish Commodore, and it succeeded in the end.

Well it seems you know your Amiga history pretty well I am of course speaking from mostly anecdotal observation, particularly from the UK market. There was a noticeable window in the early 90's where the Amiga looked as if it had gained a real lead over the Atari ST (in terms of star power at least), made more obvious from how the magazines of the time slowly lost interest in mentioning the ST in relation to multi format games.

I`ll concede my comment of complacency, but in the grand scheme of things the Commodore brand ultimately failed to adapt to the rapidly changing market around them. The signs of desperation shown very vividly with the various models it produced.. The Amiga CDTV, A600 and the CD32 being the worst choices in my opinion. Whatever choices they made it would seem there wasn't much room for error, and not being able to capture enough market share didn't give them breathing space..