English Amiga Board - View Single Post - AGA successor: Document about the Advanced Amiga Architecture published

Matt_H · 02 May 2023, 23:50

For context, if you haven't watched it already, you need to watch Dave Haynie's video, The Deathbed Vigil. It provides a ton of insight into what Commodore engineering was trying to do versus what Commodore management would allow them to do.

AGA/AA/Pandora was never supposed to exist, but came into development as a "quick" stopgap because AAA development was taking too long (probably because it was starved of R&D resources). But even then, management dragged their feet, insisting on the development of useless new ECS machines like the 2200/2400; AGA was supposed to be available somewhere in the window of late '89 and early '91. Instead, it came out late '92, and too late to be available for the holiday shopping season in high quantities. By the time it was widely available in 1993, VGA had become immovably entrenched.

Imagine if we'd gotten the A3000+ and a 1200-like machine in 1990. VGA existed by that point, of course, but it was expensive and wasn't yet ubiquitous. Most PC games were still EGA at that point. If the original engineering timeline had held, with AGA in ~1990 and AAA in ~1993, the Amiga definitely could have remained competitive as the "obvious" (and drastically less expensive) choice well into the late 90s, or certainly long enough for a post-AAA architecture to be available. A 1280x1024 screen on AAA? That would have been a game-changer for CAD and other workstation/productivity applications. That sort of resolution didn't become common on PCs/Macs until well into the late 2000s.

In other words, if you look at AA/AAA in the contexts for which they were originally intended by engineering, e.g., the markets of ~1990 and ~1993, respectively, they're damn impressive. And if that timeline had held I think computer history would be much different and much more interesting.

02 May 2023, 23:50	#28
Matt_H Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 945	For context, if you haven't watched it already, you need to watch Dave Haynie's video, The Deathbed Vigil. It provides a ton of insight into what Commodore engineering was trying to do versus what Commodore management would allow them to do. AGA/AA/Pandora was never supposed to exist, but came into development as a "quick" stopgap because AAA development was taking too long (probably because it was starved of R&D resources). But even then, management dragged their feet, insisting on the development of useless new ECS machines like the 2200/2400; AGA was supposed to be available somewhere in the window of late '89 and early '91. Instead, it came out late '92, and too late to be available for the holiday shopping season in high quantities. By the time it was widely available in 1993, VGA had become immovably entrenched. Imagine if we'd gotten the A3000+ and a 1200-like machine in 1990. VGA existed by that point, of course, but it was expensive and wasn't yet ubiquitous. Most PC games were still EGA at that point. If the original engineering timeline had held, with AGA in ~1990 and AAA in ~1993, the Amiga definitely could have remained competitive as the "obvious" (and drastically less expensive) choice well into the late 90s, or certainly long enough for a post-AAA architecture to be available. A 1280x1024 screen on AAA? That would have been a game-changer for CAD and other workstation/productivity applications. That sort of resolution didn't become common on PCs/Macs until well into the late 2000s. In other words, if you look at AA/AAA in the contexts for which they were originally intended by engineering, e.g., the markets of ~1990 and ~1993, respectively, they're damn impressive. And if that timeline had held I think computer history would be much different and much more interesting.