Quote:
Originally Posted by TEG
+1
and hardware limitations evoked here, added to the problem. At least did not help to overcome the problem with the business model despite some intrinsic qualities of the machine.
But didn't CBM have some experience in the professional field with the PET? Perhaps the PET had some success in the educational field only, I don't know very well this machine. If someone know...
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Indeed. CBM (Commodore BUSINESS Machines) had a lot of experience selling into businesses.
But this is the post-Tramiel era and they had on their hands this thing that had, in today's dollars a $3000 price tag (before second drive and monitor). And they had, by contrast, the Commodore 64, with a 1541 drive cost $199 ($500 in today's money).
So if you were in charge of Commodore in 1985 and were in charge of the Amiga what would you have done? I asked my dad this morning this question.
Who do you market the $3000+ (in today's money) machine in an era where the Commodore 64 is 1/6th the cost, the Mac, which costs more, already has Aldus Page Maker that looks super sharp (monochrome, higher resolution) and the clones (which were inferior to the Amiga in most ways except in the area of being able to run Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar with much sharper displays when running monochrome and could use EGA if they wanted color with sharper text.
Here's what my dad said: He would have marketed the Amiga as an entry level WORKSTATION just like the Commodore was an entry level home computer, two amazing machines that were ahead of their time. He also said it would have supported having a "21.8Khz" monitor OPTION (I am quoting that because I've never heard of that frequency. I know 15 and 31 khz but 21.8? Sounds like witchcraft.
But he says that even in 1985, 21.8mhz monitors were common and not substantially more expensive and would have let the Amiga have its amazing color and also destroy the Mac as the PC alternative as the world's first Personal WORKSTATION that just happened, wink wink, to be an amazing game machine.
p.s.
Also, I've seen a couple posts talking about using overscan. Where is the overscan feature in Workbench 1.1? I can't even tell how to change the screen resolution in 1.1 let alone use overscan.
This is what Prefs looked like in 1985. It wasn't a folder.
