What we had - The Amiga in 1985

[EAUniW]

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[EAUniW]

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[Thorham]

Originally Posted by EAUniW

It really was ahead of its time.

It really wasn't. It was a product of it's time. It simply filled a market gap, and there were certainly more power computers available for more money. That said, the Amiga is still awesome, of course

[EAUniW]

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[Megalomaniac]

The A1000 was an amazing machine for its time, but it was the A500 which allowed it to become a mainstream success internationally. Outside America nobody considered spending £1500 for a home system in those days, but once the A500 dropped from its initial £700 to encroach on the ST's price point it was a guaranteed success.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by EAUniW

More powerful for more money yes, but no computer did it all and in quite the way the Amiga did for quite some time. And for the price, it was a steal.

No you were right in the first place, no PC or Mac at any price could rival the Amiga 1000 from a hardware point of view in 1985. You could buy a $30,000 PC based 24bit graphics system, or an actual UNIX based graphic workstation, hell if we are talking bullshit comparisons we me might as well put in the awesome Quantel Paintbox.

Ditto, no other computer could play a 4 note polyphonic approximation of the Fairlight Synthesizer at any price unless you start talking about dedicated hardware that cost as much as a brand new BMW 735i SE.

Purely from a hardware point of view 1985 PC compatibles were a mess of cobbled together parts, the Mac was mono and everything else was just inferior, even reasonable virtual analogue synthesis is possible on a stock Amiga 1000 of 1985 as Per Hakkan Sundell's SID player/demos prove.

I haven't even talked about it being the only personal computer that has a multitasking operating system in 1985, and one that only OS/2 Kernal would come close to matching in efficiency first.

The reality is the Amiga 1000 in 1985 was like a UNIX based graphic workstation for a fraction of the price of the cheapest IBM XT model/Mac mono. It was the most sophisticated realtime electron gun controller you could plug into a display without exception and at any price.

The problem with the Amiga was its complexity, not an excuse for all the terrible game coders mind, just required talent to develop for. Not much you could do about that, you either designed your own custom sprites or a blitter (the Amiga doesn't have a blitter technically, it has a blimmer as it manipulates the data en-route to doing the block image transfer unlike an off the shelf blitter they could have used). I believe The Mindset PC does indeed have a blitter as part of it's base spec.

There are no 1985 computers that can run anything like Shadow of the Beast 1, 1985 Konami arcade motherboards yes but consoles/computers available to the general public at any price = zero.

By the time of Amiga 500 though the advantage was pretty much gone. Acorn had a better computer in the Archimedes and it only cost about £150-200 more than the A500 option and came in a professional 3 box design like the A1000 3000 etc.

The Amiga 1000 is the only time in history that the competition was inferior and more expensive, it is also the only time in history that it also happened to be the most powerful game development platform vs any console at any price.

These are all well known facts amongst the respected journalists at BYTE and PCW magazine etc.

I owned and used all of these systems that weren't an Amiga 1000, they were all inferior, no exceptions. The only problem the Amiga, and therefore the A1000, ever suffered was piss poor game developments clogging up the shelves in stores vs the talented console game developments it had to go up against once Mega Drive hit the West.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by EAUniW

Had the support of virtually every major software firm.

No, it didn't, and this was probably the main reason for its eventual failure.

[Tigerskunk]

Just adding my 5cents that the claim that the Archimedes being the better computer is highly debatable...

[TCD]

Here we go again...

Yes, in 1985 the Amiga 1000 was an amazing machine with a very competitive price. Commodore maybe didn't get it to stores fast enough after the launch event though. In 1987 the Amiga 500 brought that machine down to a price that 'normal' home computer would consider buying it for and the start of the real success story of 'the Amiga'.

Sadly that's where the cool story kinda ends. The CDTV was interesting, but it lacked the titles and support to become another success. The AGA chipset was a nice addition, but it was too late. So yeah, there was a time when the Amiga was 'the shit' and owning it made you the hippest kid in town.

[oscar_ates]

Core Amiga team was a competent engineers grouped up. The day commodore kicked that group out, Los Alamos team, Amiga was f.ked up. Remaining commodore engineers could not release a follow up in 7 years although there was rangers chipset designed in 1989 by Jay Miners team. AGA was too late with little improvements. I work as engineer in a company, every two/three years we are releasing an updated product otherwise we know we will be out of business

[lesta_smsc]

Seems like all the posts for the original poster has been replaced with ".." - there a reason for this as the conversation was started then removed?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Seems like all the posts for the original poster has been replaced with ".." - there a reason for this as the conversation was started then removed?

I noticed that two days ago about an older thread of the poster. Really sucks if you destroy threads in that way.

[Tigerskunk]

Deleting your old posts is so incredibly lame.

[Weasel Fierce]

Huh, all the way back to 2020.