SNES Doom Amiga Back-up Disks

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Can you explain what on Earth all this has to do with what Thorham has said?

Maybe he wanted to say that John Carmack apologized via VR to the Amiga community, but since he had disagreement with ZeniMax, they plug off VR internet connection, and nobody saw it.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Maybe he wanted to say that John Carmack apologized via VR to the Amiga community, but since he had disagreement with ZeniMax, they plug off VR internet connection, and nobody saw it.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

From experience Doom at playable speed without shrinking screen was 486 @ 33mhz, Doom is a 1994 game I think and by that time a 33mhz 486 wasn't even on sale. The direct rival to the A1200 in 92/93 was the 8mhz 2mb 80286 floppy based Amstrad PC2286 and that couldn't run Doom.

An ad from the German PC-Magazin two months before Doom was released in December 1993:

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by TCD

An ad from the German PC-Magazin two months before Doom was released in December 1993:

So what Amiga could you buy for 4000 Deutsche Mark, at that time?
Could it run Doom?

@Mods
Hide this post from Hammer eyes .

[TCD]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

So what Amiga could you buy for 4000 Deutsche Mark, at that time?

An A1200 was 900 DM, I'd guess you could get a A4000/030?
Edit: Just had a look and it seems like the A4000/040 was sold for 4000 DM.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Could it run Doom?

In December 1993 only PC ran Doom

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by hammer

Amstrad PC2286 is a 1989-released machine. The A500 still has the "power without the price" entry vector in 1989.

For worldwide 1992 to 1994, 486 dominated Intel's unit sales while AMD's dominated 386DX unit sales. Should I post market intelligence from Data Quest to debunk your experience?

In 1992 it was the closest High Street PC for low end, about £600-800 with FDD, VGA, Adlib and 2mb RAM (inc SVGA monitor). In 1989 Amstrad 286s were mega expensive, think it was £1000 for the 8086 version.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by TCD

An A1200 was 900 DM, I'd guess you could get a A4000/030?
Edit: Just had a look and it seems like the A4000/040 was sold for 4000 DM.

In December 1993 only PC ran Doom

But based on FPS of Gloom on 28mhz 020 4mb A1200 it probably could do it as well as a 386SX PC. In 1993 you could get a 1200 for £325-350 with no bundled games/Dpaint of the 1992 launch stand alone pack. Apollo/Blizzard 1220/4 was about £175 in 94/95 or something and Gloom is very playable on that spec.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

So what Amiga could you buy for 4000 Deutsche Mark, at that time?
Could it run Doom?

@Mods
Hide this post from Hammer eyes .

The A4000/040 IIRC was always £1999.99 and 2.5DM=£1 so 5000DM according to 1993 exchange rates. Anything less than 040 is not great compared to £700-800 486 33mhz budget PC performance.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Amstrad PC2286 is a 1989-released machine. The A500 still has the "power without the price" entry vector in 1989.

The A1200 still had it in 1992 too.

For worldwide 1992 to 1994, 486 dominated Intel's unit sales while AMD's dominated 386DX unit sales. Should I post market intelligence from Data Quest to debunk your experience?

No need to 'debunk' anything. Doom was designed for a 486 and Carmack wouldn't port it to anything less - unless a pile of cash was involved.

But Doom's code wasn't 486 specific so it would run on a 386SX (if it had enough RAM), just very slowly. 386SX's were big sellers between 1990-1993 because they could run windows 3.1 in 386 enhanced mode and were cheap (compared to 386DX and 486 systems), so many people had one. That meant many PC users would try out the Doom shareware release, encouraging them to upgrade to a 486 when they found the 386SX wasn't fast enough.

The A1200 was actually closer to a 386SX than a 286. Both were 32-bit with a flat memory model. A 386SX-16 was a similar speed to the 14MHz EC020, but limited by bus width rather than RAM speed. A typical 386SX had 1-2MB RAM, 40-120MB hard drive and a low-end ISA bus VGA card. Both would need more memory to run Doom, but when the A1200 got trapdoor RAM it was faster than the 386SX-16 (about equivalent to a 386SX-25).

What this means is that unlike a 286, the A1200 could have run Doom with a relatively cheap (£140) RAM board. Very slowly of course, but that would just encourage users to upgrade to a 68030. If Commodore had been in better financial health and had released the A1200 a bit earlier (eg. late 1991), by the time Doom was released it would have been well established and just might have convinced Carmack that a port was viable.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

2.5DM=£1

No it's not.
If by that second currency, you mean euro. No it's not.
I remember well these times, and when transition finally came, the idea was that one DM= one Eur.
But soon... after everyone sell their apartments.. let's say... for 100.000 Dm (that was equal to euro), after few months realized that euro is suddenly twice stronger then DM. So they lost twice the value.
Some of the banking tricks I guess... why should bank hold only 83.567% of the whole populati, when they can hold 92,786 just by exchanging rates of Euros to DM.
This was the biggest fraud ever... I still remember it.

Still... considering, how no one complained, I wonder, why banks even stopped at that fraud?
I wouldn't.

[utri007]

Anything related to starting is now lost. Another spoiled thread. Soon, this will have 1400 messages about nothing. Please go back here. https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86674&page=255

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

The A4000/040 IIRC was always £1999.99 and 2.5DM=£1 so 5000DM according to 1993 exchange rates.

I'm not sure that's valid. Let's see the actual price it sold for in Germany.

Anything less than 040 is not great compared to £700-800 486 33mhz budget PC performance.

£700-800 486 PC wasn't great either.

Here's what you got for £828 in 1993:-

Falcon 486DX 33MHz
1MB RAM
Trident 8900C low performance ISA bus VGA card
102MB hard drive
No monitor
No sound card
No operating system???

Can't run Doom on that!

You would want the 'hi-spec' 486DX-33 which came with 4MB RAM and a 14" SVGA monitor. After adding a cheap sound card the price is £1713.

Yes, that's right - more than twice the price of your '£700-800 486 33mhz budget PC'!

But price comparisons are silly. Would you really ditch all your Amiga stuff just because a crap quality PC clone was a bit cheaper? Of course not. You ditched it because all the latest hot games needed a PC. Even if the A4000 was substantially cheaper you still wouldn't buy it (unless you had some other application that required an Amiga).

[Thorham]

Don't we already have a thread like this?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Don't we already have a thread like this?

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated!

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

From experience Doom at playable speed without shrinking screen was 486 @ 33mhz, Doom is a 1994 game I think and by that time a 33mhz 486 wasn't even on sale. The direct rival to the A1200 in 92/93 was the 8mhz 2mb 80286 floppy based Amstrad PC2286 and that couldn't run Doom.

Historic frame rates are funny though, it's all relative. I played DOOM on my 386 back and it the day and still thought it was awesome even though it must have been very slow (< 10 FPS). In more recent years I tried DOOM attack on my ACA 1230 at 12 FPS and found it very choppy to play and not much fun.

Also, some FPS games are more enjoyable to play even with lower frame rates for some reason (more responsive), AmiQuake is actually quite nice to play...even at 15 FPS. Possibly using some kind of movement prediction to make up for poor multiplayer internet speeds.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

In 1992 it was the closest High Street PC for low end, about £600-800 with FDD, VGA, Adlib and 2mb RAM (inc SVGA monitor). In 1989 Amstrad 286s were mega expensive, think it was £1000 for the 8086 version.

http://www.sunnyside.homelinux.org/s...uary_1993.html
Issue 19 of "PC Marketplace" dated Feb 1993




386DX-40 with 14-inch color SVGA monitor for 770 UKP.
Includes 42 MB HDD, 1.44 FDD, Mini-Tower, 1 MB RAM, 102 KB, 2S/1P/1G ports, IDE controller.

Extra:
Per MB for 25 UKP
105 MMB hDD for 95 UKP
Non-interlace monitor for 50 UKP.

For 4MB RAMM equipped 386DX-40 with SVGA monitor, it's 845 UKP.

For 4MB RAM equipped 386DX-40 without monitor, it's 575 UKP.
For 4MB RAM equipped 386DX-40 with a non-interlace monitor, it's 625 UKP.

For 4MB RAM equipped 486SX-25 with a non-interlace monitor, it's 680 UKP.

Windows and mouse prices are listed.

Prices are lower towards Q4 1993.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I'm not sure that's valid. Let's see the actual price it sold for in Germany.

£700-800 486 PC wasn't great either.

Here's what you got for £828 in 1993:-

Falcon 486DX 33MHz
1MB RAM
Trident 8900C low performance ISA bus VGA card

I'll bite.

[ Show youtube player ]

Doom (low details) on 386DX-40 with 128K cache
Tseng ET4000 ISA = 26.751 fps
Trident 8900CL ISA = 23.0088 fps
WD90C32 = 26.838 fps (Diamond Speedstar 24X)

For Doom, these SVGA cards with Am386DX-40 perform like Commodore's AGA with MC68030 @ 40 Mhz to 50 Mhz!

If the game experience is not textured mapped 3D, it's the platform competes against low-cost SNES's strong 2D gaming experiences. For gamers, you're selling "dreams".

The important Xmas Q4 1993 sales period.

https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/it...PCZone-005.pdf (169 MB download)
PC Zone Aug 1993 issue
Page 14 of 116
Commodore DT486SX-25 PC with VAT and carriage for 979.99 UKP
includes 4MB RAM, 80 MB HDD, 512K video RAM, SVGA monitor, Win3.1, mouse, keyboard

Page 78 of 116
486SX-25 based PC for 699 UKP VAT exclusive.
includes 70 ns 4MB RAM, 84 MB HDD, 1.44 MB FDD, 2S/1P, 1 MB Video RAM SVGA(16.7 million colors), 14 inch SVGA monitor, UK keyboard, and MS-DOS 6.

Page 56 of 116
Orchid SoundProducer (stereo, Sound Blaster 2.0 compatible) for 54 UKP.
Sound Blaster 2.0 Deluxe Edition for 66 UKP (with Lemmings, Indy 500, and Speakers).
Sound Blaster Pro Deluxe Edition for 103 UKP.
Gravis UltraSound for 134 UKP.

Doom doesn't need FPU. Doom wasn't the only 3D texture-mapped game in 1993 and 1994.

UK 1993 market has a 57.72 million population size. Commodore UK remained operational in 1994, hence it competed against PCs during 1994.

Commodore Canada (selling PC clones since 65,000 CD32 boards for Amitech's A2200 clone were locked up in a Philippines warehouse, Commodore Canada sourced PC clones from Canadian 3D Microcomputers) and Commodore Netherlands remained operational in 1994. Commodore UK has shut down after Escom buyout in 1995.

Ex-Commodore Germany employees "jumped ship" to Escom.

The US 1993 market has a 260.3 million population size.

The problem of "single source" is a higher platform-ending risk and the risk is real.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

So what Amiga could you buy for 4000 Deutsche Mark, at that time?
Could it run Doom?

@Mods
Hide this post from Hammer eyes .

Yes you could run doom on an Amiga with a GoldenGate bridgeboard. With exotic technologies like an ET4000 and a Sounds Blastar. Or run the Mac version of Doom when it came out.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Don't we already have a thread like this?

Somebody posts that the 486 33 Mhz wasn't released by late 1993, I post an ad for a 486 66 Mhz from that time and there we go.

[BSzili]

The transformation is now complete, this became a fully fledged "what if thread"!