Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

If the A1200 was so perfectly engineered machine, why it failed to save commodore going bust?

"I was disappointed with the A1200 because it wasn't perfectly engineered"

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

The problem with the Amiga was that CBM was still trying to keep a foot in both markets and being master of none. Failing to pick a lane and stick to it (and delivering appropriate hardware/software for that choice) was their biggest mistake.

When you realize that the A1000 had Commodore software (some of which were games) and the A1200 didn't even get an updated reference before launch you get the idea that it was a fault on many levels. Not picking a lane was certainly one of the bigger ones, but it didn't stop there.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The Amiga was indeed seen as a toy

Only by silly people Toy systems don't have all the applications the Amiga has available. Who would write all that software just for a toy system? It makes no sense.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The 'gaming' PC is still a toy today!

A gaming peecee is basically just a workstation that someone uses for gaming.

[malko]

Originally Posted by Thorham

[...] Indeed, but at least you can use that power for other things, like gaming, Blender, etc.

You are right. Thanks to that latest 32bit WinUAE runs flawlessly even on my 16 years old PC under Win7 .

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Only by silly people Toy systems don't have all the applications the Amiga has available. Who would write all that software just for a toy system? It makes no sense.

Yeah but the general perception was that it was a toy. It was simply Commodore fault. The Amiga 1000 advertising campaign was a disaster (and certainly crushed the money they had and so the future we are discussing here), machine was unavailable, software development was not pushed and later I never saw a campaign for the Amiga 2000. It was all about the A500.

On the contrary I can remember the advertising for the PC, Apple and even Amstrad PCW:

"In ten minutes it changed my life".



"The writing"



Amstrad also used advertising billboards. Never saw that for the Amiga.

Instead Commodore money was used for this (1993) :



Maybe sailboat fans were big Amiga consumers?

Getting a computer onto the market isn't just about electronics especially if you're a challenger. And they did very well for the C64. So the surprise and the still head scratching 39 years later about the debacle.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by TEG

Instead Commodore money was used for this (1993) :



Maybe sailboat fans were big Amiga consumers?

Getting a computer onto the market isn't just about electronics especially if you're a challenger. And they did very well for the C64. So the surprise and the still head scratching 39 years later about the debacle.

Don't forget about CBM being official sponsor of the PSG https://www.soccerbible.com/lifestyl...eritage-range/

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Don't forget about CBM being official sponsor of the PSG https://www.soccerbible.com/lifestyl...eritage-range/

This is probably one of the worst childhood memory and I hate being reminded of it.

My wife still joke about that even nowadays. My love for the Amiga probably equal my hate for this plastic club .

Note that also AJ Auxerre was sponsored by Commodore.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

This is probably one of the worst childhood memory and I hate being reminded of it.

My wife still joke about that even nowadays. My love for the Amiga probably equal my hate for this plastic club .

Note that also AJ Auxerre was sponsored by Commodore.

At least the sailing boat was almost nice...

I did a search, the PSG sponsoring was 1991-1994 ! They must have sunk a fortune into it. It was in the same line of the A1000 advertising, completely abstract. You show a name that nobody have an idea of what about it is. The intermediate steps were completely missing.

"Commodore? Oh yeah, I remember now. The ones who did the C64 toy. They are still alive?"

Clearly, it seems there was another large pool of potential buyers in the suburbs :



I would not be surprised if there was more than what we saw at the surface. I mean political influences, money funnelling or whatever.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by TEG

Commodore should have had the custom chips to compensate the weak 68040, it was all their strength, but they did not managed to make it.

Even the Saturn had so-so 3D, the PS1 dev kits were out while Commodore was trying to shift the £300 CD32. Saturn/PS1/3DO level custom chipsets in 93/94 were best of the best engineer talent requirement so Commodore never ever had a chance of making a £400 computer to rival 25mhz 486+chunky 8bit/pixel screen modes by 94 when they were dirt cheap budget PC spec. I know Hombre was only viable for a £2000 top end Amiga before you ask and it was not N64/PS1 quality I bet.

IMO they should have recompiled Kickstart for x86 by 1993 and picked a low end and high end SVGA off the shelf chipset(one for £400 and one for £2000 Amiga) and put them on a bespoke mobo with AMD386 40mhz for A1400 etc. My 486 was half the price of an A4000/040 in Autumn 1992 and it was downhill all the way as the 4000/040 hardly dropped and was priced like a Pentium PC by March 94 and much more expensive than like for like Mac LC475. The 486 was a turning point just as 6502 and 68000 were, Commodore failed to notice.

[Karlos]

I don't think a 386 or 486 would've been a great Amiga system - even with a fully reimplemented x86 native Kickstart and Workbench - in 1993. I mean unless the only software you intend to run on it was the OS itself and what came with it. You immediately lost compatibility with all existing software. Plus, it wouldn't run any PC software either, at least without significant effort put into something like Wine or just dual booting.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

IMO they should have recompiled Kickstart for x86 by 1993 and picked a low end and high end SVGA off the shelf chipset(one for £400 and one for £2000 Amiga) and put them on a bespoke mobo with AMD386 40mhz for A1400 etc.

That has absolutely nothing to do with Amiga Turn Amiga into a peeceee, how absurd

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Only by silly people Toy systems don't have all the applications the Amiga has available. Who would write all that software just for a toy system? It makes no sense.

It was perceived as a toy for good reason. All home computers were toys, in that they were designed for entertainment and learning rather than to be business tools. There's no shame in that. If the Amiga was designed to be a business tool most of us wouldn't have been interested in it.

A gaming peecee is basically just a workstation that someone uses for gaming.

A gaming PC is just a workstation in the same way that a McLaren F1 is just a car. Sure you can use it to go get groceries or pick the kid (singular) up from school, but it still screams 'toy!' the whole way.

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

The problem with the Amiga was that CBM was still trying to keep a foot in both markets and being master of none. Failing to pick a lane and stick to it (and delivering appropriate hardware/software for that choice) was their biggest mistake.

The problem is people were trying to crowd into both of those lanes and didn't see the third lane in the middle that was largely unoccupied.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TEG

The kid should have started a music career. The name was right there: MC Ommodore

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by TCD

The kid should have started a music career. The name was right there: MC Ommodore

Thank goodness he was smart enough to not get an A1200.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Even the Saturn had so-so 3D, the PS1 dev kits were out while Commodore was trying to shift the £300 CD32. Saturn/PS1/3DO level custom chipsets in 93/94 were best of the best engineer talent requirement so Commodore never ever had a chance of making a £400 computer to rival 25mhz 486+chunky 8bit/pixel screen modes by 94 when they were dirt cheap budget PC spec. I know Hombre was only viable for a £2000 top end Amiga before you ask and it was not N64/PS1 quality I bet.

Both Amiga Hombre and Sony PS1 have a similar 1 million transistor budget target.

Sony's render compute power is split with CPU (30 MIPS @ 33.8 Mhz), 3D Geometry Transformation Engine (66Mhz @ 58 Mhz), and fixed-function Graphics (designed by Toshiba, no hardware Z-buffer).
The compute target is over 99 MIPS.

Amiga Hombre has a higher clocked PA-RISC with 3D extensions for the job.

For a PC with fast PCI SVGA (e.g. ET6000 or S3 Trio 64U) without 3D acceleration, Pentium 60 is the minimum and recommended Pentium 75 or faster.

[ Show youtube player ]
Tomb Raider's software render @ 320x200 (console resolution level) on Pentium 83 OverDrive (about Pentium 75).

At a higher price, a 1996-era Pentium PC equipped with 3DFX Voodoo beats any console version.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

IMO they should have recompiled Kickstart for x86 by 1993 and picked a low end and high end SVGA off the shelf chipset(one for £400 and one for £2000 Amiga) and put them on a bespoke mobo with AMD386 40mhz for A1400 etc. My 486 was half the price of an A4000/040 in Autumn 1992 and it was downhill all the way as the 4000/040 hardly dropped and was priced like a Pentium PC by March 94 and much more expensive than like for like Mac LC475. The 486 was a turning point just as 6502 and 68000 were, Commodore failed to notice.

The Amiga assumes a "big-endian" binary format.

For translation efficiency, you need a fancy cutting-edge software translator like on Xbox One (little endian)'s Xbox 360 (big-endian) emulator that rivals Apple's Rosetta (from Transitive Corporation) effort.

Due to Xbox One's CPU being weak Jaguar CPUs relative to IBM PPE target, Xbox One (little endian)'s Xbox 360 (big-endian) emulator needs a translated Xbox 360 game that has byte swapped applied, hence the large download. For every Amiga game, you need a little-endian translated version. Amiga custom chips have big-endian assumptions since it's designed for 68000.

Emu68 runs its ARM CPU in a big-endian mode which improves translation efficiency.

PC's Executor Mac68K emulator has an incomplete clean room MacROM programmed for X86 CPU, but this method wouldn't work for "kick-the-OS" Amiga games.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It was perceived as a toy for good reason. All home computers were toys, in that they were designed for entertainment and learning rather than to be business tools. There's no shame in that. If the Amiga was designed to be a business tool most of us wouldn't have been interested in it.

A gaming PC is just a workstation in the same way that a McLaren F1 is just a car. Sure you can use it to go get groceries or pick the kid (singular) up from school, but it still screams 'toy!' the whole way.

There's a difference between a gaming PC and a workstation PC e.g.
1. Gaming PC has a single fast AGP (64bit, 66 Mhz) slot vs workstation PC's multiple PCI-X (64bit, at least 66 Mhz).
2. Gaming PC has a single fast PCie 16X lanes slot vs workstation PC's multiple PCie 16X lanes.

High-end gaming PC board such as ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero or mid-high ASUS ROG Strix X670E has two PCie 8X lanes slots. Cheaper AM4 B550 and AM5 B650 motherboards have a single PCIe X16 lane slot which doesn't split into two PCie 8X lane slots which limits its expansion options. ASUS ROG Strix B650E is an exception due to two PCie 8X lanes slots capability, but its cost is higher than ASUS's TUF X670E. The pattern is similar to Intel's LGA1700 motherboards.

Intel's ECC policy is restricted for LGA 1700 gaming PC platforms e.g. only W680 chipset. HEDT workstation PCs have ECC. AMD allows ECC for AM4 and AM5 gaming PC platforms e.g. from ASRock and ASUS brands.

PC platform holders made sure that the gaming PC's expansion capability is inferior when compared to workstation PC.

Gaming PC's single fast expansion slot is like the wedge Amiga's single Zorro slot idea, but the gaming PC market wasn't addicted to wedge C64/C128 cases.

A1200's Budgie/AA-Gayle chipset could support a single fast 32-bit Zorro slot (limited to Zorro II's 24-bit address range) and a single ISA slot (via PCMCIA R&D) or a single slower 16-bit Zorro II slot. A1200 has the technology foundation but the Commodore is addicted to C64/C126 form factor.

Usually, low-cost mini-tower PC cases are not designed to mount a heavy monitor, hence they use softer and cheaper metals, hence they are structurally weaker than A2000/A3000 cases. My university encloses PC clones in a steel-reinforced box while PowerMac desktops don't require it. The Amiga is missing a mid-range "gaming Amiga" model.

[malko]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

This is probably one of the worst childhood memory and I hate being reminded of it.
My wife still joke about that even nowadays. My love for the Amiga probably equal my hate for this plastic club .
[...]

Ahhh, Marseille VS Paris...
[ Show youtube player ]

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I doubt that. The combination of KS2 and 25MHz 68030 meant that many games wouldn't work on the A3000, and it was 4 times the price of an A500 system. Only a rich fool would buy an A3000 to play games.

A3000 can load Kickstart 1.3 ROM image into memory and degrade tools can be used to disable CPU caches. Use the hard disk to store these degradation tools.

I recall, A3000 has an extra feature that fakes $C00000 slow memory address range into Chip RAM.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Unfortunately I bought my Cyberstorm 060 a little too early, so it only had a rev 5 chip. At 66MHz it was a bit flaky so I settled for 60MHz. If I could have overclocked to 100MHz I would have! Vampire V2 is approximately equivalent to an 80MHz 060.

It's a silicon lottery. My 68060 Rev 1 has stable 62.5 Mhz via TF1260.

My bundled 68LC060 Rev 4 with TF1260 works at 74 Mhz. My 68LC060 Rev 4 was screened for 74 Mhz operation by one of the TF1260 builders.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I already have a Blizzard 1230-IV in my A1200 since the 90's so I didn't want to change that. I used to have an A600 with 33MHz 030 but stupidly threw it away in 2015 because the keys got yellowed! (dark times when I thought the Amiga scene was dead). So that was another reason to choose the A600 (got one off eBay for NZ$300).

That's your decision.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

More irrelevant PC noise.

It's relevant. "Economies of scale" matters.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This is true.

However the A4000 did have a use case with the Video Toaster, and might have been attractive to those rich people who would previously have bought an A2000 (quite a few around here). Commodore knew this and put a higher margin on the A4000 to compensate for the lower sales volume.

The Video Toaster 4000 requires Amiga's video and Zorro slots.

Mid-range 3D gaming Amiga could have missing Amiga's video slot.

Commodore was selling A3000/030 @ 25Mhz with 105 MB HDD for $899 in 1993.

$899 + $299 CD32 = $1,198 which still cheaper than A4000/030 @ 25Mhz's $1599 asking price.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Some Amiga fans complained about it being too expensive, but they didn't understand that for professional use it was cheap enough (A4000 with Toaster was much cheaper than alternatives). Commodore could have dropped the price by a few hundred dollars but that still wouldn't make it cheap enough for the average Amiga fan, so there was no point.

Video Toaster is a tiny market niche.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Which makes the A1200 vitally important for Commodore's survival. They needed to get as many AGA machines out as possible to attract developers.
Unfortunately by this time Commodore was running out of steam so they couldn't produce enough to meet demand.

65,000 CD32 boards for Commodore Canada/AmiTech's A2200 clone were locked up in the Philippines warehouse.

Some posters claimed an extra 100,000 CD32s were in the Philippines warehouse when Commodore International went bust.

https://archive.org/stream/AmigaComp...ul_94_djvu.txt
From July 1994

Commodore UK's financial director, Colin Proudfoot, said the liquidation can be reversed and that the move meant no creditor could "rock the board during investment talks.

Some offices around the world have closed but many of the manufacturer's key sales divisions continue in business, including the UK, Germany, Italy and
Scandinavia.

The Philippines-based Amiga assembly plant has stopped making the computer, although Proudfoot is confident there is enough supply to meet
demand for the next few months.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I regret not buying as many A1200s as I could get my hands on to sell in the shop.

I obtained my A1200 during COVID19 lockdown and it was low cost due to "broken for parts". I took the chance and it worked, but Budgie timing fixes and floppy drive replacement needs to be applied.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Gamers today don't buy single slot workstation PCs, they buy big box PCs with fast CPUs that they can put the best possible graphics card in. Hardcore gamers put water cooling systems in them to enable max overclocking.

You missed a single fast slot e.g. AGP or a single fast PEG(PCIe 16 lanes) slot.

You're not aware of the modern gaming PC situation.

Examples
1. AM5 based low cost "MSI Pro b650M P" micro-ATX motherboard with MSI RTX 3080 Ti Gaming X Trio (OC model). Result: NO other PCIe slot is exposed due to GPU size. Needs a PCIe 1X ribbon extender.

Layout
PCIe x16 v4.0
PCIe x1 v3.0 (blocked)
PCIe x1 v3.0 (blocked)

2. AM5-based ASUS TUF X670E Plus WiFi with Gigabyte RTX 4080 Gaming OC.

Layout
PCIe x16 v5.0.
PCIe x4 v4.0, party blocked due to oversized GPU needing air intake clearance.
PCIe x4 v4.0.


3. AM5-based ASUS ROG X670E Hero with ASUS TUF RTX 4090 OC edition (exceeds 450 watts).
Result: The bottom PCIe (4X lanes) slot is usable or a very tight fit when two RTX 4090 are installed on two x8/x8 PEG slots and one of the two RTX 4090s would have a crap airflow.

Layout
PCIe x8 or x16 v5.0. Only single x16X active or two slots x8/x8 mode.
PCIe x8 or x16 v5.0. Only single x16X active or two slots x8/x8 mode.
PCIe x4 v4.0.


AM5-based ASUS ROG B650E-E
Layout
PCIe x8 or x16 v5.0. Only single x16X active or two slots x8/x4 mode.
PCIe x4 v5.0.
PCIe x4 v4.0

A gaming PC's single fast PEG slot follows AGP product segmentation.


The workstation PC has multiple symmetric fast slots i.e. multiple active PEG x16 slots.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The problem with the single Zorro III slot idea is that it becomes much more expensive for little gain. The engineer who was designing the A1000+/jr wanted to just put an edge connector on it like the original A1000 and A500 - only 32 bit like the A1200. Unfortunately this design was delayed by efforts to make the case cheaper, in yet another example of engineers not appreciating the urgency of getting products out ASAP.

A1000Jr used a daughterboard with insufficient layers for Zorro III operation.

https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...b8ad2575c0.jpg
A1000Jr has four active Zorro II, 1 video slot, and 3 non-functional ISA slots.

From https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=2015
A1000Jr's product segmentation
A2200 has 2 Zorro II slots
A2400 has 4 Zorro II slots
A3200 has 2 Zorro II slots
A3400 has 4 Zorro II slots
These are on a daughterboard.

Use a cheap mini-tower case with weak consideration for mounting a heavy monitor. During my A3000's RAM upgrade, my local PC vendor called A3000's case and frame as overkill.

The goal for a single Zorro III's mass production is to expand the Zorro III addon market.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

But even if it did get out the door, with one or two slots this mid-range machine would be encroaching on the price of a 386SX PC.

Absurd.

My argument is CD32 with just one Zorro III slot! CD32 already has an expansion edge connector and it's too bad it's not a Zorro II/III connector.

A1200 and CD32 have expansion edge connectors that are not compatible with the Zorro II/Zorro III slot.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

More Amiga fans would buy it than the A4000, but not as many as would buy the A1200 - which had equivalent functionality for a much lower price.

You haven't factored in-line video and ISA slots with Zorro II slots.

To preserve A4000's product segmentation, remove the video slot from the mid-range 3D gaming Amiga.

My argument is just a single 32-bit Zorro III slot and a single 16-bit slot (e.g. PCMCIA or active ISA or Zorro II, pick one). No in-line expansion slots and no daughterboards. Think of a CD32 board with a single 32-bit Zorro III slot and a single 16-bit slot (pick one). A1200 already has a 32-bit data line Zorro-like with a 24-bit addressing edge connector and a 16-bit PCMCIA slot.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It was perceived as a toy for good reason. All home computers were toys, in that they were designed for entertainment and learning rather than to be business tools. There's no shame in that. If the Amiga was designed to be a business tool most of us wouldn't have been interested in it.

... and maybe it would have been alive, still. School kids aren't the people that can fund a platform - at least not at this time anymore. The problem is that the idea of a "home computer" was fading away, and people weren't buying "home computers" anymore, but appliances. That's a market change, and CBM didn't notice.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

All home computers were toys

Tell that to everyone who used them for work

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If the Amiga was designed to be a business tool most of us wouldn't have been interested in it.

Then why did peecee gaming take off?

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

A gaming PC is just a workstation in the same way that a McLaren F1 is just a car.

What do you think people use to run demanding software like Blender on? An office peecee with integrated Intel graphics?

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

it still screams 'toy!' the whole way.

So, what actually makes a peecee a gaming peecee then?