Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The retail market for such a machine was limited, as shown by the Quadra 605's short lifespan of only 1 year.

Reminder, Quadra 605 is also sold as the Macintosh LC 475 and Macintosh Performa 475 and 476.

Quadra for business, LC for education, and Performa for home. LC 475 variant continued to be sold to schools until July 1996.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageads/..._apple_inc_ad/
Apple advert that shows Macintosh Performa 475 in 1993 has $1099.

[smellysocks77]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

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.

by 'middle' I take it you refer to the home/enthusiast market. Maybe that middle lane was empty for a reason.

perhaps there would have been some market there, but with almost the entire market rushing to those two outside lanes (consoles in 1, Apple/IBM compatibles the other) am not sure it would sustain the very large Commodore Inc for any period of time.

Overall I agree with you and am very glad of the Amigas we did get (especially the 1200) and not see them turn into PCs.

I never understood if you wanted to do PC stuff why you didn't just get yourself a PC. You wanted console games, just get the console. Hands up who bought an Amiga to do Turbo Tax.

Why the need to compare Amiga to those other two and try and turn your Amiga into something that could attempt both on a custom chipset.

Amiga was a genius multimedia creative tool with a great OS perfectly matched to it's hardware and 000's of brilliant games of a certain style and character. PC's or consoles had none of that and never would.

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by hammer

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.

Well, this is played on a 486 motherboard. I'll assume 33MHz FSB and non-EDO RAM, maybe even at 1 waitstate. The experience would probably be better in software-render mode on a true Pentium motherboard, especially if running at 66MHz FSB with EDO RAM. I think PCI might be a bit slower on a 486 too, it was never really designed for it.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by hammer

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.

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

What happened to these CD32s that were locked up in the Philiphines warehouse after commodore went bust? Also, why was Escom interested in A1200/A4000 re-release but not in CD32s?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

What happened to these CD32s that were locked up in the Philiphines warehouse after commodore went bust? Also, why was Escom interested in A1200/A4000 re-release but not in CD32s?

Please, for the love of all that is holy just keep it in your own thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=113038

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

... 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.

Yeah, and for a time the appliance was "good games" (the reputation and the perception of the A500). It faded away too while the platform aged.

The other birth gift i.e. the ability to run serious parts too, was not pushed and not rapidly updated to match, or even exceed, the new market standard 640x480x256. So it crashed too.

I think the resolution was the key point to put the R&D effort on. The resolution and the ability to plug a cheap VGA monitor instead the need of a multi-sync one.

Do someone have an idea if it was feasible to electronically stretch or whatever, the original Amiga resolutions to VGA so it would have been possible to display it on this kind of screen without losing the sync ?

[malko]

Originally Posted by TEG

[...] new market standard 640x480x256. So it crashed too.
I think the resolution was the key point to put the R&D effort on. The resolution and the ability to plug a cheap VGA monitor instead the need of a multi-sync one. [...]

Not sure it was a better road. 640x480 is primarily an NTSC standard from 1953 (thus not I international). Since the Amiga was a computer that could be plugged on any TV (native TV resolution) it would have meant that you would have had to add the cost of a monitor to the price. Even if a lot of people did buy a 1084 like monitor, not all did and the Amiga get plugged on a lot of TV. It was also a marketing key point BitD.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by malko

Not sure it was a better road. 640x480 is primarily an NTSC standard from 1953 (thus not I international). Since the Amiga was a computer that could be plugged on any TV (native TV resolution) it would have meant that you would have had to add the cost of a monitor to the price. Even if a lot of people did buy a 1084 like monitor, not all did and the Amiga get plugged on a lot of TV. It was also a marketing key point BitD.

I didn't say the native resolutions had to be removed. Only to add a 640x480x256 one and if a VGA monitor is connected, the ability to display native resolutions on the VGA monitor (even distorted).

The Wow! effect would have been 640x480x4096 even if it done with a bit of hack.

ECS accept a VGA monitor but it's 4 colours and the screen lose the sync if you run a not productivity application. And it should have work out of the box, not required some extra software or setting working half the time. I was extremely disappointed when I plugged a VGA monitor to my A500+ and I quickly realized it was just unusable due to this loss of screen synchronisation I did not anticipated.

For me, this was downright deception and the machine effectively felt into the toy category due to false promise.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

What happened to these CD32s that were locked up in the Philiphines warehouse after commodore went bust? Also, why was Escom interested in A1200/A4000 re-release but not in CD32s?

https://archive.org/details/Australi...ge/n1/mode/2up

When Escom purchased Commodore, CD32 was being sold at $299 AUD in Australia i.e. "Amiga CD32 CD-ROM consoles are back in stock." From Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, Volume 12 Issue 6, Date: June 1995. This is leading to PS1's western market's launch hype.

Escom (stacked with ex-Commodore Germany personnel) didn't purchase Commodore Semiconductor Group, hence it's effectively the end of Amiga's custom chip road map with Escom.

A500 played contemporary 3D games during the 1987 to 1990 time period while it's the opposite for A1200.

Following the failed Philps CD-I adventure, Commodore has a higher interest with the VCD market rather than focusing on their core gaming competency. VCD market is popular in East/South East Asian markets, but Commodore has very little market presence.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by malko

Not sure it was a better road. 640x480 is primarily an NTSC standard from 1953 (thus not I international). Since the Amiga was a computer that could be plugged on any TV (native TV resolution) it would have meant that you would have had to add the cost of a monitor to the price. Even if a lot of people did buy a 1084 like monitor, not all did and the Amiga get plugged on a lot of TV. It was also a marketing key point BitD.

The major use case for wedge Amigas being plugged into TVs via A600/A1200 built-in and A500's A520 RF modulator and color composite is for games. Video genlocking with VHS video is a market niche.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TEG

I didn't say the native resolutions had to be removed. Only to add a 640x480x256 one and if a VGA monitor is connected, the ability to display native resolutions on the VGA monitor (even distorted).

The Wow! effect would have been 640x480x4096 even if it done with a bit of hack.

ECS accept a VGA monitor but it's 4 colours and the screen lose the sync if you run a not productivity application. And it should have work out of the box, not required some extra software or setting working half the time. I was extremely disappointed when I plugged a VGA monitor to my A500+ and I quickly realized it was just unusable due to this loss of screen synchronisation I did not anticipated.

For me, this was downright deception and the machine effectively felt into the toy category due to false promise.

PC VGA chipset promotes legacy CGA/EGA into VGA's signals which is a close relative 1984-1985 era PGC monitor signal specs and 1986 MCGA DE15 socket plug. VGA cloners made IBM VGA standard cheap. CGA uses NTSC's 15 kHz and 60 Hz timings.

For AGA's dual purpose use case, A1200 owner would need higher priced multi-sync or C= 1942 monitor.

On my A3000, I have both C= 1084S (via RGB) and PC VGA monitor connected (via Amber). Basic VGA monitor may have issues with PAL's 50 hz despite using Amber.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by smellysocks77

by 'middle' I take it you refer to the home/enthusiast market. Maybe that middle lane was empty for a reason.

perhaps there would have been some market there, but with almost the entire market rushing to those two outside lanes (consoles in 1, Apple/IBM compatibles the other) am not sure it would sustain the very large Commodore Inc for any period of time.

Overall I agree with you and am very glad of the Amigas we did get (especially the 1200) and not see them turn into PCs.

I never understood if you wanted to do PC stuff why you didn't just get yourself a PC. You wanted console games, just get the console. Hands up who bought an Amiga to do Turbo Tax.

Why the need to compare Amiga to those other two and try and turn your Amiga into something that could attempt both on a custom chipset.

Amiga was a genius multimedia creative tool with a great OS perfectly matched to it's hardware and 000's of brilliant games of a certain style and character. PC's or consoles had none of that and never would.

For most Amiga games, the AmigaOS is being kicked out. LOL

Computers and game consoles with PCM audio and strong 2D visual capability are also multimedia.

[ Show youtube player ]
PC 286-16 with fast VGA can play comparable A500-era games such as
Body Blows,
Gods,
Pinball Fantasies (PC has 256 color version),
Prehistorik 2 (background parallax 2D PC game not available on the Amiga until recent RTG port).

PC's 386 would be required for DOS PC games with 386 protection mode to match 68K's flat memory address model.

For 1987 to 1990 date range, A500's product positioning is about lower price against higher priced 286-16 based PC and it plays contemporary 2D games.

A1200 didn't follow A500's product positioning on the ability to play contemporary 3D games for 1992 to 1994 date range. There's nothing platform specific about increasing math power!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

... 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.

That's right - their parents funded it.

The problem is that the idea of a "home computer" was fading away, and people weren't buying "home computers" anymore, but appliances.

Also correct. But appliances for what purpose?

First, let's get business applications out of the way. This market was sewn up in 1981 when IBM launched the PC. The Amiga could run business apps too of course, but without Microsoft and IBM compatibility they would be seen as 'toy' apps no matter how well they worked. But these apps were mostly irrelevant to the vast majority of home users anyway.

So what 'appliance' functions was the average person expecting from a home computer? There were many things it could be used for, but they were not individually important enough to justify the cost of the machine or the training required - until around 1995 when that 'killer app' arrived... the Internet. The home computer now had an exclusive application which was useful and desirable to the average person.

If Commodore had made the Amiga capable of getting on the net 'out of the box' for half the price of a PC they could have made a killing. But by that time they were gone, so the opportunity never arose.

That's a market change, and CBM didn't notice.

CBM noticed alright. They just didn't manage to last long enough to take advantage of it.

That's not to say that they didn't try. CBM started offering online capabilities very early on with the VIC-20, which in conjunction with the 300bd 'VICMODEM' was the cheapest way to get online in 1982. They did a deal with CompuServe to support the VIC's 22 column format. Over 1 million VICMODEMS were sold. This could be considered the first real example of a home computer being used as an 'appliance'.

In 1985 they switched to Quantum Link, which was a Commodore exclusive service for C64 and 128 users. In 1989 the service was renamed America Online and opened up to other platforms. AOL made a fortune in the internet era, and Commodore had a stake in the company that would (had they still been around) have made them a lot of money, as well as providing an Amiga friendly internet portal.

In 1995 a friend of mine started the first internet service in Hawke's Bay (before then you had to make a toll call to get on the net from here), and I joined soon after. Initially I had a 14k4bd modem (later upgraded to 33k6) hooked up to my A1200, using my 29" TV as the display. In 1996 I wrote a driver for CNET PCMCIA Ethernet cards, then used a 486 PC as a proxy server until I got broadband to make a direct connection to the net.

The A1200 was very competent at doing email, newsgroups and ftp, but not so good on the Web due to the lack of a good browser. Had Commodore still been around then they could have commissioned web apps to suit the Amiga like they did with Q-Link on the C64. This wouldn't have been hard to do because html was an actual standard back then (until Netscape screwed it with javascript). But they had to get there first.

In order to make it through to the mid 90's Commodore would have to provide a sufficiently compelling reason for people to purchase an Amiga over a PC. They weren't going to do that by making it a clone of the PC but not compatible - it needed something the PC didn't offer. By 1995 that no longer included a multitasking OS. However it did include being much cheaper due to being more efficient. At this time people were buying PCs specifically for gaming (even if they pretended otherwise), so the Amiga would need excellent gaming hardware combined with good general purpose computing capabilities. With this it could remain a 'toy' for a while longer.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

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

Because 95% of Amiga 500 games released were not done with enough talent/care to make full use of machine, unlike NEC PC-E/MD/SNES and the A1200 games was even worse. If you put diesel in an BMW M3 it's going to be shit, a machine is only as good as what you run it on

No company with Commodore's turnover could sustain Irving/Medhi's Microsoft sized bonus checks paid to themselves either. Did the CEO of NEC get $1,000,000 bonus when he smashed the Famicom stranglehold in the market?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

That's right - their parents funded it.

Does not make a difference for the argument. Parents did not see the value in such toys either.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Also correct. But appliances for what purpose?

Does it matter? What matters is your willingness to put money into a system, and that willingness depends on your idea what you would do with the machine. $1000 for a toy for my child? No way! $1500 to get my taxes done - hmm, ok, maybe worth the money.


The net result is probably the same (the child plays computer games) but the customer has the feeling of not having wasted the money for something useless.


Macs were bought by "serious people" that used them (in their perception) serious applications. PC were bought because it was a PC, not a toy.


With applications like "wordcraft" that are more a demonstration of a principle than something useful, you cannot convince anyone to by an Amiga for word processing.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

First, let's get business applications out of the way. This market was sewn up in 1981 when IBM launched the PC. The Amiga could run business apps too of course, but without Microsoft and IBM compatibility they would be seen as 'toy' apps no matter how well they worked.

They did not work very well, probably with some minor exceptions like "Word Perfect", but it was already pretty late to the show.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

But these apps were mostly irrelevant to the vast majority of home users anyway.

That is not quite the point. They were necessary to create an image of the system, but in the early years, no serious vendor of such applications jumped on the Amiga.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

So what 'appliance' functions was the average person expecting from a home computer? There were many things it could be used for, but they were not individually important enough to justify the cost of the machine or the training required - until around 1995 when that 'killer app' arrived... the Internet.

Oh no. I knew persons that bought a system just for word processing for their day job, and even "exotic" systems like the CPC Joyce that could only do that. Green on black monitor, word processing built in, printer with custom interface. It was, from a technical point, a shitty machine, but it sold because it could do what people considered important for them. Word processing was a killer app before the internet, and the Amiga could not do it "right" (or was not known to do it right). 50Hz, color TV? Phew.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

CBM noticed alright. They just didn't manage to last long enough to take advantage of it.

That means they did not. If you consider something important, you don't sit around and idle and do some "minimal effort" investment.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The A1200 was very competent at doing email, newsgroups and ftp, but not so good on the Web due to the lack of a good browser.

...and too late for the show.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

At this time people were buying PCs specifically for gaming (even if they pretended otherwise),

No, PCs where mostly *used* for games, even though bought for different reasons. That's not quite the same.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

so the Amiga would need excellent gaming hardware combined with good general purpose computing capabilities. With this it could remain a 'toy' for a while longer.

But would not find buyers with such a profile and perception, and that's part of the problem. The Amiga was seen (also by many "developers") as a glorified C64. A toy machine. The PC was seen as a professional system that is worth the investment.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by 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.

x86 was massively cheaper than anything Motorola had in 93/94 MIPS/$ and a CPU is a CPU and the 68060 and PPC were to expensive to rival AMD's x86 performance/cost ratio. Seeing as Commodore didn't even have Mical/Needle's 2D chipset talent something had to give, and it was faster CPUs at the cheapest price==x86 by AMD. Let's not forget AMD are the only company in the world to create dirt cheap real-time raytracing (their Oberon APU for Sony's PS5 which is soon to get a Pro version which I have been playing around with the dev kit). Now if they had a 486 AND the talent of Mical/Needle doing a 3D chipset there may have been a successor to the A1200 worth getting in 1994, but we will never know because some tit at Commodore expected the Amiga designers to move 1000s of miles to work at Commodore for peanuts AND never even used Jay Miner's fully functional Ranger chipset and made the ECS piss poor 'update'.

Kickstart source code + IBM = OS/2 (in exchange for IBM REXX which became AREXX in that deal) and that was better than NT and Mac OS 9. Instead of getting useless REXX perhaps they should have got a free x86 port of Kickstart because IBM knew what they were doing.

Gould's Commodore==complete shitshow.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

... 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.

School kid's parents are funding home computer purchases.

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

The problem is that the idea of a "home computer" was fading away,

If AMD's price policy was Motorola's copy Intel's price guide tactics, AMD wouldn't be able to change the status quo.

"Gaming PC" is the home computer vs normal office PC has low-end integrated graphics.

Entry-level workstation PCs have at least UDIMM ECC memory (W680 LGA 1700, ASRock/ASUS AM4/AM5) and ECC video memory capable GPUs e.g. RTX 4090, RTX 3090, and RTX A series.

Bill "PCJr" Sydnes didn't follow "power without the price".

Microsoft has to battle established players in the business application market like text-based Lotus 123, Word Star and Word Prefect with superior "next-gen" GUI-based Mac ports of MS Excel (1988) and MS Word(1989) on Windows 2.x. Apple Mac managed to gain sufficient business and education customer size.

The Amiga had WordPerfect 4 and 5 from the PC DOS version, hence Amiga version wouldn't change the status quo. ProWrite port for the Amiga didn't have access to Hi-Res-Denise during 1987 to 1989 until A3000's 1990 release. Hi-Res 4 color Denise was mostly completed around late 1987.

A500's "toy" form factor is not optimal for the education sector.

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

and people weren't buying "home computers" anymore, but appliances.

For games, A500/A1200's insert a game disk and kick-the-OS is an "ease of use" appliances like a games console.

CD32 has the same "ease of use" appliances, but with a larger game storage.

There's no mucking about with PC's autoexec.bat, config.sys and soundblaster settings on the Amiga.

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

That's a market change, and CBM didn't notice.

Commodore didn't keep up with the math power increase with their mass produced products.

[ Show youtube player ]

Commodore didn't keep up with competition's compute power and price/performance ratios.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

x86 was massively cheaper than anything Motorola had in 93/94 MIPS/$ and a CPU is a CPU and the 68060 and PPC were to expensive to rival AMD's x86 performance/cost ratio. Seeing as Commodore didn't even have Mical/Needle's 2D chipset talent something had to give, and it was faster CPUs at the cheapest price==x86 by AMD. Let's not forget AMD are the only company in the world to create dirt cheap real-time raytracing (their Oberon APU for Sony's PS5 which is soon to get a Pro version which I have been playing around with the dev kit).

Now if they had a 486 AND the talent of Mical/Needle doing a 3D chipset there may have been a successor to the A1200 worth getting in 1994, but we will never know because some tit at Commodore expected the Amiga designers to move 1000s of miles to work at Commodore for peanuts AND never even used Jay Miner's fully functional Ranger chipset and made the ECS piss poor 'update'.

PS1 has LSI CoreWare CW33300 based MIPS R3000A @ 33.8Mhz with 30 MIPS, custom geometry engine GTE @ 58Mhz with 66 MIPS and custom display engine with pixel related fixed functions @ 53 Mhz (based on GTE, designed by Toshiba). Roughly 162 MIPS. Pentium 75-to-90 would be needed to run PS1 game ports.

MIPS R3000A is pipelined like 68LC040 i.e. not 68030.

MIPS R3000A has a 5 stage pipeline with no FPU. MIPS R3000A's CP0 has memory management through virtual memory technique.
80486SX has 5 stage pipeline.
68LC040 has 6 stage pipeline.

Ex-Amiga team 3DO's has 13 MIPS for ARM60 @ 12.5 Mhz and geometry engine @ 25Mhz (assume 25 MIPS for 1 IPC matrix math efficiency) and display engine with pixel-related fixed functions @ 25Mhz.

Commodore has MIPS-based CPU with CD32's FMV module.


CD32's FMV module has the following:

1. 24-bit DAC (STM's STV8438CV) for 16.7 million colors display.

2. MPEG-1 decoder from C-Cube CL450, 352 x 240 pixels @ 30hz, 352 x 288 pixels at 25 Hz, pixel interpolation and frame duplication to produce output formats of 704 x 240 pixels at 60 Hz or 704 x 288 pixels at 50 Hz.

https://websrv.cecs.uci.edu/~papers/...LES/060803.PDF

CL450 has about 398K transistors with up to 40 MHz. CL450 includes a licensed MIPS-X RISC processor with semi-custom extensions. In quantities of 100K or more per year, the price is less than $50 in 1992.
CL450's MIPS-X RISC processor still has the usual RISC instruction set.

3. LSI l64111qc (Digital Audio Decoder, 16-bit DAC),

4. 512 KB local RAM, NEC 423260 DRAM 4Mbit (512 KB) with 80 ns.

5. Lattice ispLSI 1024-60LJ CPLD.

Commodore is willing to spend on this non-core business by following the failed Philps CDI.

Commodore says NO to MIPS RISC processor @ 40 Mhz for Amiga's general-purpose games.

Commodore says NO to 512 KB Fast RAM for Amiga's general-purpose games.

Commodore says NO to 24-bit color 704 x 288p for Amiga's general-purpose games.

Commodore says NO to 16-bit stereo audio for Amiga's general-purpose games.

The argument against $20 DSP3210 is implemented on CD32's higher cost FMV module with a very narrow functionality!

From https://websrv.cecs.uci.edu/~papers/...LES/060803.PDF

CD32's FMV module's $50 C-Cube CL450 SoC includes a licensed MIPS-X RISC CPU with 40 Mhz clock speed . You're looking at 40 million instructions per second (MIPS) RISC-based CPU i.e. it's like parts of PS1's CPU.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Kickstart source code + IBM = OS/2 (in exchange for IBM REXX which became AREXX in that deal) and that was better than NT and Mac OS 9. Instead of getting useless REXX perhaps they should have got a free x86 port of Kickstart because IBM knew what they were doing.

IBM OS/2 targeted 16-bit 286 until OS/2 2.0's 1992 release.

OS/2 1.0 (1987) targeted 286.
OS/2 1.1 (1988) targeted 286.
OS/2 1.2 (1989) targeted 286.
OS/2 1.3 (1990) targeted 286.

In addition, OS/2 lacked device drivers for many common devices such as printers, particularly non-IBM hardware. Windows, on the other hand, supported a much larger variety of hardware.

IBM's 16-bit 286 focus is an attempt to protect IBM's 32-bit big iron hardware business!

For native games, Windows 95 has games for Windows (e.g. Doom95) while OS/2 is a barren wasteland.

[ Show youtube player ]
10 Years of Early Windows Gaming 1995

OS/2 can GTFO i.e. to repeat Sony fanboys, "it has no games".

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

For 1987 to 1990 date range, A500's product positioning is about lower price against higher priced 286-16 based PC and it plays contemporary 2D games.

True - and still true after that. Superb A500 games were still coming out in 1993-1994, proving that a fast CPU and VGA were not required when you had the Amiga's custom chips.

A1200 didn't follow A500's product positioning on the ability to play contemporary 3D games for 1992 to 1994 date range. There's nothing platform specific about increasing math power!

False. It followed it closely.

Doom was released in December 1993. Before that the number of texture-mapped 3D games of note could be counted on the fingers of one hand with several to spare. As you know, by that time Commodore was in dire straights and unable to implement the next generation of Amigas to handle 3D games. Nevertheless the A1200 could easily be upgraded to play games like Doom (and many were).

The A1200's 'product positioning' wasn't the problem - the issue was the Amiga in total having less than 10% share of the market and therefore little incentive for developers to support it. If Commodore had released it a year earlier it might have reached 'critical mass' soon enough to stave that off, and Commodore might have made enough money to get the next models out in time for Doom etc. I should also point out that despite the hype around 3D, 2D games were still very popular. The A1200 was capable of running more sophisticated 2D games without the compromises the A500 placed on them.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

OS/2 lacked device drivers for many common devices such as printers, particularly non-IBM hardware. Windows, on the other hand, supported a much larger variety of hardware.

Windows didn't have much choice there because it had to run on a variety of PC clones, therefore it needed to include as many drivers as possible.

It's interesting to note that IBM, with its enormous clout and reputation, still couldn't draw customers away from Microsoft. Bill Gates must have been grinning from ear to ear.

More importantly though it shows that if Big Blue couldn't pull it off, little old Commodore had virtually no chance.

IBM's 16-bit 286 focus is an attempt to protect IBM's 32-bit big iron hardware business!

I don't think so. Windows 3.0 came out in 1990. Before that there were two separate variants Windows 286 and Windows 386. The 386 variant was only used on 386 PCs and is now quite rare, while the 286 variant worked on 286's and 386's. I suspect the 386 version was significantly more expensive too.

Before 1990 the vast majority of PCs were 8086/8 or 286 based. I doubt IBM's '16-bit 286 focus' had anything to do with 'protecting their big iron hardware business'. More likely they just didn't want to split it into two products like Microsoft did.

For native games, Windows 95 has games for Windows (e.g. Doom95) while OS/2 is a barren wasteland.

Doom 95 only existed because Microsoft was willing to pay to do it themselves (Carmack refused). IBM could have done the same if they wanted to - but why would they?

OS/2 can GTFO i.e. to repeat Sony fanboys, "it has no games".

I doubt that worried IBM at all. They weren't making toys. Besides, gamers would boot their machines into DOS to play games.

The one time IBM attempted to entertain the gaming crowd it didn't end well (PCjr) so I'm not surprised they didn't give it much thought after that. Gamers might think the PC suddenly became built for games in the 90's, but that's not really true. The vast majority of PCs were still made for business use. Even today, purpose-built gaming PCs are rarely seen in most electronics stores.