Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

And sadly the marketing department did not get the facts right:

"dazzling 3D graphics manipulation and animation powers"
Nope - and as if the amazing 2D power wasn't good enough

We don't know that this advert was created in-house, but even if it was you can't expect advertising people to understand the technical aspects perfectly. I mean, even 30 years later people who should know better are getting it wrong.

The Amiga was used by Hollywood etc. for its 'dazzling 3D graphics manipulation and animation powers'.

Perhaps it was stretching the truth a little to associate this with a stock A500. But hey... I remember using my 512k A1000 to generate 3D images with Sculpt 3D in 1987, and it was pretty 'dazzling' - even if the machine did have to be left on overnight to do a single frame.

Originally Posted by Gorf

And no: with a Genlock you can not capture images ... a genlock is no screengrabber...

This is a minor nitpick. Many genlocks had an RGB splitter output for connecting to a DigiView or similar video capture device.

Originally Posted by Gorf

"4 unique dedicated chips" ... did they count Garry? But not the CIAs?

Yes, Gary was a dedicated gate array chip. The CIAs are not considered 'dedicated' chips, they are just a slightly modified version of the 6526 I/O chip which was part of the 6502 family.
MOS Technology CIA

The 6526/8520 Complex Interface Adapter (CIA) was an integrated circuit made by MOS Technology. It served as an I/O port controller for the 6502 family of microprocessors, providing for parallel and serial I/O capabilities as well as timers and a Time-of-Day (TOD) clock. The device's most prominent use was in the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128(D), each of which included two CIA chips. The Commodore 1570 and Commodore 1571 floppy disk drives contained one CIA each. Furthermore, the Amiga home computers and the Commodore 1581 floppy disk drive employed a modified variant of the CIA circuit called 8520. 8520 is functionally equivalent to the 6526 except for the simplified TOD circuitry.

Originally Posted by Gorf

All in all to much emphasis on optional tools like genlock and digitizer, which are not part of the package.

In your opinion. Others might think it was appropriate for an advert touting the machine's 'creativity'. No other home computer had genlocking ability so this was a major feature of the Amiga (and one that might be attractive to home videophiles etc.). The ability to capture and manipulate images ('with optional tools') was demonstrated at the launch of the A1000, so there was precedent.

Originally Posted by Gorf

And even a typo: "workshopful of" instead of "workshop full of"

Oh golly a typo! At least it wasn't 'Type some shit in here'.

IMO this was one of Commodore's better adverts. The only nitpick I might have is the drawing of an ST as a windup toy. I get it, but I have never been a fan of adverts denigrating the competition. What's worse is you have to examine it closely to understand the reference.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TEG

The ballerina and the pie animations are as smooth as displayed by a 8 bits machine. Not to mention the atmosphere of the 60s. Great for a machine which expresses the future

And what you see at the end? A very young kid with a ball in the hands, sending the subliminal message of a toy.

Who validated this abomination?

Commodore paid an enormous amount of money to a top advertising firm to produce these A1000 ads. They did not get value for money. The technique seems to be a homage to The Wizard of Oz, which was one of the first color movies (it started in monochrome like normal movies of the time, then switched to dazzling color when Dorothy arrived in Oz). The idea seems to be that 'other' computers only had monochrome displays, so the Amiga was ahead of the competition. But they did a poor job of getting this message across. 1985 wasn't 1939! Too much time was spent showing old monochrome movie clips and not enough on the Amiga.

Mind you, it wouldn't be the only time that an ad campaign left me scratching my head. Even today it's not uncommon to not figure out what a TV ad is about until the last second - if at all! Computer magazines in the 80's were full of clangers pushing some theme that barely related to the product.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gorf

The A1000 was a revelation at the time it came out. It was capable of so many things people would never assosiate with computers. It gave ordinary customers the possibility to do not only "ordinary" computer tasks, but gave them a tool for creativity and of course fun. At a price far below any contemporary machine. The A500 continued this legacy with an even lower price.

The A1200 simply could not recreate that.
We sent pages over pages comparing its price to an equally equipped PC, but that is missing the point: even if it may have cost twice as much (which it did not), such PCs were now in the affordable range for the vast majority of customers.

Yes, there are always those who could not have afforded a "multimedia" or gaming PC, but if we look back at the numbers, this was simply not longer true for the vast majority. The sales numbers show this clearly.

The A1200 simply did not have the undeniable edge over the PC, which previous models had at the time. And yes: this was disappointing.

It would have needed the "one more thing", the little extra, the plus the others would not have.

A DSP for sound-mixing and modem functionality might have been such a thing (already discussed at length), of a better chipset with some early rudimentary 3D support, or maybe a "floptical"-drive* that would hold 20MB - rendering a HD unnecessary for a couple of years.
(just one of the above, not all three, might have been enough)

FYI, DSP3210 is designed for IEEE-754 FP32 3D. AT&T has DSP16 for low-cost audio DSP.

Neither PS1's GTE nor 3DO's MADAM's matrix math coprocessors are designed for IEEE-754 FP32 3D.

3DO MADAM's matrix math coprocessor's best feature 4 x 4 matrix multiply of 16bit values with 32bit results.

A RISC CPU with 1-clock 16x16 MUL single pipeline would need 8 clock cycles to match.
A RISC CPU with 1-clock 16x16 MUL dual pipelines would need 4 clock cycles to match.
A RISC CPU with 1-clock 16x16 MUL single 64-bit SIMD pipeline would need 2 clock cycles to match.

Back to 3DO MADAM's matrix math coprocessor, ARM60 CPU must pre-load all required initial values into the appropriate place in the stack. The CPU must also pre-set the control bits. Once the initial settings have been done, the CPU starts an operation by writing the appropriate value to the 'StartProcess' register. The CPU must then poll the status register in order to know when the process is completed. Missing interrupt feature. It's a rush job CPU PIO driven matrix math coprocessor. It reminds me of Akiko's C2P.

ARM60 CPU loading values into MADAM's matrix co-processor's stack and the 2MB 80 ns access rate FP DRAM would be the major bottleneck. There's a setup cost with an external custom chip method compared CPU's integrated SIMD implementation.

Intel i860 has 64-bit SIMD MMX-like feature with 16KB+16KB L2 cache.
Pentium III, each SSE vector is either four 32-bytes, eight 16-bytes or sixteen 1-byte values. Intel quickly ramped-up Pentium's clock speed and recycled i860's 64-bit MMX-like feature for Pentium MMX. HP PA-RISC has MAX v1 32-bit SIMD and MAX v2 64-bit SIMD.

PS1's GTE is not IEEE-754 FP32 3D.

Commodore selected DSP3210 due to IEEE-754 FP32 3D.

Evans & Sutherland ESV workstation used an array of DSP3210 like SGI's array of i860 for RealityEngine.

DSP3210 is a dual pipeline RISC CPU/DSP i.e. separate 32-bit integer and floating-point pipelines. DSP3210 has zero-wait state 8KB local on-chip memory for full-speed MUL processing.

---------

During Amiga's golden era, stock A500 was able to play contemporary 2D games with comparable 2D gaming experience as Sega Genesis and superior multi-platforms 2D gaming experience when compared Atari ST.

For the western markets, SNES was released for North America in 1991 and EU in 1992 and Sega Genesis was released for North America in 1989 and EU in 1990.

Stock A1200 didn't run contemporary "full 32-bit" texture-mapped 2.5D/3D games from the "full 32-bit" gaming PCs.

AGA didn't have enough user base to compete against strong 2D games competitor SNES which started to build its user base from 1990.

[Fraglord]

I loved the A1200, but found in retrospect that it wasn't as good as it could have been if Commodore let the r&d department do their work earlier. By the time Wolfenstein 3d rolled out and adventure games on cd-rom became popular, it was game over. But I learned all the computer and design skills I could ever need on the A1200, and it's still working to this day. So no. Not dissapointed, but what a difference a better gfx chip, a true AGA and some more omph to play Wing Commander and 3d games would have done.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Stock A1200 didn't run contemporary "full 32-bit" texture-mapped 2.5D/3D games from the "full 32-bit" gaming PCs.

2.5/3D texture-mapped games:-
Catacomb 3-D

released in November 1991... Catacomb 3-D is a landmark title in terms of first-person graphics. It is the first example of the modern, character-based first-person shooter genre

Amiga system requirements - 68020, ECS, 2MB ChipRAM

Catacomb 3D on Amiga CD32
[ Show youtube player ]

Wolfenstein 3D

released on May 5, 1992... Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters"

Amiga system requirements:- 68020, AGA, +1MB Fast officially, but I have run it on a stock A1200 and it had 680k free RAM.

Legends of Valour

released by U.S. Gold and Strategic Simulations in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS... Legends of Valour is played in a first-person perspective, being one of the first RPGs to use a smooth-scrolling three-dimensional environment engine in the style of Wolfenstein 3D... "Theoretically the Amiga version should be playing [like] on an 8MHz 286 PC but using this technique we've developed it's more like playing on 16MHz 386".

Amiga system requirements:- 68000, 1MB, OCS.

These 3 examples show that a stock A1200 was quite capable of running contemporary 2.5D texture-mapped games.

Of course a stock A1200 couldn't run Doom because it needed more RAM, same as a typical contemporary 386SX PC (which had 1-2MB). But Doom was released in December 1993, only 4 months before Commodore went bankrupt. By that time accelerator cards were available that could run Doom at a good frame rate for a lot less money than a 486 'gaming' PC.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Perhaps it was stretching the truth a little to associate this with a stock A500. But hey... I remember using my 512k A1000 to generate 3D images with Sculpt 3D in 1987, and it was pretty 'dazzling' - even if the machine did have to be left on overnight to do a single frame.

Such claims as in this ad lead to high expectations, which might then in turn lead to a disappointment after purchase - all without a need to do so, since the gfx powers of the Amiga were amazing ... just not really 3D.

Yes, Gary was a dedicated gate array chip. The CIAs are not considered 'dedicated' chips, they are just a slightly modified version of the 6526 I/O chip which was part of the 6502 family.

Wikipedia classifies Agnus, Denise and Paula as the "Chipset" - And Gary, CIAs (and DMAC, Buster ...) as Custom Chips.
They all were dedicated chips for the Amiga, since you could not use the Amiga CIAs in an C64
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Original_Chip_Set
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_custom_chips

Oh golly a typo! At least it wasn't 'Type some shit in here'.

You pointed out my typo in my earlier response:
I might have an excuse, since English is not my native language ... and I am not trying to sell a product here.
As the quality of an advertisement usually intends to reflect the quality of the product, such things do matter.

Here it is even more ironic, since they claim the Amiga enables you to do "word process with faultless professionalism".

IMO this was one of Commodore's better adverts.

That's the problem ...

The only nitpick I might have is the drawing of an ST as a windup toy. I get it, but I have never been a fan of adverts denigrating the competition. What's worse is you have to examine it closely to understand the reference.

Yes - it makes a reference, that would be totally unclear to a novel customer. And it does not point out the reasoning behind it or what the differences are.
Comparative advertising can be fun, but here it misfires.
(Such ads were also banned in Germany at the time ...)

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Such claims as in this ad lead to high expectations, which might then in turn lead to a disappointment after purchase - all without a need to do so, since the gfx powers of the Amiga were amazing ... just not really 3D.

I dunno, people had much lower expectations back then. Nobody was expecting PlayStation level graphics, the fact you could run stuff like Castle Master at a reasonable rate was pretty much what we all expected of "3D" at the time.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

These 3 examples show that a stock A1200 was quite capable of running contemporary 2.5D texture-mapped games.

To be honest, no one really cared if systems were merely 'quite capable' of running state-of-the-art games. It was always the presentation on a high-end PC-DOS machine that got people cheering. Back then, PC users were confident that upgrading their machines in the future would improve performance, rather than having to buy an entirely new computer.

[TCD]

Yep, in the 80s 3D was 'filled polygon' and not 'texture mapped'. The Amiga was pretty good at 'filled polygon' as countless demos prove

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

To be honest, no one really cared if systems were merely 'quite capable' of running state-of-the-art games. It was always the presentation on a high-end PC-DOS machine that got people cheering. Back then, PC users were confident that upgrading their machines in the future would improve performance, rather than having to buy an entirely new computer.

Back then I too updated my pc configuration with better graphic cards and more ram. Today hardware is so cheap so that you simply buy something new

[Karlos]

For the vast majority of people I knew, PCs were boring AF in 1992/1993, simply because most of them were just work related units and not remotely cutting edge by PC standards then. I knew people that still had monochrome displays and bloody beepers. Things began to change when faster 386 and 486 began to become more affordable. In late 1993, the one guy I knew with a 486 (SX 25) got doom which ran playably fast but probably not more than 15-20fps on his system. It was undoubtedly the shape of things to come but I had a ton of fun 2D games that ran at 50fps and other fun stuff.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep, in the 80s 3D was 'filled polygon' and not 'texture mapped'. The Amiga was pretty good at 'filled polygon' as countless demos prove

When you pre-calculate the math ... then at low res that is true.
It was not really that much better than the the ST, despite it lacking the blitter:

[ Show youtube player ]

And the Amiga was much worse at doing 3D polygons than e.g. the Archimedes as Virus or Frontier show.

All of course a far cry from what a 68010 based SGI IRIS could do in 1985:

[ Show youtube player ]

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by gorf

when you pre-calculate the math ... Then at low res that is true.
It was not really that much better than the the st, despite it lacking the blitter:

[ Show youtube player ]

and the amiga was much worse at doing 3d polygons than e.g. The archimedes as virus or frontier show.

All of course a far cry from what a 68010 based sgi iris could do in 1985:

[ Show youtube player ]

68010?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

And the Amiga was much worse at doing 3D polygons than e.g. the Archimedes as Virus or Frontier show.

Imagine someone creating this ad:-

"The amazing Amiga 500, has no better 3D graphics than an ST and much worse than an Acorn Archimedes or SGI workstation!". They'd be shown the door before the day was out.

Advertising

The purpose of advertising is to inform the consumers about their product and convince customers that a company's services or products are the best, enhance the image of the company, point out and create a need for products or services, demonstrate new uses for established products, announce new products and programs, reinforce the salespeople's individual messages, draw customers to the business, and to hold existing customers.

There's more to 3D than just polygon based games. The Amiga's HAM mode could put thousands of colors on screen with subtle shading to enhance raytraced images. Meanwhile the Archimedes was doing crude shaded polygons (and virus was a pretty poor game).

The SGI IRIS 2400 in your video was creating some 3D wireframe graphics and then animating it in 8 colors (according to my count). The Amiga could easily do the same - perhaps not quite so smoothly but then the SGI cost over $20,000 which was 20 times more than the A500!

The polygon animation in this A500 demo looks pretty smooth to me...

[ Show youtube player ]

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

Back then, PC users were confident that upgrading their machines in the future would improve performance, rather than having to buy an entirely new computer.

I'm not so sure about that.

How did you upgrade a typical 386SX to get more performance? The CPU was soldered onto the motherboard so you couldn't swap it for a faster one - you had to replace the whole board. Might need new RAM too since 386SX boards used 30 pin 8 bit SIMMs. Then you found that the case wasn't big enough and the power supply wasn't powerful enough, and the graphics card would still be holding you back. Also your hard drive was nearly full so you wanted a bigger one. Oh, and your old monitor might not handle the new higher resolutions either! Of course all that assumes that you had a typical clone made from 'standardized' parts. If it was a proprietary design like Amstrad or Acer then you were probably screwed.

In many cases it was cheaper and easier to just buy a new machine and sell or trade in the old one (assuming the CMOS battery hadn't leaked and the machine was still working properly).

I'd say A1200 owners were more confident that our machines could be upgraded. After all the Amiga had been designed to take accelerator cards from the start (only the A600 and CDTV were not officially upgradable). Even just adding more RAM doubled the speed! By 1993 you could get a 50MHz 030 and FPU with up to 128MB RAM, and by 1995 a 40MHz 040 or 50MHz 060.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

2.5/3D texture-mapped games:-
Catacomb 3-D

released in November 1991... Catacomb 3-D is a landmark title in terms of first-person graphics. It is the first example of the modern, character-based first-person shooter genre

Amiga system requirements - 68020, ECS, 2MB ChipRAM

Catacomb 3D on Amiga CD32
[ Show youtube player ]

FYI, Catacomb 3D is an EGA displayed game i.e. 16 colors. Amiga would need 4 bit planes display. Grind and Dread C2P renderer has 4 bit planes display.

Catacomb 3D CD32 port was released around 2016.
https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=4017

System requirements:

Amiga CD32 or ECS Amiga with a 14 MHz 68020 processor and 2 MB Chip RAM. Additional Fast RAM is recommended for optimal performance. At least Kickstart v3.0 is required.

The non-CD32 Amiga's Wing Commander port uses 16 colors 4 bit planes display.

Can you see the pattern?

PC's ground texture mapped Formula 1 Grand Prix (PC/DOS) "World Circuit" from 1991 runs in 256 color VGA mode. The texture map is missing on the Amiga version.

PC's 1990 release Wing Commander's render runs in VGA's 256 color chunky pixels.

PC's 1992 release Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss has texture-mapped 3D in 256 color VGA mode.

PC's 1993 release IndyCar Racing has texture-mapped 3D in 256 color VGA mode. IndyCar Racing is a follow from the 1989 Indianapolis 500 game.

PC's 1993 release Frontier: Elite II has texture-mapped 3D in 256 color VGA mode. The texture map is missing on the Amiga version.

Amiga AGA's Magic Carpet port was scrapped by BullFrog.

For the "full 32-bit" gaming PC platform, there was a flood of texture-mapped 3D in 256 color VGA mode games in 1994 year that was in development in 1992 and 1993 date range.

SNES's Mode 7 and PC's VGA provide the BASELINE STANDARD for 256 color 8-bit chunky pixels. The keyword is consistency.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Wolfenstein 3D

released on May 5, 1992... Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters"

Amiga system requirements:- 68020, AGA, +1MB Fast officially, but I have run it on a stock A1200 and it had 680k free RAM.

Legends of Valour

released by U.S. Gold and Strategic Simulations in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS... Legends of Valour is played in a first-person perspective, being one of the first RPGs to use a smooth-scrolling three-dimensional environment engine in the style of Wolfenstein 3D... "Theoretically the Amiga version should be playing [like] on an 8MHz 286 PC but using this technique we've developed it's more like playing on 16MHz 386".

Amiga system requirements:- 68000, 1MB, OCS.

These 3 examples show that a stock A1200 was quite capable of running contemporary 2.5D texture-mapped games.

Of course a stock A1200 couldn't run Doom because it needed more RAM, same as a typical contemporary 386SX PC (which had 1-2MB). But Doom was released in December 1993, only 4 months before Commodore went bankrupt. By that time accelerator cards were available that could run Doom at a good frame rate for a lot less money than a 486 'gaming' PC.

You have forgotten the "game ready" optimized C2P standard DID NOT exist for the Amiga platform in the critical 1992 to 1993 data range. Hint: Commodore's SDK sucked for high-performance action games.

Amiga didn't have "Michael Abrash" Mode X software optimizer evangelist during the critical 1992 to 1993 date range and VGA provides baseline 256 color 8-bit chunky pixels standard.

PC's Mode X is from Mode 13h with minor VGA registers change and PC's Mode X avoids Amiga's C2P issues.

"Game ready" optimized C2P wasn't a baseline standard on the Amiga. The keyword is consistency.

For Windows NT 3.x development, Microsoft hired Michael Abrash before IDsoftware. Microsoft is the platform holder for MS-DOS and Windows. After Quake's development, Microsoft rehired Michael Abrash for natural language research and the Xbox team until 2001. In 2002, Abrash went to RAD Game Tools where he co-wrote the Pixomatic software renderer, which emulates the functionality of a DirectX 7-level graphics card. At the end of 2005, Pixomatic was acquired by Intel. When developing Pixomatic, he and Mike Sartain designed a new architecture called Larrabee. AVX-512 has GPU style gather and scatter instructions which is important for software render's texture mapping and raster.

Amiga's Legends of Valour port is a 16 color version that needs 4 bit planes. The developers for Amiga's Legends of Valour port didn't evangelise their C2P solution while SNES's Mode 7 and PC's VGA provides the BASELINE 256 color 8-bit chunky pixels hardware functions.

Can you see the pattern?

PC's Legends of Valour has 256 color version.

Commodore's official position on A1200's 256 color 8-bit chunky pixels issue from https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=1604

The “chunky to planar” logic was thought out in a lunchtime conversation between Beth Richard (system chip design), Chris Coley (board design), and Ken Dyke (software) over Subway sandwiches on a picnic table in a nearby park one day, because Ken was telling us how much of a pain it was to shuffle bits in software to port games from other platforms to the Amiga planar system. We took the idea to Hedley Davis, who was the system chip team manager and lead engineer on Akiko and he said we could go ahead with it. I showed him the “napkin sketch” of how I thought the logic would work and was planning on getting to it the next day as it was already late afternoon by that point. I came in the next morning and Hedley had completed it already, just from the sketch!

Commodore didn't hire the best for their SDK development.

The timeline could have changed i.e. if AGA platforms had a game-centric SDK with "game ready" optimized C2P OR 256 color 8-bit chunky pixels mode as BASELINE standards in 1992. Release timings matter in the commercial world. Sony has a good game-centric SDK for PS1.

R&D time was wasted on moonshot AAA's chunky pixels mode instead of focusing on modest AGA's 8-bit chunky pixels mode! Doing the basics and mastering it.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep, in the 80s 3D was 'filled polygon' and not 'texture mapped'. The Amiga was pretty good at 'filled polygon' as countless demos prove

1990 release of SNES Mode 7 says Hi.

If your R&D approach is to respond to competitor's released product, you're too late.

Texture map 3D games were in development in late 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima..._Stygian_Abyss

An early difficulty was the implementation of texture mapping. Neurath had experimented unsuccessfully with the concept on an Apple II computer in the late 1980s, but he believed that the more powerful IBM PCs of the time might be able to process it. He contacted Lerner Research programmer Chris Green—an acquaintance from his past work with Ned Lerner—who created a working algorithm.[19][20][23] Using the Space Rogue engine, Green's algorithm, assembly code from Lerner Research's Car and Driver and original programming, the Blue Sky team completed a prototype of Underworld after roughly a month of work.[7][10][20][23] Neurath described the prototype as "fast, smooth, and [featuring] true texture mapped walls, though the ceiling and floor were flat shaded and the corridors and rooms were all 10' [3.0 m] high—it looked a lot like Wolfenstein-3D in fact."[4] The team demonstrated it at the June 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and impressed Origin Systems.[10][20][21][23] Origin producer Warren Spector later said, "I remember Paul showing me that demo ... at CES and being totally floored by it. None of us had ever seen anything like it."[23] The two companies reached a publishing agreement that summer, and Origin suggested that the game be reworked to fit into the Ultima universe.[10][20] The team agreed, and the game was renamed Ultima Underworld.[20]

Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss's early texture map 3D engine demonstration was in June 1990. id Software's use of texture mapping in Catacomb 3-D was influenced by Ultima Underworld.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-1989-PUB-...3139140?_ul=IN
From 1989, General Electric Aerospace Simulation & Control Systems' texture mapped 3D advert from US DoD's F16 flight simulator. This texture mapped technology was used in Sega's arcade game products.


https://segaretro.org/Press_release:...S_BREAKTHROUGH

GE's Simulation and Control Systems Department, a unit of GE Aerospace, has signed a Technical Assistance and License Agreement with Sega Enterprise Ltd., Tokyo, Japan that will harness GE's image processing technology to Sega's best-selling video and arcade games

This 3D business unit was ultimately purchased by Intel.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I'm not so sure about that.

How did you upgrade a typical 386SX to get more performance? The CPU was soldered onto the motherboard so you couldn't swap it for a faster one - you had to replace the whole board.

There are A600-style CPU upgrade hacks for soldered 386SX. https://www.amibay.com/threads/info-...7/#post-491513

The problem with the 386SX motherboard is the 16-bit memory bus which gimps math processing. Upgrading from a 16-bit memory bus motherboard to a 32-bit memory bus motherboard is okay.

---

With a desktop PC clone, AT standard size motherboard can be swapped out for newer AT standard size motherboard. Existing ISA cards, case, PSU, keyboard, mouse, SVGA monitor are then recycled for the new machine.

Both CPU and partitioned video card are upgraded out-of sync with each other.

I could have recycled my ET4000 ISA card for my Pentium 150 build, but a no-name OEM S3 Trio 64UV+ PCI card is cheap.

For AGA upgrade, my entire A3000 (68030-25/68882-25) needs to be dumped for A4000 upgrade or A1200 side grade with 030 accelerator purchase. "Big box" Amiga has a game console-style boat anchor. Dave Haynie wanted AA3000+ motherboard upgrades for existing A3000 owners.

An A500 owner with GVP A530 (or any full 32-bit 68K accelerator), the entire machine and 030 accelerator dumped for A1200 side grade and buy another 030 accelerator. An A500 owner with GVP A530 couldn't join AGA gaming in 1992-1994. Any desktop PC owner can join VGA gaming with an SVGA card upgrade. Selling A500/GVP A530 to another person doesn't expand AGA's user base.

An A2000 owner with full 32-bit 020 accelerator, the entire machine and CPU accelerator are dumped for A4000/030-25 upgrade/side grade or A1200 side grade and buy another 030 accelerator. Any desktop PC owner can join VGA gaming with an SVGA card upgrade. Selling the A2000 with full 32-bit 020 accelerator to another person doesn't expand AGA's user base. A4000's motherboard is not compatible with A2000's case.

An A2000 owner with full 32-bit 040 accelerator, the entire machine and CPU accelerator are dumped for A4000/040 side grade or A1200 side grade and buy another 040 accelerator. 040 is usually socketed. Does Commodore sell unpopulated A3640 card? Does Commodore sell A4000s with unpopulated CPU/FPU? Selling A2000 to another person doesn't expand AGA's user base. A4000's motherboard is not compatible with A2000's case.

Only Amiga made it possible for a "full 32-bit 68030-25 and 68882-25 FPU" to be thrown away. This is like dumping 386DX-25 and 387-25 just for a video card upgrade. CD32's cost is about $299 USD.

For A3000T/040's case, an entire machine is dumped just for a video card upgrade. A3640 card can be recycled for A4000/030

The Amiga platform couldn't leverage its existing full 32-bit 68k Amiga ECS evolving into AGA while existing full 32-bit CPU PC users can upgrade into fast SVGA upgrades. Amiga AGA starts from ground zero, game console style.

Lower cost gaming PC breaking away from PC workstations with a single fast graphics slot destroys the Amiga's mass production models. Lower cost VLB motherboards has few VLB slots and ISA slots while PC workstation has higher VLB and E-ISA slots.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I'd say A1200 owners were more confident that our machines could be upgraded. After all the Amiga had been designed to take accelerator cards from the start (only the A600 and CDTV were not officially upgradable). Even just adding more RAM doubled the speed! By 1993 you could get a 50MHz 030 and FPU with up to 128MB RAM,

For 1993, that's in a similar price range to 486SX-33 PC clone or Quadra 605 (68LC040-25) type box from Apple. Amiga's 3rd party 030 vendors do not have economies of scale. Commodore UK tried to solve this issue and rejected by Ali.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

and by 1995 a 40MHz 040

What a joke. 486DX50 class CPU in 1995....

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

or 50MHz 060.

For 1996 Quake, my 1996 era Pentium 150 (overclocked to 166)/S3 Trio 64UV+ PCI PC destroys Warp1260 with RTG (not gimped by Super Buster) and 100 Mhz 68060 Rev 6.

SysInfo shown why 68060's 4 bytes fetch per cycle from L1 cache has gimped 68060. AC68080 V2 has fixed this Motorola stupidity. You're in dreamland.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gorf

When you pre-calculate the math ... then at low res that is true.
It was not really that much better than the the ST, despite it lacking the blitter:

Amiga's F-29 Retaliator port used hardware acceleration. Amiga blitter has adder functions.

Amiga's Dread is faster due to blitter accelerated C2P and displaying more than 16 colors due to hardware sprites and copper.

https://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/ot...85(JMiner).pdf

BYTE: Tell us about the blitter

Miner: I like to call it a bimmer because that stands for bit-mapped image manipulator. The term blitter is left over from literature referring to block transfer. This machine does block transfer, but it does much more because it has three inputs, and those three Inputs can be combined in many different ways.

The logic operations that can be performed are complete If you think of three variables, you can perform 256 logic operations on them.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Imagine someone creating this ad:-

"The amazing Amiga 500, has no better 3D graphics than an ST and much worse than an Acorn Archimedes or SGI workstation!". They'd be shown the door before the day was out.

Look, the quote from the ad totally needlessly includes the term "3D"

AMAZING SCIENCE FACT!
Amiga is used by Disney. Universal and other Hollywood studios for its dazzling 3D graphics manipulation and animation powers.

It would be totally fine without this specific term - and much more accurate:

AMAZING SCIENCE FACT!
Amiga is used by Disney. Universal and other Hollywood studios for its dazzling graphics manipulation and animation powers.

By just leaving out this two characters.
Especially since it claims to be scientific...

The SGI IRIS 2400 in your video was creating some 3D wireframe graphics and then animating it in 8 colors (according to my count). The Amiga could easily do the same - perhaps not quite so smoothly but then the SGI cost over $20,000 which was 20 times more than the A500!

The polygon animation in this A500 demo looks pretty smooth to me...

pre-calculated in low resolution vs. real-time in high resolution.
The IRIS can move the flat shaded model in all angles in real-time.