Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

The A1200 should have had a tape deck. Since it didn't have a 5 1/4" bay to install a CD Drive, we could at least use a tape adapter to play CDs from our Discmans.

I know you're joking, but wouldn't it be awesome to see an A1200 loading games from cassette tape? With a flashing border and tape sound out the speakers like the ZX Spectrum. I wonder what baud rate you could get?

But not with a built in tape deck. I bought a Spectrum +2 from a gentleman in Egypt. The tape deck was faulty so I cut that section out of the case and glued the end back on to make a much more compact unit. Then I added an interface circuit and socket for an external tape recorder. Works brilliantly!

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I know you're joking, but wouldn't it be awesome to see an A1200 loading games from cassette tape?

No it wouldn't I already don't like floppies

[Promilus]

Jokes aside there were tape adapters for Amiga. Including VHS.

[chb]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Commodore saved a dollar, the customer saved $10. Might not seem like much, but you would apply the same principle to everything else - and then it would be more expensive than an Archimedes. Result? Poor sales, and disgruntled customers who paid more for an unpopular machine. Commodore made the A1200 cheaper so you could get it cheaper and get more out of it. The more sales they made the more popular it would be, and the better it would be for them and you.

The problem was that Commodore saved a dollar on their entry-level A1200s without HD, but had to raise the price by hundreds of dollars for the HD models because of the 2.5" drive. It made the HD models very expensive, and in 1992 the writing was already on the wall that a floppy-only computer was going to be obsolete. They shot themselves in the foot with that decision IMHO.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I don't know why you didn't expect this. Commodore always built their 'consumer' models down to a price, and the strategy worked. The VIC-20, C64 and A500 were all top sellers because they were cheap. Which is the way most people liked it. Making the case and power supply bigger would raise the cost, compromise the ergonomics and make it look ugly. For those who didn't need a hard drive that would be a lose-lose situation - to satisfy the whims of a few who wanted a cheap hard drive no matter what else it affected.

Commodore could have easily saved the money for a slightly bigger case and stronger power supply by omitting features that were rarely used by included. Why the RF modulator? The A500 didn't have one, those handful of people who really wanted to connect their A1200 to a TV through RF in 1992 could buy the A520. PCMCIA was nice 10 years later when affordable network cards were available, but totally out of touch in the beginning of the 90s for a budget computer.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not sure what you mean by this, but the A590 needed a separate power supply because the A500 PSU (despite its size) wasn't deemed powerful enough. Commodore obviously wanted to avoid that with the A600 and A1200. The obvious answer was to use a 2.5" drive.

Lots of people (including myself) used an 3.5" HD with the original power supply without problems, even with turbo boards and other expansions. At least for the factory HD models the could have picked a 3.5" drive with low power consumption.

[Promilus]

PCMCIA was nice 10 years later when affordable network cards were available, but totally out of touch in the beginning of the 90s for a budget computer.

That was initially the only way to get A600 Fast RAM afaik. PCMCIA was emerging standard and it was fairly good to have. Thanks to that a (small) number of devices were introduced to Amiga market as well - as long as there was a driver to it. I don't blame Commodore for keeping that in A1200 as well. The main question I might ask is why all of you keep insisting that Commodore should keep saving money when developing A1200 specs. For budget market there was already A600. Archimedes was more expensive and still sold well despite rather limited userbase and software base. A1200 in more expensive stock config would still sell ok, especially if Commodore did sign up contracts with developers and let all of new machine features be brightly visible in games during debut.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Cyprian

I see that in case of signed div/mul 386 is a bit faster than 030:

Signed Multiplication 32bit
386 38 cycles
030 44 cycles


Signed Division 32bit
386 43 cycles
030 90 cycles

https://www2.math.uni-wuppertal.de/~.../opcode_i.html

https://oldwww.nvg.ntnu.no/amiga/MC6...s/68030it.HTML

Those numbers don't mean much. Since the 386DX maxes out at 40MHz while the 68030 goes up to 50MHz, the achievable results on the 68030 are 25% better than shown here, making the 68030 faster at multiplying - though still a bit slower at dividing. But comparing single instructions in isolation doesn't give you the whole picture. Real-world programs have shown that the 68030 generally matches a 386DX at the same clock speed.

For example, a program that calculates 3000 digits of pi on various machines that 'depends very much on the speed of integer division' showed an A1200 with 50MHz Blizzard 1230-IV doing it in 10.6 seconds, while an IBM PS/2 Model 85 with 33MHz 80486SX took 9.4 seconds. So the 50MHz 68030 was only 13% slower than the 33MHz 486. However a team effort aimed at optimizing the 68020 code managed to get it down to 9.4 seconds on my A1200 with 50MHz Blizzard 1230-IV - the same time as the 33MHz 486!

[Karlos]

@bruce

The initial comparison was between 386SX and 68030, not 386DX. Though the latter is fairer.

The original argument pitched a 25MHz 386SX with 4MB against an A1200 with 030 card to show the A1200 wasn't that much cheaper. Except given the disparity between those
two processors seems to defeat the argument. You could get an A1200 with a better processor for less than the PC still.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

However a team effort aimed at optimizing the 68020 code managed to get it down to 9.4 seconds on my A1200 with 50MHz Blizzard 1230-IV - the same time as the 33MHz 486!

Did the 486 version get the same team optimization effort?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Scaling for clockspeed I'd say the 020 is a match. A fact I was able to confirm years later with a 28MHz Blizz 1220.

No problem: you can use a card with a faster 020 with a 68851 and a 68882 for our example. (If such a thing existed)
But it would not make it any cheaper, would it?

"But look how cheap the A1200 was" is the main argument in this thread of those defending Commodores management. Well - if you compare it the the entry level PCs of the same company it really isn’t such a great deal.
It was only cheaper because it was missing a lot of things - to a point were it even severely compromised the performance of the machine.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Gorf

No problem: you can use a card with a faster 020 with a 68851 and a 68882 for our example. (If such a thing existed)
But it would not make it any cheaper, would it?

"But look how cheap the A1200 was" is the main argument in this thread of those defending Commodores management. Well - if you compare it the the entry level PCs of the same company it really isn’t such a great deal.
It was only cheaper because it was missing a lot of things - to a point were it even severely compromised the performance of the machine.

Yeah, having a faster 020 and some fastRAM would've really given the A1200 a boost

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Gorf

No problem: you can use a card with a faster 020 with a 68851 and a 68882 for our example. (If such a thing existed)
But it would not make it any cheaper, would it?

"But look how cheap the A1200 was" is the main argument in this thread of those defending Commodores management. Well - if you compare it the the entry level PCs of the same company it really isn’t such a great deal.
It was only cheaper because it was missing a lot of things - to a point were it even severely compromised the performance of the machine.

Not "look how cheap it was", but "it was as cheap as commodore could make it", pretty much.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Yeah, having a faster 020 and some fastRAM would've really given the A1200 a boost

Just the fast RAM, really. The full performance of the 14MHz 020 puts it right spot versus 7MHz 68000 and 25Mhz 68030 which is where the serious machines started. Even 1MB would've had a worthwhile impact.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I know you're joking, but wouldn't it be awesome to see an A1200 loading games from cassette tape? With a flashing border and tape sound out the speakers like the ZX Spectrum. I wonder what baud rate you could get?

Maybe quite slow*, but DAT/DDS would have offered a lot of space!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Data_Storage

*(180kB/s … a little bit faster than single speed CD-ROM)

But aktuelle I guess Sony MiniDisk would have been preferable…

Putting one of these formats in as standard in the AGA machines, would have given them some more attention by media … kind of free advertising

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Just the fast RAM, really. The full performance of the 14MHz 020 puts it right spot versus 7MHz 68000 and 25Mhz 68030 which is where the serious machines started. Even 1MB would've had a worthwhile impact.

Honestly, I think a new CPU and more RAM is like trying to put bandages on a barely improved chipset. Sure, the machine does get a noticeable improvement in speed, but it's not as big of an improvement as some fans must've expected

[Karlos]

Just on the HD aspect, although I fitted a slimline 3.5 inch to my 1200 wedge originally, I do appreciate the case made for 2.5 inch. Something designed for laptops makes sense in a wedge that you could lug round to your mate's house and play on.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Jokes aside there were tape adapters for Amiga. Including VHS.

Yes, the video backup system.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Honestly, I think a new CPU and more RAM is like trying to put bandages on a barely improved chipset. Sure, the machine does get a noticeable improvement in speed, but it's not as big of an improvement as some fans must've expected

True.
But these bandages might have helped at least a litte bit. But of course far from ideal.
It is just the thought: even with all the delays and AGA being what is was, what could Commodore have done in 92 and 93 to improve things
(besides of course ordering enough AGA chips for Christmas 92 ...)

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Gorf

True.
But these bandages might have helped at least a litte bit. But of course far from ideal.
It is just the thought: even with all the delays and AGA being what is was, what could Commodore have done in 92 and 93 to improve things
(besides of course ordering enough AGA chips for Christmas 92 ...)

At the end of the day, third party accelerators have done more for the Amiga than Commodore themselves. Of course...you also needed the money to afford those accelerators

[oscar_ates]

Just another question, did anyone predict commodore was going on a crash course in 1994? For me it came with a surprise

[Karlos]

It wasn't a complete surprise but I'd be lying if I said I could remember how quickly the penny dropped and when exactly it was. I'm sure print magazines in late 1993 were talking about poor sales of AGA machines, but I don't trust my recollection.