Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Why the hell on earth Commodore could not make machine that can read high density floppy disks at full speed while owning Amiga tech for 9 years? A1200 had DD support, commodore A4000 had half-speed hd floppy drive, Escom A4000s went back to dd drives

DD was the standard, and the Amiga had it before most. Cheap DD disks were bad enough for getting read errors, but cheap HD disks were worse. PC users often didn't notice - until they went to restore their backups - because it mostly happened on inner tracks (unfortunately Amiga DOS uses inner tracks first when filling up the disk).

I checked the price of DD vs HD disks in 1992 and HD disks were nearly twice the price, so not much advantage to having them unless you needed to transfer large files from a PC. Desiring HD floppies is just another example of PC envy.

DD disks could be used by a number of home computers besides the Amiga. I had a DISCiPLE on my ZX Spectrum with a DD drive (I wrote a program to read them on my Amiga). My IBM JX had two of them, and my Amstrad PC2086 also has them. Some early PC laptops had DD 3.5" drives. You can easily replace the 3" drive in an Amstrad CPC or ZX Spectrum +3 with a DD 3.5" drive. MSX floppy drives were DD. The Commodore 1581 was DD. Knitting machines, synthesizer keyboards and industrial machines used them too.

To use HD disks at full speed on the Amiga it would need twice as many DMA slots per line, possibly impacting other stuff like sound and sprites. It also needs twice as much ChipRAM to read in and decode tracks. Since older machines and disks had to be DD, moving to HD would introduce further compatibility issues. I did have an HD drive in my A3000 but never used it as such. Having a mixture of DD and HD disks would have been a pain, so it was easier to just use DD disks.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

You seem to misunderstand, what I proposed as a solution:
The 6510 and the ViC-II would of course have their own dedicated 64KB of RAM

Of course, = $.

- but the modified VIC-II would write its output to a region of chipram!
Since the low-res pixel-clock should be very similar this cold actually work.

After some more thought, I would change "region" to a single line (or two lines for double buffering) - a 1-2 KB of fast SRAM or a line buffer like within Amber would be enough for that:

VIC-II is filling this line up with 4 bits per pixel "vertically" while Agnus/Denise would read 16 bits "horizontally" for each of the 4 bitplanes that are formed this way.
(yes: this is c2p in hardware)

The Amiga bitplane pointers would be reset to the same address after every line, reading the "same" line over and over again, but it would have a different content each time of course ...

This way you could treat is as any other Screen. You could even mix it with a fifth bitplane somewhere else in chipram or display Amiga-sprites on it.
(the C64 sprites are of course automatically part of the VIC-II output)

Sounds very complicated - and a likely source of incompatibility.

This is something what could actually be done today with a A314 running Vice

Or a Vampire with appropriate HDL?

Hey, I just thought of a solution that would work without adding any extra hardware or software to the Amiga! Put all of it in a separate box, and call it a C64.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Whole thread is a big what-if. Devkits mounted in computers as whole platform are rather expensive anyway. Much more expensive than target machine.

That's true. I bought an A3000 costing NZ$7200 to develop software for the CDTV. That was nothing compared to what dev kits for games consoles cost.

Most professional developers used workstations or PCs. AmigaDOS was developed by MetaComCo on on a SAGE IV running TRIPOS. They also distributed Lattice C, which was available as a cross compiler for the PC or native as 'Amiga C' marketed through Commodore. To use the Amiga version effectively you needed an expanded machine with several floppy drives and FastRAM.

However many home computer developers started off as hobbyists developing stuff on their own machines with very limited resources. Assemblers were much faster than compilers and didn't need much RAM. I had a 20MB hard drive and 2MB FastRAM on my A1000 and it was an excellent development machine for asm coding.

It seems they just dropped it off with a boing ball and some other demos and then observed how it goes because they had absolutely no idea where this tech can lead them. And it obviously led them nowhere with that particular design.

Even if Commodore themselves didn't, the software houses did. Just read the first issue of Amiga World to see all the companies champing at the bit to do stuff for it. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that the userbase wasn't growing fast enough to justify Amiga specific development. Electronic Arts for example was very disappointed by the poor A1000 sales. Meanwhile the PC market was booming, so US developers moved to it even though PCs sucked - because the name of the game is making sales, not producing amazing software.

What Commodore really didn't appreciate was how urgent it was to ramp up sales of the A1000. They had enough machines out there to develop software for it, but not enough to create a market for it. I can understand their lack of haste, since the C64 was still selling well and the C128 was doing OK too. But that wouldn't last. Two years turned out to be a long time - too long for many US developers.

Bottom line - it wasn't more development machines that were needed, but more consumer machines. Commodore should have looked at cutting costs on the A1000 earlier and marketing it more aggressively.

In the end Apple took DTP, Atari took MIDI and Amiga took gaming and video editing. The latter with 3rd party tools and hardly any good money for Commodore. Which is kind of suboptimal for such supreme architecture.

The Amiga's architecture wasn't all that 'supreme' for those other applications. Apple got DTP because the Macintosh suited it, and Atari got the MIDI market for the same reason. Amiga got video because that's what it was good at.

But the Amiga handily beat both the Mac and ST for gaming, which was potentially a much larger market. Problem is gaming had a stigma attached to it in the US. Commodore's mistake was not pushing the Amiga into the European and Oceanic markets sooner, where they could sell more to gamers.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

(unfortunately Amiga DOS uses inner tracks first when filling up the disk)

Errr... no.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

To use HD disks at full speed on the Amiga it would need twice as many DMA slots per line, possibly impacting other stuff like sound and sprites.

Err... no. With AGA, enough bandwidth is available (actually, twice the bandwidth). It would have just needed an updated Paula, but the design did not change, so the bandwidth limitation did not change.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What Commodore really didn't appreciate was how urgent it was to ramp up sales of the A1000. They had enough machines out there to develop software for it, but not enough to create a market for it. (...)

Bottom line - it wasn't more development machines that were needed, but more consumer machines. Commodore should have looked at cutting costs on the A1000 earlier and marketing it more aggressively.

Agreed. But C128 - "a toy computer" was available nearly anywhere along Atari & Amstrad. A1000 wasn't. It was "professional machine".

The Amiga's architecture wasn't all that 'supreme' for those other applications. Apple got DTP because the Macintosh suited it, and Atari got the MIDI market for the same reason. Amiga got video because that's what it was good at.

I think with few minor modifications Amiga would beat crap out of both.

But the Amiga handily beat both the Mac and ST for gaming, which was potentially a much larger market. Problem is gaming had a stigma attached to it in the US. Commodore's mistake was not pushing the Amiga into the European and Oceanic markets sooner, where they could sell more to gamers.

But that's exactly what I'm talking about. They'd have to first agree it IS great gaming machine and should advertise it as such. Along with adverts showing it's NOT ONLY for games. C= marketing did suck. And yes, by 87-88 iirc C64 users got official hint about C65. That held back some of them from buying incompatible Amiga 500 if (partially) compatible C65 would offer new screenmodes, blitter, more memory and 16bit CPU. Wow. What a mess.

Amiga hardware - we love. We cherish it. We know it's weak points. We know what improvements would make it even better. But there's no such improvement which would offset bad marketing or bad timing.

[oscar_ates]

Amiga was a 16-bits beast. However, it could not make the jump to 32bits era. I do not see any 32-bits quality game with A1200 and CD32. All look a little bit improved 16-bits games. PCs and PSX did the 32-bits revolution and survived to today.

Game sack guys give 1$ for every bits they feel CD32 has and at the end guy paid 4$:

[ Show youtube player ]

[sokolovic]

Someone should rename this thread "Official Amiga What if Competition".

[jizmo]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Someone should rename this thread "Official Amiga What if Competition".

"Was anyone else disappointed with this thread?"

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Game sack guys give 1$ for every bits they feel CD32 has and at the end guy paid 4$:

[ Show youtube player ]

Do you really think he's being serious there?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Someone should rename this thread "Official Amiga What if Competition".

I'd vote for "Here we go loopy-loopy"

[coder76]

I think PC's were still rubbish, until they got 3D cards and better OSes than Win95 or Win98. That happened when Red Hat Linux 7 and other similar came in 2001, and Windows XP. Before that, PCs used just brute force with CPUs to move pixels around. We can do that now as well with the A1200, when Pistorm32 is out. And games like Quake and Quake 2 will run easily, if you just accept 320x256 resolution and 256 colors (maybe also HAM8 is possible in 3D games).

[Promilus]

@coder76 - nope. If game used directdraw it used whatever compatible hardware acceleration was available on GPU die. And since early 90s there were already functional blocks to assist drawing, memory copy and logic operations on it.

[itsmedoofer]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Someone should rename this thread "Official Amiga What if Competition".

Crystal ball gazers anonymous......

[itsmedoofer]

Originally Posted by jizmo

"Was anyone else disappointed with this thread?"

I'm disappointed I've not got as much free time as some of these people....

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Do you really think he's being serious there?

Of course not. He is just making joke. I would give 24$

[paul1981]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Coffee would be a good idea and go very well with the (video)toaster and some HAM!

So we need an integrated microwave as well?

Take of the A1200 shielding.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Of course, = $.

It would be an $50-$60 add-on card.
You made clear, you had no interest in the C64 - so this would have been of no concern to you.
It would have been a great development tool and a nice gimmick for former 64 users, that would like to keep some stuff and have a more gentle upgrade experience.

And it would have been a important gesture:
Commodore showing it really cares about compatibility and that the Amiga is indeed the natural upgrade path for millions of C64 users.

It would have been good marketing for once and helped the brand.

Sounds very complicated - and a likely source of incompatibility.

No. Actually this idea is pretty straight forward.
I already said keeping the original video-out on such a board would be much simpler - but TEG wanted a more integrated experience. That is the way to achieve that, while keeping the Amiga chipset untouched.

With a slight modification of Agnus (around 128 flip-flops, 2 counters and very little else) this would be even simpler - a direct feed ...

Or a Vampire with appropriate HDL?

No, unless you can connect your Vampire to the A500 trapdoor-port or the front-port of the A1000.

Hey, I just thought of a solution that would work without adding any extra hardware or software to the Amiga! Put all of it in a separate box, and call it a C64.

We had this answer already three times. I will not repeat the arguments a forth time :-/
You are really missing the point.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by paul1981

Take of the A1200 shielding.

Some moderate overclocking into the GHz region would also help

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Errr... no.

Errr...yes.

To be more specific, it starts at track 40 and goes inwards to 79. Only once the inner part of the disk is full does it start filling the outer tracks.

The reasoning behind this scheme is that the heads don't need to seek as far on average, compared to starting at track 0. This does seem to be true, at least compared to PCs which sound like they seek more on average.

Downside is the linear speed on the disk is lower as you go further in, which reduces signal amplitude. Therefore a 'weak' sector on an inner track is more likely to get read errors. On the Amiga if the last few tracks are bad you will hit them just before the disk becomes 50% full, whereas on a PC you would be safe until the disk was almost 100% full.

Here's a sector map captured from the excellent disk editor DPU on my A1200. I formatted a disk and copied about 400kB of files onto it. As I did so the sectors filled up from track 40 inwards. Apart from the bootblock there is nothing in the outer tracks.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Promilus

It's not like Amiga chipset does handle that accurately in hardware. It doesn't even have such text mode afaik.

Not really a 64-like Character-Mode, but Blitter and Copper can emulate text modes of PC MDA, CP/M, PET, MSX, Memotech, Sinclair ZX-80/81, Dragon, TRS-80 ... in realtime:

http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/CharMode