Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by ferrellsl

My apologies for blowing your false narrative, but Windows NT 3 had pre-emptive multitasking as early as 1996, along with process separation, memory protection, virtual memory and multi-user capabilities. It was rock solid for office, home desktop, and server use. The Amiga never had any of those features, and it still doesn't, not even under OS4. Being able to run mission critical applications made Windows NT the choice for most corporations. I'm sorry but the Amiga was never a choice for anyone other than gamers who occasionally needed to draft a letter or spin up a spreadsheet or for graphics and video designers. It was unstable as hell and one bad behaving app easily brought down the entire OS. Your claim that Windows wasn't stable until Windows 2000 was released is a bold faced lie. I helped field Windows NT in 1996 across the US Dept. of Defense and we never had any stability problems with NT 3 nor NT 4.

On my Amiga, I recall constant crashes due to memory fragmentation, and when it wasn't crashing, I'd get out of memory errors due to the same issue even though the OS would report several megabytes of free RAM. It was free alright, just not in large enough contiguous chunks to start another app or to keep working the apps I'd already opened and was working in. This did not improve with later versions of the OS either because the kernel was essentially never improved upon.

If AmigaOS was so great then someone needs to explain why it's been relegated to fanatical hobbyists as a play-toy rather than being used to run mission critical applications at the office and elsewhere.

Dude, chill.

WinNT didn't become a general consumer product until Win2k. And required a fridge to run it.

You sound awfully offended.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Hercules

Another downfall; no memory protection meaning chances of crashes when a program writes to memory it writes over something else.

Just because this bears repeating: memory protection was not in any consumer oriented OS until after Commodore had already gone bust. Meaning the exact same problem existed for Windows 3.x, Mac OS, TOS, etc. And yes, it did cause problems and crashes for those systems.

Memory protection did exist in several OS's aimed at the professional market though, but even here - note that this was not in common use. For instance, Microsoft didn't offer memory protection until 1993 with the launch of Windows NT. This is a year after the A1200's launch and several months before Commodore went bust.

The feature just wasn't common at the time. This is really one of those 'retrospectively required' features: we're talking about it because it's common now and seems silly not be part of an OS. We're not talking about because it was common then - almost everyone used an OS without it in 1992.

Edit: note that certain DOS programs did use DOS/4G (or DOS/4GW) to enter 'protected mode', but this had nothing to do with protected memory. Rather this was to allow programs access to more than 640KB of RAM in an easy fashion.

[malko]

Originally Posted by ferrellsl

My apologies for blowing your false narrative, but Windows NT 3 had pre-emptive multitasking as early as 1996, along with process separation, memory protection, virtual memory and multi-user capabilities. It was rock solid for office, home desktop, and server use. [...]

NT, rock solid... .
It reminds me of one of my IT teachers (working for the IT city office) who said something similar to this :
"NT is stable, yes. However, it was decided that the servers would be restarted manually on Fridays at the end of the day so that they would not crash during the weekend when there is no one there. Restarting the computer once a week is the minimum to prevent unexpected issues. This excepted, it's a stable OS, yes !".

You may also think about 'Hotmail' and all the issue that had MS during the 3-4 years that last the migration to NT servers after MS bought Hotmail in 1997/98. Because NT was not able to support the workload of Hotmail (and in 1997 it was already NT4)....

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

A little bit of "fast ram" would have suffice... full 32bit 14mhz machine in the 1992 would have been not so expensive, and not so bad!

The A1200 was a full 32 bit 14MHz machine. All you had to do to get full speed all the time was plug in a RAM board. Commodore could have produced their own RAM boards like they did for earlier machines, but third party manufacturers could probably have made them cheaper. And people who wanted real power could install an accelerator, without the hassle of dealing with on-board 'FastRAM' that wasn't that fast.

For many users it wasn't necessary anyway. The A1200 is already several times faster than the A500 even with only chipRAM - partly due to the 32 bit CPU bus, and partly due to AGA having wider bandwidth. The ROM also runs at full speed, so Workbench and general system performance is much faster.

Speaking of ROMs, having most of the OS in ROM is a big advantage that many people don't consider when comparing the Amiga to PCs. My A1200 boots from cold in under 20 seconds (less than the time it takes for my TV to start up), whereas my PC running WinXP takes 2 minutes to get to a usable state. That makes a huge difference to how I work with it.

If things get too messy on the Amiga I just reboot and have a fresh desktop in a few seconds. If something locks up or becomes unresponsive on the PC it can take several minutes to flush it out of memory and get things back to normal - and I dare not just hit reset in case it corrupts some files. When I want to 'shut down' the Amiga I just turn it off, with no concern that it might decide not to finish the job.

With the Amiga's OS in ROM I can boot from a floppy disk knowing that it won't screw up my system configuration, and nothing can screw up a ROM! With Windows you never know if the next reboot will fail due to a system update, something you installed, or even worse got infected by malware.

[Amigajay]

The best analogy for me is the A500 and A1200 in terms are like the PS4 and PS4 Pro, the only difference was one machine was marketed as the next gen and the other an upgrade, if Sony tried to sell the PS4 Pro as the PS5 it wouldn’t sell very well as the upgrade was not good enough.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Hercules

Amiga was a great machine. Its demise was all the custom hardware was hard soldered onto the board unlike today's PC's where you can just upgrade your video hardware by slotting in a graphics card.

You are right there - though truth be told it was the demise of PCs of the time too. My 386-SX motherboard has on-board VGA, but only ISA bus slots - so a video upgrade is out of the question. Later 486's had VESA, a short lived bus that had much better performance but was unreliable.

And so it went - Micro channel, EISA, PCI, AGP... every generation having another incompatible 'standard' that made upgrading to the latest video card impossible. Not that there was much point because your old CPU would be too slow anyway. So you replace the motherboard, RAM and CPU as well - then are forced to get a new operating system because the drivers won't work!

One thing they did get right was the zorro 2 / 3 autoconfig standards designed by David Haynie. It thanks to this why PC's back then had ISA standard that we see to this day in PCI express.

Yes, another example of forward thinking that Commodore doesn't get enough credit for.

Every Amiga gamer who just sticks a disk in the drive and is presented with a fully working game should think about what it was like for PC users at the time. First you had to make sure the sound card and motherboard jumpers and BIOS settings were correct, then you might have to load a driver to get the sound card into the right mode, configure high memory drivers to get the required type and amount of RAM, and finally configure the game to use the same settings! And because the bus slots were all in parallel with no priorities, it was all too easy to get clashing I/O addresses and interrupts.

[DanielAllsopp]

Originally Posted by ferrellsl

If AmigaOS was so great then someone needs to explain why it's been relegated to fanatical hobbyists as a play-toy rather than being used to run mission critical applications at the office and elsewhere.

NASA disagrees with you:

http://www.generationamiga.com/2017/...ed-until-2004/

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by DanielAllsopp

NASA disagrees with you:

http://www.generationamiga.com/2017/...ed-until-2004/

Also, the Windows EULA has always stated that it is not intended for mission-critical systems, so it seems that mission criticality has no correlation with popularity.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Also, the Windows EULA has always stated that it is not intended for mission-critical systems, so it seems that mission criticality has no correlation with popularity.

AmigaOS has something similar!

http://amiga.nvg.org/amiga/reference...ion/index.html

THE AMIGA SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, OR AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL MACHINES IN WHICH CASE THE FAILURE OF THE AMIGA SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

AmigaOS has something similar!

My point exactly.

[malko]

Of course, but an OS that can be up in -/+10 seconds after a reset is a huge advantage...

Not related but these space discussions remind me some spaceships' IT bugs Mars climate orbiter and Ariane 5, etc...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I honestly can't believe you claim the 1200 to be perfection. Even on the day it was released it was an underpowered piece of shit. Barely any 500 games worked on it. AGA sucked. It was nothing but a huge disappointment.

Cue a massive thunderclap as the entire Amiga Demoscene community FACEPALMS at your ignorance. I was into Amiga demos from the start, even on my A500, and I have been blown away by the impressive work I've seen AGA put out when it's not being attached as an upgrade to games. And most A500 games worked on it, with patches and options to disable AGA, so stop putting down the A1200.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

When current, the A1200 was already a very expensive computer for what it was. Yes an 030 and fast memory would have made it a better machine, but what was really required was a major overhaul of the graphics and sound capabilities. It needed to compete with the consoles and PC's of the time, and it simply couldn't.

I agree with the 030 and fast mem, in hindsight, but the A1200 also needed to be as COMPATIBLE as possible with the existing Amiga library. That they managed to upgrade the graphics to 32-bit AND did it in a way that only slight tweaks were needed to get 16-bit code to work on it, and only then in some cases, was commendable.

Originally Posted by activist

Pointless to go over all this yet again but the bones of this, the AAA chipset in Haynie's A3000+ (with chunky mode) was booted as early as 1991. Planned budget version to follow - A1000+, would have been absolutely incredible for the day. Had this happened it's debatable even the whole PC fps revolution and exponential hardware proliferation driven by ever more powerful 3d game engines ever would have come to pass (e.g.MS office did not drive 3d accelerator cards). Bill Sydnes arrival stopped this development entirely in it's tracks.

But it would no longer be an Amiga. It depends what DEFINES Amiga, and that to me is the custom chips as the A1000/A500 has them and the OS. Change either significantly and fundamentally, and is it still an Amiga? I doubt it.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Also its all irrelevant now we all have XBOX's

Speak for yourself, I can't stand consoles. And I have tried one, an original PlayStation.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

However I won't sit back while lies and misconceptions about the Amiga continue to be promulgated.

Hear, hear!

Originally Posted by roondar

Moving to the PC after the A1200 sucked. It made me realise all the more just what had been lost with Commodore going bankrupt.

Agreed. Two things alone caused me to switch to the PC and leave behind my beloved A1200: Doom, and Commodore's collapse. But having to faff around with the clunky and badly-designed MS-DOS after the joy that was WB3.1, just to get Doom and other cutting-edge games to run, was a nuisance. I was only finally firmly in the PC camp once I got Win95. And what a great time for games that was.

Of course, I missed out on the Amiga's twilight years and felt a bit sad when my Dad (who initially bought me the A1200 and held onto it after I went to the PC) put it on eBay. Ironic now, that I've used WinUAE to catch up with the Demoscene in more time than ever before, now in the 2010s where PC games now mostly suck. Open-world, and all of that crap.

[Hewitson]

I ran NT 4 for a while. It wasn't half as good as anyone here is making it out to be. It was slow, bloated, and not a great deal more stable than the 9x/ME range of "operating systems".

Everything Microsoft did after MS-DOS 6.22 was shit and contributed to the decline of enjoyment people get from their computers as we see it today.

Originally Posted by Foebane

Cue a massive thunderclap as the entire Amiga Demoscene community FACEPALMS at your ignorance. I was into Amiga demos from the start, even on my A500, and I have been blown away by the impressive work I've seen AGA put out when it's not being attached as an upgrade to games. And most A500 games worked on it, with patches and options to disable AGA, so stop putting down the A1200.

Well, I facepalm at the Amiga Demoscene community for releasing demos that run at several frames per second even on an 060.

By the time we got AGA, PC's had left the Amiga for dead and most of these high end demos run considerably better on a Falcon/060 than an A1200/060.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Well, I facepalm at the Amiga Demoscene community for releasing demos that run at several frames per second even on an 060.

Many PC demos are like that, too. And in many cases, PC demos won't even RUN on my PC (especially DOS, and no, not even on DOSBox, neither). I prefer to watch Amiga demos on my PC thru WinUAE - at least they run, and they have more colour and ingenuity under severe restrictions than the equivalent PC demos which have none, basically. I can see now why many sceners prefer the C64 to the Amiga, but I go one step up.

[Hewitson]

No, many PC demos are not like that. Watching demos through WinUAE is not an accurate representation of how these demos run on a real Amiga.

The C64 is the superior demo machine. It always has been. Watch something like Radio Napalm or Mathematica. They're on a completely different level.

And of course on the C64 it's common to press space to get to next part. Amiga goes to next part, whether you like it or not!

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No, many PC demos are not like that. Watching demos through WinUAE is not an accurate representation of how these demos run on a real Amiga.

Maybe I don't know how Amiga demos run on an 060 machine with plenty of fast ram, as I never had one of those. But I HAVE had an A500 and A1200, so I know what to expect, and many 3D routines were naturally slow, especially the old "rotating object" bits. I've seen PC demos that were just as slow with their more advanced routines, and that is usually down to the graphics card being underpowered.

The C64 is the superior demo machine. It always has been. Watch something like Radio Napalm or Mathematica. They're on a completely different level.

You mean on the level that not even an A1200, let alone an A500, can recreate the effects in those demos, even if they are significantly scaled down on the C64? I call bullshit on that, as I've seen Amiga demos do exactly the same things with more colours and better audio - I, for one, can't get past the awful palette of the C64, nor the "acquired taste" audio of SID. Give me the same demo effects on Amiga, every time.

And of course on the C64 it's common to press space to get to next part. Amiga goes to next part, whether you like it or not!

So? I hate the way that so many C64 demos are repetitive and LAST for AGES. Give me a typical Amiga demo with its average 3-minute length any day!

[Hewitson]

Most PC demos ran smooth as silk with only a very basic videocard.

The 64 scene is better than the Amiga. Always has been and always will be.

[Foebane]

Most PC demos ran smooth as silk with only a very basic videocard.

Older ones, especially 3D-accelerated ones, yes. I'm talking about the very latest stuff, with exceptionally high system requirements.

The 64 scene is better than the Amiga. Always has been and always will be.

Just because the C64 started the ball rolling doesn't mean it's the best, and it's YOUR personal opinion, anyway. I don't agree, and nor do thousands of others.

Everyone who knows me here knows I am the die-hard Amiga demo fanboy, aside from Chip, but this is the first time anybody has actually denounced Amiga demos as being inferior. Are you an Amiga traitor or something, Hewitson? Or do you just prefer the generally lacklustre Amiga gaming scene? Why are you here at all if you're going to bash an aspect of the Amiga?

Don't forget, it was you who said AGA sucked, I'm just calling you out on it.

[sandruzzo]

It seems that Commodors' mission was destroying Amiga...