Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Nope. Thanks to MicroniK A500 tower kit you could've put A2k CPU card inside which means Blizzard 2060 was available for A500 long before Warp... albeit at radical system change and obviously expensive process. And again you did mention ACA500 which handles A1200 accelerators (although I'm not sure anyone did use e.g. Blizzard1260). ACA500 is over decade old now so even if you arbitrary rule Micronik Tower Kit out it still is an 060 option before vampires and warps. I think 060 feature level of V2 was around the launch of V4... FPU was added to the softcore only after V4 was released. In other words - I did burst your bubble with actual facts, it would be a good option for you to at least try to learn from your mistakes.

Like A2000, it's the same dead-end platform when A500 can't be upgraded into AGA baseline. MicroniK A500 tower kit wasn't 1st A500 to wannabe A1500/A2000 kit.

Blizzard 2060 arrived in the 1995-1996 time period. https://retro-commodore.eu/files/dow...Manual-ENG.pdf
MicroniK A500 tower kit effectively turns A500 into a wannabe A1500/A2000.

For the 1996 Quake, Phase 5's Blizzard 2060 (68060 @ 50Mhz) + CyberVison 64 (S3 Trio 64U) on a slow Zorro II bus will NOT beat my 1996 era Pentium 150 with S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build.

I owned an Amiga 3000 (030 @ 25Mhz, Zorro III, 4MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM, Kickstart 3.1) in 1996 and I have looked into Phase 5's CyberStorm 060 + Cyber Vision 64 upgrades vs Pentium 150 / S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build.

MicroniK A500 has a slow Zorro II bus.

For the given budget, my Pentium 150 / S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build beats Phase 5's 1996-era upgrades. I overclocked Pentium 150 Mhz into 166 Mhz with a 60 to 66 Mhz front-side bus jumper. Intel 430VX PCI competent cache coherent chipset murders both Zorro III and Zorro II-based Amigas.

My classic Pentium Socket 7 motherboard has a 512 KB L2 cache and the Intel 430VX PCI chipset has a 64-bit 66 Mhz front side bus and matching system memory. https://theretroweb.com/motherboards...20n-35-8258-xx
My mb520n Pentium motherboard only has two add-on cards i.e. SVGA PCI and 16-bit soundcard ISA.

The Amiga with Phase 5 add-on counterpart has kitbashed addons that are not friendly for mass production.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I didn't play any of those games on the PC. But I did play Wolf 3D and Doom - to test PCs I was repairing. Despite being the most popular PC game of the day Doom didn't excite me. However one day I was tasked with getting Tomb Raider running properly on a PC - and I was hooked! Soon after that I bought a Sony PlayStation just to run that one game.

Recently I have come to appreciate Doom more - not the original but DoomAttack, which adds mouse look. Finally Doom the way it should have been! It still doesn't have the depth of other games that took up most of my play time though. For me it has about the same staying power as Microsoft Solitaire or Astrosmash on the Mattel Aquarius.

And that's exactly the obnoxious attitude a lot of PC gamers had that annoyed us so much. One would thought after 30 years they would leave us alone.

I paid big money to run Quake on my A3000 and what a disappointment! Then I did the same thing on the PlayStation II. That was the last time I bought a game based on what 'sane' gamers were playing.

Quake is less fun in solo mode, hence I played Quake in multiplayer network mode.

After my 1st Pentium 150 PC purchase in 1996, I purchased a Celeron 300A PC in 1998, hence building my 1st home LAN network.

My university allowed WinQuake/Quake II/ Quake III/Unreal LAN parties after hours and that's a large Windows NT 4.0 OpenGL PC fleet in multi-player competition.

Quake wasn't the only 1996 game release for the PC i.e. Duke Nukem 3D. PC's 1995 has Star Wars Dark Forces.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

All the Amiga fans who cry about how Commodore should have put this or that in the A1200 ignore the fact that even they did it still wouldn't have attracted many PC games to it. The Amiga didn't have sufficient market share and that would only get worse as PC adoption rose exponentially.

Did you forget major 3rd party developers have pushed Commodore International to have Fast RAM expanded A1200 SKU?

4 MB RAM equipped A1200 baseline would have allowed for easy PC ports that targeted 4 MB RAM.

Many developers couldn't be bothered refactoring their 4MB RAM usage PC games into baseline A1200's 2 MB RAM. It's good that my older self is handy with a soldering iron for my A1200's timing fix. My 1993 self wouldn't be able to perform the A1200 timing fix.

A1200 timing fix stabilized both TF1260 and AmigaKit 8 MB Fast RAM FPU expansion card.

The 3MB to 4MB RAM target is common for PCs with 4MB RAM, 3DO (3 MB), PSX (3 MB) and Saturn (4 MB).

A1200 with a Fast RAM baseline would run PC 3D ports badly, but there's a big reason for CPU upgrades.

ADoom requires 4MB of Fast RAM.

[Promilus]

Like A2000, it's the same dead-end platform when A500 can't be upgraded into AGA baseline

Irrelevant, you claimed there was no 060 for A500 before Warp and Vampire, I proved your wrong. Be honorable enough to admit it.

For the 1996 Quake, Phase 5's Blizzard 2060 (68060 @ 50Mhz) + CyberVison 64 (S3 Trio 64U) on a slow Zorro II bus will NOT beat my 1996 era Pentium 150 with S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build.

Bull crap argument. Show me 1992 PC with upgrades which does run quake at least as good as upgraded Amiga. No? So what's the relevance of that shitty argument? No relevance at all? Aaaaahh, pure BS offtopic just because you fail to get discussion going your way... what a sore loser you are.

For the given budget, my Pentium 150 / S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build beats Phase 5's 1996-era upgrades

No sh*t sherlock, and where were you able to get such upgrades for 386DX machines? Nowhere? Aaaaah... That's probably the reason why you are unable to provide apple to apple comparison and that's why you try to pass that BS pentium machines.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

The arrogance of stating that there actually was something like "PC world", in which the dumb drones were completely oblivious to the wonders of Amiga and everything else, is simply astonishing.


Not to forget the arrogance of stating that somehow it's wrong that people might want to use the most popular, standard-setting productivity software, and/or play the latest games.


Imagine the real bubble you have to live in to think that Doom was the only game people cared about (aside from the fact that perhaps Mr.Carmack was motivated more by the size of user base - 80 vs 3% circa 1991 - than platform cost).

Here's a link to help you understand how vacuousthis obsession is. It's the list of most popular PC games from between 1989 and 1994 containing numerous genre-defining releases such as X-Wing, AitD, Ultima Underworld 2, LBA, Commanche, Magic Carpet, Under The Killing Moon, plus numerous other high-profile blockbusters such as Lands of Lore, Sam & Max, Gabriel Knight, etc.

Yeah, this is the "PC world" any sane computer gamer wanted to live in, but not because they were too blinkered to see THE ONLY TRUE WAY but precisely because they could see what a dead end Amiga was becoming. Yep, Thorham, it's cool'n all you could play Doom on Amiga in 1996, but at the same time the rest of the world was into Quake, System Shock, D3D and a bunch of other insignificant titles.

.......

this is getting too boneheaded and not fun anymore - there's a surprise - so it's time to hit the eject button and take one of my periodic time-outs from this thread. But I'm pretty sure that when I check up on it again in 6 months or so it'll still be the usual suspects preaching the same ol' sermons

EA has unreleased Magic Carpet for Amiga AGA.

https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=811044&postcount=4



"MAGIC CARPET - Bullfrog

From what we have seen, this is going to be one of the most visually stunning of the first batch of releases for the CD32. This is a shoot-em-up seeing the hero flying on the back of a magic carpet blasting the hell out of everything in his path, a-la Space Harrier. What makes Magic Carpet stand out is the spectacular fractal-based texture-mapped landscapes giving the graphics a stunningly realistic quality.

What makes Magic Carpet different from most of the other CD32 titles is that this game will NOT be released on any non-CD Amiga as it relies heavily on the new Akiko chip for converting PC-style graphics to the Amiga. A few very impressive stills from the game in action can be found on the CD give you a taster of what the action should be like."



There was an untextured mapped Magic Carpet build for stock A1200.

BullFrog tried and failed.

BullFrog was one of the 3rd party developers who argued for a CPU-accelerated A1200 bundle deal during their discussions with Commodore International.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Irrelevant, you claimed there was no 060 for A500 before Warp and Vampire, I proved your wrong. Be honorable enough to admit it.

My statement is true since your cited addon made the Amiga 500 into a wannabe A2000. Like my A3000, your wannabe A2000 has the same problems with AGA.

Phase 5's CGX 1995 release is too late for Commodore's critical 1993.

I purchased my A1200 during the COVID-19 lockdown for the complete Amiga experience. I prefer my A1200+PiStorm over my A500+PiStorm.

Compared to PiStorm's Emu68 RTG, the Zorro II RTG is inferior due to the slow Zorror II bus.

Originally Posted by Promilus

Bull crap argument. Show me 1992 PC with upgrades which does run quake at least as good as upgraded Amiga.

That's a bullshit argument. It depends on fcking cost to run Quake at competitive performance.

Phase 5 Blizzard 68060 and CyberVision 64 add-ons turn the rest of the Amiga into a south bridge and sound card which is effectively no different from recycling my 16-bit sound card ISA, mouse, and keyboard for a classic Pentium 150 upgrade. Your cited tower kit is a new modified PC case while I can recycle my existing 386 PC AT mini-tower clone case.

When running Quake, the problem is uncompetitive cost vs performance with Phase 5 upgrades.

With Phase 5 addons, the Amiga departed from "power without price" and Amiga doesn't have Apple's premium.

PC doesn't have a problem with manufacturing cost-low motherboards while Amiga has manufacturing problems.


----

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21106...essors-for-pcs
Would AmigaOS move to AMD/NVIDIA's ARMv8 cost competitive desktop PCs or keep with expensive PowerCrap?

Price vs performance competitive big-endian capable desktop PCs is coming from the usual king of PC cloners.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Wow, you propose a mode the Os could not support at this time? Seriously? I fully understand why CBM did not go that route.

Yes, seriously. It's a far less relevant deficiency than an A1000 shipped without a ROM because the OS wasn't ready, an A3000 shipped before KS2 was ready or an A600 shipped without functional OS-support for the internal IDE port. And I again replied to your point before you made it. So let me repeat: OS-support for chunky screens available in hardware with the release of AGA/KS3.0 could have come with OS3.1, 3.2, 3.3 or whatever. Commodore had done this before.

[sandruzzo]

A1200 +2mb fastmem + 40mb HDD could have been a good start as base machine?

[Promilus]

That's a bullshit argument. It depends on fcking cost to run Quake at competitive performance.

LoL, said by a guy who bought A1200 and PiStorm32 to run quake when every PC from 98 onward does that for a fraction of investment. Your arguments are idiotic. A1200 with 060 is no better to run quake. It still sux. And BTW Quake for Amiga was released in 98. That's 4 years AFTER commodore did die and 6 after the release of A1200. Again - no f*** PC from 92 can run quake as good upgraded Amiga. So take your silly arguments with PC somewhere else.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

For the given budget, my Pentium 150 / S3 Trio 64 UV+ PCI PC build beats Phase 5's 1996-era upgrades. I overclocked Pentium 150 Mhz into 166 Mhz with a 60 to 66 Mhz front-side bus jumper. Intel 430VX PCI competent cache coherent chipset murders both Zorro III and Zorro II-based Amigas.

At what speed could it run Amiga programs?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

A1200 +2mb fastmem + 40mb HDD could have been a good start as base machine?

That would've been much better, yes. Even just 1MB of fastmem would be nice. I upgraded from an A500 to an A1200 with 63MB HDD and it was such an improvement already.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

At what speed could it run Amiga programs?

I don't care. I play mostly games which is Commodore's core revenue market.

During high school, our visual arts computers were fielding Apple Macs with Adobe Photoshop taking over the Amiga 2000s with Deluxe Paint. During university, it's Apple PowerMacs with Adobe's graphics applications.

I have Cakewalk instead of Bars and Pipes.

I prefer MS Visual Studio (C++) or Borland Builder/Delphi over others.

I prefer MS Office 97 over others. I was running MS Word 68K on Amiga 3000 with Shapeshifter.

Lightwave runs faster on Pentiums when compared to non-pipelined FPU 68060. 68060 has Cyrix 586 behavior which has a competitive integer with weak FPU.

I did have Cinema 4D and Imagine 3D coversdiscs from PC and Amiga magazines. PC's Cinema 4D XL 7 was fully functional.

There's a "Scala MultiMedia MM200 SE Creative Labs Edition" Sound Blaster PCI bundle.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by hammer

I play mostly games which is Commodore's core revenue market.

That was probably one of Commodore's mistakes.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Promilus

LoL, said by a guy who bought A1200 and PiStorm32 to run quake when every PC from 98 onward does that for a fraction of investment. Your arguments are idiotic. A1200 with 060 is no better to run quake. It still sux. And BTW Quake for Amiga was released in 98. That's 4 years AFTER commodore did die and 6 after the release of A1200. Again - no f*** PC from 92 can run quake as good upgraded Amiga. So take your silly arguments with PC somewhere else.

At this point you're arguing The Ship of Theseus. How much of the PC changes before it doesn't count as an upgrade?

But it's a silly argument. If you wanted to play Quake in 1997 (when an Amiga port became available) you could either buy a '97 specification PC or upgrade a '92 spec Amiga. And a PC capable of playing Quake with reasonable performance was a better investment at that point.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

If you wanted to play Quake in 1997 (when an Amiga port became available)...

Was there a Quake port before clickBoom?

[grond]

If one only wanted to play games, the PC probably was a better choice from some point in the early 90s with the exact point in time depending on how your preferences with regard to game genres were. If you only wanted to play games, it didn't matter whether your "game launcher" was a crappy DOS prompt or a kickstart hand/animation. If games audiences were Commodore's core market (which I don't deny), the A1200 was even more bound to become a flop.

[Arc Angel]

Originally Posted by hammer

EA has unreleased Magic Carpet for Amiga AGA.

https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=811044&postcount=4



"MAGIC CARPET - Bullfrog

From what we have seen, this is going to be one of the most visually stunning of the first batch of releases for the CD32. This is a shoot-em-up seeing the hero flying on the back of a magic carpet blasting the hell out of everything in his path, a-la Space Harrier. What makes Magic Carpet stand out is the spectacular fractal-based texture-mapped landscapes giving the graphics a stunningly realistic quality.

What makes Magic Carpet different from most of the other CD32 titles is that this game will NOT be released on any non-CD Amiga as it relies heavily on the new Akiko chip for converting PC-style graphics to the Amiga. A few very impressive stills from the game in action can be found on the CD give you a taster of what the action should be like."



There was an untextured mapped Magic Carpet build for stock A1200.

BullFrog tried and failed.

BullFrog was one of the 3rd party developers who argued for a CPU-accelerated A1200 bundle deal during their discussions with Commodore International.

IMHO that's interesting you use Magic Carpets, as, indeed, when it's been released on the Windoz PC, it was ( again IMHO ) clear that 3D was the next big thing, and the Amiga hardware was left behind, with its 2D only games.
It's really a pity the 1200 wasn't shipped with a DSP, or a faster CPU, to give it the ooomph necessary for 3D stuff.
68020 14 Mhz, in late 1992 ...

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by TCD

Was there a Quake port before clickBoom?

Quake was still a commercial game back then, id usually releases sources for game some generation back, so once they do that, the ports usually pour in.
How would someone do a port without sources? ;-)
For the record: Source code was released on December 21st, 1999

[TCD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Quake was still a commercial game back then, id usually releases sources for game some generation back, so once they do that, the ports usually pour in.
How would someone do a port without sources? ;-)
For the record: Source code was released on December 21st, 1999

https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/List_o...Official_Ports

Quake for Amiga - created using leaked code stolen and later replaced by an official port

Like that

Some of the Aminet files are dated 1997, so I guess that's when the port was first released.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

At this point you're arguing The Ship of Theseus. How much of the PC changes before it doesn't count as an upgrade?

But it's a silly argument. If you wanted to play Quake in 1997 (when an Amiga port became available) you could either buy a '97 specification PC or upgrade a '92 spec Amiga. And a PC capable of playing Quake with reasonable performance was a better investment at that point.

If you swap your motherboard and CPU it's already different platform. It's no longer '92 PC when you invest into Socket7 instead of Socket3, right? Right. And we're talking about disappointments related to A1200 specs. I did previously mention that graphics and sound wise it was fairly possible to match up PCs up to ~95-96. JUST with more powerful CPUs. Because PC games did not rely on VGA cards to accelerate graphics even if they had capabilities (like blitter and other h/w options). And it only did change in late 90s with 3D acceleration. So A1200 paired up with sufficiently fast CPU and with proper support from developers might have been fairly good platform up to the middle of 90s. The problem was... it didn't come great at stock config. It came as cheap solution and most games were written to that specification. It was irrelevant you could've paired it up with 060 and get pentium level of applications with decent (S)VGA graphics.