Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[TEG]

Maybe, maybe not, The incentive would hae been to push the CD format and compete with pc 386 generation but keeping in mind the preparation of next amiga system. Let say by 1990, 1991 commodore proposed us to enhanced our system by adding a CD drive with extra hardware for less than a price of a new computer aquisition, don't you think we would all have been happy to run games we all saw in magazines on our amiga? of course no cdtv launch, no amiga 600 just the 500 and a powerfull cd ad on(A570 with extra hardwares).

Still the same problem. The games we "all saw in magazines" would have not been ported to this extension because it would not sold.

In 1991 the A500 technologie was completely out-of-date and the best you would be able to do with the CD extension, was adding a better processor and memory. But the 1985 OCS chipset with all its limitations would remain so people would not invest a big chunk of money in their old A500. Something really new was needed.

[albino]

Originally Posted by TEG

In 1991 the A500 technologie was completely out-of-date and the best you would be able to do with the CD extension, was adding a better processor and memory. But the 1985 OCS chipset with all its limitations would remain so people would not invest a big chunk of money in their old A500. Something really new was needed.

You don't get my point, i agree undread percent with the ocs was outdated 12 years later, but you should aknowledge that AGA was outated the year they launched it (1992). By offering something to keep us waiting a big improvvement around 1991/92 with something less expensive than a 1200 with cd format then give us a true next gen hardware at least as powerfull as the 3dO (which came out around 93).

[TEG]

Originally Posted by albino

You don't get my point, i agree undread percent with the ocs was outdated 12 years later, but you should aknowledge that AGA was outated the year they launched it (1992). By offering something to keep us waiting a big improvvement around 1991/92 with something less expensive than a 1200 with cd format then give us a true next gen hardware at least as powerfull as the 3dO (which came out around 93).

The problem is employees does not live only of thin air, you have to pay them. I don't think your plan could have filled the gap on this point until 1993. Money was needed and I can't see how a enhancer/CD-ROM extension for the A500 could have fulfilled this role. The number of interested people would have been too small.

Did you imagine to buy something that you know would became obsolete a few time later? And what about the speech? "We promise you a wonderful platform in 2 years but buy our crap for the moment please." Everyone would have waited.

In addition, there would have been damages to the brand reputation, unable to output something really new, only "patch" after all this time.

Frankly I think it was an untenable situation, they had fallen too far behind.

[albino]

Originally Posted by TEG

The problem is employees does not live only of thin air, you have to pay them. I don't think your plan could have filled the gap on this point until 1993. Money was needed and I can't see how a enhancer/CD-ROM extension for the A500 could have fulfilled this role. The number of interested people would have been too small

until 1993 the best selling product was the amiga 500, the c 64 was still selling and the pc commodore branch was seeling good on top of that commodore owned cmos chipset factories. When commodore launched the 600 they killed the 500 sells. What i'm saying is a rethink of their market strategie by not launching product who didn't sell(CDTV, AMIGA 600), if you don't sell something you don't get money that's my point. Instead expand the life of your best selling system (amiga 500) with an enhanced cd add on until the you launch something really next gen. Let me remind you something, by the end of 1994 commodores employee stoped to be payed...

Anyway what is done is done we can't go back in time only one thing id certain, AGA was not up to the task as 1994 amiga successor.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by albino

until 1993 the best selling product was the amiga 500,

Actually only until 1992.
The A500(+) was discontinued in summer 1992

While numbers were growing until 91 the Christmas season of 91 showed they reached a plateau and dark clouds were in the horizon:

Commodore got extremely lucky in 90 and 91 because of the fall of the iron curtain but that effect would wear off soon.

More and more A500 owners were leaving the platform and second hand sales were cutting into Commodores sales - The A500 and the 64 were dead men walking and something had to be done.

and the pc commodore branch was seeling good

Any proof of that?
My impression was, that their only profitable market for the PC line was Germany and maybe New Zealand ...
I would like to see some numbers though

on top of that commodore owned cmos chipset factories.

Which was hopelessly outdated

When commodore launched the 600 they killed the 500 sells. What i'm saying is a rethink of their market strategie by not launching product who didn't sell(CDTV, AMIGA 600), if you don't sell something you don't get money that's my point.

In case of the A600 and probably the CDTV too: downsizing and selling nothing instead would have been still much cheaper. They produced way too much machines and had to clear them out at a huge loss ...

Instead expand the life of your best selling system (amiga 500) with an enhanced cd add on until the you launch something really next gen.

They tried to sell the A570 but almost nobody wanted it .. Commodore had to slash the price an sell it for less than they payed for the drive alone to Matsushita ...

There is really nothing alone what could be done with an A500 add-on.

The only way would have been to bring an AA-machine in 1991 instead of 92.
(See other thread)

[albino]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Any proof of that?
My impression was, that their only profitable market for the PC line was Germany and maybe New Zealand ...
I would like to see some numbers though

There not my word, but david's pleasence former CIO of commodore UK.

Originally Posted by Gorf

They tried to sell the A570 but almost nobody wanted it .. Commodore had to slash the price an sell it for less than they payed for the drive alone to Matsushita ...

There is really nothing alone what could be done with an A500 add-on.

The only way would have been to bring an AA-machine in 1991 instead of 92.
(See other thread)

The A570 was disigned to work with A500, when they start selling them they disclosed the a500 almost at the same time,of course the sell will drop and don't even rise. The A570 was designed has an add on to turn your amiga into a CDTV, if it was designed to improve the 500 capacities it might have worked because of the hype of the CD market at the time. Can you imagine playing doom on amiga 500?!
People might keep their amiga a few more years until the next big thing coming.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by albino

if it was designed to improve the 500 capacities it might have worked because of the hype of the CD market at the time.

But how???
Sorry, but that does not make much sense ...

Can you imagine playing doom on amiga 500?!

It's called Dread.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

You are aware, that the A1200 does already have such a 2nd memory controller for FastRAM on board? It is called Budgie.

A1200FuncSpec.txt

A1200/A1200HD
Advanced Amiga 1200 System
Functional Specification
October 28, 1992
Revision 1.6

by Edgar A. Gunther, Brian Fenimore, and George Robbins.
Copyright (C) 1992 Commodore-Amiga, Inc...

2.9.2 Budgie

Budgie is a chip that serves as the main data path element in the A1200 system. It provides the interface between the 32-bit processor bus and the 32-bit chip memory bus, generates the RAS and AS select signals from the RAS and CAS timing signals that Alice supports. It also provides a 16-bit bus buffer which can be used for either an expansion bus or in this case the PCMCIA port data buffer. It also includes some miscellaneous functions, notably processor clock generation and 28Mhz/Genlock clock multiplexing. It is implemented as a CMOS ASIC in a 128 Pin SMT package.

Internally, the data path element is similar to Bridgette or the bus buffer/bridge logic implemented on the A3000 system. Data can be routed to/from the 32-bit processor port to either half of the 32-bit chip memory bus. Data can be bridged from the low order half of the chip memory bus to the high order half to support 16-bit Amiga chip accesses...

The memory decoding takes the RAS and CAS timing signals provided by Alice and the multiplexed address bus and generates appropriate selection for 32-bit accesses. It also uses A1/A0 and SIZ1/SIZ0 on processor accesses to do the right decoding there. It supports 2-banks of 32 bit memory with 9-bit addressing for a total of 2M-bytes of chip memory. RAS selection is used for bank selection, CAS selection is used for byte write control and to avoid contention on bridged reads. Refrcsh is done with CAS before RAS and the logic must assert all RAS and CAS signals during refresh cycles.

If the A1200 was to have FastRAM on board they would have used Ramsey like the A4000 did. Or if the PCMCIA port was dropped they might have had enough room to put a FastRAM controller inside Budgie (assuming it had enough spare gates and a larger package with more pins was available).

However I would prefer to have the PCMCIA port. It was much more interesting than some boring FastRAM that you wouldn't want when you installed an accelerator card. Without it I wouldn't have had lots of fun developing a driver for PCMCIA network cards, and far fewer people would have networked their A1200s - which would be quite sad.

[lmimmfn]

[QUOTE=albino;1664911]

Originally Posted by TEG

It would have totally flop. The problem is always the same, the installed base. Editors would have not develop games for this add-on because a poor penetration of the market. STe syndrome[QUOTE

Maybe, maybe not, The incentive would hae been to push the CD format and compete with pc 386 generation but keeping in mind the preparation of next amiga system. Let say by 1990, 1991 commodore proposed us to enhanced our system by adding a CD drive with extra hardware for less than a price of a new computer aquisition, don't you think we would all have been happy to run games we all saw in magazines on our amiga? of course no cdtv launch, no amiga 600 just the 500 and a powerfull cd ad on(A570 with extra hardwares).

I always wanted a CDROM for my A1200, never did get one, it seemed like a load of hassle unless you had your 1200 in a tower. It's a missed opportunity that they never released the 1200 with a nice CDROM drive Excluding all that Akiko crap.

[Gorf]

So someone should fix that Wikipedia entry:

Budgie
Used in the A1200, Budgie connects the trapdoor expansion port for Zorro II-like expansions and controls additional Fast RAM.

[CCCP alert]

If the A1200 had come with 128k of 32bit Fast RAM as well as AKIKO in addition to a 14mhz 020 what sort of 2.5D or Wolfenstein type performance would that give you over a 2mb only AKIKO devoid A1200 that we did get?

Is there a Doom/Wolf engine specifically coded for AKIKO for CD32 with some Fast RAM spec? Is there any FPS that uses AKIKO and detects Fast RAM on CD32?

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by albino

There not my word, but david's pleasence former CIO of commodore UK.


The A570 was disigned to work with A500, when they start selling them they disclosed the a500 almost at the same time,of course the sell will drop and don't even rise. The A570 was designed has an add on to turn your amiga into a CDTV, if it was designed to improve the 500 capacities it might have worked because of the hype of the CD market at the time. Can you imagine playing doom on amiga 500?!
People might keep their amiga a few more years until the next big thing coming.

Problem is I saw ZERO evidence of any home computer game publisher apart from the bankrupt Cinemaware that could have made a professional quality genuine 'only possible on CDTV' game anyway. The CDTV is lovely, the games for it are lousy. The CD32 is even worse, it feels like the cheapest console I have ever used AND there are bugger all properly designed CD-ROM developments/ports from PC HDD only games.

CD-i had Burn Cylcle and Voyeur with Hollywood actors, what did Commodore CD machines get? Bugger all worth buying a CD based Amiga

Microcosm is a naff game, Novastorm is not bad though and had that not been cancelled it may have sold quite a few CD32 consoles if it looked remotely like the 3DO/PC-CD game.

There really was never a need to buy a CD-ROM for an Amiga if you were a gamer. The best game on the CDTV is a homebrew transfer of It Came from the Desert, the CD has about 646mb free space!

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

If the A1200 had come with 128k of 32bit Fast RAM as well as AKIKO in addition to a 14mhz 020 what sort of 2.5D or Wolfenstein type performance would that give you over a 2mb only AKIKO devoid A1200 that we did get?

Akiko doesn't buy you much, actually, it is highly overrated. If that chunky-to-planar conversion would be something the blitter could do (over DMA) or if the display hardware would have been chunky to begin with - that would be of some advantage. But the way how Akiko works... no.

[grond]

Originally Posted by TEG

The idea of offering to replace the motherboard of the existing base when a new platform was outputted make more sens. An effort to try to uniformise the stock. But a real dynamic would have been need from Commodore. I mean announcements, TV spots, certified vendors, support, etc... and R&D for this new board in addition to the new platform.

I guess it would simply have cost too much. People would have expected this replacement board to be available at a price quite a bit below an actual A1200 (how much are the keyboard, case, power supply and floppy drive?). Then people would have had to mess around with their A500 to get the board installed and quite a few boards would have been damaged in the process with unclear warranty. Or you'd have to make replacements obligatory through licensed dealers of which too few were around anyway and which would have wanted some compensation for the installation.

On the other hand, even just creating uncertainty about how many A500s remained OCS and how many had moved on to AGA would likely have been advantageous for getting games producers to make AGA titles instead of staying with OCS which again would have been an incentive for OCS users to upgrade.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

The CD32 is even worse, it feels like the cheapest console I have ever used AND there are bugger all properly designed CD-ROM developments/ports from PC HDD only games.

Behold the Amstrad GX4000 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_GX4000

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grond

I guess it would simply have cost too much. People would have expected this replacement board to be available at a price quite a bit below an actual A1200 (how much are the keyboard, case, power supply and floppy drive?).

For a fully assembled machine the whole supply chain is much longer and more complex, and you need to assemble the parts (manual labor), the boxes are much bigger and take more room in storage and do cost more to ship and so on.
And you would sell them at stores, which would display them and take up to 25% for themselves..

I would think they could easily offer such a board at half the price of an A1200 (or less) over direct orders (or a couple of resellers with very little margin on their side) and still having the same profit in the end.

Or more plausible: C= ending up with more money, since it seems likely to my that 1 in 10 A500 owners would upgrade that way, which would be 400K AA boards instead of just <100k A1200

Then people would have had to mess around with their A500 to get the board installed and quite a few boards would have been damaged in the process with unclear warranty.

More sales for Commodore

Or you'd have to make replacements obligatory through licensed dealers of which too few were around anyway and which would have wanted some compensation for the installation.

If you wanted warranty yes. If you don't want to tinker yourself and also did not know a friend who was good ad such things, you would have to pay somebody ...

But honestly: at that point in time almost everybody I knew, had already opened their Amiga at least once, many tinkered with Kickstart switches, some with ECS upgrades others modded there case ...

On the other hand, even just creating uncertainty about how many A500s remained OCS and how many had moved on to AGA would likely have been advantageous for getting games producers to make AGA titles instead of staying with OCS which again would have been an incentive for OCS users to upgrade.

Exactly

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Behold the Amstrad GX4000 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_GX4000

To be fair, the GX doesn't feel cheap, it's pretty solidly put together. Unlike the CD32 which feels like it's been made out of the cheapest plastic someone could lay their hands on and would break at the slightest knock.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Gorf

So someone should fix that Wikipedia entry:

Someone should've but most ppl don't care. The only fast ram controller on Amiga is A3k and 4k with Ramsey. Fairly slow and slightly buggy.

[albino]

Does anybody know what chips are inside the A570?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by albino

Does anybody know what chips are inside the A570?

Under the written word "DMAC" you can identify a Xilinx FPGA, which was the most expensive part on the board (other than the drive itself)