Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I wonder why they bothered. Take Babylon 5. They only did the pilot episode on the Amiga.

They probably made the pilot as cheap as possible, according to wikipedia the pilot aired in Feb 1993 and due to its success WB commissioned the series in May 1993 so commissioning the series would have provided them with enough budget to replace the Amiga with faster PC rendering solutions/render farms.

They also might also have been waiting for a PC version of Lightwave to become available. If the pilot was aired in Feb 1993, it could have been in production for the year prior.

[TheLurker]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I wonder why they bothered. Take Babylon 5. They only did the pilot episode on the Amiga.

The are several sources that state it was the first season, not just the pilot. The first non-Amiga Lightwave wasn't released until 1995, so it makes sense to me that the first season was still Amiga based.

[sokolovic]

There is always a good reason to bash the Amiga under the false flag of "objectivity"

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by TheLurker

The are several sources that state it was the first season, not just the pilot.

That would be nice.

Originally Posted by TheLurker

The first non-Amiga Lightwave wasn't released until 1995, so it makes sense to me that the first season was still Amiga based.

Sounds plausible.

[ancalimon]

I was expecting the following:

256 colour AmigaOS to be as fast as 2 colour AmigaOS.
non-interlaced 640-512 mode that wasn't slow like doublepal.
sound chip that could play midi files and was more than 4 channels.
a normal speed high density floppy drive
a 030 and at least 4 mbs of fastmem.
an external hdd port for a standard 3.5" hdd.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

I was expecting the following:

256 colour AmigaOS to be as fast as 2 colour AmigaOS.
non-interlaced 640-512 mode that wasn't slow like doublepal.
sound chip that could play midi files and was more than 4 channels.
a normal speed high density floppy drive
a 030 and at least 4 mbs of fastmem.
an external hdd port for a standard 3.5" hdd.

You're 42 years old now no way you were expecting this at the time it was released.

I means, you were at best 11 years old when the A1200 was released. And you expect us to believe that you were aware that a 68030 with fast ram would enhance significantly the A1200 or that you wanted a "non interlaced 640-512 mode that wasn't slow like doublepal" (yeah daddy, I would prefer this even if I'm 11 years old.).

[oscar_ates]

Interesting read on commodore final year from two insiders:

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.../c/FxnoQxs2FvM

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Interesting read on commodore final year from two insiders:

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.../c/FxnoQxs2FvM

That was an interesting read, thanks. So that was the end of August 1993 and it really did seem like the CD32 was the only hope and then the patent thing happened and it was a wrap. The one other takeaway is that they were still having a hard time making A1200's at that time which was almost a year after its introduction. Probably wouldn't have made a huge difference but curious how many more A1200's would have been sold if there had been a healthy supply from the start. No A600 and plenty of A1200's and C= might have made it, we'll never know.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

You're 42 years old now no way you were expecting this at the time it was released.

I means, you were at best 11 years old when the A1200 was released. And you expect us to believe that you were aware that a 68030 with fast ram would enhance significantly the A1200 or that you wanted a "non interlaced 640-512 mode that wasn't slow like doublepal" (yeah daddy, I would prefer this even if I'm 11 years old.).

of course A1200 would have been much more powerful with more ram and 68030. But both would have made the computer much more expensive. It was a entry computer system competing with low-cost PCs (386er class) at that time.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by lionagony

That was an interesting read, thanks. So that was the end of August 1993 and it really did seem like the CD32 was the only hope and then the patent thing happened and it was a wrap. The one other takeaway is that they were still having a hard time making A1200's at that time which was almost a year after its introduction. Probably wouldn't have made a huge difference but curious how many more A1200's would have been sold if there had been a healthy supply from the start. No A600 and plenty of A1200's and C= might have made it, we'll never know.

I think Commodore accelerated its demise by many wrong management decisions. In my view there was no real concept or strategy behind. Cash cow earning money was C64 but they never managed to build up a real successor. They were everywhere in every market. Amiga was not in the middle of the strategy and future but only one platform of several. They wasted lots of money by building PCs but being too small to earn money with it. What would have happened if they concentrated all on Amiga? I do not know. Unfortunately they also had no real concept on amiga too. They partly marketed it as a gaming machine, next time as professional system. Difficult to see how they might have survived.

But if you look what happened to all platforms at that time, surviving of Commodore is at least doubtful. Only Apple survived, but that only with money from Microsoft

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by lionagony

That was an interesting read, thanks. So that was the end of August 1993 and it really did seem like the CD32 was the only hope and then the patent thing happened and it was a wrap. The one other takeaway is that they were still having a hard time making A1200's at that time which was almost a year after its introduction. Probably wouldn't have made a huge difference but curious how many more A1200's would have been sold if there had been a healthy supply from the start. No A600 and plenty of A1200's and C= might have made it, we'll never know.

Interesting to note that A4000 was selling well, better than even expected by Commodore and so was the A1200 (the problem wasn't selling them but build them !)

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

of course A1200 would have been much more powerful with more ram and 68030. But both would have made the computer much more expensive. It was a entry computer system competing with low-cost PCs (386er class) at that time.

The thing is 14mhz ec020 is not in the same class with a 386sx or dx. Or is it?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

Most Amiga users and magazines seemed to be very happy with the A1200 when it came out. I wasn't at all, and a look at the first games pretty much ended my association with Amiga gaming. I just saw the same games with more colours and a bit smoother. There was no wow factor. After that I stuck with the Amiga 500 (with half meg memory expansion) and my Super Famicom (Jap SNES).

Here's what Commodore got wrong in my opinion

1. Too much focus on creating higher-res screen modes with more colours (and also making the blitter work in these different screen modes) and not enough on enhancing gaming(8 or maybe 16 sprites when the comparitively old Megadrive and SNES could manage 64 and 128 respectively). It's a bit like the original Amiga - yes it can display 4096 colours on screen, but the majority of the games for the system were 16 colours (Albeit some had added some Copper magic) and most didn't even run at 50/60 fps. That was fine back in 1985 but 7 years(!) later you expect a significant upgrade.

2. There was a mild improvement to dual playfield mode. Great!... when the SNES had 5(?) playfields and could scale and rotate whole screens. Commodore seemed to have no sense they were competing here....

2. Sound chip needed 6 channels to get a decent track playing with sound effects. Again SNES and Megadrive have 6 channels each. Using the same sound chip from 1985 was ridiculous!

3. Like the original Amiga, if you wanted to get a good number of objects on screen with a lot of colours and scrolling, you had to spend ages using hardware tricks or specific techniques. Time = money and developers aren't going to want to spend 2 years making an arcade quality game on the A1200 when simpler systems exist....

I do have a CD32 now, but it's not very impressive from a technical point of view, even the mighty Banshee is bettered on both the SNES and Megadrive. The reason I like it is because it offers something a bit different and it's an Amiga It's fairly obvious it had no hope of competing long term. I just find it hard to see what Commodore was thinking with the AGA architecture??

For stock A1200 and CD32,

1. AGA Blitter is still 16 bit like ECS/OCS Blitter.

LISA and ALICE's bitplane fetch is 32-bit with up to 28 MB/s bandwidth i.e. 2 cycle 32-bit Fast Page RAM @ 14 Mhz.

Want something better than Banshee on A1200? Try Reshoot Proxima 3.
[ Show youtube player ]

2. From the LISA chip, four 64-bit hardware sprites can be used to create a background.

[ Show youtube player ]
Street Fighter II AGA: The impossible Amiga port, made possible.

Nintendo started to create its SNES install base in 1990 and arrived in Amiga's core revenue European market in Q4 1992. Amiga AGA install base was starting from ground zero in Q4 1992 and the existing 32-bit CPU-equipped Amigas with OCS/ECS can't join the AGA install base e.g. no CD32 addon card for "big box" Amigas.

16-bit A500/600 acted as "Atari ST" against A1200/CD32 i.e. install base matters for 3rd party game developers.

Meanwhile, existing full 32-bit 386DX CPU-equipped PCs can be upgraded with fast VGA like Trident 8900CL or Tseng Labs ET4000AX and join the PC's 32-bit 386DX/486 and fast VGA target platform install base.

Amiga's game console nature doesn't work for bigbox desktop platforms.

2. 14 Mhz 68EC020 @ 14 Mhz performs like a 7 Mhz due to the shared Chip RAM clock cycle with the AGA chipset.

A1200/CD32 needs Fast RAM to reduce this shared memory bandwidth design flaw.

68EC020 has a hardware barrel shifter.

3DO alternative has the key original Amiga engineers. 3DO has 50 MB/s sys bus bandwidth.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

I think Commodore accelerated its demise by many wrong management decisions. In my view there was no real concept or strategy behind. Cash cow earning money was C64 but they never managed to build up a real successor. They were everywhere in every market. Amiga was not in the middle of the strategy and future but only one platform of several. They wasted lots of money by building PCs but being too small to earn money with it. What would have happened if they concentrated all on Amiga? I do not know. Unfortunately they also had no real concept on amiga too. They partly marketed it as a gaming machine, next time as professional system. Difficult to see how they might have survived.

But if you look what happened to all platforms at that time, surviving of Commodore is at least doubtful. Only Apple survived, but that only with money from Microsoft

Apple survived 1993 with price vs competitive 68LC040-based products (USD $999) against PC''s 486SX-25 and 486SX-33 SKUs.

Apple's DTP market niche is larger than the Amiga's VideoToaster niche.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TheLurker

The are several sources that state it was the first season, not just the pilot. The first non-Amiga Lightwave wasn't released until 1995, so it makes sense to me that the first season was still Amiga based.

Lightwave raytracing engine for RISC CPUs was floating with notable users before Lightwave 5's 1995 Windows release.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Problem was, Commodore engineering were already slow without the intervention of the clowns like Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes, who made the things even worse. From 1987 to 1992 there was no significant update on the A500 released in 1987, instead they showed on CES like events new OCS/ECS machines with Zorro slot, or 68030 cpu added. There were also disasters like CDTV project which sunk 90M$, C64GS ended up commodore to cannibalize the unsold boards to place in C64C machines which was still selling. No need to mention working on a new 8-bit machine in 1987 to 1991 "C65" which market had no interest. All flops. CDTV sold a few 100s in US, and 30k in UK, 20k in Germany surprisingly. US people totally dismissed it. Then geniuses Mehdi/Bill thought the future was PCs and did nothing on Amiga for 6 months. After that realized that the PC market was overtaken by Taiwanese attack of the clones. Then came the infamous A600 from Bill Sydnes, which further detoriated the situation for Commodore. In the mean time, to promote A600 sales they cancelled the still selling A500plus production, which on its own shooting directly on your head not even on your foot. A1200 was done in panic mode, using A600 as base machine and shoehorning some AAA/AA working chips on it. It is no miracle that it was not enough/too late/future proof. Games like the Wing Commander/Wolfenstein 3D/Alone in the Dark made the PC gaming took high off together with powerful 386/486 CPUs. And finally, Doom was the final nail in the coffin, since the bare A1200 could not run it. Overall story is similar to what happened to Nokia/Blackberry phones. If you don't innovate and be in line with customer expectations, end result will be what happened to commodore in 1994. Overall, still Irving Gould was the main responsible person that this all happened under his ego/hunger for holding grip on power/watch.

C65's 256 colors display capable chipset was completed in Dec 1990. R&D effort wasted. This should have been C128.

AA3000+ AGA was completed around Feb 1991. AA3000+ AGA doesn't have A600's PC-originated IDE and PCMCIA.

Commodore wasted "more than 6 months" (cited DaveH's statement) on an unreleased ECS-based "A1000Jr" project.

Without IDE and PCMCIA, AGA A500 could be launched in Q4 1991 or Q1 1992. ECS A600 is a waste of time.

Commodore had a "read my lips, no new chips" directive during A3000's R&D phase, hence A3000 is stuck with ECS and 1989's A500 Rev 6A had a 2 MB Chip RAM jumper and ECS Agnus.

A300 suffered a scope creep due to Commodore Germany's demand for IDE which resulted in A600's March 1992 release and A500's cancellation.

A500P's cancellation wreaked Commodore's revenue stream during 1992.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I wonder why they bothered. Take Babylon 5. They only did the pilot episode on the Amiga.

Amiga's CPU power is bottlenecked by Motorola's 68K dead end e.g. 68060 at 50 Mhz.

Amiga had it's 68060 @ 50 Mhz experience in 1995.

In 1995, Intel had its 3rd-generation classic Pentium improvements i.e. 120 Mhz and 133 Mhz models. Pentium Pro (P6) 150 Mhz was also released in 1995.

For raytracing and compute power, it's either Pentium/Pentium Pro or the RISC hype.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

The thing is 14mhz ec020 is not in the same class with a 386sx or dx. Or is it?

A 14MHz 020 is more powerful than a 16MHz 386SX (typical low-end PC in 1992). Without FastRAM they are about the same, but the Amiga's custom chips make it faster in typical applications. The A1200's ROM also runs at 14MHz, so system operation is quite snappy even without FastRAM. The 68020's instruction cache helps too.

386DX is a different story, but they were considerably more expensive. Most 386DX systems had cache RAM, ran at higher clock speeds (up to 40MHz), and had more RAM (typically 4MB).

[Cyprian]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

A 14MHz 020 is more powerful than a 16MHz 386SX (typical low-end PC in 1992). Without FastRAM they are about the same

can you provide figures for that test 386SX vs 68020?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Cyprian

can you provide figures for that test 386SX vs 68020?

For the 386:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386

The 20 MHz version operates at 4–5 MIPS/

For the A1200 :
http://amiga.resource.cx/perf/sysspe...cpu&order=mips

68EC020/14MHZ 4.53 MIPS

So yes it is roughly the same, probably a bit better for the A1200 since the figures above are for a 20mhZ 386, not a 16mhz one

EDIT (frome the same WP article) :

The 16 MHz 386SX contains the 100-lead BQFP. It was available for USD $165 in quantites of 1000. It has the performance of 2.5 to 3 MIPS as well