Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This is all well and good, but AFAIK the Macintosh II did not have this 'line skip' capability, nor the ability to have a screen resolution lower than 512x384. That meant the Mac was stuck in hires, which explains the extremely low frame rate of Doom on the Macintosh II.

This Mac's display might have had 256 colors, but it didn't have the other features needed to support a reasonable frame in Doom. This was a result of it not being designed for real-time animation (aka games). Neither did it have the hardware required for fast 2D action games, which is totally understandable considering the target market.

The Macintosh platform had 256 color-packed pixels and a Doom port in 1994. Most mainstream game studios didn't bother researching efficient Blitter assist C2P for the Amiga. Commodore's SDK didn't have an efficient Blitter assist C2P code library. Many mainstream 386DX-33 era 3D PC games weren't ported for the Amiga AGA.

Apple didn't stay with Macintosh II and has improved upon it. The 1987 PC has IBM's VGA and 8514 standards.

The Amiga had its entry point when competitor's 256-color display ASICs were expensive and they were cost-reduced from the likes of Trident 8900(C model released in 1991) and ET4000 series (released in 1989).

SUN GX 3D accelerator is workstation expensive but it gave its key engineers proven experience and co-founded NVIDIA.

For cutting-edge tech companies, personnel development is important.

Amiga Lorraine wasn't cheap until Commodore applied a cost-reduction manufacturing specialty.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This means we cannot point to the Macintosh II as an example of what Commodore 'should' have been able to do. There's a big difference between a dumb frame buffer with only two very similar resolutions and the complex circuitry of AGA (or even VGA).

1. Macintosh's 256-color implementation is not able to match PC VGA's 320x200 256-color efficiency.

2. Apple didn't stay with Macintosh II and has improved upon it. 256 color display use case was reused multiple times.

3. The Macintosh platform had 256 color-packed pixels and a Doom port in 1994.

4. Thanks to IBM, the hardware foundations for the gaming PC's rise in the early 1990s were established in 1987. Commodore wasn't paranoid enough and underestimated PC clones.

5. IBM's 1985-released PGC (PGA) established a 640x480 256 color use case. 256 color display use case was reused multiple times across multiple hardware generations.

6. Commodore didn't have a solid 256-color use case until they copied what the PC was doing and it was too late. Commodore's flip-flopping from Ranger, no new chips, ECS, foreign TIGA, failed moonshot AAA, C65, ECS, and AGA shows chaotic management directions.

7. Nintendo has a 256-color display use case with SNES's 1990 release. Nintendo was less chaotic.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by hammer

The Amiga had its entry point when competitor's 256-color display ASICs were expensive and they were cost-reduced from the likes of Trident 8900(C model released in 1991) and ET4000 series (released in 1989).

Clearly, the ability of the Tseng ET3000 were impressive:

The ET4000 was one of the last ISA-based AIBs and provided the core IP for three generations of ET4000/W32 2D accelerators.


The ET3000 series came out in September 1987, less than six months after IBM’s VGA announcement, and it shipped in high volume for over two years during a time when 50 companies were producing VGA compatibles. At the time, the ET3000 was feature-rich, supporting 1024 × 768 displays with a frame buffer size of 2 MB.

[...]
Toshiba fabricated the chip in its Iwate 650-nm fab.


source

Do someone know the process used for Amiga chips?

So yeah, the A500 was a good move but A2000 should have been a Ranger machine (1024×1024 pixels with 128 color). HAM was here to compensate the lack of true 256 colors.

[ShK]

Too bad that Amiga 1200 didn't come with the fast memory, and the FPU slot wasn't populated. 8MB Flash Fast RAM Memory Expansion gives a nice boost for the stock Amiga, with it you can even play MP3s.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TEG

Clearly, the ability of the Tseng ET3000 were impressive:

Really?

ET3000AX

The predecessor of the famous and fast ET4000. Unfortunately the ET3000 isn't much of a performer compared to the ET4000 but given the timeframe no-one can blame Tseng for this. The ET3000 falls behind on the PVGA1A but note that the ET3000 is quite a bit older. VGA cards where introduced in 1987 and this particular Tseng ET3000 is from 1988. In that time VGA was very high-end and most PC's were stuck with EGA, CGA or even Hercules...

ET3000AX 256KB ISA(P100) 10.70 [fps]

Pentium 100 is no faster running Doom than an A1200 with 50MHz 030 (which BTW would be no faster with chunky pixels, and only 15% faster with chunky pixels and 33 MB/s CPU to video RAM bandwidth).

Originally Posted by TEG

Do someone know the process used for Amiga chips?

Amiga Original Chip Set

According to Jay Miner, the OCS chipset was fabricated in 5 µm manufacturing process while AGA Lisa was implemented in 1.5 µm

Originally Posted by TEG

So yeah, the A500 was a good move but A2000 should have been a Ranger machine (1024×1024 pixels with 128 color).

I disagree. The Ranger design was awful, and we don't even know what actual enhancements the chipset would have had. The only prototype we have didn't include it.

"The "Ranger" was the code-name for the A1000-followup idea/project/notion/whatever being advocated by the Los Gatos Amiga group. It may have been 68010 with or without simple MMU, or with 68020, or with virtually any other magical thing you can imagine, including way better Amiga chips (already designed and working, only Commodore refused to release them), etc. Basically, "Ranger" became a kind of catch all for anything anyone ever believed would have been done better had Los Gatos not lost out over Commodore Germany's A2000 configuration...

There's no question a "Ranger" project did exist in some form at Los Gatos. Far as I know, it was never completed, though I wasn't out there. It made the transition from "legend" to "myth" over ten years ago, I'm afraid, gaining new powers with each retelling, after the fashion of all good myths." - Dave Haynie

Originally Posted by TEG

HAM was here to compensate the lack of true 256 colors.

This makes no sense. In 1985 256 colors was barely on the RADAR. IBM's Professional Graphics Controller (introduced in 1984) cost more than two entire Amiga 1000 systems. AFAIK no contemporary home computer did 256 bitmapped colors at a reasonable resolution.

The original Amiga design had HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) color encoding, which suited NTSC. This was intended to go beyond 256 colors to a true color display (Jay Miner's dream was to create a flight simulator like the full-size ones used to train pilots).

When Commodore took over the design they (sensibly) changed it to RGB, but left in the HAM mode because the chip had already been laid out and the space wasn't needed for anything else. Having RGB output instead of HSV caused a color fringing effect. Despite this it produced stunning images compared to anything else out there, while using less memory than 256 color VGA.

On composite output the fringing in standard HAM mode is barely noticeable. In hires (AGA) it's practically invisible. Only problem is that calculating the best values to minimize fringing takes a fair number of CPU cycles. With 6 bitplanes already sucking bandwidth in OCS that meant it was rarely used for games, but it was great for static screens, video, and photographic applications.

HAM was generally underutilized in games back in the day, largely because other platforms didn't have it and coders couldn't be bothered. Some PC ports had static screens (poorly) scrunched down from 256 colors to 32 or even 16, when they could have been converted to HAM with higher quality - or even converted directly from the source artwork with possibly even better results than VGA!

It is fortunate that Commodore left this 'spare' screen mode in the OCS chipset, because it helped define the Amiga. In 1985 there was nothing like it that could be afforded by mere mortals. It enabled NewTek to create low cost photographic images on any Amiga with their DigiView digitizer, setting them on the path to the Video Toaster. Many of us are only just beginning to understand what it is capable of!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TEG

Clearly, the ability of the Tseng ET3000 were impressive:

Do someone know the process used for Amiga chips?

So yeah, the A500 was a good move but A2000 should have been a Ranger machine (1024×1024 pixels with 128 color). HAM was here to compensate the lack of true 256 colors.

Tseng Lab's ET3000 was replaced by ET4000AX (ISA) in 1989, ET4000/W32 (ISA) in 1992, ET4000/W32i in 1993, and 'etc'.

Tseng Labs wasn't able to match S3 Trio's cost-reduction methods. S3 Trio 64 was first appeared in 1995.

Trio64 are fully integrated solutions based upon the earlier Vision 864 and 868 accelerator chipsets.

Other comparable ET4000xx are the Trident 8900xx and WD90C32 families.

The big elephant in the room is ATI followed by rising the NVIDIA.

ATI's 1st large customer is Commodore which enabled certain Commodore Germany's clone PCs. Commodore Germany is the major PC clone advocate in Commodore's corporate politics.

Relentless innovation is needed in the very competitive PC SVGA market.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

The Macintosh platform had 256 color-packed pixels and a Doom port in 1994.

Dec 10, 1994 to be precise. Minimum system requirements included a 68040 CPU and 8MB RAM, and it needed that 040 too because there was no low resolution screen option.

If you don't understand how disconnected this is from the A1200 then there's no point discussing it further. Just shut up about Macs, they are irrelevant.

Most mainstream game studios didn't bother researching efficient Blitter assist C2P for the Amiga. Commodore's SDK didn't have an efficient Blitter assist C2P code library. Many mainstream 386DX-33 era 3D PC games weren't ported for the Amiga AGA.

Blitter provides a very minor speed improvement.

Most mainstream Amiga games studios weren't doing stuff that needed c2p. The first 'very fast c2p converter (cpu+blitter) 020+' open-source c2p routines for the Amiga were uploaded to Aminet in April 1994. Commercial games using similar code appeared from 1995 on, but the first commercial Amiga game to use texture-mapped 3D was Legends of Valor which was released in 1993. The Amiga version was faster than the PC version!

Also in 1993 Commodore released the CD32 with hardware c2p via Akiko. For AGA machines without Akiko the KS3.1 ROM provided a CPU routine. It wasn't optimized like Peter McGavin's code, but could easily be patched to use faster code - or even additional c2p hardware (odd that no RAM or accelerator card manufacturer did this!).

In the 386DX-33 era few texture-mapped 3D games existed, and most Amigas weren't powerful enough to run them anyway (256 color chunky or not). Nobody in their right mind expected a stock $399 A1200 to compete against a 386DX costing many times more in applications that needed that processing power. The machine it should be compared to is a 386SX, which was a popular 'low-end' PC choice in 1992.

Commodore wasn't paranoid enough and underestimated PC clones.

Commodore got into PC clones fairly early on, but like many others they soon discovered it wasn't quite that easy. Most of Commodore was happy to just ride that wave, but Gould wasn't. If it wasn't for his 'not being paranoid enough' we probably wouldn't have the Amiga at all.

As for 'understanding' PC clones - what was there to understand? It wasn't the machine, but the user Commodore had to attract. IMO they were a little too paranoid about the Amiga not being IBM compatible. Probably would been better not to pander to those who would choose IBM anyway, and concentrate on the markets they could excel in.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I disagree. The Ranger design was awful, and we don't even know what actual enhancements the chipset would have had. The only prototype we have didn't include it.

C65 proves 256 colors bitplane on A500's Chip RAM level bandwidth is reasonable and its better on A3000's 32-bit Ramsey Fast RAM 030 memory controller and 32-bit Chip RAM.

C65's 256-color 8-bitplane chipset was completed in Dec 1990.

Buster's and Ramsey's functions were cost-reduced into A1200's Budgie.

AGA's development "lost more than 6 months" that followed the "read my lips, no new chips" directive.

AGA-based A1000+ R&D was canceled and "lost more than 6 months" on ECS-based A1000 Jr.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This makes no sense. In 1985 256 colors was barely on the RADAR. IBM's Professional Graphics Controller (introduced in 1984) cost more than two entire Amiga 1000 systems.

What you don't get is completing the product and shipping it, instead of staying prototype forever or other failed moonshot projects.

The same key engineer for IBM PGC moved to SUN to design the GX quadrilateral 3D accelerator. The same key GX engineer co-founded NVIDIA.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/63673
The Sun GX graphics engine uses the host CPU as the main controller and has all its graphics functionality hardwired directly into two large ASICs; the FBC (frame buffer controller) and TEC (transformation engine and cursor). The GX has only three instructions: rendering arbitrary, filled quadrilaterals; displaying precomputed pixel images; and block image transfers. With these instructions the GX can do at least 80% of the most used functions in its targeted markets: window systems, 2-D geometry, and 3-D wireframe.


Sega Saturn and 3DO had a similar quadrilateral 3D direction. Sega obtained the texture mapper IP from the US military-industrial complex. For Saturn and 3DO, sprite engines have evolved with distortion function for accelerated texture handling.

NVIDIA's Jensen Huang is a former AMD microprocessor designer. AMD was ahead of Commodore in the higher-clocked RISC CPU designs.

Professional Graphics Controller established the precursor to VGA monitors and the solid 256-color use case for IBM's MCGA, VGA, and 8514 designs.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

AFAIK no contemporary home computer did 256 bitmapped colors at a reasonable resolution.

Your thinking is Commodore management instead of establishing in-house technology leadership. IBM's leadership team established the 256-color use cases across multiple products i.e. PGC, MCGA, VGA, 8514, and XGA. SVGA cloners branched from VGA and 8514.

The original Amiga Lorraine's design was influenced by (US military-industrial complex) military flight simulators.

The mass-produced PC GPUs were mostly influenced by SGI's workstation graphics.

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal".

"Only the Paranoid Survive".

Intel was sued by DEC. NVIDIA was sued by SGI. NVIDIA was sued by 3DFX. Both Intel/Compaq and NVIDIA have financial strength for a legal battle of attrition.

With NVIDIA being the new SGI graphics king, the rest of the industry hardware accelerated raytracing road maps (Sony's PS6, MS's next Xbox 2027) are based on NVIDIA's.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Relentless innovation is needed in the very competitive PC SVGA market.

And yet the vast majority of PCs were sold with VGA cards that were far from innovative - apart from cost reduction. Most PC adverts in the A1200's day didn't even say which card or chipset was in them! Customers were happy enough with 'SVGA 512k' or whatever the vendor bothered to put in the system specs. Never mind that a typical ISA video card was dog slow in 256 color SVGA. Games used standard 320x200 mode and most people ran Windows in 16 colors because that's all it used anyway.

The real innovation didn't build until games started needing hardware acceleration, which quickly separated the wheat from the chaff. But this was well after the A1200's time. It was now a retro computer with the big advantage of being fixed in time so we could get to know it better. I would not have wanted constant innovation when I had barely begun to explore AGA!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Dec 10, 1994 to be precise. Minimum system requirements included a 68040 CPU and 8MB RAM, and it needed that 040 too because there was no low resolution screen option.

Wrong. The lower cost 68LC040 is needed, NOT the full 68040. Doom does NOT use FPU.

MacOS's GUI can run on softFPU.

Macintosh survived 1993 and 1994.

I don't live in a country with a weaker currency.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If you don't understand how disconnected this is from the A1200 then there's no point discussing it further. Just shut up about Macs, they are irrelevant.

Stock A1200 didn't deliver new "full 32-bit 2.5D/3D" gaming experiences, hence A1200 competes against strong 2D competitors like SNES.

You're out of touch and it shows when Commodore failed!

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Blitter provides a very minor speed improvement.

Any improvement helps with lowering the rendering time. Line skip tricks on Amiga Dread are Blitter line draw accelerated.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Most mainstream Amiga games studios weren't doing stuff that needed c2p. The first 'very fast c2p converter (cpu+blitter) 020+' open-source c2p routines for the Amiga were uploaded to Aminet in April 1994.

Low AGA installs base problem and missing Sega Mega Drive's line skip tricks as used in the recent Dread/Grind. A600's unit sales should have been AGA machine sales.

For OCS/ECS machines, Citadel was recently improved to run faster. My point, there is no baseline efficient C2P.

Gloom (released in 1995) on stock A1200 wasn't a good experience and it was late. Gloom's Wolfenstein 3D with floor/ceiling texture presentation is dated when compared to PC's 1994-1995 3D games.

Most mainstream game studios are porting 2D games to the Amiga, but NOT their 2.5/3D games.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Commercial games using similar code appeared from 1995 on, but the first commercial Amiga game to use texture-mapped 3D was Legends of Valor which was released in 1993. The Amiga version was faster than the PC version!

WRONG! For 1993, you lost Gateway 2000's 486SX price vs performance comparison.

1993 Legends of Valor for Amiga OCS/ECS wasn't a 256-color presentation. The Amiga OCS/ECS version wasn't 16 color palette optimized like the recent Grind i.e. Legend of Valour targeted Atari ST's palette limitations and caused the Amiga OCS/ECS version to be improved EGA+ Atari ST version.
[ Show youtube player ]
The Atari ST's influence sucks.

A600's unit sales should have been AGA machine sales.

PC's Legends of Valor was a 1992 release and it's dated by 1993 e.g. PC has Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss in 1993 and VGA.

vs

[ Show youtube player ]
Grind: 'Darkenward East' v0.3 showcase for Amiga OCS/ECS. Grind's colour art direction would be competitive against PC's Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss.

Fears have potential, but it has jelly opponents. LOL.

Nemac IV was reasonable on 030 @ 25 Mhz, but its 1996 release was late for the Amiga. PC had Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and PS1 ports in 1996.

[ Show youtube player ]
PC's Legends of Valor runs in 256 colors VGA. AGA port would be similar to the VGA version.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

C65 proves 256 colors bitplane on A500's Chip RAM level bandwidth is reasonable and its better on A3000's 32-bit Ramsey Fast RAM 030 memory controller and 32-bit Chip RAM.

C65's 256-color 8-bitplane chipset was completed in Dec 1990.

You obviously don't know much about the C65's graphics hardware. Compared to the A500 it was quite limited. Those 8 bitplanes used up half the memory of the machine, and could only be accessed through a small window.

The C65 wasn't really ready in 1990. 10,000 units were slated to be produced in May 1991, but the VIC-III chip still had bugs in it. The DMAgic chip wasn't finished until February 1991. They were finally ready to produce the machine in June 1991 (with remaining VIC-II bugs 'fixed' via ROM workarounds), but by then it was too late - the C64 market was already collapsing. According to Dave Haynie:-

There really wasn't much of a place for an enhanced C64-class machine in the early 1990's. Commodore could not realistically release the C65 in 1991 and expect success without a marketing miracle

David Pleasance also wasn't happy with it. He said:-

"I for one was very pleased [about the cancellation]. I had been very vocal to head office about not having a market for it in the UK. We had very little marketing budget compared to Nintendo and Sega, who were making all their profit from sales of the games, not the hardware."

Commodore would have to sell the machine at a good profit to justify it, so the price would be much higher than the consoles at a time when interest in the C64 was waning. It would take resources away from the Amiga, which was their real cash cow at the time but past due for a refresh.

If the C65 had been developed in 1985 instead of the C128 then it might have stood a chance, even more so if they hadn't taken on the Amiga. But by the early 90's it would still be ending its life. In 1991 the C65 promised to provide 75% of an A500 at a time when we really needed a new Amiga, and they couldn't afford to do both. I for one would have been very disappointed if we got the C65 instead of the A1200.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And yet the vast majority of PCs were sold with VGA cards that were far from innovative - apart from cost reduction. Most PC adverts in the A1200's day didn't even say which card or chipset was in them! Customers were happy enough with 'SVGA 512k' or whatever the vendor bothered to put in the system specs. Never mind that a typical ISA video card was dog slow in 256 color SVGA. Games used standard 320x200 mode and most people ran Windows in 16 colors because that's all it used anyway.

That's a flawed argument.

https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufac...tseng_labs.php
By 1991, according to IDC, Tseng Labs held a 25% market share in the total VGA market.

The PC has very large market.

VGA's 16 colors 640x480p only needs 256 KB VRAM.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Wrong. The lower cost 68LC040 is needed, NOT the full 68040. Doom does NOT use FPU.

Wow, I never knew that!

Full 040 or LC040 it's still way to expensive to put in a low-end Amiga in 1992. And we wouldn't be happy with it because many Amiga fans were into ray-tracing and other stuff that needed an FPU.

Macintosh survived 1993 and 1994.

...while producing a confusing array of machines, and burning through cash in an attempt to improve the OS - which by 1995 was desperately needed but never got out the door! Without Steve Jobs coming back to save them Apple was screwed.

Stock A1200 didn't deliver new "full 32-bit 2.5D/3D" gaming experiences, hence A1200 competes against strong 2D competitors like SNES.

The A600 got knocked for not having a numeric keypad, but imagine if it had no keyboard at all! And no disk drive, no mouse, nothing but a boring box you plugged expensive game cartridges into. Can you imagine getting enthused about that? Me neither. If you want the "full 32-bit 2.5D/3D gaming experience" of an SNES then just buy one, but don't expect the full range of experience the Amiga provides.

1993 Legends of Valor for Amiga OCS/ECS wasn't a 256-color presentation.

Correct, and it didn't need to be. Furthermore since the game was developed just as AGA machines arrived it was too early for them anyway.

PC's Legends of Valor was a 1992 release and it's dated by 1993 e.g. PC has Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss in 1993 and VGA.

Ultima Underworld needed a very powerful machine to do it justice, whereas Amiga Legends of Valor ran on a stock A500. No need to buy that Gateway 486!

PC's Legends of Valor runs in 256 colors VGA.

But the Amiga version was better.

You see, the number of colors are not what makes or breaks a game. So long as you have enough to get the message across that's all you need. I can provide many examples of games where fewer colors were better. Latest example is the Amiga Knight Lore port that destroys the atmosphere and muddies the graphics. Give me the 2 color Spectrum or 3 color Amstrad version any day!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

You obviously don't know much about the C65's graphics hardware. Compared to the A500 it was quite limited. Those 8 bitplanes used up half the memory of the machine, and could only be accessed through a small window.

R&D resources were wasted and A3000 has faster 32-bit Chip RAM which A1200 has obtained.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The C65 wasn't really ready in 1990. 10,000 units were slated to be produced in May 1991, but the VIC-III chip still had bugs in it. The DMAgic chip wasn't finished until February 1991. They were finally ready to produce the machine in June 1991 (with remaining VIC-II bugs 'fixed' via ROM workarounds), but by then it was too late - the C64 market was already collapsing. According to Dave Haynie:-

Who wasted time between C64's release to C65's release?

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

David Pleasance also wasn't happy with it. He said:-
Commodore would have to sell the machine at a good profit to justify it, so the price would be much higher than the consoles at a time when interest in the C64 was waning. It would take resources away from the Amiga, which was their real cash cow at the time but past due for a refresh.

I didn't advocate releasing C65. I stated that the 256-color chip R&D effort was wasted on C65.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I disagree. The Ranger design was awful, and we don't even know what actual enhancements the chipset would have had. The only prototype we have didn't include it.

Yeah, and you keep spamming us with words of ppl unrelated to that project when Jay Miner in his interview after he left Commodore did explicitly say Ranger chipset was FINISHED AND TESTED. Much unlike AAA which had first prototype set of chips and was non-working. The real and only reason why Commodore didn't use Ranger is because it was too expensive.
2 long-term problems of Amiga OCS were addressed in that chipset - amount of ChipRAM and speed of ChipRAM. I wouldn't say sticking to OCS features while solving only one of those in ECS (2MB of chipram) in next 5 years is actual accomplishment for C= R&D department.

As for C65 - that kind of thing was actually a really good idea, but that's something which should've been done in place of C128. Nearly 100% compatibility with C64 but a lot more usable features. So DMA controller, much bigger RAM, faster CPU (going faster while on-screen drawing as well, unlike Plus/4 or C128) and blitter. Dual SID is also fun. The only problem with that would be... A500 which came in '87. With C65 in '85 I would see A500 sales dropping a lot. Trying to introduce yet another 8/16b machine in early 90s was just as stupid idea as trying to sell C64GS ... and guess who was behind that one! Yup, all those respectable leaders...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

I didn't advocate releasing C65. I stated that the 256-color chip R&D effort was wasted on C65.

Sorry I must have lost track. But you said it was 'completed' in 1990. It wasn't. If it had been maybe the effort wouldn't have been 'wasted'. Anyhow Bill Sydnes did the right thing and cancelled it (just) before it was too late to develop the A1200, so it all worked out in the end.

What's interesting is that the A600 was being developed at the same time, so cancelling the C65 gave it more resources. Some say the A600 was also wasted R&D effort, but it laid the groundwork for the A1200 and became an actual product that fans enjoyed.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Wow, I never knew that!

Full 040 or LC040 it's still way to expensive to put in a low-end Amiga in 1992.

From the 1993 era A3000T/040 vs A3000T/030 price difference, the A3460 card is $400.

Commodore could have produced A1200 + modified A3460 for $799 USD. This is close to Apple's Quadra 605's $975 price for a 68LC040-based machine.

3rd party A1200 accelerators don't have Commodore's bulk 68040 purchase power.

A500's $699 USD price in 1987 is $897.63 in 1993.

Commodore is gatekeeping the 68040 for the elites. I already told you the 1994's 68060 @ 50 Mhz price in 10,000 lots. 68LC060 is cheaper.

https://techmonitor.ai/technology/mo...0_next_quarter

Motorola Inc yesterday finally launched the long-promised 68060 follow-on to the 68040, claiming that it matches the performance of the Intel Corp Pentium at less than half the price – it costs $263 at 50MHz when you order 10,000 or more and will sample next month
...
There are also cheaper 68LC060 and 68EC060 variants of the new part, which omit the memory manager, and both the memory manager and the floating point unit; they cost $169 and $150 respectively for 10,000-up.


Commodore didn't shift towards the Amiga platform with the mass-produced 68040 socket that is needed for 68060. Thanks to TF1260 for keeping the 68060 socket adapter board at a low cost.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And we wouldn't be happy with it because many Amiga fans were into ray-tracing and other stuff that needed an FPU.

Prove there were 1 million 68881/68882 Amiga users in 1993.

Prove Commodore can survive from the Lightwave niche.

68882 @ 50 Mhz only has 1.33 MFLOPS which is very low in 1993 professional raytracing.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...while producing a confusing array of machines, and burning through cash in an attempt to improve the OS - which by 1995 was desperately needed but never got out the door! Without Steve Jobs coming back to save them Apple was screwed.

In 1995, Apple canceled A/UX and purchased NextSTEP in 1996.

Apple's CEO Michael Spindler is wise enough to bring back Steve Jobs and NextSTEP. "A good man always knows his limitations".

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The A600 got knocked for not having a numeric keypad, but imagine if it had no keyboard at all! And no disk drive, no mouse, nothing but a boring box you plugged expensive game cartridges into.

1. A600 is a sales flop that costs more than A500P.
2. A600 lacks 256-color display modes.
3. "A1000 Jr" ECS development delayed AGA project "more than 6 months".

https://www.landley.net/history/mirr...re/haynie.html

When he got to Engineering, he hired a human bus error called Bill Sydnes to take over. Sydnes, a PC guy, didn't have the chops to run a computer, much less a computer design department. He was also an ex-IBMer, and spent much time trying to turn C= (a fairly slick, west-coast-style design operation), into the clunky mess that characterized the Dilbert Zones in most major east-coast-style companies. He and Ali also decided that AA wasn't going to work, so they canceled both AA projects (Amiga 3000+ and Amiga 1000+, either one better for the market than the A4000 was), and put it all on the back burner, intentionally blowing the schedule by six+ months. They canceled the A500, which was the only actively selling product ever canceled in C= history, to my knowledge, and replaced it with the A600. The A600 was originally the A300, George Robbins' idea of a cheaper-than-A500 Amiga; a new line, not a replacement. Sydnes added so much bloat, the A600 was $50 more than the A500, $100 over the goal price.


A300 was supposed to replace C64c. David Pleasance blames Commodore Germany for scope creep on the A300 project. The higher-priced A600 resulted in the A500's cancellation and a large-scale revenue decrease during 1992.

Stacked with ex-Commodore Germany's personnel, Escom's basic A1200 has a higher asking price than Commodore's.

[emiespo]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Really?

ET3000AXPentium 100 is no faster running Doom than an A1200 with 50MHz 030 (which BTW would be no faster with chunky pixels, and only 15% faster with chunky pixels and 33 MB/s CPU to video RAM bandwidth).

Edit: missed the link. That must’ve been a really crappy GFX board that no pentium user would’ve wanted unless in an office PC.

My A4000 with 060 and Cybervision 3D could finally match a 486/DX2 running Doom, for double the money.

An A1200 with that config can barely keep up with a speedy 386. Comparing costs, it’s nonsense.

Also, Akiko’s purpose was to cut costs and integrate chips, it has ALMOST nothing to do with “hardware chunky”. It does the math operation to convert pixels, but needs to engage the cpu a lot. It was just a useful addition, given how slow the CD32 was. A real chunky mode would have been *a lot* better.

Actually: has anyone ever thought that bitplane graphics are almost always computationally worse than packed chunky? The only reason why they might have kept them relate to the initial chip design and some cost saving factor.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by emiespo

Actually: has anyone ever thought that bitplane graphics are almost always computationally worse than packed chunky? The only reason why they might have kept them relate to the initial chip design and some cost saving factor.

Do you allude to forum members or Commodore engineers? On the forum it was already debated and said it was a good design for OCS due to limitations of the time.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by emiespo

Actually: has anyone ever thought that bitplane graphics are almost always computationally worse than packed chunky? The only reason why they might have kept them relate to the initial chip design and some cost saving factor.

The initial idea was not so bad: You can upscale the number of colors by the number of bitplanes, and thus scale by the amount of memory. You can also use the same planar blitter design, regardless of the bitdepth of the frame buffer. The alternative (back then) would be to have 1, 2 or 4 bits/pixel modes, and a blitter that is also mode-dependent and can draw lines in 1, 2 or 4 bits/pixel, which surely complicated the design, and you would still not have EHB, HAM, 32 and 8 color modes, and DualPF.

Thus, at the time the Amiga chipset was designed, it was a reasonable choice, but when RAM prices lowered, it became a burden.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Sorry I must have lost track. But you said it was 'completed' in 1990. It wasn't. If it had been maybe the effort wouldn't have been 'wasted'. Anyhow Bill Sydnes did the right thing and cancelled it (just) before it was too late to develop the A1200, so it all worked out in the end.

The difference between Dec 1990 and Feb 1991 is minor. The goal is to commit to a 256-color AGA chipset for A600's Q1 1992 release. I rather have Xmas Q4 1991 with AGA-based "A500 Advanced".

A1200 with IDE and PCMCIA can be released in Xmas Q4 1992. AGA install base should reach a critical size ASAP. This is important for 3rd party game developer's planning and ROI.

A500's Chip RAM has a dual playfield, sprites, audio, and four-clock cycle memory access wastage. AGA Alice has 2 cycles (row, column) of memory access improvement, but it remains a 16-bit data bus.

Due to the "failed moonshot" AAA project and "read my lips, no new chips" directive during A3000's R&D, AGA's development runs out of time.

AAA's 16 million color palette insert into AGA is useless for action 320x256p with 256 colors gaming. I prefer a dual 16-bit Blitter and 18-bit color palette over 16 million color palette.

Meanwhile, PC SVGA cloners have a solid baseline 256-color use case.

Hi-Color and True Color modes weren't mandatory until around 1996-1997 with PS1's Western market game releases.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What's interesting is that the A600 was being developed at the same time, so cancelling the C65 gave it more resources.

A600's ECS is largely completed from A3000 and A500P.

The Gayle chip handles PC-originated ISA-based PCMCIA and IDE. It does nothing for the AGA install base growth. Most copy-protected game disks are not hand-drive installable anyway.

A600's sales flops and A500's cancellations made Commodore's revenue weaker.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Some say the A600 was also wasted R&D effort, but it laid the groundwork for the A1200 and became an actual product that fans enjoyed.

1. Do A1200 fans like the A500 install base causing an "Atari ST" effect on the AGA platform?

2. Do A1200 fans like Commodore Germany's revenue wreaker move that caused Commodore's demise? A600's sales flops and A500's cancellations made Commodore's revenue weaker. I prefer the original Commodore to be alive.