Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[TEG]

Originally Posted by TCD

Am I the only one that found the slanted F-key design of the ST rather silly? It didn't look horrible, but for me certainly not better than the Amiga.

I like it. Give a futuristic look. For the price the overall design of the ST case, excepting the joystick connectors under the machine, was very good I find.

@babsimov
I don't agree we you about reusing the A500 case. It was important from a marketing point of view to have a fresh design and the A1200 case is a nice achievement. I was very happy to have it, more svelte but in the same line of it predecessor. It showed the innovation of the machine. I was bored of the A500 case.

The VIC20/C64 was from another area when customers were less observant.

And for me, the case of the Falcon was a complete deception for sure. It gave me the sensation of a machine blocked in the past, some DIY, something not very appealing.

The problem for C= was not the A1200 case cost, it was to not be able to produce enough machines for Christmas.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TCD

Am I the only one that found the slanted F-key design of the ST rather silly? It didn't look horrible, but for me certainly not better than the Amiga.

I like it a lot, and would say it did look a tad better than A500, though that doesn't mean I don't like the A500's (or A1200s) looks (they certainly don't look "uncool", as some of the folks in that Guardian thread claim).

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

(they certainly don't look "uncool", as some of the folks in that Guardian thread claim)

You can argue about subjective things like that forever.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Thorham

You can argue about subjective things like that forever.

Which is why I'm not arguing about it, I'm just stating my opinion.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Which is why I'm not arguing about it, I'm just stating my opinion.

Bad wording, sorry about that.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Essentially, as it is a rotating mass, you are creating a force on the ballbearing of the drive that is perpendicular to the graviation that pushes it to the side, and you are creating a force on the heads, too. I had here a Quantum drive that, by accident, was tilted in the computer, and as a result, it created bad sectors on its surface. Long story short - don't do that.



This is not quite true, not in my experience. Laptop drives might have been more robust in this sense, but not the desktop drive I had.

There's no such phenomenon. Rotating mass only creates centrifugal force, it does not react with gravity any other way than regular non-moving object of the same shape and mass... So the bearings in hdd which can be positioned vertically or horizontally are designed to withstand gravity in both directions - in that aspect any angle between 0 and 90deg is just how gravitational force is divided to vertical and horizontal components to ball bearings (balls are round, inner and outer rings have a profile to let the force be transferred in pretty much wide range of angles without any additional wearing down). Now ... bad sectors. Head is controlled by VCM which allows autocorrection of position. Very old drives had stepper motor which didn't allow that. That's why you were FORCED to use your hard drive in exact same position as long as you did care for your data. The only real problem is - as I've said - tilting WHILE drive is spinning. It does create additional momentum on the platters which tries to counteract the change of angular momentum.

The only real problem with different orientation of HDD would've been if there was different kind of bearings but that would basically force usage of such drive in only one specific valid position. Any other problems which comes from hard drive being mounted at different angle most likely come from bad vibration transfer (maybe even near mechanical resonance) and/or incorrect tightening and are not inherently relevant to mounting position. Mounting HDD in angle between 0 and 90 degrees has absolutely no effect on air cushion which holds head over platter in specific distance. And bad head positioning is the only thing which might induce bad sectors...

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by TEG

I like it. Give a futuristic look. For the price the overall design of the ST case, excepting the joystick connectors under the machine, was very good I find.

Totally agree, the look of the ST case was very modern for the time and particularly original. The 500's case is much more conventional. But while I much preferred the ST case, it was what was inside the 500 case that really clinched my choice at the time.

@babsimov
I don't agree we you about reusing the A500 case. It was important from a marketing point of view to have a fresh design and the A1200 case is a nice achievement. I was very happy to have it, more svelte but in the same line of it predecessor. It showed the innovation of the machine. I was bored of the A500 case.

As I said, of course a new case was a preferable option, as was planned with the 1000+. But in the interest of saving money, it wouldn't have bothered me that much if the 500's case was reused, say in another color, as long as inside there would have been the AGA, a 3.5" 40 MB hard drive and why not a DSP. And if it had also made it possible to have this at the end of 1990 I would have been even happier.

The 500 case could have been modified to have a second side expansion hatch to install connectors from an internal expansion card. It could have been for example a DSP card, if the DSP was not included as standard. A modification like the one we can see here.
https://www.a1200.net/amiga-500-cases-original-gallery/
To choose, an A500 case modified like that would have suited me perfectly at the time as long as it had the AGA in it and a harddrive (of course, on top of the keyboard, it would have been necessary to add a third LED for HD activity, like on the A1200)


About the 1200 case, at the time I made up my mind, especially because it contained the AGA and finally brought something new to the Amiga. But, for all that, the legacy of the 600 bothered me, in particular the uninteresting 16-bit PCMCIA port and the more expensive 2.5" hard drive for the same capacity, just because this case was the legacy of the worst Amiga model, the 600. If Commodore absolutely wanted a keyboard case, well I would have preferred the 500 or something with a similar size.

The VIC20/C64 was from another area when customers were less observant.

I'm not sure. Buyers mostly looked at what was inside. And the C64 was clearly above the VIC20, so if to have that at an affordable price, you had to reuse the VIC20 case, then no problem.

And for me, the case of the Falcon was a complete deception for sure. It gave me the sensation of a machine blocked in the past, some DIY, something not very appealing.

At the time, I also found that the reuse of the ST case for the Falcon suggested that Atari was not doing so well. And the fact that the 1200 had a new case made me think that Commodore was doing much better. Well in the end I was very wrong about Commodore which will disappear before Atari.

On the other hand, what was inside the Falcon and, in particular, its DSP really made me dream. More than the AGA. I waited until the end for the Amiga DSP card promised by Commodore. After the bankruptcy, that's when I bought an accelerator card.

Now knowing the situation of Commodore at the time of the release of the AGA generation, well if the reuse of the 500 case could have saved Commodore some money, it seemed to me an option not to be rejected.

The problem for C= was not the A1200 case cost, it was to not be able to produce enough machines for Christmas.

I agree, it was a real problem and largely due to Medhi Ali's decision to produce excessively too many 600s (ECS) instead of 1200s (AGA). And since no one wanted the 600, they will have to be sold at a loss to liquidate stocks.

And I also agree, the 1200 case was not perfect, but at least we found a real keyboard with numeric keypad like the Amiga had always had, with the exception of the 600, and also a data port. Internal extension that can once again accommodate interesting extensions.

But, of course, the 1000+ case would have been the best option by far.

[pixie]

Originally Posted by babsimov

Now knowing the situation of Commodore at the time of the release of the AGA generation, well if the reuse of the 500 case could have saved Commodore some money, it seemed to me an option not to be rejected.

It wouldn't have saved and you would be left with a new generation machine on old case...

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by pixie

It wouldn't have saved and you would be left with a new generation machine on old case...

Maybe.
But, for me, to choose between the 1200 case or the 500 case (a little redesigned as indicated above) well I prefer the 500 case, because it is more spacious and expandable.


Some people have Amiga 1700s, a 1200 motherboard in a 500 case and it's not bad.

https://www.amibay.com/threads/my-am...e-shape.33225/

And, of course, the ideal would have been the 1000+ case.

[pixie]

I hear all people talk about 3.5"... my A1200 had one 3.5", so I don't really know what they're about. Perhaps only some 3.5" fit, my surely did, I don't know

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by pixie

I hear all people talk about 3.5"... my A1200 had one 3.5", so I don't really know what they're about. Perhaps only some 3.5" fit, my surely did, I don't know

Yes, a 3.5" fits if you remove the protection plate and tinker with the power supply from the floppy drive and with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter cable. About two years after purchasing my 1200, a friend told me about it and helped me with this manipulation.

But by default the 1200 is internally designed for a 2.5" hard drive only. Putting a 3.5" inch is DIY. Whereas with a larger case in the style of the 500, it would have fit without problem from the beginning.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by babsimov

Yes, a 3.5" fits if you remove the protection plate and tinker with the power supply from the floppy drive and with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter cable. About two years after purchasing my 1200, a friend told me about it and helped me with this manipulation.

But by default the 1200 is internally designed for a 2.5" hard drive only. Putting a 3.5" inch is DIY. Whereas with a larger case in the style of the 500, it would have fit without problem from the beginning.

So this where lie the real question: why C= did not provided a case accepting 3.5" and 2.5" drives without DIY as it seems it was possible out of the box?

In my opinion Ali was using the Amiga platform to push new PC technologies coming to the market: PCMCIA an 2.5". In a sense it was not totally stupid as it will be technologies really used in a near future in laptops but the Amiga deal with teething problems.

For the record, when I ordered my A1200 with an HD (I was absolutely bored with having only floppies on the A500), I had to wait something like 2 or 3 weeks because there was not 2.5" cable available. I mean it show there was a real problem of industrialisation/organisation at Commodore at A1200 time. Such problems delay cash to arrive when it could be avoided.

Originally Posted by babsimov

At the time, I also found that the reuse of the ST case for the Falcon suggested that Atari was not doing so well. And the fact that the 1200 had a new case made me think that Commodore was doing much better. Well in the end I was very wrong about Commodore which will disappear before Atari.

Your guts was right. Commodore was doing better with the A1200 and it was much appreciated than the Falcon but there was others factors.

[babsimov]

Originally Posted by TEG

So this where lie the real question: why C= did not provided a case accepting 3.5" and 2.5" drives without DIY as it seems it was possible out of the box?

Because the 1200 case is the direct inheritance of the 600 that was limited to a 2.5" hardrive with a 2,5" IDE connector. And also because Commodore was targeting all the possible price saving. A 2.5 inch consumes less than 'a 3.5" which allowed them to provide a less powerful external power supply. With 3,5" HD an a 020 28 MHz accelerator card like mine, it worked, but with more the power supply was too light.

In my opinion Ali was using the Amiga platform to push new PC technologies coming to the market: PCMCIA an 2.5". In a sense it was not totally stupid as it will be technologies really used in a near future in laptops but the Amiga deal with teething problems.

Sorry, Medhi Ali knew absolutely nothing about computers and even though I remember well what is explained in the books, he didn't know how to use a computer. The PCMCIA decision is from Jeff Franck, just like the 2.5" inch IDE.
Medhi Ali only instruction regarding the 300/600 was that it must not be expandable, because he wanted to sink GVP!!!

Besides, originally the 300 was not supposed to have a hard drive controller, but as already without the hard drive it cost more to produce than the 500, they added the hard drive controller to pass the pill. And as the case was too small, the 2.5" was the only size that fit. Jeff Franck made the first big mistake with PCMCIA which was a standard for laptops, and therefore already expensive. The 2.5" hard drive is the other error that comes as icing on the cake. The 600 accumulated all the possible and imaginable errors to make a monumental flop. And he did it.

Faced with complaints from the community about the small keyboard, they also made up the argument that it was a step towards to a future Amiga laptops one day. What a hell of a joke.

For the record, when I ordered my A1200 with an HD (I was absolutely bored with having only floppies on the A500)

The Amiga 500 could get an external hard drive. In 1989 I bought a Commodore A590. It is probably because GVP sold more external hard drives for the Amiga 500 than Commodore that Medhi Ali gave his instructions. But when we compare the GVP hard drives to the A590, it's not surprising, the GVP hard drives were the best on the Amiga. But they were also more expensive.

I had to wait something like 2 or 3 weeks because there was not 2.5" cable available.

I didn't have this kind of problem when I bought my 1200. The dealer installed the hard drive directly into the machine so that I kept the warranty. I just had to wait a little over an hour, during which time I wandered around. And when I returned I left with my 60 MB hard drive installed inside. And I even believe that he had partitioned the disk in two at my request and installed the OS. But I'm not sure anymore about this.

I mean it show there was a real problem of industrialisation/organisation at Commodore at A1200 time. Such problems delay cash to arrive when it could be avoided.

Above all, it shows that the 1200 should never been sold in a version without a hard drive. It was stupid. Since AmigaOS 2.x the operating system has been designed for hard drive exclusively. Having had daily use of a hard drive for several years, it didn't even occur to me to buy a 1200 without a hard drive. In 1992 the hard drive had been the rule on PC or MAC for a long time, even at the entry level.

Moreover, the 1000+, the entry-level model originally planned for the AGA generation, had a hard drive as standard and it was obviously the wisest choice.

Your guts was right. Commodore was doing better with the A1200 and it was much appreciated than the Falcon but there was others factors.

Yes, the 1200 sold better than the Falcon, but that doesn't mean that Commodore was ultimately doing better than Atari, which survived longer.

Besides, it's paradoxical, because I remember that in the press at the time the Falcon was really praised for its technical innovations and in particular its DSP. While the 1200 was well received, but not as praised for its innovation (particularly in terms of sound).

The Falcon especially paid for the fact that Atari disappointed its community with the STE which didn't have much more than the ST. There are also publishers who fled this platform more than the Amiga. And then, it must also be said, like the 1200, the Falcon arrived much too late.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Care to explain HOW it is bad for mechanism and doing spindle motor vertically is not? Head is handled through VCA (or VCM - voice coil motor). Orientation does not matter here. It's kept in place just over platter by creating air cushion which is generally independent on orientation.

Hitachi's specs suggest that errors increase when the drive is on angle of more than 5 degrees. As to why this might happen, it's irrelevant. If the manufacturer specifies an operating condition you should stick to it, not second-guess their reasons for specifying it.

The only real issue was with spindle being up because weight of platters would pull down the shaft which MIGHT get bad at some point.

Yes, the bearings will probably wear out faster at an angle because the force isn't evenly distributed. According to one article I read this isn't a problem because 'drives are only made to last a few years' which is purportedly acceptable because by that time you will be wanting to upgrade anyway. IOW, manufacturers don't want long-term reliably - they want it to work until just after the warranty runs out, then break down so you have to buy a new one!

Yes, yes... but your first claim was it cannot be tilted at all

Picking nits? Obviously I was talking about the angle it would be at inside the A1200, which is 15 degrees. That's 3 times higher than Hitachi's specified maximum tilt angle.

And the other issue is the "failure rate" - I'd like to see how they matched failures with actual mounting position rather than mishandling drive (e.g. resonance, improper fastening, actually tilting during operation)

Again, it's irrelevant. If you have problems with the drive tilted more than 5 degrees, they won't be taking responsibility for it.

Imagine you're Commodore and you bought 500,000 drives to put in A1200s, then a few months later 10% of them come back under warranty. Maybe it was just a bad batch of drives, but you will have to eat it because you didn't mount them according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Even worse, with thousands of customers wanting answers you can bet the subject of mounting angle will come up - and you will get the blame for it.

2.5" drives are generally at lower risk of bearing failure and head crashes due to the much lower mass of the platters and heads. This also allows them to spin up faster and down sooner, both to save power and prevent being damaged by bumps - which laptops experience a lot more than desktop computers. I'm betting 3.5" hard drives have lower reliability in the A1200 for these reasons too.

It's natural to want move the keyboard around occasionally, and it may get bumped accidentally. For these reasons it would be better to have a separate box for the 3.5" hard drive. Unfortunately this would raise the price and make it less portable.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by babsimov

The st case design is better than the Amiga. Moreover, this is the case for the majority of boxes in the Atari ST range. The Falcon is in no way the same as the ST. It was a much better evolution of the line than the AGA was for the Amiga.

I dislike Falcon/ST's function keys.

I dislike Falcon's 16-bit gimped 68030 CPU which locked out the built-in CPU's 32-bit expansion capability.

AT&T marketed DSP3210 for 3D and multimedia acceleration.

Originally Posted by babsimov

But, as I said, reusing the 500 case for the AGA wouldn't have bothered me that much at the time. Especially if it had made it possible to have the AGA at the entry level in 1990. And it's the same for case of the 2000, it would have been better to keep it for the 3000. It was enough to change the plastic facade with a facade modernized in the style of the 3000. This way Commodore avoided the obligation to continue producing 2500s for the videotoaster market, because the 3000 case was not compatible.
https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...ct.aspx?id=166

" Some time after the Amiga 3000 had been shipping, we discovered that Commdore was still shipping many, many Amiga 2500/30 systems. Why? People liked the larger box, especially for Video Toaster applications"

A way for Dave Haynie to say, half-heartedly, that the design of the 3000 case was not that good.

The A3000's case designers didn't factor in the Video Toaster use case i.e. it's style over function.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TEG

excepting the joystick connectors under the machine

Dear god, this really is one of the WTHWTThinking design questions. For those who have never had an ST, it really can drive a man to tears since you have to lift the entire machine and then still fumble with the plug in a very narrow space.

Maybe not so much of a problem bitd for people who just connected it once and not changed anything for a long time, but for somebody like me in 2024 who rotates various machines on the desk often it's a big PITA.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TEG

So this where lie the real question: why C= did not provided a case accepting 3.5" and 2.5" drives without DIY as it seems it was possible out of the box?

In my opinion Ali was using the Amiga platform to push new PC technologies coming to the market: PCMCIA an 2.5". In a sense it was not totally stupid as it will be technologies really used in a near future in laptops but the Amiga deal with teething problems.

For the record, when I ordered my A1200 with an HD (I was absolutely bored with having only floppies on the A500), I had to wait something like 2 or 3 weeks because there was not 2.5" cable available. I mean it show there was a real problem of industrialisation/organisation at Commodore at A1200 time. Such problems delay cash to arrive when it could be avoided.


Your guts was right. Commodore was doing better with the A1200 and it was much appreciated than the Falcon but there was others factors.

Ali's PC component push was demands from Commodore Germany i.e. Commodore's PC division.

This is stated from Commodore the Inside Story - The Untold Tale of a Computer Giant book by David John Pleasance. Starting around page 126.

Commodore UK advised Ali for A300 replacing C64c.

Commodore Germany demanded a hard disk capable mass-produced Amiga model, hence A300 project's scope creep into A600.

From David Pleasance's book:

But in February or March 1991, after analysing the results from the UK
Christmas sales, it became obvious that the C64 as a saleable product was dying – in fact, for all intents and purposes, it was dead.
...
(skip, read the book for extra details)
...
In September that year, all the general managers met in Frankfurt to agree the final basic specifications of the A300, 

(skip, read the book for extra details)
...
It transpired that after our Frankfurt meeting the German subsidiary – who had clearly missed the whole point of the need and demand for the A300 – had underhandedly told Mehdi Ali that they could not and would not sell any Amiga that did not have a hard drive included, thereby sabotaging the whole well-thought-out plan to entice C64 buyers into an affordable upgrade path. Mehdi Ali simply rolled over and conceded, but never had the balls to talk to me or any other GM about the change of plan.

This A600 would become a catastrophic disaster for the
following reasons:

Though it was smaller and had fewer features than the A500, it cost more to manufacture.

Being called the A600 gave consumers the impression it was a higher specification machine than the A500, resulting in sales of the A500 slowing down significantly, virtually destroying that existing (and profitable) market.

We had prematurely killed off the A500 by introducing the A600 instead of the planned A300 – and on which we made considerably less money.

Consumers who bought the A600 believing it to be a superior model to A500 were very upset, believing they had been misled (which of course they had).

The press, with whom we had an excellent relationship, absolutely lambasted our misguided rationale, and justifiably so.

Meanwhile, boot capable AGA based AA3000+ didn't have IDE interface during Feb 1991.

1991 time waster's "A1000Jr" didn't have Gayle nor Budgie. A600 had Gayle (Gary replacement) chip. Budgie (Ramsey/cost-reduced Buster replacement) needs to be modified with Gayle.

According to Commodore Germany's demands, AA500+ without hard disk capability is no go. Additional work is needed for AGA-based A1000+.

My concept of AA500+ is just A500 with core AGA chipset, 68EC020, Fat Gary, Ramsey and 68020 local bus. Super Buster is needed for Zorro II/III expansion.

A600 has extra TLL chips for CPU bus separation for PCMCIA (along with Gayle R&D) and Agnus's Custom Chip bus.

Mehdi Ali has two significant information from Amiga's strongest markets i.e. UK and Germany.

It's up to Mehdi Ali and Bill "PCJr" Sydnes to provide leadership and figure out a good path forward.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TEG

In my opinion Ali was using the Amiga platform to push new PC technologies coming to the market: PCMCIA an 2.5". In a sense it was not totally stupid as it will be technologies really used in a near future in laptops but the Amiga deal with teething problems.

The only real 'teething problem' the Amiga had with PCMCIA was that it wasn't a PC. This meant that most PC cards wouldn't work 'out of the box' in the Amiga because the drivers were made for PC laptops. We would have to write our own drivers, which wasn't easy when the card manufacturer didn't publish the required hardware details.

However Amiga hardware designers soon realized that they could make their own PCMCIA devices relatively cheaply because the bus interface was actually quite simple. Performance was good too, twice as fast as Zorro II when in the A1200.

Ali was not responsible for putting PCMCIA on the A600 (and A1200). It was Jeff Porter, designer of the LCD portable and A500, who came up with the idea of putting PCMCIA in the A600. It was also his idea to drop the numeric keys and use smd to make the PCB and case smaller - all with the goal of making it cheaper (which was what Ali wanted). He put PCMCIA in it to replace the Zorro expansion port on the A500, which would be too large for the A600.

As has been previously stated, the Germans wanted a hard drive in the A600 - a good idea IMO. The IDE interface was cheap and allowed the use of a physically smaller internal hard drive that matched the rest of the machine. Compared to the equivalent A500 setup this was a much cheaper solution.

In late 1991 the A590 with 20MB XT-IDE drive was selling for £279. In mid 1992 an A600 with 20MB 2.5" drive cost only £95 more than the stock (floppy only) machine. With 2MB RAM the A590 cost £369. A 4MB PCMCIA card for the A600 cost £149. A 4MB RAM expansion box for the A500 cost £179. So having PCMCIA and IDE ports made the A600 cheaper to expand. You could have a 20MB hard drive and 4MB of FastRAM for £35 less than just the 20MB hard drive alone on the A500.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TEG

Clearly if you are the manufacturer of the computer you cannot take the risk of a such experience. 99,999% of hard drives are mounted at 90 deg angle, there is no data to backup you if you do otherwise on the long run on a lot of drives. You have to think industrial, ie mass production and so minimized all risks.

If you do otherwise your are simply not competent as a product designer as you put your company in potentially big troubles.

Ask Intel Raptor's memory corruptions to due aggressive CPU power profile.

In spec they say..

[ Show youtube player ]
From Hardware Unboxed. Intel CPUs Are Crashing & It's Intel's Fault. There's an email trail.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

A600 has extra TLL chips for CPU bus separation for PCMCIA (along with Gayle R&D) and Agnus's Custom Chip bus.

Those TTL chips isolate the PCMCIA port from the CPU bus. This was a cheap solution with practically zero development costs, and important to prevent possible ESD damage to sensitive custom chips etc.