Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[malko]

Originally Posted by grond

[...] Oh, and the processor wasn't an Intel at all but a 6x86 by Cyrix, [...]

For having used some of them, the most obvious was the price difference with Intel CPUs. In terms of usage, for the time and the used application (office use), there was no difference.
Some comparison here

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by roondar

To clear things up, I've attached part of a screenshot from the june 1996 issue of Amiga Format to show I was roughly correct, a 1230 MK IV cost 180 pounds without FPU/RAM, and 280 GBP with 4MB of RAM (I can't find a 2MB version this quickly, but IIRC that would've been about 250GPB total).

Don't forget that a Blizzard 1230 IV is the top end of 030 accelerators. You could get an entry-level 030 card for £120-130, and a Viper 030/28 with 8MB of fast RAM for £180.

Regardless of my error, I'm still 100% sure you could not get a Pentium 90 PC for that price.

Indeed. Feels more like trolling to me...

[CrazyPepsi]

What happend to Pos ??

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by CrazyPepsi

What happend to Pos ??

I fear the answer to that will continue to elude us all.

[CrazyPepsi]

leak download :P ?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Don't forget that a Blizzard 1230 IV is the top end of 030 accelerators. You could get an entry-level 030 card for £120-130, and a Viper 030/28 with 8MB of fast RAM for £180.

By 1997 you could get a Blizzard 1230-IV for £129.95, and by 1998 it had dropped to £95.95. RAM was much cheaper by then too.

So while PCs were getting cheaper, so was Amiga hardware. If you had an A1200 then it was an excellent time to upgrade. And no reason to discard it when only a few years old.

The 1998 advert below is interesting because it shows that even A500 and A600 users could upgrade their Amigas for not much money. Compare that to 386 owners whose only real choice was to buy a whole new machine.

20 years later, where are those 386s? Most went to the tip. But A1200s are now selling on eBay for £450 or more, and Blizzard 1230-IVs for £200+. The A1200 has held its value much better than a typical PC of the same vintage.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by grond

Sorry, you don't remember right. I spent 97/98 in England and the conversion rate was 1 £ = 3.2 .. 3.35 DM during that time which seemed very good as it had been 4 DM for a long time.

So, I decided to Google it. Partly because I started to really doubt my memory there and partly because the date you mentioned (1997/1998) was about a year after the date I was talking about in that post (1996).

As it turns out, the rate fluctuated throughout 1996 - trending up. Starting in January at 1 £ = 2,21DM and ending in December at 1 £ = 2,62DM. (averaging 2,42)

I'd call that both of us being equally right and wrong - we're both off by about the same amount .

Source: https://freecurrencyrates.com/en/exc...P-DEM/1996/cbr

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

20 years later, where are those 386s? Most went to the tip. But A1200s are now selling on eBay for £450 or more, and Blizzard 1230-IVs for £200+. The A1200 has held its value much better than a typical PC of the same vintage.

In all fairness, I'm pretty sure most Amiga's went to the tip as well.

As for e-bay, I did a quick search and you can get complete 386 systems for anywhere between €200 and €400. Similarly, you can get A1200's for around €350. To me, the somewhat lower price for the 386 seems understandable as so many more of them were made. And even then there are crazy people asking for way too much money https://www.ebay.nl/itm/IBM-PC-AT-51...wAAOSw94ddFYW9

Seems very close to the norm for retro computing

[CrazyPepsi]

it doesent matter psx was the thing to get even the demo disc is epic

[roondar]

Originally Posted by CrazyPepsi

it doesent matter psx was the thing to get even the demo disc is epic

I had a lot more fun with my A1200 in 1992 than I did with my PSX in 1992. Wonder why

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by roondar

In all fairness, I'm pretty sure most Amiga's went to the tip as well.

Perhaps, but the number produced was much lower than PCs, so I suspect a greater proportion have survived.

then there are crazy people asking for way too much money https://www.ebay.nl/itm/IBM-PC-AT-51...wAAOSw94ddFYW9

This is a recent trend, and it's interesting because real IBM PCs and XTs go for much more than clones. I suspect many are going to 'collectors' who want to own a bit of history. Personally I wouldn't touch one at any price (having to work with crappy IBM PCs and XTs is a memory I don't I don't want to bring back.)

What's the attraction of an XT or AT, or even a 386 or 486? People are still throwing away Pentium systems that are much more capable and can run the same software. I can only guess that long-time PC owners are trying to relive their youth by pretending that more powerful PCs don't exist (this would explain that silly 486 benchmarking thread).

The Amiga market is quite different. In general we are (sensibly) willing to pay more for later more advanced models, and we are not shy about upgrading our machines beyond what was possible in 1992. Our Amigas are not museum pieces, and we don't keep them just to make pointless benchmark comparisons.

[rmzalbar]

When the Amiga line came out in the mid-80's, it did everything so much better than its competition that the effect was essentially magical. Nothing else at the time was anywhere close at any price. It simply did everything better, and it did that into the 90's before anyone else began to get their legs under them. Seeing an Amiga out for demonstration in a store, or discovering one for the first time at someone's home was an almost religious experience.

That the arguments here have come down to neck-and-neck comparisons with rulers and split-second stopwatches out and whatnot, is related to why I was disappointed with the A1200 at the time. For all of the time and talent Commodore had available to them to reimagine the hardware, the magic just didn't happen. There should have simply been no comparison possible. Of course, the lack of interest on the part of the top executives and the failure to reinvest in silicon capability made this impossible - the engineers did a good job with what they had available to them.

Today, of course, the lack of diversity in the hardware benefits the Amiga and C64 fan - getting a great system together is fairly easy to do, and it also provides a well-defined golden-age where most of the software runs as it should on one configuration, and takes good advantage of it.

It's hard to nail down old DOS stuff in the same way as there was a constant bit-by-bit progression of each individual hardware system, requiring a lot of fiddling around and decisions to make when you decide to build a retro 386 PC, for example. And.. the feelings just aren't there.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by grond

Oh, and the processor wasn't an Intel at all but a 6x86 by Cyrix, I think, which was a Pentium MMx-class CPU, not a (much, much more expensive) Pentium Pro.

Hang on, would that be allowed to have an Intel Inside badge on it if it were a Cyrix CPU?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by rmzalbar

When the Amiga line came out in the mid-80's, it did everything so much better than its competition that the effect was essentially magical. Nothing else at the time was anywhere close at any price. It simply did everything better, and it did that into the 90's before anyone else began to get their legs under them. Seeing an Amiga out for demonstration in a store, or discovering one for the first time at someone's home was an almost religious experience.

See, I respect your opinion - if you're disappointed with the A1200 that's fine and I can understand that. Understand my replies have nothing to do with trying to convince you otherwise. My responses here are mostly about 'how true' certain thing are. With that in mind, I want to reply to the above.

Now... I know this is controversial on an Amiga forum. But in 1987, when the A500 was released (a computer which pretty much no one was disappointed by), there already was 'better' tech you could buy for prices not too far from that 386SX I keep comparing the A1200 with...

Please don't burn me now

At the same time as the A500 was launched, you could get a 286 with VGA card*, or an Acorn Archimedes. Now, these were more expensive than an A500, but that shouldn't really be a problem - after all, people in ths thread have consistently compared the A1200 to much more expensive hardware and called it disappointing it couldn't compete.

Note then that the A500 launched in a very similar position as the A1200 did: it featured slightly older technology and competitors had started to catch up. The only difference is one of respective popularity in the marketplace and perhaps how far competitors had caught up. But the notion that an A500 was better than all machines around it was not really true. It was more popular (in Europe at least) for sure, though and hence got much better software support. Especially in that key area of games.

The fact that the arguments here have come down to neck-and-neck comparisons with rulers and split-second stopwatches out and whatnot, is directly related to why I was disappointed with the A1200 at the time. For all of the time Commodore had available to them to reimagine the hardware, the magic just didn't happen. There should have simply been no comparison possible. Of course, the lack of interest on the part of the top executives and the failure to reinvest in silicon capability made this impossible - the engineers did a good job with what they had available to them.

Well, the reality here is that the A500 was not as far above it's competitors as most of us think.

Just look at some of the recent Acorn Archimedes stuff, or at some ports of A500 games to the system (many of which are simply better on the Archimedes). Or in fact look at some of the stuff you can run on a 286+VGA. They're really rather impressive machines that were available at the same time as the A500. In some ways the Acorn and the 286 with VGA were very clearly and objectively better than the A500: both have 256 colour graphics for instance, both have a faster CPU and the Archimedes also has better sound: 8 channels vs 4, with similar sampling rates and support for panning.

Don't get me wrong, I thought like you did in 1987 and I loved my A500. But knowing what I know now, I understand that this was in no small part due to the failing of the Acorn Archimedes and 286 (over here in Europe at least) as demo scene and game computers. It's not that they couldn't do it, it's just that people used them for other things. And so we got the idea 'our' hardware was much better.

Today, of course, the lack of diversity in the hardware benefits the Amiga and C64 fan - getting a great system together is fairly easy to do, and it also provides a well-defined golden-age where most of the software runs as it should on one configuration, and takes good advantage of it.

It's hard to nail down old DOS stuff in the same way as there was a constant bit-by-bit progression of each individual hardware system, requiring a lot of fiddling around and decisions to make when you decide to build a retro 386 PC, for example. And.. the feelings just aren't there.

I agree. And you know, it is difficult to see things as they were back in the day when talking about these subjects. So that does muddle things a bit.

*) In fact, as early as 1985 (when the A1000 was launched), you could a 'high colour' ISA card for surprisingly little money (as in several hundred dollars at the most) that let your PC display a 1000+ colours on screen out of a palette of hundreds of thousands. These cards were never popular with consumers and so no games supported them, but they did exist and were used in video applications.

Originally Posted by Dunny

Hang on, would that be allowed to have an Intel Inside badge on it if it were a Cyrix CPU?

I can't read that logo at all. But I do believe the Intel Inside badge has always been blue.
More importantly, perhaps: Intel never named any of it's CPU's 6x86.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by roondar

Now... I know this is controversial on an Amiga forum. But in 1987, when the A500 was released (a computer which pretty much no one was disappointed by), there already was 'better' tech you could buy for prices not too far from that 386SX I keep comparing the A1200 with...

The better tech was certainly not DOS PC’s which were still in the thousands to buy and still used CGA, EGA for games at the time, and not talking workstations the best was probably the X68000 yet still around £3000 at launch and only sold in Japan, so again comparisons are worthless with prices like these.

Originally Posted by roondar

At the same time as the A500 was launched, you could get a 286 with VGA card*, or an Acorn Archimedes. Now, these were more expensive than an A500, but that shouldn't really be a problem - after all, people in ths thread have consistently compared the A1200 to much more expensive hardware and called it disappointing it couldn't compete.

Of course its a ‘problem’ are we comparing like for like or apples with bananas!? spending more than the computer you are comparing just for a video card (and the same again for a sound blaster card) is laughable, yes the Archimedes was closer in price but even the cheapest model with little support was still double the price.

Originally Posted by roondar

Note then that the A500 launched in a very similar position as the A1200 did: it featured slightly older technology and competitors had started to catch up. The only difference is one of respective popularity in the marketplace and perhaps how far competitors had caught up. But the notion that an A500 was better than all machines around it was not really true. It was more popular (in Europe at least) for sure, though and hence got much better software support. Especially in that key area of games.

Don’t agree at all with this statement, the A500 launched with the best technology you could get for the price, the A1200 on the other hand was just about the best budget computer for the price.

And you keep saying ‘everyone or most of us’ think the A500 was the best machine at the time, that’s simply not true, of course the as i mentioned the X68000 wiped the floor in most aspects power wise, but it simply wasn’t in the same market, in the budget home computer market nothing beat the A500 for power vs price.

Originally Posted by roondar

Just look at some of the recent Acorn Archimedes stuff, or at some ports of A500 games to the system (many of which are simply better on the Archimedes). Or in fact look at some of the stuff you can run on a 286+VGA. They're really rather impressive machines that were available at the same time as the A500. In some ways the Acorn and the 286 with VGA were very clearly and objectively better than the A500: both have 256 colour graphics for instance, both have a faster CPU and the Archimedes also has better sound: 8 channels vs 4, with similar sampling rates and support for panning.

Again different markets and much higher prices, plus alot of the A500 ports to the Archimedes came a couple of years later when the machine was dying and only mainly Krisalis and 4th Dimension were supporting it, so unless you wanted to wait until 1994 to play Cannon Fodder, Lemmings 2, Heimdall and you needed 2mb ram for the privilege then yeah the Archimedes was the games machine for you!

[grond]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

the A500 launched with the best technology you could get for the price, the A1200 on the other hand was just about the best budget computer for the price.

Interesting statement. Both computers were the best tech for their respektive prices at their time but one was the best Volkswagen for the price and the other was the best Lada for the price? Hence, the problem with the A1200 was that Commodore couldn't offer a more capable machine at perhaps 1.5 times to twice the price of the A1200? I guess that's really what it boils down to.

[grond]

Originally Posted by roondar

So, I decided to Google it. Partly because I started to really doubt my memory there and partly because the date you mentioned (1997/1998) was about a year after the date I was talking about in that post (1996).

As it turns out, the rate fluctuated throughout 1996 - trending up. Starting in January at 1 £ = 2,21DM and ending in December at 1 £ = 2,62DM. (averaging 2,42)

I'd call that both of us being equally right and wrong - we're both off by about the same amount .

Amazing. The rates don't even line up well with what I am 100% sure I got between September 1997 and June 1998. I guess consumer conversion rates in banks and post office were a separate story... (oh, them scurvy banksters!)

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by grond

Interesting statement. Both computers were the best tech for their respektive prices at their time but one was the best Volkswagen for the price and the other was the best Lada for the price? Hence, the problem with the A1200 was that Commodore couldn't offer a more capable machine at perhaps 1.5 times to twice the price of the A1200? I guess that's really what it boils down to.

Well it boils down to Commodore being dicks to the creators of the Amiga and hence they weren't around to work on a successor, in the end Commodore were turning into another PC brand, the custom chips on the AA simply weren't impressive enough, yes it was a nice 'upgrade' to the A500 and well worth the money if you were getting an Amiga anyway, but for the majority of A500 owners the upgrade simply wasn't worth the bother.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Hang on, would that be allowed to have an Intel Inside badge on it if it were a Cyrix CPU?

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have been allowed. The description of the computer is pretty clear though while the image is not. If it is an "Intel inside" logo, the most likely explanation is that there were also PCs in the same case with an Intel CPU and the ad designers messed up as all computers in the catalogue seemingly looked the same.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

The better tech was certainly not DOS PC’s which were still in the thousands to buy and still used CGA, EGA for games at the time, and not talking workstations the best was probably the X68000 yet still around £3000 at launch and only sold in Japan, so again comparisons are worthless with prices like these.

Which is exactly why I did not compare the A500 to them. I compared the A500 to the competition the A1200 had in the computer market: a machine roughly double the price.

If you've read this thread, you'll have noted that many people in it have claimed that the A1200 wasn't very good because PC's were as good or better. I pointed out about a thousand times that those PC's were much more expensive. And the reaction I got was essentially "who cares about price".

By the way, I got curious about PC pricing in 1987 so I looked it up. In 1987, you could buy a genuine IBM PS/2 model 30-002 with 256 colour graphics (in 320x200) for $1700. Nowhere near 3000 pounds (at 1987 rates that's about 1100 pounds or roughly twice the price of an A500). Note: the graphics card used in that PC was supported by many games: as early as 1988 you had 256 colour mode PC games.

Source: Infoworld April 6, 1987 and https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/ba...BP-to-USD-1987.

Of course its a ‘problem’ are we comparing like for like or apples with bananas!? spending more than the computer you are comparing just for a video card (and the same again for a sound blaster card) is laughable, yes the Archimedes was closer in price but even the cheapest model with little support was still double the price.

I'm comparing the same price difference here as existed between the A1200 and "budget PC's". I do this because it has been pointed out ad nauseum in this thread that those PC's were "too close/better" in abilities compared to the A1200 for the machine to be worthwhile.

The Archimedes cost about 800 pounds on launch. The cheap PC's that were 'better' than the A1200 cost closer to 1000 pounds. The A500 cost 500 pounds on launch, the A1200 400 pounds.

See how that is the roughly the same difference? The way I'm comparing hasn't changed at all. I use the same standard for every machine.

Don’t agree at all with this statement, the A500 launched with the best technology you could get for the price, the A1200 on the other hand was just about the best budget computer for the price.

I disagree completely here. Both launched with the best technology you could get for the price. It was impossible to get an A1200 level computer for the same cost. Closest you got were those 386's and they cost a good deal more and often didn't even include sound (there was also the Atari Falcon, but it was only on the market for under a year before it was cancelled. It was also more expensive than the A1200 by a significant margin. And if you actually wanted it to have the same amount of RAM, it became even more expensive).

Now, I will agree that OCS was more 'modern' in 1987 than AGA was in 1992. But that doesn't change my point: neither the A500 nor the A1200 had competitors that could do the same at the same price.

And you keep saying ‘everyone or most of us’ think the A500 was the best machine at the time, that’s simply not true, of course the as i mentioned the X68000 wiped the floor in most aspects power wise, but it simply wasn’t in the same market, in the budget home computer market nothing beat the A500 for power vs price.

I never said 'everyone' thinks so. I did say 'most of us' and that seems a fair conclusion to me after reading this thread and it's continued lavish praise for the A500. Edit: understand I do love the A500 and think it had great hardware for the price.

Now, don't get me wrong: in the budget market, the A500 was very nice. But so was the A1200, despite all your protests. They were much more alike than you want to admit.

Again different markets and much higher prices

Again, exactly the same as with the A1200 in 1992: PC's were mostly in a different market and much more expensive. Yet quite a few people in this thread have consistently compared the A1200 to those much more expensive PC's, some going as far as comparing it to PC's or consoles that were several years newer.

All I'm doing is using the exact same standard. And if that is wrong then I'm done here - one standard for all is the only correct way to do these comparisons.

If the A500 can only be seen as a budget machine and mustn't be compared to machines twice the price or several years newer because it's unfair to do so then the same must hold for the A1200 as well. If, on the other hand we go down the route of this thread then we see the A1200 is being compared to machines twice the price and that is apparently OK.

Fair enough, in that case - the same goes for comparisons between the A500 and it's competitors. No double standards.

, plus alot of the A500 ports to the Archimedes came a couple of years later when the machine was dying and only mainly Krisalis and 4th Dimension were supporting it, so unless you wanted to wait until 1994 to play Cannon Fodder, Lemmings 2, Heimdall and you needed 2mb ram for the privilege then yeah the Archimedes was the games machine for you!

I didn't say the Archimedes was a better machine if you wanted to play games. I did, however, say that its lack of gaming ability was (IMHO) because of market situations - as the machine very clearly could provide games that were at least at A500 levels.

As for games on the system, you might want to recheck that. I Googled it and found and all of the games on your list were available in 1993 for the Archimedes. Incidentally, that was also the year when they were released on the Amiga. Apart from Heimdall, they required 1MB of RAM.

Interestingly, I found there were plenty of other Amiga ports on the system. Such as SWIV (1991), Lemmings (1991), Gods (1991), Pacmania (1991), Lotus 2 (1992).

[Dunny]

Back when the A1200 was launched, I was very poor. I had saved up my paper round money for an A1000 of my own years prior which my Dad then bought me. I used it until at least '96 before getting an A1200 which took a HUGE amount of cash for me.

PCs were a non-starter. Way too expensive, especially if I wanted to play the decent games that were out. And besides, I was already invested in the Amiga. The A1200 was a no-brainer and was a much needed upgrade.

I was well happy with it.