Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Before anyone says they should have just like, made a cheap ubiquitous sound card for the Amiga, a cautionary tale.
I was in the position of needing to buy a sound card for my main PC Battlestation last year, basically I wanted surround sound because I had surround sound speakers and this Assrock motherboard just had stereo out. SRSLY, no digital out, just Mic In, Line In, Stereo Out.
So I amble on over to the local shopkeep and buy an Asus Xonar PCIe card, I had used these elsewhere years ago and figured how could I go wrong?
I slap it in, install drivers and it's like if you were playing the Blood Money intro while stabbing Paula with a screwdriver.
Google a bit and apparently there's a known incompatibility with this particular chipset, no fix or workaround.
And it's just a stupid PCIe 1X card, how the hell can this be happening?
I return it and buy a Soundblaster Audigy, for about $90.
This works just fine, except every now and then when it wakes up from sleep, it gives seriously distorted audio until I reboot.
Sound cards, nobody can do them right, mirite?

My old "ASUS Xonar D2X" PCIe card works fine with my cheapo MSI PRO B650M-P AM5 motherboard. I have a PCie 1X extension ribbon for Xonar since the MSI RTX 3080 Ti Gaming X Trio is fat.

My current PCie sound cards are;
CL Sound Blaster Z SE for ASUS TUF X670E Plus WiFi (upper floor). This AM5 motherboard doesn't have audio digital out i.e. only analog 7.1. Sound Blaster Z card was recycled from an older gaming PC setup i.e. ASUS ROG X570-F AM4 /ASUS ROG RTX 3080 Ti/Ryzen 9 3900X was sold. Sound Blaster Z SE sometimes doesn't recover from sleep which needs a reboot.

CL Sound Blaster AE-7 for ASUS ROG X670E Hero (upper floor). This AM5 motherboard has audio digital out. CL Sound Blaster AE-7 was recycled from an older gaming PC setup i.e. ASUS ROG X570-E AM4 (moved to the ground floor).

ASUS Xonar D2X for MSI PRO B650M-P (ground floor). ASUS Xonar D2X's Windows 10 X64 driver has been frozen in beta since October 2015.

My Amigas are located in the ground floor home office. Amigas doesn't have EPA sleep modes.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Yes, PC had many technologies and no standard till 1997. Amiga could use same technologies as PC and in the same way so i don't get your point.
Of course many Amiga users was OK with Paula so they no need to pursue additional technology. PC users are without choice - to get audio they need to invest money and risk no standard.
I never claimed that Paula was not outdated - of course it was but still outperform standard PC in 1992/1993 and i think this primary goal of this thread.

For DOS gaming, Sound Blaster is the de-facto standard. My Yamaha YMF262 OPL3 ISA card is a Sound Blaster Pro 2 clone. Yamaha competed against its customers e.g. Creative Labs.

Creative Lab's Sound Blaster Pro 2 uses Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3).

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TEG

Yeah, however it was very expensive. 1200F TTC in July 1993 (200$ / 355DM)! I did not search enough to find 1991 advertise. I precisely bought a compatible one because of the price and as a result it was barely working.

It make me think that, in the PC world, customers were used to only have the PC speaker or not sound at all. So the previous remark made by someone to not over exaggerate the importance of the sound was right from a PC perspective. From an Amiga perspective it was just unimaginable. This is just that people were accustomed to have s**t.



[edit]

ChatGPT say that "Sound Blaster Pro" was 250$ in 1991 which is consistent with 200$ in 1993.

From BYTE, Nov 1993, scanned page 199 of 454.

Sound Blaster 16 Basic is $199 USD.



From BYTE, Nov 1993

Sound Blaster Deluxe = $79 USD.
Sound Blaster Pro = $132 USD.
Sound Blaster 16 ASP = $230 USD.



From BYTE, Nov 1993
Sound Blaster Deluxe = $86.87 USD.
Sound Blaster Pro = $128.17 USD.
Sound Blaster 16 ASP = $219.79 USD.


ChatGPT is not accurate.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by TEG

So we can infer that if Commodore released in, let say 1989, but even 1988 was realist, a "Paula Blaster" card for the A2000 and an "A500 Blaster" with enhanced Paula, containing perhaps 2 of them as it was suggested in another post and embedding a better sound resolution, I think it would had the capacity to create a new dynamic in the market. I mean you would have buy an Amiga just to have a synthesizer at home.

Eventually in the "A500 Blaster" you would put those damn MIDI ports and you sell the "Official Amiga piano keyboard" to make more bucks and attack the synthesizer market, and the ST one.

The initial effort had been done. Paula was alive. They just had to enhance the design. Unless their fabrication process was at the limit in terms of transistors count per die. I can't judge this point but by using several chips you could certainly did wonders.

Actually if only it would have been technically feasible I'd release SID based PC soundcard in '85 and Paula based soundcard in 88/89. Use additional money to actually develop new stuff and try to move forward with something even more bold (but in this instance - working) than AAA... And as for future chipset it would've been great if it was easier an non-warranty-void type of chip replacement. So basically... yeah creating modular architecture but while retaining compatibility. It's not that big issue, with proper planning it would've been possible to create chipset interconnects future-proof and option to replace e.g. Agnus to Agnus XL which has both old agnus compatibility mode but natively support 32b data bus, burst modes and has twice DMA channels. Allowing incremental upgrades of single chips from chipset would've been fairly cheap even if IC itself would've been expensive (in comparison to replacing WHOLE platform to a new one) so that'd provide steady flow of cache with only R&D focused investments... There are many ideas which might have worked ... but in the end it's only hypothetical.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TEG

It make me think that, in the PC world, customers were used to only have the PC speaker or not sound at all. So the previous remark made by someone to not over exaggerate the importance of the sound was right from a PC perspective. From an Amiga perspective it was just unimaginable. This is just that people were accustomed to have s**t.

How is it "unimaginable", when heaps of top Amiga games (some I've alredy mentioned before) have very little fx? Yeah, I mean mostly "computer" style games, but there wer also many arcade-style ones where you'd get an intro music and some pew-pew later.

Secondly, it's typical for the good folks of AD 2024 to forget that not everybody had a top notch TV or HiFi rack back in the old time. When I finally managed to beg/steal/borrow my way to have an Amiga all I could connect it to was 14" green monitor with no sound, which was jerry rigged to some ramshackle old radio/tape deck combo. I eventually upgraded to a lil' colour TV with sound, but some arcane hair splitting about many-channels and mono/stereo was really the last thing on my mind.

The point is that back then we were used to enjoying games despite many technical disadvantages. So, yeah, if you happened to have a dad who only bought a powerful PC for work and didn't care much for soundcards, you'd still be rather happy that you could experience cutting edge games.

Regarding Paula being there in Amiga as a standard, sure it was a partially a blessing - allowing poors like me to have amazing, affordable sound solution - but also a curse in the long-term, since the PC clones' cheap expendability (which also drove innovation) was a key factor in microcomputers' demise.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Yeah, in retrospect that was disappointing. But no Amiga did, and in 1992 we didn't see it as that much of a big deal. The main thing was getting 256 colors so the graphics didn't suffer. Converting it to bitplanes shouldn't be hard - or so we thought. Who knew PC developers would just stick with chunky and convert it on the fly? (shades of ZX Spectrum games ported to the Amstrad without making any effort to change the graphics)

On the packed pixel issue, Commodore's CD32 software engineer had a very negative comment against A1200 that led to Akiko's C2P hardware assist.

Later, smaller 3rd party programmers figured out AGA's Blitter assist C2P. 3rd party Amiga diehards didn't give up on AGA's Blitter.

John Carmack's 1994 statement mirrored Commodore's official position on this issue.

Commodore did not have the game/tech demo/demo scene software engineering talent to mitigate the packed pixel issue for the larger A1200/A4000 install base.

Akiko's hardware assist C2P was less than a day job.

Most CPUs prefer to work on packed pixels format. The Amiga 2D game ideology has minimized CPU usage, hence there is a disconnect.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If there was one thing I would have added to AGA it would be this, even it didn't work with sprites etc. Just give us 320x200 in 256 color 1 byte per pixel screen and don't worry if it doesn't fit with anything else!
.

Commodore could have "MCGA'ed" ECS with AGA's gaming resolution only for A500/A2000/A3000. Specfic target 320x200/256p 1 byte 256 color mode is good.

AGA's 640x400p (Double NSTC)/512p (Double PAL) with 256 colors and 640x200p/256p with 256 colors are mostly business resolution modes. 640x400p/512p with 256 colors are entry-level SVGA resolution modes.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

No. The blitter can be doing its work while the CPU is doing other stuff. I notice this when compiling.

It depends on the resolution and colors displayed.

I applied CPUFastBilt patches when I had my TF1260 with A1200.

You can bog down AGA's Blitter with 640x400p with 256 colors on Workbench. AGA's Blitter wasn't scaled for Lisa's X4 display capabilities.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Moving windows around, scrolling text etc. doesn't slow it down, and the system still feels responsive even when the CPU is working hard out (unlike this PC I'm using now - 4GB of RAM and a 3GHz CPU - and it takes ages to open a simple window! I don't know what it's doing in there - guess the hamsters need a rest every now and then).

This is a Windows issue.

SSD storage has a higher importance for Windows 7/8/10/11. With SSD and Windows XP SP3, my old Dell Pentium 4M /GeForce FX5200 laptop is fast.
"3 Ghz CPU" can be meaningless when the slowest component is a mass storage device.

My A1200 has solid-state storage devices for PiStorm32-Emu68 and (hotkey disable PiStorm on boot) stock A1200 modes.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Actually if only it would have been technically feasible I'd release SID based PC soundcard in '85 and Paula based soundcard in 88/89. Use additional money to actually develop new stuff and try to move forward with something even more bold (but in this instance - working) than AAA... And as for future chipset it would've been great if it was easier an non-warranty-void type of chip replacement. So basically... yeah creating modular architecture but while retaining compatibility. It's not that big issue, with proper planning it would've been possible to create chipset interconnects future-proof and option to replace e.g. Agnus to Agnus XL which has both old agnus compatibility mode but natively support 32b data bus, burst modes and has twice DMA channels. Allowing incremental upgrades of single chips from chipset would've been fairly cheap even if IC itself would've been expensive (in comparison to replacing WHOLE platform to a new one) so that'd provide steady flow of cache with only R&D focused investments... There are many ideas which might have worked ... but in the end it's only hypothetical.

Commodore engineer who designed SID has exited Commodore and co-founded Ensoniq and it was later purchased by Creative Labs.

Ensoniq's sound cards were popular and shipped with many IBM PC compatibles. Many games in the late MS-DOS era supported the Ensoniq Soundscape either directly or through General MIDI.

In addition, Ensoniq devised an ISA software audio emulation solution for their new PCI sound cards that was compatible with most contemporary IBM PC games. It is speculated that this was an important factor in Creative Lab's acquisition of Ensoniq, because Creative/E-MU was struggling with legacy compatibility at the time with their higher-performance PCI audio solutions.

I still have my ES1370 PCI card. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoni...q_ES1370_1.jpg

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

I wouldn't say SNES had a big audio capability, sure there was DSP with 6502 core but due to constraints on cartridge memory SNES audio capabilities were hardly utilized, it was yet another reason to use some weird tricks and make actual music from basically just few bytes of data. (un)fortunately Nintendo did dump CD-ROM based add-ons to SNES (including Play Station), if they went forward with the initial idea that'd be basically game over for Amiga in gaming market.

Now soundcards on PC. Sure there were plenty of cheap ones (including some clones) with not so great quality but by the time A1200 was released there were pretty decent ones in affordable price level. And - to no surprise - they did support PC CD-ROM titles with proper soundtracks played in the background... with speech during cutscenes and so on. And soon PC gaming industry became a lot more creative. All while Amiga developers were still trying to fit their games into floppies and running on 2MB chipram equipped A1200 ...

When CD-ROM evolved into a popular storage media for distributing software, the Amiga desktop platform didn't officially evolve with it.

Officially, CD32 was separated from the rest of the AGA platform.

Wedge-shaped Amiga form factor would find it difficult to include a 5-inch CD-ROM drive, 3.5-inch hard disk, and 3.5-inch floppy disk drive.

The laptop's slim CD-ROM drive could fit inside the A1200's case, but laptop parts usually have higher prices.

Commodore could sell Amiga chipsets and license reference designs like AMD/NVIDIA's business model and the final assembly risk is on 3rd parties.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by hammer

From BYTE, Nov 1993, scanned page 199 of 454.

Sound Blaster 16 Basic is $199 USD.



From BYTE, Nov 1993

Sound Blaster Deluxe = $79 USD.
Sound Blaster Pro = $132 USD.
Sound Blaster 16 ASP = $230 USD.



From BYTE, Nov 1993
Sound Blaster Deluxe = $86.87 USD.
Sound Blaster Pro = $128.17 USD.
Sound Blaster 16 ASP = $219.79 USD.


ChatGPT is not accurate.

Thanks for the scans. That mean we were paying an hidden "extra tax" here in France. Anyway 130$ is still significant.

[Amigajay]

Hammer why did you post scans of 1993 prices when the chatgpt quote was from 1991?!

Either way, most Amiga owners probably thought it was expensive and a luxury at the time, i always thought it strange you had to buy a ‘sound card’ for your IBM, though i guess they were business machines primarily, and on the few rare occasions i was shown DOS games they only had beeper sound.

And don’t forget comparing US prices will always be cheaper (where DOS gaming took off alot quicker) when comparing to the Amiga market which was majority European based.

Edit: couldn’t find the Sound Blaster Pro in any UK PC mags in 1991, in early 1992 it was listed at £179.99, so probably around the said $250 when launched.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Actually if only it would have been technically feasible I'd release SID based PC soundcard in '85 and Paula based soundcard in 88/89. Use additional money to actually develop new stuff and try to move forward with something even more bold (but in this instance - working) than AAA... And as for future chipset it would've been great if it was easier an non-warranty-void type of chip replacement. So basically... yeah creating modular architecture but while retaining compatibility. It's not that big issue, with proper planning it would've been possible to create chipset interconnects future-proof and option to replace e.g. Agnus to Agnus XL which has both old agnus compatibility mode but natively support 32b data bus, burst modes and has twice DMA channels. Allowing incremental upgrades of single chips from chipset would've been fairly cheap even if IC itself would've been expensive (in comparison to replacing WHOLE platform to a new one) so that'd provide steady flow of cache with only R&D focused investments... There are many ideas which might have worked ... but in the end it's only hypothetical.

Look like a SID card for PC was technically feasible. I don't know if you are award of the "HardSID ISA Board". It was realised in 1999:
[ Show youtube player ]

So yeah, with there advance on the PC world, they could have infiltrate the market with:
1/ A SID card in 1983 (C64 was released in 1982)
2/ An Amiga video card for PC in, let's say 1988 after the A500 launch.
3/ Simultaneously an Amiga sound card for the PC

You could have pushed customers to buy the two cards by proposing some extra features only if both were installed in tandem in the PC.
Such card would have push the technicals team to create C2P for the Amiga I think.

[sandruzzo]

whether you like ti or not, Paula is still impressive today cos It was back in the days

[TEG]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

How is it "unimaginable", when heaps of top Amiga games (some I've alredy mentioned before) have very little fx? Yeah, I mean mostly "computer" style games, but there wer also many arcade-style ones where you'd get an intro music and some pew-pew later.

Because of Defender of the Crown, SOTB, Lotus Turbo Esprit, Pinball Dream, etc... which set the level. It was part of the soul of the Amiga, what made the legend and why you wanted the machine.

Not to mention the trackers part with the dreaming amount of floppies samples which were circulating AND the incredible digits read in real time from floppies! This was mind blowing.

An Amiga without Paula wouldn't have been the Amiga.

[ Show youtube player ]

I had another one with the Money For Nothing intro.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Promilus

as for PC games they used to support all mainstream standards like GUS, Roland, SB and AdLib - in fact sound system setup was the first thing to do after installing the game.

Not all games supported all those 'mainstream standards', and who could blame them? What a nightmare it must have been for PC game developers. You just finished writing hardware drivers and music converters for half a dozen wildly different sound systems, and then someone comes out with yet another one!

And yes, many cards did support competitor's standard through emulation (although stability and performance remains debatable).

I remember those times. Not fun! Why couldn't the PC have really standard sound hardware that games could use automatically - without having to ask silly questions like what I/O address and interrupt the sound card is set to? You know, like on that other computer with awesome sound hardware that was so underappreciated by its fans.

Actually IBM did introduce a 'standard' sound system in 1984, except only for their short-lived 'home' computer, the PC jr. But Tandy used it their very popular Tandy 1000 (PC jr done right) and it was also used in the BBC Micro, Sega SC-3000, SG-1000 and Master System, Ti99/4a and several other home computers, as well as many arcade machines. With 3 square wave tone generators and noise channel the SN76489 was much better than the PC's stock 'PC speaker' sound.

This is the PC 'standard' that in 1984 the Amiga was looking to beat with its four channels of PCM sound capable of producing any waveform you could imagine, each with its own independent playback frequency, fed via DMA for very low CPU overhead. This deceptively simple system was so good that 7 years later expensive PC addon cards struggled to match it. Here was a standard with the power and elegance to stand the test of time. And yet some individuals - who seem unable to say anything good about the Amiga - excoriate it for being 'outdated', as if having such a powerful enduring standard meant nothing.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

whether you like ti or not, Paula is still impressive today cos It was back in the days

It's nice enough and the 14bit trick helps with CD style audio (WAV) and channel mixing (DeliTracker).

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not all games supported all those 'mainstream standards', and who could blame them? What a nightmare it must have been for PC game developers. You just finished writing hardware drivers and music converters for half a dozen wildly different sound systems, and then someone comes out with yet another one!

Of course it was a nightmare, but also perhaps the pinnacle of thinking from "The cathedral and the bazaar". By throwing loads of solutions out there, the better ones survived and innovation from all of them fed back into the next set of offerings. And ultimately the need to cope with that variety lead to DirectX.

Meanwhile the Amiga had Paula as it's cathedral and nobody had the time or money to build a better cathedral, so it was stuck with it even when things should have moved on.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TEG

An Amiga without Paula wouldn't have been the Amiga.

One of my most treasured memories is the first time I turned on my brand new A1000, and heard that awesome full-bodied stereo sound coming out of the monitor speakers as it started up. I fell in love with the Amiga right there and then, and nothing could disappoint me about it from that time on. People who never used an A1000 can't appreciate what a 'religious' experience that was.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Of course it was a nightmare, but also perhaps the pinnacle of thinking from "The cathedral and the bazaar". By throwing loads of solutions out there, the better ones survived and innovation from all of them fed back into the next set of offerings. And ultimately the need to cope with that variety lead to DirectX.

Meanwhile the Amiga had Paula as it's cathedral and nobody had the time or money to build a better cathedral, so it was stuck with it even when things should have moved on.

And so it goes. Whatever warts the PC had are held up as some kind of advantage, while anything the Amiga had is denigrated. And the people pushing this narrative are always - Amiga fans! Where did this self-loathing come from?

Well I for one refuse to 'move on' from that magical time. Instead I will crank up the volume on my stereo with huge speakers and blast out classic MOD songs until 3 am - or until I fall asleep after a hard day at work, and dream of being back in 1987 again being blown away by Paula's awesome sound.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

One of my most treasured memories is the first time I turned on my brand new A1000, and heard that awesome full-bodied stereo sound coming out of the monitor speakers as it started up. I fell in love with the Amiga right there and then, and nothing could disappoint me about it from that time on. People who never used an A1000 can't appreciate what a 'religious' experience that was.

Especially having come from a Spectrum

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And so it goes. Whatever warts the PC had are held up as some kind of advantage, while anything the Amiga had is denigrated. And the people pushing this narrative are always - Amiga fans! Where did this self-loathing come from?

Why do you assume it's self loathing?

The Amiga was awesome as a 16-bit machine and easily outclassed the PC. Where I think both Commodore and Atari went wrong was trying to maintain that same design into the 32-bit era. They tied themselves up in backwards compatible designs that disappointed because they didn't represent the kind of step change people saw when the 8-bit designs were scrapped and replaced by wholly incompatible 16-bit machines.

Had they started with a clean slate straight after the OCS chipset was completed and built the next revolutionary platform, maybe the home computer scene could have continued. Instead they tried to play the same game as Microsoft, keeping everything compatible, but they had neither the resources nor the skills to do so. The nearest we saw was Apple, who weren't afraid to break things if it was in the long term goal of the platform and I think their success in remaining relevant shows something of what might have been.