Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

C64 users do not need to take care about such problems Everything works on every C64

NTSC C64 has plenty of compatibility issues with C64 software.

[Chucky]

this is like having a discussion with a toddler......
(or flatearther. kinda same thing)

[Chucky]

And, btw, an A-590 harddisk cost at least 4 times the price of a 1541, not less!! Seems you have no idea about what it all cost back then?

browsing through old Amiga magazines. Amiga 500 6995Kr (SEK) A590: 6995 SEK..

quite spot on.. I would say.

[Tigerskunk]

@Overdoc:
I can get where you are coming from.

Yet I think it's hard to compare these two systems, since conceptually they are so extremely different.

The Amiga was designed to be a dynamic, flexible and open system.

The C64 was always a much more "stoic" and closed system. It does what it does, and it does it extremely well. It's a really rounded package out of the box.

The Amiga isn't. But that's kind of its idea in a way. It's expandable, dynamic and open. Which gives the user a lot more chance to do shit with it. But also greater things.

So, kind of apples and oranges, really.

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Chucky

browsing through old Amiga magazines. Amiga 500 6995Kr (SEK) A590: 6995 SEK..

quite spot on.. I would say.

Read your own words again, please!
You claimed that an A-590 was the same price like a 1541, which is absolute nonsense!!

Otherwise, show me what year this Amiga mag is from, and I will try to find an old C64 mag from the same time, so you can see the thruth.


@Steril707:
Thanks a lot for your post, at least I see there is also some users here who can understand what I am talking about.
And yes, I am fully with you.
These are very different systems, and both have their positive, but also negative sides.
Only problem is that since this is an Amihga enthusiasts forum, most cannot admit that, or are simply too blind to see the problms from a user#s perspective.

@Aardvark:
Good point! Absolutely correct.
But in the end it was not much of a problem, since software sold in PAL countries was PAL compatible, and software sold in USA was NTSC compatible.
The problem of incompatibilities due to not swichable memory expansion affected users much more.

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Gorf

16 times for the C128 is correct.
But the dolphinDOS manual claimed only 25x for very special cases - for most operations it is 10x or even less.

25 times is for everything that uses the kernal load routines, which definitely IS MOST operations
16 times on the 1571 in burst mode also works only for LOAD and not for other data tranfer routines

You are comparing apples with pears here.

Originally Posted by Gorf

But this all is of course very much besides the point:
Without any expansions the C64 has dog slow floppy speeds.

Just like the Amiga 500 without any harddisk expansion.
It is dog slow and needs annoying diskchanges when you want to use any diskcommand

Originally Posted by Gorf

You are constantly comparing a C64 with all kinds of extras to a stock A500 and there you only pick a certain operation and claim the C64 is superior…

Not true!
I originally compared loading a directory between a stock C64 with 1541 drive and a stock Amiga 500, both systems WITHOUT any expansions.

I only brought Dolphindos into play as soon as people told me that the problem could be solved on the Amiga 500 side easily by adding a harddisk, or second diskdrive, etc.
But then it is a completely different thing!!

Originally Posted by Gorf

By now I am sure you know very well this is all very stupid.
This all makes no sense other than you are trolling us.

These points are certainly not stupid, it is somthing which happened to users in reality tons of times. It is just that you are completely stuck in your technical system and cannot understand the problems from a users/customers side.

Why do you think nearly every Amiga 500 you buy these days has a hole drilled somewhere for this needed memory expansion on/off switch?
If it would have been sooo useless and not needed like you all claim here, then why did everyone need to drill the hole and install this switch?!

Originally Posted by Gorf

No, I did not #forget#.
But that is simply not what the Amiga was intended for.

It was good at gaming - sure. But it could and can do so much more.

It surely was intended to be more than a gaming machine, but in the end for 90% of users it WAS a gaming machine.
Also, in contrast to the Amiga 1000 and 2000, the Amiga 500 was clearly advertised as a gaming machine. Just put in the disk to load the game, like it was mentioned here. And yes, this is where the Amiga was good and what it could do very well.

Originally Posted by Gorf

It’s like buying a bike just to push it around and never ride it.
It is certainly not the foult of the bike but of the stupid customer

it is a bit different,m I would say.
It is like if there is a fancy mountainbike available, but iturns out 90% of users only ride it a the street, and it is doing that job very well.
Then you get let's say new tires for this bike (like a memory expansion for the A500), which is great for riding in the woods, but makes biking on the street more difficult.
But still, remember, 90% of all the users use the bike only on the street!

Now what would you do knowing this ?
Would you still ignore this fact, or would you maybe make the bike a bit more useable for the street?

Originally Posted by Gorf

So now they do not all have a switch but a jumper … lol
I would ask you to have a closer look at your "collection", but I do not think it exists.

Jumper or directly connected switch doesn't make a difference at all.
Most had this 2 pins, where you could connect a jumper, or 2 wires which went to a switch.

if you don't believe me, I can do some pictures of my memory expansion and upload them here.

Originally Posted by Gorf

I am out - stop feeding this troll

It is getting really childish with such false assumptions.
Maybe have a look in Amiga hardware book or similar, and you will see that every memory expansion card had this possibility so switch it on/off

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Read your own words again, please!
You claimed that an A-590 was the same price like a 1541, which is absolute nonsense!!

No he did not. Nor did anyone else.
The only comparison was that the 1541 costed as much as the computer itself - in this case the C64. Which is true.

The A590 costed also as much as the computer itself - in that case the A500.

If you are willing to buy an upgrade that doubles the original price of the C64, the same logic must apply to the A500.

Again: nobody said the 1541 was the same price as the A590 in absolute terms.

So stop this stupid nonsense!
Please keep to the facts and quit making stuff up!

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

25 times is for everything that uses the kernal load routines, which definitely IS MOST operations
16 times on the 1571 in burst mode also works only for LOAD and not for other data tranfer routines

You are comparing apples with pears here.

It was not my comparison but yours
Glad you finally understand it is nonsensical.

Just like the Amiga 500 without any harddisk expansion.
It is dog slow and needs annoying diskchanges when you want to use any diskcommand

No, the A500 floppy speed was state of the art, when the computer came out.
The C64 + 1541 was not: PC, Apple and Atari were much faster.
You know that. Everybody ever experienced a C64 knows about the abysmal slow speed …

But you brought this subject into the discussion, while this comparison is really apples and oranges as you now admit. It leads nowhere.

Not true!
I originally compared loading a directory between a stock C64 with 1541 drive and a stock Amiga 500, both systems WITHOUT any expansions.

Here we go again.
Why would you want to load a directory?
Ether you want to boot directly into a game or a program - the Amiga is doing this without any typing.
Or you boot into your Workbench or DOpus if you want to manage files.

Nobody seems to miss that "functionality" except from you, probably because it serves no real purpose in everyday computing.

You seem to only pick this strange subject because it might be the only thing the C64 shines in comparison to the Amiga.
But only in theory since it is absolutely irrelevant for the user in real live.

These points are certainly not stupid, it is somthing which happened to users in reality tons of times. It is just that you are completely stuck in your technical system and cannot understand the problems from a users/customers side.

I was/am an Amiga user and was a C64 user before that - I never even touched the C64 a single time after I got the Amiga.
It took me much longer to understand the internals of the Amiga and it was more complicated to program for it … but just using it was sooo much easier and more rewarding.
I missed absolutely nothing from the C64.

Why do you think nearly every Amiga 500 you buy these days has a hole drilled somewhere for this needed memory expansion on/off switch?

Most holes are for ROM switches I would guess. Since most people did buy the original A501 which has no switch …
Back in the day every Amiga 500 user I knew had a slow-ram expansion, but nobody wanted to switch it off.
That never was a subject.
Maybe some shitty games would not work? We blamed it on the game for sure and moved on to the next game.

If it would have been sooo useless and not needed like you all claim here, then why did everyone need to drill the hole and install this switch?!

Because this is just not how it was.

it is a bit different,m I would say.
It is like if there is a fancy mountainbike available, but iturns out 90% of users only ride it a the street, and it is doing that job very well.
Then you get let's say new tires for this bike (like a memory expansion for the A500), which is great for riding in the woods, but makes biking on the street more difficult.
But still, remember, 90% of all the users use the bike only on the street!

Than they should not have bough a mountain bike in the first place or they should finally start using it on mountain trails.

Either way: the fancy mountain bike is surely not to blame

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

It is getting really childish with such false assumptions.
Maybe have a look in Amiga hardware book or similar, and you will see that every memory expansion card had this possibility so switch it on/off

I actually did have a look after your claim and it turns out, that you are lying.
Only very few came with a real switch, most came with a jumper that is useless unless you start tinkering and connect a cable and a switch drill hole … and quite a portion has no possibility to switch it off at all.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

The A-1011 drive was designed to be the extrenal drive for the Amiga 500, and afaik came AFTER the Amiga 500 release, but did not have a passthrough.
It was simply stupid design of this drive.

No, it wasn't. Commodore correctly figured that most customers wouldn't want more than one external drive, so they optimized the A-1011 for style and price. The floppy drive in it is a custom unit with the interface built into the drive, and the cable plugs straight into it. This was obviously done to reduce size and cut costs.

Anyone who who needed the passthrough could simply buy an A-1010. I had both!

If there had not been 3rd party companies helping Commodore out, then Amiga 500 users would have never ever seen a DF2 or DF3 drive.

Irrelevant because Commodore expected 3rd party companies to produce drives.

Again, compare this to the C64.
I can connect up to 4 drives without that stupid buffer issues. None of the drives uses up any ram.

The IEC bus was brilliant. It allowed any device (including an Amiga!) to access any peripheral on the bus with a set of generic commands. But that simplicity meant the drive had to be much more 'intelligent', which in those days meant building a full computer into it. And the C64 made it worse. 'No stupid buffer issues', but getting a directory listing wiped out your BASIC program because without a DOS that was the only way to do it.

Think about how crazy this is in fact! As a programmer, you need to know how many diskdrives your customer/user has connected, otherwise your program might not run. (which actually was the case with some games, and gladly the 3rd party drives had this switch to turn them off, but not Commodore's own A-1011 drive....really funny )

Any game that took over the system could use all the memory and any disk drives that were attached. Of course if it didn't take over the system then it had to follow the rules, one of which is asking for memory and having to accept that hardware or software addons might reduce the amount available. That's how any sophisticated OS works.

Haha, so I need to buy another extra hardware (ram expansion) to get the other badly designed hardware (diskdrive) working without issues?

Installing extra RAM to improve functionality was a requirement for many computer systems of the day (and still is!). The first commercial computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX81. It only came with 1kB of RAM, which wasn't even enough to display a full page of text! Then I got a 16k ZX Spectrum - which I soon had to upgrade. My PC has a whole 1 Gigabyte - and struggles to display some modern web pages that really need more (virtual memory sucks!).

You all keep telling me that this is such a well thought design which was ages in advance of it's time ?!
What a joke!

But it was, and this example proves it. The Amiga was the first 'home' computer built on the principle of 'no limits', where you could add anything you wanted so long as you had enough RAM. And there was no practical limit on how much you could add. In comparison 8 bit machines struggled to support more than 64k, and the PC was limited to 640k.

Ok, but then it is not 'hardware compatible' at all.

Nonsense. Having detectable differences between different hardware configurations doesn't make them 'not at all' compatible. It is the responsibility of developers to not use stupid tricks that may break due to not following OS rules or relying on undocumented 'features'. That includes things like expecting an exact amount of RAM to be available, or RAM being in particular memory locations, or it all being ChipRAM etc. But many Amiga coders carried over bad habits from 8 bit home computers. They ignored Commodore's warnings about making unwarranted assumptions (just like some did on the Amstrad CPC etc.) and paid the price. That is not the fault of the design.

Commodore designed a ram expansion which was not fully hardware compatible, but yet didn't bother to install a switch to make it backward compatible.

The RAM expansion was fully compatible with programs that followed the rules. Any that broke when a RAM expansion was added were buggy.

If developers had really been such great minds thinking about future expansions and all, then they might have implemented a nice looking switch in the case

You don't seem to appreciate the design philosophy behind the Amiga. Once extra RAM has been added there should be no reason to remove it. If buggy software can't handle it (even after running nofastmem) then fix the software - don't add a hardware workaround.

Like I mentioned so often before.....user friendly design obviously was not the Amiga's strength

Let me see - simply insert disk and watch it load, vs typing 'load "*",8,1' and then wait ages only to realize that the drive has crashed?

But it was a very good machine because of it's special chips - that's what gave us all those great games and demos etc.

It was a lot more than that. The Amiga was the first computer I used that had a proper OS to match the hardware. That helped me a lot when years later I wrote programs for Windows 95 and XP, and also allowed my Amiga to be useful today.

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I actually did have a look after your claim and it turns out, that you are lying.
Only very few came with a real switch, most came with a jumper that is useless unless you start tinkering and connect a cable and a switch drill hole … and quite a portion has no possibility to switch it off at all.

I believe the jumpers for turning off the memory expansion were aimed more for developers who wanted to test if their software will work on unexpanded Amigas, than for users who would want to play the few games (is there a list of these?) that refused to work with slow RAM expansion (1 MB total RAM became pretty standard around 1989 and almost nobody with Amiga 500 didn't have it after).

My Amiga 500 came with 1 MB and I never needed to remove the expansion for any of the games that I had.

Back in 1990-ies, I also got broken Amiga 2000 which I was hoping will have some cool ROMs, to use in the Amiga 500.

It turned out it had 1.2 ROMs, but later I also acquired 2.0 ROMs. There were under 10 games (or maybe under 5), that I had, which needed switching the ROM to 1.2 (I did it physically, no fancy ROM switchers).
On the other hand I had some FFS formatted floppies with scene intros. For them I needed 2.0 ROMs and again remove the old and install the new chips.
I really liked the new 2.0 OS on the Amiga 500 and was really proud of it. Then I friend came with irresistible offer for the 2.0 ROMs for his Amiga 500 and I was left again with 1.3 and 1.2 ROMs.

Having the ROMs on easy to remove sockets did prove to be very useful feature of the early Amgias. As I wrote above I was able to use ROMs from several machines and manually remove and upgrade my Amiga in minutes. No soldering needed and also no static electricity danger like on the C64, where you can easily fry the video chip or audio chip, if you are not electronics savvy enough.

Here is another example of the forward thinking that the Amiga brought to the Commodore. The C= 8-bit machines (PET, VIC-20, C64, C128, C16) were almost incompatible between each other even at BASIC level. Hopefully the 16-bit machines were more compatible between each other, staring the new era of computing.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

So, to all who think I am just badmouthing the Amiga -> not at all!
But I am also not praising it religiously just because it is an Amiga.

Who does? But it was a more advanced machine with a different intended use case. C-64: outdated 8-bit technology at the time the Amiga entered the market. Amiga: Top-notch technology at this time.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

still, and internal Amiga drive cost about 50% of a 1541 back then...quite overpriced, if you ask me?

1541: 180K, 5 1/4", SS SD old technology.
Amiga: 880K, 3 1/2", DS DD top notch technology back then.


See the difference? Yes, of course 3 1/2 drive parts were more expensive back then than 5 1/4" drives.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

You are again right here, but when the ram is in the drive, it cannot conflict with ram needed by an application or game at the same time

I still wonder which type of "conflict" you talk about. If a program uses the Os, there is no conflict because the Os takes care of the drive and provided the RAM to the application and the drive. If a game takes over the machine, there is no conflict either since it is then the game that decides to use a drive or not.


You seem to make something a problem that actually isn't one. You seem to look at the Amiga with 8-bit glasses, where you know where each buffer and each system variable is located in RAM.


Get over it, the Amiga does not work this way. There is *one*(!) fixed system variable, and this is address 4, AbsExecBase. Everything else floats. There is no "the screen memory starts at $400". It does not work this way.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Because my game which always worked before does not work any longer after I installed the expansion?

Which game? Apparently, it was very badly engineered. Not that CBM didn't document how to use the Os, but a couple of "game studios" apparently confused the Amiga with a C64. But that wasn't really a hardware issue.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

The PC was a bit different thing, since almost all applications and games started on top of the OS (Windows, or DOS before), so incompatibilities to the harrdware were obviously solved by the OS?

To some degree, memory allocation at least. But that's exactly as it works on the Amiga. You ask the Os for services. If you don't do that and expect a fixed memory layout... things break. Same as they would on the PC. It is not the way how the Amiga or the PC was engineered that was the problem - it was rather a matter of poor software product quality.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

But on the Amiga, most games loaded 'directly' into ram, and not from Workbench. And I think this caused the issues if those games were not programmed like the OS developers would have intended to be done?

No, neither. If the game loads directly, bypassing the Os, then why would the 2nd drive buffer matter? The user of this drive buffer is the Os, components of it, the trackdisk.device, and the file system. If those components are not used, and the Os is completely ignored and bypassed - as it was done on the C64 - then there is no conflict of course.



What you *cannot* do on the Amiga is "use the Os partially". Either, run the system on the Os, and use the Os for hardware services - or - you run bare metal on the hardware, and don't use the Os, as a "glorified C64". But then there is no issue either. There is no hardware that is "glued" to the Os allocated drive buffer, and the drive isn't "bound" to that buffer. It is just the buffer the Os provides to Agnus to initiate the DMA transfer of the drive data.


You heard right: DMA. There was no CPU-based bit-banging as on the C64. You fired off the DMA, and Agnus places drive data in RAM where asked to, without using the CPU.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

I believe the jumpers for turning off the memory expansion were aimed more for developers who wanted to test if their software will work on unexpanded Amigas, than for users who would want to play the few games (is there a list of these?) that refused to work with slow RAM expansion (1 MB total RAM became pretty standard around 1989 and almost nobody with Amiga 500 didn't have it after).

My Amiga 500 came with 1 MB and I never needed to remove the expansion for any of the games that I had.

Exactly.

An other reason might be to offer more "features" than the Commodore part - even if these features are not that useful. It was one more point you could advertise for virtually no additional cost for a stupid jumper.
Nevertheless at least here in Germany most users simply bought the original A501 from Commodore from what I remember, since this is what most stores had on the shelf and everyone trusted it will work (which it did).

[Gorf]

Let's switch to something else:

One thing the Amiga 1000 did not get right from the beginning was the missing real time clock.
The A1000 was supposed to be a serious computer and was advertised as such. With the price Commodore asked for it, there was no excuse to not include a proper battery buffered RTC in 1985.

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Gorf

It was not my comparison but yours
Glad you finally understand it is nonsensical.

No, the A500 floppy speed was state of the art, when the computer came out.
The C64 + 1541 was not: PC, Apple and Atari were much faster.
You know that. Everybody ever experienced a C64 knows about the abysmal slow speed …

But you brought this subject into the discussion, while this comparison is really apples and oranges as you now admit. It leads nowhere.

You seem to be dreaming?
You compare a A-500 WITH harddisk to a C64 WITHOUT Dolphindos!!
That's an apple vs oranges comparison.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Here we go again.
Why would you want to load a directory?
Ether you want to boot directly into a game or a program - the Amiga is doing this without any typing.
Or you boot into your Workbench or DOpus if you want to manage files.

Oh, man, this cannot be true, I have to explain things like to a baby here....

Why do I want to list a disk's content?
Maybe because I want to run one of the applicatins that I have stored on this disk? Ever thought about that ?!?

But being an Amiga guy you probably didn't know that a disk can have more than ONE application!
You don't have to use a new disk for every small aplication. Seems to be something Amiga users cannot comprehend.....

Originally Posted by Gorf

Nobody seems to miss that "functionality" except from you, probably because it serves no real purpose in everyday computing.

You seem to only pick this strange subject because it might be the only thing the C64 shines in comparison to the Amiga.
But only in theory since it is absolutely irrelevant for the user in real live.

Now I understand!
Ofcourse, if I would do like you and always need a bootable disk for every 10kb application on a 880kb disk, then I really don't need this functionality.

But in contrary to you, I used my floppy disks's space a bit more economically, since I had several applications/tools/games on ONE disk, and therefore the need to list it's content and then start the correct application

Originally Posted by Gorf

I was/am an Amiga user and was a C64 user before that - I never even touched the C64 a single time after I got the Amiga.
It took me much longer to understand the internals of the Amiga and it was more complicated to program for it … but just using it was sooo much easier and more rewarding.
I missed absolutely nothing from the C64.

You are free to think like that, no problem.
But it is your personal preference, and you will need to accept that someone else's preference is different.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Most holes are for ROM switches I would guess. Since most people did buy the original A501 which has no switch …
Back in the day every Amiga 500 user I knew had a slow-ram expansion, but nobody wanted to switch it off.
That never was a subject.

Then I can assure you that your 'guess' is VERY wrong!
I had at least 200 Amiga 500 going through my hands, still have probably almost 100 of them.
So I KNOW EXACTLY why these holes were drille: to switch off the memory expansion.

Only very few, maybe 1 out of 20 had a switch for a kickswitcher or bootselector.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Maybe some shitty games would not work? We blamed it on the game for sure and moved on to the next game.

What a completely stupid criteria for a game being good or bad!
Because it didn't like the new added memory expansion, it was a shitty game?!?
But ok, I do not need to follow such completely crazy thoughts....

Originally Posted by Gorf

Because this is just not how it was.

Again, it is useless talking to you since you have absolutely no experience.
You probably ever had one Amiga which did not have that hole, but I had and still have a 'bit' more of them than you, so I have no need to let you with absolutely no knowledge about A-500s and memory expansions explaining anything to me.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Than they should not have bough a mountain bike in the first place or they should finally start using it on mountain trails.

Either way: the fancy mountain bike is surely not to blame

hahaha, I knew that would be your answer!
And it perfectly explains your complete ignorance towards 90% of the users.
It perfectly shows all the opinions by most people critizizing my arguments.

The point is:
You think something is right, because it suits for 10% of the users whic hused the thing like it was intended to be used, who only use software which obeys to the OS and programming guidelines etc, etc.

But despite all the other 90% users had issues, because they didn't bother whether a software obeyed those rules or not, you still think it is those users fault, because for you yourself everything was fine.

According to this philosophy, it is not very surprising that Commodore went bancrupt

I tell you something:
You may want to think that you can dictate someone how to use a product, like some idiots really do believe and even try to force this, but in the real worlds the user decides how he is using the product, and if you do not fulfill those user requirements, your product will simply die, which as we all know in the end was the case with the Amiga

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Exactly.

An other reason might be to offer more "features" than the Commodore part - even if these features are not that useful. It was one more point you could advertise for virtually no additional cost for a stupid jumper.
Nevertheless at least here in Germany most users simply bought the original A501 from Commodore from what I remember, since this is what most stores had on the shelf and everyone trusted it will work (which it did).

Almost noone had an original A501 expansion here in Austria. It was expensive, and missing the switch.
And even if you don't want to believe, the MAIN PURPOSE of this switch (or jumper where a cable with a switch was connected) was indeed the possibility to switch it off!!
Do not try to construct some completely out of reality reasons only to justifice your wrong assumptions.

I had to switch off the expansion quite a lot for several games, and yes, I also had to switch off the diskdrive sometimes (not soo often, I admit) before I had a memory expansion.

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

I believe the jumpers for turning off the memory expansion were aimed more for developers who wanted to test if their software will work on unexpanded Amigas, than for users who would want to play the few games (is there a list of these?) that refused to work with slow RAM expansion (1 MB total RAM became pretty standard around 1989 and almost nobody with Amiga 500 didn't have it after).

My Amiga 500 came with 1 MB and I never needed to remove the expansion for any of the games that I had.

90% of users needed the ram expansion for 2 things:
1) copying disks with one drive without the need swap disks in between
2) playing games which needed a ram expansion.

The first game which actually needed that was Dungeon Master in 1990, afaik?
But at this time we only had games produced between 1987 and 1990, and a good part of them needed the memory expansion to be turned off.

It took until about 1991 when more and more games needed 1MB.
Most if not all which were produced at this time or later worked with the expansion without any issues.
It is only older games which came on the market before who need the expansion t obe turned off.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Back in 1990-ies, I also got broken Amiga 2000 which I was hoping will have some cool ROMs, to use in the Amiga 500.

It turned out it had 1.2 ROMs, but later I also acquired 2.0 ROMs. There were under 10 games (or maybe under 5), that I had, which needed switching the ROM to 1.2 (I did it physically, no fancy ROM switchers).
On the other hand I had some FFS formatted floppies with scene intros. For them I needed 2.0 ROMs and again remove the old and install the new chips.
I really liked the new 2.0 OS on the Amiga 500 and was really proud of it. Then I friend came with irresistible offer for the 2.0 ROMs for his Amiga 500 and I was left again with 1.3 and 1.2 ROMs.

I can only tell from the Amiga 600, which 2 friends of mine had back then.
and it was really like 1 out of 15 games which did not work.
Maybe not all of them failed because of the Kickrom, it could also be possible that some of them failed because of the A-600's 1MB ram?

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Having the ROMs on easy to remove sockets did prove to be very useful feature of the early Amgias. As I wrote above I was able to use ROMs from several machines and manually remove and upgrade my Amiga in minutes. No soldering needed and also no static electricity danger like on the C64, where you can easily fry the video chip or audio chip, if you are not electronics savvy enough.

This certainly was a good thing on the Amiga 500!
And it was not only the Kickrom, but in fact all custom chips were socketed. :
Definitely one thing the Amiga DID right from the start.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Here is another example of the forward thinking that the Amiga brought to the Commodore. The C= 8-bit machines (PET, VIC-20, C64, C128, C16) were almost incompatible between each other even at BASIC level. Hopefully the 16-bit machines were more compatible between each other, staring the new era of computing.

But as you see the Amiga line also was not completely compatible to each other because of different Kickroms, different memory configurations, different chipsets like OCS/AGA, different clock frequencies,....

What you say is true for the Commodore 8 Bit computers.
But in ther end there always comes a point where you need to leave and old system behind, make a cut, and develop a completely new system.

One of the reasons why Commodore went bust is in my opinion because they stayed to the Amiga line for too long, perhaps because they still tried to make a 'better Amiga' with 680XX CPUs, but with no good 3D grafic support.
In 1995, the Amiga system was 10 years old, and it would have been time for C= to develop a new, fast 32 Bit 3D capeable homecomputer or console, which again would have brought us a 'new era' like the Amiga did in 1985.

But in the end C= went bust, and Sony brought their Playstation 1 on the market, which was again a good challenge to all PCs (at least as a console for gamers)

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Let's switch to something else:

One thing the Amiga 1000 did not get right from the beginning was the missing real time clock.
The A1000 was supposed to be a serious computer and was advertised as such. With the price Commodore asked for it, there was no excuse to not include a proper battery buffered RTC in 1985.

That's true.

But today we are very happy it did not have that RTC, because otherwise quite a lot of Amiga 1000 boards would not exist anymore because of broken traces from leaking batteries.

[deimos]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Let's switch to something else:

One thing the Amiga 1000 did not get right from the beginning was the missing real time clock.
The A1000 was supposed to be a serious computer and was advertised as such. With the price Commodore asked for it, there was no excuse to not include a proper battery buffered RTC in 1985.

May I suggest that we also at least try to keep the conversation to "Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1"? So that's the Amiga 1000 and the accessories, O/S and software it had (or was missing) at launch.

[Chucky]

Read your own words again, please!
You claimed that an A-590 was the same price like a 1541, which is absolute nonsense!!

this explains ALOT you do not listen what people say..
I said that the diskdrive to a c64 costed aprox same as the computer. and I said the harddrive for the Amiga cost the same as the Amiga. and I was right noone said a HD costs as the 1541. it is you that are too centered to a C64.. not only the OS should work as the C64. stuff should have the same price?

Anyway your rant is still based on issues due to programmers that did program the Amiga as if it was a C64.. like you is still thinking it is a C64.. sorry. but it isn't..

it is just a silly text and rant from you who doesn't even bother to understand what people tell you.