Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[TommyTomorrow]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?(cut)

Here's what Commodore got wrong in my opinion(big cut)

It's easy to judge after several dozen years when you know much more about these computers and consoles than you knew then. At that time, few ordinary gamers thought about blitter, the number of colors in games, etc. The big advantage of the A1200 (as well as the A600) was the possibility of mounting a hard drive and installing Workbench on it, and thus transferring games from floppy disks to the hard drive.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by TommyTomorrow

It's easy to judge after several dozen years when you know much more about these computers and consoles than you knew then. At that time, few ordinary gamers thought about blitter, the number of colors in games, etc. The big advantage of the A1200 (as well as the A600) was the possibility of mounting a hard drive and installing Workbench on it, and thus transferring games from floppy disks to the hard drive.

But it did not come stock with harddrive and it was a hurdle to connect 3.5inch cheaper harddrives to machine.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by BigD

We really couldn't have expected anything more from C=. Gould thought the CDTV would conquer the world and lost interest in the Amiga after that bombed. C= UK could market the A1200 but nobody else really tried. Medhi Ali pushed the A600!!! 'Nuff said! I wanted an A1200 for Christmas 1994 and there was no stock! It's not like they weren't selling even post Commodore!

That pushing a lot of A600s to market and flooding it with a machine that nobody wanted sealed the doom of the commodore. What a short sightness...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by pandy71

not introducing DSP as part of standard configuration in Amiga was one of biggest mistakes - i bet that developers rather quickly adapt DSP.Multiple times...

If it wasn't part of the 'standard' Amiga configuration by 1987 at the latest then it was useless, because by that time the Amiga already had a 'standard configuration'.

What DSP chips were being used in home computers in 1986, when the A500 was designed? The first reference I can find to the Motorola DSP56001 is Steve Jobs' NeXT computer, which cost US$6500 in 1988.

Here's a homebrew DSP56001 board for the Amiga made in the 1990's. Doesn't look very complicated, yet how popular did this design become?

My 1990's hand made co-processor for my Amiga



I don't remember anyone in the Amiga scene talking about DSP at that time (or ever - until now). The earliest expansion card using a DSP chip that I know of is the Video Toaster flyer in 1994, which used an ADSP2115 dedicated to audio record/playback. Seems nobody was interested enough in general purpose DSP on the Amiga to make it worth producing. Therefore I conclude that not having it built in as standard was not 'one of biggest mistakes'.

[TommyTomorrow]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

But it did not come stock with harddrive and it was a hurdle to connect 3.5inch cheaper harddrives to machine.

It was easier and cheaper to buy a 3.5" drive and connect it externally on a signal tape than, for example, to buy a GVP controller for the A500. Let's not forget that there were also versions of the A1200HD.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If it wasn't part of the 'standard' Amiga configuration by 1987 at the latest then it was useless, because by that time the Amiga already had a 'standard configuration'.

What DSP chips were being used in home computers in 1986, when the A500 was designed? The first reference I can find to the Motorola DSP56001 is Steve Jobs' NeXT computer, which cost US$6500 in 1988.

Here's a homebrew DSP56001 board for the Amiga made in the 1990's. Doesn't look very complicated, yet how popular did this design become?

My 1990's hand made co-processor for my Amiga



I don't remember anyone in the Amiga scene talking about DSP at that time (or ever - until now). The earliest expansion card using a DSP chip that I know of is the Video Toaster flyer in 1994, which used an ADSP2115 dedicated to audio record/playback. Seems nobody was interested enough in general purpose DSP on the Amiga to make it worth producing. Therefore I conclude that not having it built in as standard was not 'one of biggest mistakes'.

FYI, AT&T DSP3210 is designed for "3D and multimedia".

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by TommyTomorrow

The big advantage of the A1200 (as well as the A600) was the possibility of mounting a hard drive and installing Workbench on it, and thus transferring games from floppy disks to the hard drive.

Well ... most games would not allow that, which was a PITA.
(WHDload came much later ...)

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

That pushing a lot of A600s to market and flooding it with a machine that nobody wanted sealed the doom of the commodore. What a short sightness...

If you knew the real history of the A600 etc. you would realize that it wasn't shortsightedness. It was more a matter of not having the resources to develop the machines they wanted. Firstly they didn't have the brain power or chip manufacturing facilities to get the AAA chipset out in a timely manner. Even AA took longer than expected, thus the A500 was dropped too early and the A600 arrived before the A1200. This was poor management for sure, but their plans weren't shortsighted, they were overly optimistic.

The A600 actually sold very well when the price was dropped below the A500+. But not having an AGA machine out by then made Amiga fans think nothing was coming. Gould expected it in 1991. The reason it didn't happen then was that the engineers were too busy doing other stuff that didn't pan out. Most of them weren't interested in a low cost replacement for the A500 with enhanced graphics. To make matters worse Commodore had continuous financial problems that limited R&D.

All this whinging about Commodore not doing this or that is silly. They came through with the A1200 and it was a great machine. That seems like a miracle when when you consider that they were at death's door way back in 1986 - after throwing bucket-loads of money at the A1000 and not being able to make a profit on it. We should think ourselves lucky for getting what we did.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

FYI, AT&T DSP3210 is designed for "3D and multimedia".

FYI, DSP3210 was introduced in 1991.

That's far too late to be part of the Amiga's 'standard configuration'. It wouldn't go into a low-end machine like the A500 because it was cost-constrained and other stuff would take priority. A DSP chip only provided in high-end Amigas was useless. John Carmack still wasn't going to port Doom to the Amiga if the A4000 had DSP.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by pandy71

you need multiple DSP's like AT&T DSP3210 to implement above functionality - probably at least 4 perhaps 8 and also develop set of software libraries to perform such functionality - using market proven solution was less risky especially under time pressure and in overall expected sales (low) figures for FMV.

PSX VCD is a side bonus to its core 3D gaming competency.

Asian exclusive PSX (SCPH-5903 model) has a built-in hardware decoder for VCD.

https://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1317
Without an MPEG hardware decoder, the MIPS R3000 CPU @ 33.8 Mhz (33 MIPS) software VCD player can reach 10 fps.

FMV's CL450 has an RISC CPU with MPEG-related instruction extensions @ 40 Mhz and 80 ns 512 KB Fast RAM equivalent.

DSP3210 @ 50 Mhz (25 MFLOPS, 12.7 MIPS) is designed for "3D and multimedia".


AT&T also offers MPEG decoders. https://www.researchgate.net/profile...plications.pdf

AT&T AVP-4120C (MPEG) has a RISC CPU with 50 MIPS @ 45 Mhz.

Originally Posted by pandy71

But i agree with you that not introducing DSP as part of standard configuration in Amiga was one of biggest mistakes - i bet that developers rather quickly adapt DSP

Argonaut Software of Starglider has co-designed SNES's SuperFX.

Argonaut was pushing for mass-produced RISC co-processors.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

FYI, DSP3210 was introduced in 1991.
That's far too late to be part of the Amiga's 'standard configuration'. It wouldn't go into a low-end machine like the A500 because it was cost-constrained and other stuff would take priority. A DSP chip only provided in high-end Amigas was useless. John Carmack still wasn't going to port Doom the the Amiga if the A4000 had DSP.

A4000 didn't have C2P hardware. Akiko has a 1 day job hardware C2P hardware which could be integrated into Budgie (A1200) or Bridgette (A4000, bridge chip between CPU bus and custom bus). 1991 era A1000Jr didn't have Budgie and Gayle. Too busy integrating IDE and PCMCIA mandates during 1991.

AA3000+ has DSP3210.

https://amitopia.com/updated-dsp-321...a-3000-is-out/

Dave Haynie:

In late 1990, Jeff Porter and I took a trip out to AT&T in Bethlehem, PA. They had this new DSP chip, the AT&T DSP3210,

B2B has early access.

Bill Sydnes did everything to hobble baseline AGA's general purpose compute power, but has no problems with $50 CL450 chip along with extra 80 ns 512 KB local RAM, two-channel 16-bit audio DAC, and 24-bit video DAC. FMV has chunky pixels in a 24-bit color display. Bill Sydnes made sure this chunky pixels is not accessible to the Amiga gaming.

Dave Haynie:

The Amiga 3000+ was the first computer based on the Pandora chipset (which was later dubbed AA, then AGA). Revision 0 of this system first booted successfully in February of 1991, thanks due to a chip revision that got the display logic actually working. This is revision 1, which completed the audio subsystem, and moved to surface-mount components.”

As the name suggests, this system was being designed as a drop-in replacement for the existing Amiga 3000 motherboard. In addition to the features everyone knows from the Amiga 3000, and from later computers such as the Amiga 4000, the Amiga 3000+ sported the AT&T DSP3210 digital signal processor as a coprocessor.

Note: this is the real Amiga 3000+, very rare. Most of the Amiga 3000+ type systems out, whether boards or whole computers, are actually the scaled-down “AA3000”, which was after the A3000+ had been canceled, by the Bill Sydnes administration, as a product.”

CD32 has a two-channel 16-bit DAC for CD-ROM audio.

AA3000+ revision 1 with surface-mount components is in sync with A300.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Well ... most games would not allow that, which was a PITA.

Plenty of games did, especially those that came on a large number of floppy disks (the ones you really wanted on the hard drive).

If more low-machines had hard drives then more games would support them. Therefore it made sense to have a hard drive option in lower-end machines - if it could be done cheap enough. This was possible with IDE, especially 2.5" since it didn't need a big case and power supply.

(WHDload came much later ...)

What a shame that crackers didn't concentrate on making games hard drive installable rather than just pirating them. But that's because most of them were only in it for the money. To them the Amiga was just a cash cow that allowed them to get rich off the 'lamers' who were desperate for cheap games.

When the CPC664 was my main machine I did a lot of cracking, but only to transfer the games I had purchased from tape to disk. Transferring Amiga games from floppy to hard drive had similar purpose, to speed up loading times. But the Amiga's disk drive was efficient enough that most 1 and 2 disk games didn't benefit much from hard drive installation. That meant the hard drive could be smaller because it wasn't clogged up with small games that ran fine from floppies.

The Hall of Light lists 1,404 games with a hard drive installer. That might not be 'most' games, but it's a sizable chunk of them. Many of my favorites are on that list.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Plenty of games did, especially those that came on a large number of floppy disks (the ones you really wanted on the hard drive).

If more low-machines had hard drives then more games would support them. Therefore it made sense to have a hard drive option in lower-end machines - if it could be done cheap enough. This was possible with IDE, especially 2.5" since it didn't need a big case and power supply.

IDE is relatively easy to implement e.g. AdIDE for A500. A1000Jr had IDE with existing A3000's support chips, minus SDMac, SCSI, and Amber.

The problem is PCMCIA's memory-only mode which is used as 16-bit Fast RAM on A600. PCMCIA's memory-only mode impacted Budgie (Buster, 32-bit Ramsey) which has a buffered 16-bit link with PCMCIA. Budgie also replaced the two TTL bridge chips on A600 and four TTLs on A3000.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

A4000 didn't have C2P hardware. Akiko has a 1 day job hardware C2P hardware which could be integrated into Budgie. 1991 era A1000Jr didn't have Budgie and Gayle.

Wandering off topic as usual.

We wouldn't need c2p if we had chunky. But the Amiga never had chunky so it wasn't a 'standard configuration'. Furthermore the engineers were more interested in high resolution screen modes than support for games. If I was doing ECS I would forget about productivity mode and look at ways to support packed pixels (at various resolutions) and tiled mode (text mode).

Too busy integrating IDE and PCMCIA mandates during 1991.

Not busy at all. Both IDE and PCMCIA were a piece of cake to implement, and they already had experience with XT-IDE in the A590 (1989) and memory card slot in the CDTV (1990).

AA3000+ has DSP3210.

In 1992. Far too late to be the Amiga's 'standard configuration' - and in the wrong machine.

Bill Sydnes did everything to hobble baseline AGA's general purpose compute power, but has no problems with $50 CL450 chip along with 80 ns 512 KB local RAM, 16-bit audio DAC, and 24-bit video DAC.

Not sure what you are talking about here.

Bill Sydnes was hired to handle the PC line, but got involved in the Amiga side due to lack of progress in that department. It's not his fault that AGA wasn't out in time for the machines they planned to produce.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

The problem is PCMCIA's memory-only mode which is used as 16-bit Fast RAM on A600. PCMCIA's memory-only mode impacted Budgie (Buster, 32-bit Ramsey) which has a buffered 16-bit link with Gayle's PCMCIA. Budgie also replaced the two TTL bridge chips on A600 and four TTLs on A3000.

Please explain how that is a problem.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Please explain how that is a problem.

If you read A1200 Rev 1 to 1D schematics, there are noted bugs with older Gayle and newer Gayle without the bugs.

Older Gayle has four workarounds 74 chips.

Additional features can impact the rest of the system and delay the product release.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Wandering off topic as usual.

That's bullshit.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

We wouldn't need c2p if we had chunky. But the Amiga never had chunky so it wasn't a 'standard configuration'.

Amiga had chunky with a single bitplane.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not busy at all. Both IDE and PCMCIA were a piece of cake to implement, and they already had experience with XT-IDE in the A590 (1989) and memory card slot in the CDTV (1990).

XT-IDE is 8-bit.

A590's DMAC presents an 8-bit PC-XT-like interface to a common PC chip like the WD33C93A.

A600/A1200/A1000jr/A4000 implements 16-bit AT-IDE. A4000's IDE is the buffered version.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

In 1992. Far too late to be the Amiga's 'standard configuration' - and in the wrong machine.

That's BULLSHIT. Bill Sydnes has a PCJr mentality.

The core functions for A1200/CD32 are the same as AA3000+ including the same CPU's 7.1 MB/s Chip RAM access.

16bit DAC audio reappearing on CD32 is LOL.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Bill Sydnes was hired to handle the PC line,

A mistake.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

but got involved in the Amiga side due to lack of progress in that department. It's not his fault that AGA wasn't out in time for the machines they planned to produce.

Fact: Bill Sydnes was fired by Ali for his lies(false promises) and the A600 debacle. IBM was large enough to survive the Bill Sydnes PCJr debacle.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by pandy71

You forgotten about:

• AT&T DSP3210
• Intel 386
• AMD 386
• Intel 486
• TIGA
• TSENG ET4000AX
• TSENG ET4000W32
• S3
• Sharp X68000
• NEC PC-98
• VESA
• 3DO

Probably many other very important and Amiga 1200 related things i've forgotten too.

Nope. Those things were widely discussed with a scope very far from A1200 and disappointment anyone could have. That's what offtopic means and you were kind enough (for hammer) to keep that going pretty darn far. It was never about price/performance or typical PC configuration in 93. It was all about a lot of bullS claims, irrelevant informations and bad assumptions.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If it wasn't part of the 'standard' Amiga configuration by 1987 at the latest then it was useless, because by that time the Amiga already had a 'standard configuration'.

Nope - entirely incorrect argument - hard disk was not standard Amiga configuration but equipping Amiga with HDD was highly beneficial, same for math coprocessor etc.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What DSP chips were being used in home computers in 1986, when the A500 was designed? The first reference I can find to the Motorola DSP56001 is Steve Jobs' NeXT computer, which cost US$6500 in 1988.

DSP was simply to expensive for being embedded in home computer but they found use on many computing hardware such arcade machines where they acted as graphic processors (general CPU's was to slow).TMS32010 was commonly used as 3D accelerator in 80's.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Here's a homebrew DSP56001 board for the Amiga made in the 1990's. Doesn't look very complicated, yet how popular did this design become?

Well - i assume 56k was to expensive for CBM but DSP3210 could have acceptable price (important factor is that this board require separate SRAM where DSP3210 is designed to provide internal 2KB RAM - small size for complex usage case but still with proper usage could be significant accelerating factor).

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I don't remember anyone in the Amiga scene talking about DSP at that time (or ever - until now). The earliest expansion card using a DSP chip that I know of is the Video Toaster flyer in 1994, which used an ADSP2115 dedicated to audio record/playback. Seems nobody was interested enough in general purpose DSP on the Amiga to make it worth producing. Therefore I conclude that not having it built in as standard was not 'one of biggest mistakes'.

DSP was for very long time very elitist product - expensive, uncommon, also quite important - we simply have no knowledge about many things - look at DCT - idea of DCT was formed around 1972, MDCT was invented in 1986 - today DCT is everywhere but before 1990 it was so computationally expensive that there was no practical usage except laboratories working on JPEG or MP3. Simple there was no pressure on DSP.Same was for 3D - practically no one need 3D in home computer before...

seem there is some issue with forum - CR/LF is ignored

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

A new multi-quote challenger appears...

...somebody asked why this thread has 200+ pages. Well...

I’m just still around to see if post 5000 crashes EAB server ;-)