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#4921 | |
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Quote:
C65 was abandoned in 1991, and rightly so, the market for enhanced 8-bit machines wasn’t there by the failure of MSX2, Sam Coupe, Amstrad Plus models in the west. C64 was probably still sold cause Ali f’up the A300 plans and made the A600 come out at the same price as the A500+ and thus having no model to place where the C64 was. |
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#4922 | |
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Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
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The fact that they did stop the A500+ after the A600 release, but not the C64 tells otherwise. Also: the A500 was already less expensive than the C64+Floppy, and nobody would use the 64 without it in 1992. Whatever market segment they might wanted to target with a really cheap A300: it was non existent anyways - not other company swooped in to take that segment. There was no demand. See above - there was no real gap anymore, since nobody was interested in a C64 without floppy drive. |
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#4923 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Marseille / France
Posts: 1,519
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that it was a far fetched argument to justify the A600 release afterward, especially after the release of the A1200.
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#4924 | |
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C64 and Floppy was £350 in the UK, still £50 cheaper than the A500. And some markets are totallly different, uptake of C64 floppy drives was small in the UK with the majority of software on cassette even after 1992. Find it strange why you think there was no market for a cheaper Amiga? Imo the only way Commodore could have survived long enough to get Hombre out was too cost reduce the OCS machines down to £200. Just because no other company did it, was more down too they couldn’t do it rather than nobody wanted a slice of that pie! |
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#4925 | |||||
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AFAIK in some markets the A600 was around $50 more expensive the the A500 initially. In any case: it was more expensive to produce, so even at the same price it would cut into Commodores margins ... Quote:
![]() naa - to lazy for that right now. If we take a £50 gap it would still be nonsense to try to fill that with a new product placed in between. The good old Datasette - well that was a thing of the past in Germany by end of the 80s. Quote:
As you pointed out by the MSX2, Sam Coupe and Amstrad Plus. Also very low end PCs like the Tandy or the Schneider Euro PC could have been produced at very low cost by than - but there was no market for such a thing. Quote:
Anyways: I sincerely doubt that so many more customers would have flocked to the Amiga, just because of such a low price. Most opted for a PC despite its higher price. Quote:
I think in the early 90s the people that wanted a computer bought a computer - and overwhelmingly they bought computers, that were more expensive than the Amiga. Last edited by Gorf; 01 June 2024 at 13:41. |
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#4926 | |
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Location: Sydney/Australia
Posts: 1,063
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Due to Commodore Germany's demands for hard disk capability, the A300's scope creep turned the project into A600 which has a higher production cost compared to the A500. |
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#4927 | ||
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The A300 project was in 1991. Commodore UK's David Pleasance advocated the A300 project to replace the C64c. Commodore Germany demanded a hard disk-capable for the A300 model. From Commodore the Inside Story - The Untold Tale of a Computer Giant by David John Pleasance Quote:
Since Commodore Germany manufactures big box Amigas like the A3000, Commodore Germany could be the source for "read my lips, no new chips" during the A3000's R&D phase. Last edited by hammer; 01 June 2024 at 04:22. |
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#4928 | |
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Location: Sydney/Australia
Posts: 1,063
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https://archive.org/details/Hombre_2...ge/n5/mode/2up Commodore Amiga Hombre Chipset by Ed Hepler Hombre Part 1 shows desktop and tower systems have Hitachi PA/50 add-on CPU. https://www.openpa.net/pa-risc_processor_other.html PA/50 reached 60 Mhz. Commodore's baseline PA-RISC has a 4 KB L1 instruction and 2 KB L1 data caches. Nathaniel contains CPU and Rendering functions. Hitachi's PA/50L and PA/50M have 8 KB L1 instruction and 4 KB L1 data caches. The production segmentation is similar to Celeron's smaller cache vs Pentium II's larger cache. https://www.openpa.net/pa-risc_proce...ther.html#harp Hitachi HARP-1 processor is a faster version of the PA/50 processor. Hitachi HARP-1 has 8 KB L1 instruction and 16 KB L1 data caches. Up to 150 MHz frequency. Last edited by hammer; 01 June 2024 at 03:06. |
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#4929 | |
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The thing is: both sides were probably right, since markets where different. Germany was probably more right, but they should just have demanded to fast track the A1200 - but had probably no insight of what was going on in development. Pleasance was probably right for the UK market ... but had no clue about technology or how to archive such a goal. It is easy to say "just give me an Amiga for £200" - but what was he thinking this would look like and how would he sell it next to the A500, that he obviously wanted to keep as well. I mean there isn't much you can take out of an A500 to actually save that much money ... smaller case and PCB , SMD ... fine. And then? That's not nearly enough What exactly was his plan? Maybe making the chipset less capable, so the A300 would not cut into the A500 margins? That would not only be nonsensical, totally incompatible but of course even more expensive to redesign the chips .. And even in the UK there was certainly no demand for a less than capable Amiga below the A500 |
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#4930 | |
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A1200 has a launch price of $599 USD which is 1987's $485.05 i.e. Atari ST's price range. Reference https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about...ion-calculator A1200 has a healthy price margin for both Commodore UK and Commodore International. |
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#4931 | |||
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A500 with AdIDE doesn't require Gary modification. Quote:
From CD32's cost reductions, A300 with AGA is possible. Quote:
Akiko integrated Gayle, Budgie, and two CIA chips. Budgie integrated Ramsey's, Buster's, and Bridgette's functions. A4000's Bridgette assimilated four TTLs bridge chips for the Amiga custom bus and CPU bus in the A3000. These are cost-reduction measures. Gayle replaced Gary and added functions for PCMCIA and IDE. A600 has a PCMCIA slot, five 74LS245 (byte swap area), and two 74LS245 bridge chips between Agnus's Chip RAM and PCMCIA Fast RAM. PCB edge connector is cheaper than a laptop's PCMCIA slot. It was missing A600's "Budgie" cost reduction measures. A1200 has three 74LS245 chips in its byte swap area. A600 wasn't cost-reduced enough compared to CD32 Akiko's cost-reduction measures. A300 could have IDE-capable Gayle with two CIAs integrated with it and ignore PCMCIA. The idea is okay, but execution is poor. ------------ According to Dave Haynie's statements from https://amitopia.com/updated-dsp-321...a-3000-is-out/ AGA A3000+ revision 1 has SMD and a working DSP audio subsystem. A300 wasn't the only project with SMD. https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=2015 1991 ECS A1000Jr has SMD. Last edited by hammer; 01 June 2024 at 05:25. |
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#4932 | |
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Commodore would need A300 with CD32's cost reductions for near-direct price competition against SNES. |
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#4933 | ||
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That is what I was saying: Commodore Germany should have urged the 1200 and no A300/A600 whatsoever.
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This was part of the package. Change the CD-drive for a floppy and add a keyboard and a mouse and the missing ports and we are at £350 ... one and a half year later Quote:
Cost reducing the A500 as much as possible -> go for it. Introducing a new Amiga below the A500 -> forget it, stupid stagey No matter if it was the actual A600 or a cheaper A300: in both cases just a waste of resources better spent on earlier release of AGA machines and AA+ development. |
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#4934 |
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#4935 | ||||
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
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According to Brian Bagnall in Commodore the Final Years, Quote:
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#4936 | |
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AA3000's core AGA was operational i.e. your source has "the AA3000, for a summer 1991 release". Without PCMCIA and IDE integration, AA500+ would have the following Lisa, Alice, Paula, Ramsey (32-bit memory controller, integrated into Budgie in A1200). This is known to be working. Fat Gary (evolved into Gayle in A600 and AA-Gayle in A1200). This is known to be working. Two CIAs, Four TTL 74 bridge chips (integrated into Budgie in the A1200 and Bridgette in the A4000), Buster for Zorro II functions which is optional (integrated into Budgie in the A1200). A300 project impacted AA500+(A1200). Last edited by hammer; 01 June 2024 at 05:50. |
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#4937 | ||
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CD32 already has two controller ports, RF modulator, a composite out, two audio out, power connector, and power switch. Missing parallel, serial, and floppy ports. |
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#4938 | |
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And this meme that the A600 was less than the A500 is only one of perception - perhaps based on the smaller size and lack of numeric keypad. In fact it had more in it than the A500. It was functionally equivalent to an A500+ with internal modulator and IDE hard drive option. But the lack of numeric keypad meant a very small number of titles wouldn't work with it unless the keys could be remapped - mostly flight simulators that probably need a faster CPU anyway for smooth operation. You couldn't plug an A590 into it, but the internal IDE drive and PCMCIA memory card was cheaper and more ergonomic. The CPU wasn't in a socket so you (theoretically) couldn't install an accelerator card - but how many A500 users would be doing that? So why was the A600 panned? Because it didn't have AGA. Gould promised AGA way back in early 1991, and all we got was this lousy shrunk down A500. Magazines put on a brave face, but they couldn't hide our disappointment. And nothing Commodore subsequently released would make up for it. |
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#4939 | |||
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I don't know where you got this idea from... guessing you developed a narrative first and then made up facts to support it. |
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#4940 | |
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Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Ur, Atlantis
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That said, certainly the numeric keyboard didn't matter that much for people mostly interested in arcade games. though this lot would be perhaps better off looking at consoles at that time anyway. I can agree that if A600 launched alongside A1200 nobody would complain about it much. But I don't think it caused some long lasting trauma, it's definitely not excuse for A1200's shortcomings. Whether it'd help much if it actually have AGA is questionable. AGA on its own wasn't really that much of a game changer. |
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