Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It's not a bug in Gayle. Back in 1996 I thought it was, but it turned out to be an undocumented (?) change that didn't get into the OS. Since Commodore didn't know about this it therefore follows that it had no effect on the A1200's release schedule.

Bullshit.

AA-Gayle impacted Budgie.

https://github.com/rkrajnc/minimig-m...00FuncSpec.txt

From A1200/A1200HD, Advanced Amiga 1200 System, Functional Specification, October 28, 1992, Revision 1.6, by Edgar A. Gunther, Brian Fenimore, and George Robbins.


The AA Gayle gate array is a derivative of the Gayle used in the A600.
Minor modifications were required for Gayle to operate with Alice since
a decision was made to eliminate the *AS, *UDS, and
*LDS Pins from Alice. Additional changes were needed to support the
requirements of the 14MHz 68EC020 processor.
...

Budgie

Budgie is a chip that serves as the main data path element in the
A1200 system. It provides the interface between the 32-bit processor
bus and the 32-bit chip memory bus, generates the RAS and CAS
select signals from the RAS and CAS timing signals that Alice
supports. It also provides a 16-bit bus buffer which can be used for
either an expansion bus or in this case the PCMCIA port data buffer.
....
The spare 16-bit expansion port(used for PCMCIA duty in the A1200)
provides a simple path to/from the 16-bit processor port. The direction
is dependent on the X-NOR of R_W and _BGACK signals to support
either expansion bus or several purpose buffer requirements.




--------------------
A1200 Hardware Developer / Expansion Slot Notes
by George Robbins

System Implementation Details

The A1200 system is controlled by two gate arrays referred to as Gayle and Budgie. The Gayle
array handles all the address decoding and processor control functions, while the Budgie chip
implements the 32-bit data paths and DRAM interface.

The Gayle chip is a derivative of the one used in the A600, but has been enhanced to work with
a 14MHZ processor, 68EC020 control signals and interface to the AGA chipset. The only
change to the software model is the redefinition of one of the PCMCIA "speeds" to support zero
wait state (16-bit) access for fast SRAM cards.

These are extra R&D time usage when compared to the known working Fat Gary/Ramsey combo from AA3000+. From A1200's designer statements, A1200's AA-Gayle derivative from A600's Gayle. A600's Gayle evolved from A500's Gary.

A3000/AA3000+'s Fat Gary is the 32-bit version of A500's Gary.

Gary evolved into Fat Gary for a 32-bit CPU.
Gary evolved into Gayle into AA-Gayle for a 32-bit CPU.

The A1200 project is a merge between the AA3000+ and A600 projects. There was partial R&D duplication between Fat Gary and AA-Gayle.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Shall I tell you about the PC cards that won't work in my IBM Thinkpad?

If a PC card causes the A1200 to lock up it's not due to a bug in the PCMCIA port hardware. Most likely it's because the card is doing something naughty that just happens to be benign on most PCs.

A Google search brings up plenty of complaints from PC users. Here's an example:-

NI PCMCIA-CAN/2 crashes Windows XPWhat a nightmare!

When Commodore developed the PCMCIA slot on the A600, the standard for PC cards had not yet been finalized. Furthermore the Amiga is not using one of the 'industry standard' PCMCIA interface chips designed for PC laptops, and even if it was the OS is very different so there are bound to be some compatibility issues. This is not Commodore's fault. There were compatibility issues with PCs running Linux too.

Considering all that I think we are lucky that so many PC cards do work in the A600 and A1200. When I wrote my driver for CNet network cards I got a message from the maintainer of the iCard driver. He expressed surprise that I had managed to get it working. According to him the iCard was specially designed for the Amiga because the Amiga's PCMCIA slot was fundamentally incompatible with PC cards.

1. "NI PCMCIA-CAN/2 Series 2 card" is for the embedded automotive market i.e. this is not common WiFi, Ethernet, and SCSI PCMCIA for office markets.

2. The PC world has the option for alternative laptop vendors, but there's a single vendor source for the Amiga. For PCMCIA-equipped laptops, I have both DELL and IBM brands. In modern times, I have HP, DELL, and Lenovo brands. This is to reduce the "show stopper" risk. The "second source" is important for business. You haven't realized why I have both DELL and IBM laptops with PCMCIA.

Adaptec is a major SCSI brand in the PC world.

Control Area Network (CAN) bus is a serial communication protocol that allows devices to exchange data. It is widely used in vehicles to connect ECUs in the vehicles.

The Amiga doesn't have a driver for the niche "NI PCMCIA-CAN/2 Series 2" card.

PCMCIA's support should NOT be at the expense of Commodore's financial health.

Squirrel SCSI Interface for the A1200/A600 PCMCIA arrived in 1995. https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/squirrel PCMCIA support is a nonfactor in the crucial 1991 to 1993 time periods for Commodore i.e. NOT a major system seller i.e. A600 was a sales flop.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Gorf

To me it shows, that there was a moment in time in 91-92, where the PC dominance was under pressure.

It's the internets sacred tradition that people will read data any way they want So, yeah, I guess that for an invested Amiga fan what others here have correctly identified as a "blip" counts as a competitor "under pressure". Problem is though, that if after that blip/dip you still have >65% advantage over the nearest challenger, then you never truly were under any pressure.

Originally Posted by Gorf

DOS was getting old and had a really bad user experience - Windows 3.0 was too demanding, not stable and look and feel was still terrible.

That's what people on forums like this one like to say, but in reality it's nowere near the truth. If DOS/Win really were so terrible PC would have tanked near the beginning. But DOS is actually pretty good in its simplicity and of course the DOS experience itself is really Norton Commander. And NC = DOpus on Amiga (and for me Total Commander on PC even in 2024), so pretty much the same idea of doing things.

Windows 3.0 managed to sell 10 mil units in 2 years, nearly double the Amiga user base, so yet another proof that such grumblings are not really reflected in reality. Of course Bruce will then say that in his shop in New Zealand some people complained about them, so I guess it renders the whole chart, global trend, and what has really happened moot

Originally Posted by Gorf

Mac (USA) and Amiga (Europe) were able to step in as an alternative and gained momentum.With a better product lineup and earlier AGA, the Amiga could have established an enduring user base right there. But you can't do that with low-end machines targeting only kids and gamers alone, but you need to target a more semi-professional and power-user base.

Momentum? What momentum? For Mac it flatlined (and dropped off) nearly instantly, for Amiga it's so small you really need to squint to see it. Commodore has established its largest userbases exactly with machines "for kids and gamers" (which somehow was also used for other stuff) - first C64 then the amazing A500. It had tried to target the higher end users from its inception and it somehow never really worked, so what makes you think it would in the Nineties - an era when PCs were in full swing and their prices were dropping like a stone?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gorf

To me it shows, that there was a moment in time in 91-92, where the PC dominance was under pressure.
DOS was getting old and had a really bad user experience - Windows 3.0 was too demanding, not stable and look and feel was still terrible.

As a user of Windows 3.0 with Ami Pro, it's stable enough.

Client-side MacOS, Windows 3.x and AmigaOS have no memory protection.

Corporates have memory-protected Xenix or NextStep. Windows NT 3.1 was released in July 1993.

From https://www.intel.fr/content/dam/doc...ual-report.pdf
Intel reported the following
1. In 1994's fourth quarter, Pentium unit sales accounted for 23 percent of Intel's desktop processor volume.
2. Millions of Pentiums were shipped.
3. During Q4 1993 and 1994, a typical PC purchase was a computer featuring the Intel 486 chip. (Intel claim)
4. Net 1994 revenue reached $11.5 billion.
5. Net 1993 revenue reached $8.7 billion.
6. Growing demand and production for Intel 486 resulted in a sharp decline in sales for Intel 386 from 1992 to 1993.
7. Sales of the Intel 486 family comprised the majority of Intel's revenue during 1992, 1993, and 1994. (Intel claim)
8. Intel reached its 6 to 7 million Pentiums shipped goal during 1994. This is only 23 percent unit volume.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Mac (USA) and Amiga (Europe) were able to step in as an alternative and gained momentum.

With a better product lineup and earlier AGA, the Amiga could have established an enduring user base right there. But you can't do that with low-end machines targeting only kids and gamers alone, but you need to target a more semi-professional and power-user base.

1989 to 1991 was A500's golden era with notable time exclusive game packs e.g. David Pleasance's Batman pack.

Prove Amiga has a "semi-professional and power-user base" who can spend A2000's prices at an annual 1.2. million units sale rate. Prove A2000 crossed the 200,000 annual sales rate i.e. 5 years from 1987 to 1992 for 1,000,000 A2000s.

In Germany, A500/A500P sales (1,160,500) outnumbered A2000 (124,500) by about 9.3 to 1 ratio. Similar 10 to 1 ratio for A1200/CD32 (120,500) vs A4000 (11,300).

https://web.archive.org/web/20230726...ory/sales.html
AGA Amiga install base
Germany:
Amiga 1200 = 95,500
Amiga CD32 = 25,000
Amiga 4000/030 = 7,500
Amiga 4000/040 = 3,800
Sub-total: 131,800

UK:
Amiga 1200 (Oct - Dec 1992) = 44,000 (Amiga Format May 1993)
Amiga 1200 (Jan - Aug 1993) = 100,000 (Amiga Format September 1993)
Amiga 1200 (Xmas 1993) = 160,000 (Amiga Format 56 Feb 1994)
Amiga CD32 (Xmas 1993) = 70,000 (Amiga Format 56 Feb 1994)
Sub-total: 374,000

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gorf

No that does not explain the decrease in marketshare:
this is also visible in the number of units sold - so a shift to cheaper PCs is not the cause here.

There was a recession. Most PCs were sold to businesses. What's the first thing a business does when times are tough? It had nothing to do with PCs being shitty.

BTW I am suspicious of those numbers. I bet they just added up the sales figures of major American computer makers and presumed that was all of them. Meanwhile millions of Asian clones were being assembled by small-time 'OEMs' and private individuals. That's what I did when I was running a computer shop in the 90's. There was no independent record of those sales. When we needed new PCs for our later business (every year from 2001 to 2014) we just bought the parts and built them ourselves. I'm using one now!

They did with the focus on low end models, while even the A2000 was overpriced for years, let alone the A3000 and A4000.

Not enough focus until it was too late. They wasted years on AAA, then realized that it was useless for the low end because it was too expensive. AA only existed as a backup plan in case AA failed, when it should have been their main thrust. And the A500 should have gotten a graphics upgrade to match 256 color VGA earlier, before even considering high scan rates etc. But they didn't do that because it was too low end for them.

Their idea was to create a high-end chipset and then cut it down for the low-end. There was talk of providing AA with a 16-bit 68000 interface for the A1000+, then they realized that they could put a 68EC020 in it for not much more. But nobody was talking about putting anything like AA into the A500. Of course eventually they did with the A1200 (initially called the 'AA600'), but the path to get there was tortuous.

Still, at least they did eventually get there. It's just disappointing to think that they could have gotten there 2 years earlier without the distractions of AAA and Unix workstations.

BTW the CDTV should have had AA and a 68020 CPU too. Then it would have been something to desire. At the time I though "WTF - the same old 7MHz 68000 and no improved graphics? How is this going to compete against CD-i and multimedia PCs?". That was the machine that really needed better graphics. If only they had AA ready to go in 1990...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Windows 3.0 managed to sell 10 mil units in 2 years, nearly double the Amiga user base, so yet another proof that such grumblings are not really reflected in reality. Of course Bruce will then say that in his shop in New Zealand some people complained about them, so I guess it renders the whole chart, global trend, and what has really happened moot

Er, not quite. I took over the shop in 1991. Right from the start I stocked up with PCs and Amigas, and sales were an even split between them. I tried to extol the Amiga's advantages, but soon gave up and let customers decide for themselves (nothing deflates a sales pitch faster than being asked 'But is it IBM compatible?').

Windows 3.0 marked a turning point when people actually started using it. Being bundled with new PCs was a big part of that, but so was its improved user interface. Anyone could use Windows 3.0 with practically no training. On a 386SX it was pretty fast, and once you discovered how easy it was to click on 'Games' and 'Solitaire'...

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not enough focus until it was too late. They wasted years on AAA, then realized that it was useless for the low end because it was too expensive.

According to Lew, AAA had 1 year of serious R&D.

http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahi...ggebrecht.html

Question: Tell me about AAA - it's been worked on since 1989?

Lew: "Yes, we worked on it from an architectural point of view for a long time but it's only been serious for about a year. It was obvious that AAA was not going to meet our cost targets for the mid to low end systems. We wanted to continue that development an d we also had to have an enhancement quickly so, AA was the solution to that problem. It would have been nice to have AAA at the same time as AA but we just couldn't get there."

Remember, Commodore had a "read my lips, no new chips" directive during A3000's R&D period.

1989 A500 Rev 6A's ECS 2MB Chip RAM capability's R&D would be 1987 to 1988 range.

"It's going to be 1994 before you see any product. I don't believe there'll be any easy way to upgrade because of the packaging of the chips - they are surface mounted. The memory timing and interfaces are dramatically different as we're using a method ca lled split cycling to do two cycles at once. To get the video out faster we're bursting out four 32-bit words in one memory cycle so you can't upgrade a 1200. It's the same all over though - you can upgrade a 286 to a 386 if you change the motherboard -th at's progress. We'd love to ensure that no one was ever made obsolete but that's just not practical - you spend so much time being backwards compatible that it gets in the way of progress although compatibility is a major design target.

AA Lisa's 64-bit 3.5 Mhz is a burst of two 32-bit words from 3.5 Mhz i.e. 7 Mhz FP DRAM is needed i.e. 140 ns write/read cycle.

AA+ Lisa+'s burst of four 32-bit words from 3.5 Mhz i.e. 14 Mhz FP DRAM is needed i.e. 70 ns write/read cycle. It's about the EDO DRAM range.

Legacy Amiga software wouldn't be aware of Lisa+'s extra burst modes, hence maintaining backward compatibility.

AAA scales to 64-bit VRAM. Tseng Labs ET4000 family wasn't crazy enough for AAA's 64-bit VRAM.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

AA only existed as a backup plan in case AA failed, when it should have been their main thrust. And the A500 should have gotten a graphics upgrade to match 256 color VGA earlier, before even considering high scan rates etc. But they didn't do that because it was too low end for them.

PCMCIA got in the way.

The A300 project shouldn't have merged with the AA500 project.

AA500+ in H2 1991.
PCMCIA+IDE equiped AA600+ in H2 1992.

C2P in AA baseline if chunky pixels weren't completed.
DSP3210 for cheap math power increase in AA baseline.

Lisa modified for chunky pixels e.g. modified four bitplanes for 256 color chunky i.e.
1st bitplane has 8 bits (1st byte), 8 bits (5th byte),
2nd bitplane has 8 bits (2nd byte), 8 bits (6th byte),
3rd bitplane has 8 bits (3rd byte), 8 bits (7th byte),
4th bitplane has 8 bits (4th byte), 8 bits (8th byte) and etc.

It's based on VGA's four planes that spread the byte word across the four planes. Storage striping is still needed.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Their idea was to create a high-end chipset and then cut it down for the low-end. There was talk of providing AA with a 16-bit 68000 interface for the A1000+, then they realized that they could put a 68EC020 in it for not much more. But nobody was talking about putting anything like AA into the A500. Of course eventually they did with the A1200 (initially called the 'AA600'), but the path to get there was tortuous.

I agree that the AA600 path was risky. AA500+ is for maintaining revenue levels.

From 1990 to 1991, the entire Commodore business's sweet spot is selling about 900,000 to 1 million Amigas annually.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Still, at least they did eventually get there. It's just disappointing to think that they could have gotten there 2 years earlier without the distractions of AAA and Unix workstations.

I agree. Foreign TIGA doesn't benefit Amiga's general-purpose graphics. C65 is another R&D wastage i.e. the R&D resources for C65 should have been the Amiga's.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

BTW the CDTV should have had AA and a 68020 CPU too.

I agree. 15 kHz resolution mode AA for CDTV. Double scan "business" resolution modes wouldn't be the focus i.e. not guaranteed to work.

31 kHz "business" resolution mode AA is for up-selling (e.g. AA3000+ in 1991) or selling another "evolved new" AA600+ (31 kHz "business" AA, IDE, PCMCIA) in 1992.

"No A600 ECS" for killing the "A500" model sub-brand. "Amiga 500" is like a brand in itself e.g. BMW 3 series.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Then it would have been something to desire. At the time I though "WTF - the same old 7MHz 68000 and no improved graphics? How is this going to compete against CD-i and multimedia PCs?". That was the machine that really needed better graphics. If only they had AA ready to go in 1990...

I agree. 256 colors are for the lower-effort artwork without being Jim Sachs.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

If DOS/Win really were so terrible PC would have tanked near the beginning.

I'm sure they're both fantastic

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'm sure they're both fantastic

Clearly, you didn't need to be "fantastic" to dominate the market. "Functional" was more than enough

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by Gorf

You mean when the PC trajectory is almost vertical? How would that fit the definition??

Yes the PC trajectory was almost vertical, but so was the C64 one at first. Who could predict its manufacturer would be gone in slightly more than a decade? As with many other things in life, hindsight is 20/20. :-P

But I believe the most important thing here is the fact back then, numbers were closer than they ever were compared to any other platform on the graph.

A - roughly - 75/10% split is not market pressure, is the very definition of market dominant and niche platform respectively.

I will stand corrected though: in 1987 it was probably already too late, I should have said 1983-86, when PC vs C64 was more or less 50/35 (although that is likely an apples to oranges comparison: C64 could do nothing against PC dominance, only a properly marketed and - later - improved Amiga might have)

[TEG]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Clearly, you didn't need to be "fantastic" to dominate the market. "Functional" was more than enough

They were backup by VGA and good screens. As simple as that.

[Promilus]

C64 was even more "gaming console with keyboard" than A500 To make it actually something alike computer it did cost more than twice as base machine (so, yeah, floppy drive and GeOS, then maybe even as far as GeoRAM). And indeed by vast majority of users it was used as game console with long load time from cheap medium (tape).
But in '85 NES arrived being just great alternative for C64 as fairly inexpensive gaming center.

While A500 was primarily used in similar manner there actually was a fairly large number of applications on Amiga and obviously Amiga models for more professional usage. I do not think any gaming console up to the PS1 did limit market a lot for Amiga but obviously A1200 didn't really offer much over "almost 16bit" SNES and "less than 32b" MegaCD when it comes to games. A1200HD did provide ok-ish environment for actual use of OS (and as such not only gaming) but lack of stock FastRAM did incur some penalties. But what's the use of OS if you can't run "mainstream" apps? That was the problem. And Commodore was neither interested in funding development of such apps for Amiga nor managed to introduce large enough userbase for developers to notice.

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That's what people on forums like this one like to say, but in reality it's nowere near the truth. If DOS/Win really were so terrible PC would have tanked near the beginning.

I think they were actually quite awful, as stated.

Problem was (and still is, largely), by the time competition was relatively mature - and arguably way better, at least from a couple of very significant point of view - the installed base, and most of all the professional software available simply couldn't be ignored.

It was really a vicious circle: I'm sure most people would have loved to replace the ugly DOS with the brilliant - for the time - GUI of AmigaOS, but who was going to do that when there was no Lotus, no dBase, no Autocad, etc. available there (unless you went the emulation route, which was either slow or expensive, or both)

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Turrican_3

I think they were actually quite awful, as stated.Problem was (and still is, largely), by the time competition was relatively mature - and arguably way better, at least from a couple of very significant point of view - the installed base, and most of all the professional software available simply couldn't be ignored. It was really a vicious circle: I'm sure most people would have loved to replace the ugly DOS with the brilliant - for the time - GUI of AmigaOS, but who was going to do that when there was no Lotus, no dBase, no Autocad, etc. available there (unless you went the emulation route, which was either slow or expensive, or both)

This is the min/maxing approach to history: something was "awful/ugly" vs "brilliant". This kind of hyperbole is really exasperating and nigh on impossible to argue against. Which is why I guess so many (most?) people on the internet use it

In reality though, business people cared much less about how beautiful or brilliant something is, and much more whether it can get a job done. And DOS was dependable enough. Nobody gave two hoots about its perceived "ugliness", which btw is kinda funny argument to use seeing as neither DOpus nor Linux CLI are very beautiful.And this of course was my main point. If MS-DOS, a really important part of the computer system, was really "awful", which is a really strong adjective - in this context meaning unusable/broken/etc -nobody would want to use it and instead buy Macs and Amigas.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

If DOS/Win really were so terrible PC would have tanked near the beginning. But DOS is actually pretty good in its simplicity and of course the DOS experience itself is really Norton Commander. And NC = DOpus on Amiga (and for me Total Commander on PC even in 2024), so pretty much the same idea of doing things.

Windows 3.0 managed to sell 10 mil units in 2 years, nearly double the Amiga user base, so yet another proof that such grumblings are not really reflected in reality. Of course Bruce will then say that in his shop in New Zealand some people complained about them, so I guess it renders the whole chart, global trend, and what has really happened moot

Well, I was there and can speak from my own experience, since I was known as the guy that "understands computers", all kind of PC owners asked me to help them with their problems.
And Windows 3.x was a sluggish unintuitive mess and DOS ... well DOS was DOS...
The more I had to do with both, the less I wanted to have these systems at home.
Microsoft was very good at marketing.
People may have heard of the Amiga, but almost nobody took it serious. It was perceived as a gaming toy like the C64.
Only when I showed them in person, what my A3000 could do, they were impressed.

Momentum? What momentum?

the one shown in the graph.

For Mac it flatlined (and dropped off) nearly instantly, for Amiga it's so small you really need to squint to see it. Commodore has established its largest userbases exactly with machines "for kids and gamers" (which somehow was also used for other stuff) - first C64 then the amazing A500.

And that is exactly why it died so quickly. Customers weren't invested in the platform. The Amiga could be replaced as easily as any game console for most customers.

It had tried to target the higher end users from its inception and it somehow never really worked, so what makes you think it would in the Nineties - an era when PCs were in full swing and their prices were dropping like a stone?

Mistakes were made from the very beginning. But we are talking about the A1200 here - about the second generation Amigas.

The A1000 more or less failed and the A500/A2000 took awfully long to get into the game - but almost like a miracle they eventually did!
Commodore did not know how to handle this late success and were not prepared. They did not believe in the system themselves until it was too late.
With better and a little bit earlier AGA machines and more focus on the mid-range and proper high-end machines, they could have survived much longer.

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

This kind of hyperbole is really exasperating and nigh on impossible to argue against.

Well I clearly admitted myself there was a reason PCs "won" in the end. And I apologize if my wording was a bit harsh, being a non-native speaker my vocabulary is relatively limited in certain circumstances.

My point was mostly about the end user experience. Which in my opinion, especially after the introduction of AmigaOS 2.x, was definitely more enjoyable on the Amiga. But at the same time, I am unfortunately too well aware this had little, if any, implications on the commercial fate of the Amiga... which in fact sadly died just a few years later.

DOS+Win had massive software support, and that was all that mattered in the end.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by hammer

My AA-Gayle on my A1200 rev1d4 still has bugs e.g. PCMCIA reset problems which needed 3rd party fix.

This is not really a defect.... Gayle *can* reset the PCMCIA port, but this is usually not done. The story is a bit longer.

The problem is that the PCMCIA port can/is also used as memory expansion. PCMCIA-cards can operate in two modes: As memory, or as I/O device. If you want to use it as memory device, it is important that the memory within it does not go away during a reset as this may crash the system if information such as interrupt vectors are placed in this RAM. Thus, one cannot simply reset the PCMCIA port during a hardware reset, and neither can SetPatch simply reset the port as it depends on what is in the port whether this makes sense or not.

Thus, this is not a bug, and certainly not an issue of the hardware.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

There was a recession. Most PCs were sold to businesses. What's the first thing a business does when times are tough? It had nothing to do with PCs being shitty.

Well.. this recession did not affect the Mac, which was also used in offices.
And as in every recession private customers also hesitate to buy new things.
The key might be that this recession was e.g. not effecting Germany, which had still a small boom due to the reunification.

BTW I am suspicious of those numbers.

It is of course more an estimate. Jeremy Raimer did a fantastic job here, but he certainly could not take every little detail into account. E.g. the Workstation market is also totally missing, which was at the end of the 80s and early 90s even faster growing than the PC market (on an overall lower level of course).

And the A500 should have gotten a graphics upgrade to match 256 color VGA earlier, before even considering high scan rates etc. But they didn't do that because it was too low end for them.

It was more like a "it's good enough" attitude. OSC/ESC could e.g. be easily upgraded to 5bit per colour to deliver 32K colors instead of 4K ... the bits in the 16bit wide register are simply unused.
Also an AA- (still on 16bit-Denise) could have been given the Double-CAS treatment to easily allow 8 bitplanes.

Still, at least they did eventually get there. It's just disappointing to think that they could have gotten there 2 years earlier without the distractions of AAA and Unix workstations.

I agree on AAA: a steady update path in small steps would have been much more fruitful.

On Workstations ... they only were too late on this one (again). An A3000 in early 89 would have been a hit. And Newtek would have made the Videotoaster fitting in, when the A3000 was already on the market.

BTW the CDTV should have had AA and a 68020 CPU too. Then it would have been something to desire. At the time I though "WTF - the same old 7MHz 68000 and no improved graphics? How is this going to compete against CD-i and multimedia PCs?". That was the machine that really needed better graphics. If only they had AA ready to go in 1990...

true
At least an AA- chipset and a 14Mhz 68k would have been the minimum.
And one year earlier... as always.

Atari was hinting a CD-ROM device in the late 80s ... nothing ever came from it, but it would have been the right time to make an impact, even at a higher price level.

But as it was already 91, they should have canceled the CDTV introduction and put all resources on AGA release ..

[TheLurker]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Well.. this recession did not affect the Mac, which was also used in offices.
And as in every recession private customers also hesitate to buy new things.
The key might be that this recession was e.g. not effecting Germany, which had still a small boom due to the reunification.




It is of course more an estimate. Jeremy Rainer did a fantastic job here, but he certainly could not take every little detail into account. E.g. the Workstation market is also totally missing, which was at the end of the 80s and early 90s even faster growing than the PC market (on an overall lower level of course).

Interesting read about Apple having a very productive late 90/91:

Low cost Macs
High end Quadras
Apple IIe card
Quicktime and System 7
PowerBook

They increased their sales from 1.3 to 2.1 million units in one year. Then market share peaks the next year and begins the decline.

FWIW, Reimer’s data and articles about this can be found here: https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137

You can download the spreadsheet and chart to your heart's desire. I did notice though a few errors. The totals for 92-95 leave out some models in the totals - Amiga, ST, etc. Correcting that changes the percentages slightly.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

in this context meaning unusable/broken/etc

Not unusable, etc, just crap Just like Windows 11 isn't unusable, but just bloated crap (that I use myself)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Not unusable, etc, just crap Just like Windows 11 isn't unusable, but just bloated crap (that I use myself)

It is soooo terribly bloated - even after a clean install with no extra programs installed, you end up with over 20GB on your HD ... there are tools to slim it down, but even then it is around 10GB ... the equivalent of 12.500 Workbench disks.
For something you can't actually use for anything without additional software.
Computing has taken a wrong turn ....