Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Where else can you put it? Z-II area is the only continuous region offering a 4MB window for it. Thus, that was pretty much the only option given the restriction of a 24bit address space.

Yes, that's pretty much the only option if you insist on allocating the full 4MB on a system with 24-bit address bus.

However the A1200 does have some 'spare' space higher up, and some FastRAM boards did put memory there. For example the Mikronik RA-1208 could have 8MB FastRAM and 4MB PCMCIA RAM at the same time, for a total of 10MB.

Commodore also had ideas of supplying software on PCMCIA cards. However this is an expensive option, and with few machines (initially) having a PCMCIA port it wouldn't be a popular distribution medium. It did become popular for Amiga-specific peripherals though, especially once developers realized that you didn't need that fancy attribute memory etc. The only difficult part was the connector.

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Yes, that's pretty much the only option if you insist on allocating the full 4MB on a system with 24-bit address bus.

However the A1200 does have some 'spare' space higher up, and some FastRAM boards did put memory there. For example the Mikronik RA-1208 could have 8MB FastRAM and 4MB PCMCIA RAM at the same time, for a total of 10MB.

Commodore also had ideas of supplying software on PCMCIA cards. However this is an expensive option, and with few machines (initially) having a PCMCIA port it wouldn't be a popular distribution medium. It did become popular for Amiga-specific peripherals though, especially once developers realized that you didn't need that fancy attribute memory etc. The only difficult part was the connector.

That's not continuous space... and at most you can squeeze out just another 1.5-1.75MB iirc. Which means 2MB chip, 4MB pcmcia (16bit), 4MB ZII space and ~1.5MB of fairly fragmented other fast ram (including space reserved for A500 trapdoor expansion). The actual question is ... why? What for?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I don't think many people had a 386DX-16 in 1992.

From 1992, Intel's revenues are mostly from 486s.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

AMD 386DX-40 was a popular 'mid-range' system at that time - for many times the price of an A1200. Totally different market both for that reason and because you didn't buy an Amiga when you wanted IBM compatibility!

FALSE.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

You're being disingenuous. Apple's Quadra (or Centris - as it was called in the UK*) range was the base model of the Macintosh range (crucially, it only had a single expansion slot) - strictly speaking, it ought to be compared to the A1200 as opposed to the A4000/040, which was very much the flagship of the Amiga range at the time.

You're being disingenuous. A1200 has a gimped math power. A4000/040 is not a true "040" machine since A3640 is only an adapter for A4000's 030 bus.

Quadra 605 covers the mid-range's USD 999. Blame Commodore for not covering the USD 999 price range for the Amiga.

For the UK market, Commodore had DT486DX-25 for about 799 UKP. This is about $1000 USD or $1500 AUD. Commodore: buy a Commodore PC in the mid-price range.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

And yes, the OG Quadras used 68EC040s, however the caveat there is that the Macintosh platform had no hardware acceleration out-of-the-box - *everything* had to be implemented in software.

WRONG. NO Macs used MMU-less 68EC040. You figure out how to mark certain memory address ranges as cacheless with 68EC040 CPU and you don't have 68030's cache pin controls.

The Quadra 700 in 1991 has the full 68040 @ 25 Mhz and 512 KB VRAM. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/m...uadra_700.html

Amiga's 3.5 Mhz (280 ns read/write cycle) 16-bit Blitter's 2D acceleration is slower than 68040 @ 25 and 68030 @ 33 Mhz.

A1200's gimped 68EC020-14 (with hardware barrel shifters, effectively 7 Mhz) is 47% of Alice Blitter. [ Show youtube player ] Gimped 68EC020-14 has 8 BOBs while Alice Blitter has 17 BOBs at 6 bitplanes 50 Hz.

1985 Amiga Blitter (3.5 Mhz, 16 bit, 280 ns read/write cycle) wasn't designed against 68020 @ 25 Mhz with 140 ns read/write cycle (7.14 Mhz) 32-bit Fast RAM.

68030-25 Mhz or 68040-25 with 32-bit 120 ns read/write cycle is about 32-bit 8.3 Mhz. This does not include burst mode which is common for pixel processing.

VRAM in 1988 era 40 ns serial access read/write cycle i.e. 25 Mhz.
VRAM in 1992 era 20 ns serial access read/write cycle i.e. 50 Mhz.
Burst mode memory access which is common for pixel processing.

DSP3210 @ 50 Mhz's purpose is to deliver a fast enough 32-bit object manipulator for updated 32-bit FP DRAM at a low cost.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

* - I remember this specifically because my then-girlfriend's stepfather had an 060-based Centris circa 1998... When he retired the machine I was all set to ask him if I could take it away rather than simply having him throw it out in the hope I could snaffle the 060 to use in my A1200... Alas, we split up before that could happen...

There is no such thing as a 060-based Centris. 68060 is missing a few instructions that break MacOS's boot process i.e. 68060 equipped Mac will pass the chime sound and crash.

Mac needs to load 68060 support libs before MacOS boots (e.g. bootloader) or use 68060-aware Linux.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Again, as far as I can tell, inaccurate. According to this link :
http://kpolsson.com/apple/appl1994.htm
Apple announced shipping "the one millionth Power Macintosh computer or upgrade" on the 19th of January 1995. That "upgrade" caveat is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting.

Your 2D acceleration is a de-accelerator on Amigas-equipped fast CPU accelerators. Hint: FastCPUFBilt OS patches.

Amiga's 16-bit 3.5 Mhz chipset's 2D acceleration is slower than 68040 @ 25 and 68030 @ 33 Mhz.

A1200's gimped 68EC020-14 (with hardware barrel shifters) is 47% of Alice Blitter.

RISC-based PowerPC 601 (e.g. 60 Mhz, 64-bit bus) destroys Amiga Blitter.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Furthermore, this article :
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/199...wer-mac-sales/

My link is at the end of the Xmas 1994 sales period i.e. Jan 1995.

Your link is in June 1994. Your link is missing the important Q4 Xmas 1994 sales.

The Amiga is NOT the only platform with Xmas sale targets.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

explicitly states that Apple reported shipping 145,000 new PowerMac machines by April 1994 - with Apple refusing to report current sales figures when the article was published in June 1994.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/20/b...-earnings.html

Apple's PowerMac sales were boosted by Xmas Q4 1994 sales.

Your link is missing the important Q4 Xmas 1994 sales.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Yup, but we're talking 2000/2001 here - the Amiga platform had been dead as a doornail for about 4 years at that point.

Amiga's main problems are the 68060 and PowerPC boat anchors.

Without UAE, AROS on other platforms doesn't run big-endian 68K Amiga legacy apps.

The Amiga is not a Mac when the bulk of its customer base is in the lower price segment. Commodore's Amiga Hombre dual chips have $40 cost i.e. must have ARM's low-cost mentality with "RISC" performance.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Yes, but ultimately the platform was unable to compete with the commodity x86 compatible market in terms of performance, and for several years Apple rather embarrassed themselves trying to pretend otherwise.

Apple survived.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

But affordable PIIs didn't really arrive until around 1998.

"Pentium Pro" is just an "A1000" moment. Pentium II was released in May 1997.

1995 "Pentium Pro" pushed P54 Pentiums into the lower price tier.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Are we talking about the synthetic benchmarks Apple used to try to pretend that PowerMacs were outperforming Wintel machines? Again, I was there - and as I understood things at the time, while what the PPCs were doing was very elegant and clever, all the x86 compatible CPUs simply made up for it in terms of raw computing horsepower.

P5 Pentium FPU's IPC wasn't 1.0 until Pentium MMX and Pentium Pro (beyond 1.0 IPC for FP).

PowerPC has other architecture issues with PC game ports e.g. PowerPC's gimped GPR to FP transfers.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

It was already way too late by 1996 - as I'm sure you'd agree.

Escom's Amiga Technologies Amiga Walker's 68030-40 was LOL in 1996.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

IBM fought that tooth-and-nail, and eventually failed, with MS being the biggest winner in that regard.

Lenovo says Hi. IBM's efforts weren't good enough.

IBM has its stupid moves.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

While Excel was originally developed for the Mac, it's worth bearing in mind that MS's business model in the '80s and '90s was "Embrace and Extend".

Refer to MS/SCO Xenix.

MS Excel for Mac is MS's product.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

The fact of the matter is that the Mac platform never had a prayer of supplanting the PC compatible in the business market, but in 1985 MS's attempt at a GUI was in its infancy. Reading between the lines it's reasonable to conclude that MS used the Mac platform as a loss leader while they navigated the legal hurdles which restricted Windows 1.0.

With PC clones, a single-year sales wave would overcome Apple's Mac install base. What's needed is a killer GUI app on the PC side.

PC clones had the double Windows 3.0 and Wing Commander "killer app" releases in 1990, hence the VGA sales wave became a tsunami.

According to Dataquest November 1989, VGA crossed more than 50 percent market share in 1989 i.e. 56%.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/c...lysis_1989.pdf

Low-End PC Graphics Market Share by Standard Type
Estimated Worldwide History and Forecast

Total low-end PC graphic chipset shipment history and forecast
1987 = 9.2. million, VGA 16.4% market share i.e. 1.5088 million VGA.
1988 = 11.1 million, VGA 34.2% i.e. 1.51 million VGA.
1989 = 13.7 million, VGA 54.6% i.e. 3.80 million VGA.
1990 = 14.3 million, VGA 66.4% i.e. 9.50 million VGA.
1991 = 15.8 million, VGA 76.6% i.e. 12.10 million VGA.
1992 = 16.4 million, VGA 84.2% i.e. 13.81 million VGA.
1993 = 18.3 million, VGA 92.4% i.e. 16.9 million VGA.

Text-based Lotus 123 and Word Prefect were late to the Windows 2.x with VGA party.

Apple was able to gain a large enough business customer base i.e. Amiga is not a Mac.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

I'm somewhat ancient by modern standards, and I clearly remember the "state of the art" on the DOS/Windows platform circa 1991 - at that point WordPerfect still technically ruled the roost, and it wasn't until the advent of Windows 3.1 and Word 6.0 that what eventually became MS Office started to achieve dominance.

WordPerfect was late in coming to market with a Windows version that enabled Microsoft to create a beachhead for WinWord.

WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows, introduced in 1991, had to be installed from DOS and was largely unpopular due to serious stability issues.

The first mature version, WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows, was released in November 1992 and WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows was released in 1993.

By the time WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows was introduced, Microsoft Word for Windows version 2 had been on the market for over a year and had received its third interim release, v2.0c.

Amiga's Word Prefect 4.x and 5.x ports are from the DOS version and wouldn't displace incumbents.

In 1991, WinWord 2.0 was released which had further improvements and finally solidified Word's marketplace dominance. WinWord 6.0 came out in 1993 and was designed for the newly released Windows 3.1.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Yes - in the business market sector. Still prohibitively expensive for the home market until the Far Eastern vendors started shipping competitive hardware at significantly lower cost.

A500 is also "far east" manufactured e.g. Hong Kong.

A1200 and A600 are manufactured in the Philippines.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Masculine bovine faeces. (See above)

Look in the mirror.

Your link is FLAWED since it didn't factor in Xmas Q4 1994 sales.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Still lacking in expandability - the Macintosh was originally intended to be Apple's entry level GUI model with Lisa being the flagship. Jobs apparently had to be dragged kicking and screaming into endorsing the Macintosh as the sole platform.

The original pusher for 68K MacOS's GUI is Steve Jobs. Lisa has OS updates to run Mac apps.


"In 1982, after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project by Apple's board of directors, he appropriated the Macintosh project from Jef Raskin, who had originally conceived of a sub-$1,000 text-based appliance computer in 1979. Jobs immediately redefined Macintosh as a less expensive and more focused version of the graphical Lisa."


Steve Jobs's NextStep foundation for MacOS X is natural since Steve Jobs pushed for a GUI Macintosh instead of the original text-based Macintosh.

Steve Jobs is part of Apple's history.


Without the original Los Gatos Amiga team, Commodore couldn't complete the 3DO level graphics chipset within 2 years.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

As mentioned above, that figure needs to be taken with a metaphorical shovelful of salt.

Look in the mirror.

Your link is flawed since it didn't factor in Xmas Q4 1994 sales. Did you think Commodore was the only company with Xmas sales focus?

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Nor did the Mac. Your point?

Mac's Adobe Premiere NLE is not boat anchored on a particular Zorro II/III card with a few thousand of the install base.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Thank you.
Ultimately it was the inertia from that "acquired wisdom" that set things on the path we stand on today.

Once IBM were legally barred from preventing competitors building and selling compatible machines it was effectively only a matter of time, because once the fundamental hardware design becomes a commodity, there's nothing stopping a whole host of firms working to drive the cost of components down.

The 1985 Amiga's USP was a chipset and OS which was designed to work around the CPU and RAM limitations of the time - the platform's performance belied how modest the raw horsepower actually was. Unfortunately CBM rested on their laurels, and what once put the platform five years ahead of the competition ended up holding it back once Moore's Law kicked in and RAM prices came down.

Amiga OCS was designed to maximize 16-bit 280 ns (3.5 Mhz) read/write cycle memory.

7.1 Mhz 68000 is unable to sustain 3.5 MIPS for 280 ns (3.5 Mhz) read/write cycle memory design. If 7.1 Mhz 68000 has 0.5 IPC and hardware barrel shifter, you wouldn't need an Amiga blitter on 280 ns (3.5 Mhz) read/write cycle memory.

3DO's MADAM's geometry/texture mapper engines (@ 25Mhz, Alice counterpart, line/polygon acceleration evolved into 3D math coprocessor) are designed for its 80 ns access (about 140 ns read/write cycle) 32-bit FP DRAM and dual port 16-bit 20 ns (50 Mhz effective) serial access VRAM (shared with CLIO @ 24 Mhz, Lisa counterpart).

To avoid expensive 2MB Chip VRAM, Alice/Agnus needs to evolve so it can access normal 2 MB 32-bit FP DRAM and high-speed 32-bit 1 MB VRAM.

Commodore's AAA dual chipset supports up to 16 MB Chip RAM with VRAM which is crazy expensive. AAA's FP DRAM is optional for low-end systems which are nearly pointless i.e. 140 ns read/write cycle from 80 ns access FP DRAM is about 7.1 Mhz. Unlike 3DO, no blended VRAM/FP DRAM design as Chip RAM for AAA. 2MB VRAM is not cheap.

AAA's 8X blitter speed increase from 3.5 Mhz 16-bit AGA/ECS blitter would need about 14 Mhz 32-bit memory with 70 ns read/write cycle. The display chip would need its memory bandwidth share, hence its VRAM.

A1200's 2MB CHip RAM is 140 ns read/write cycle FP DRAM which fits AGA Lisa's 4X scale from Denise's 3.5 Mhz 16 bit.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Yes, of course it is cheaper. That's the whole point why S3 survived (at least longer). P5 had to develop a Zorro to ISA or Zorro to PCI bridge for their cards, and that of course costed more. With a market as small as the Amiga, you pay of course premium. But their Trio64 based design was superior to the Tseng-based Merlin, for example. At least it worked. (-;

S3 survived until John Carmack's S3 Virge, the de-decelerator.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=26498

The insults keep on coming - check out the newsgroups and you'll see the insults flying around (usually out of context, of course), telling ViRGE owners that their card is nothing to be proud of and the like. John Carmack put the boot in by claiming that the ViRGE could only run Quake at 5fps, and of course everybody laughed along with him. The general consensus of developers is that the ViRGE is a 'decelerator' that shouldn't be touched with a very long bargepole.

For the money, S3's ViRGE DX/GX were okay 64-bit 3D cards beating V1000.

With newsgroup insults flying around against S3, I selected NVIDIA's RIVA 128.

ATI's Rage 3D didn't attract the eye of Carmack.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by hammer

You're being disingenuous. A1200 has a gimped math power. A4000/040 is not a true "040" machine since A3640 is only an adapter for A4000's 030 bus.

That's not the point. What I was getting at was with the Quadra/Centris 605, the 68LC040 (I misread it as EC - my bad) lacked the FPU, but was roughly twice the price of an A1200 with a similar-sized hard disk.

Quadra 605 covers the mid-range's USD 999. Blame Commodore for not covering the USD 999 price range for the Amiga.

Mid-range? The 605 was the cheapest desktop Mac on offer - it was Apple's idea of a budget model!

WRONG. NO Macs used MMU-less 68EC040.

AmigaOS couldn't make full use of the MMU out of the box, so it didn't make any difference.

There is no such thing as a 060-based Centris.

I'm reasonably sure that I used one.

My link is at the end of the Xmas 1994 sales period i.e. Jan 1995.

What link? The post I was responding to claimed 1.2million PowerMac sales in 1994 with no source to back it up.

Apple survived.

Barely. Without the iPod/iTunes push, Apple would have died on their arse before 2010.

MS Excel for Mac is MS's product.

I know. The point I was getting at was that they made Excel for the Mac first so they'd have a good idea how how to improve it when the Windows version shipped,

Steve Jobs is part of Apple's history.

Steve Jobs was a charlatan and a fraud, and he took credit for far too many things he had no right to.

[r.cade]

Originally Posted by hammer

Apple survived.

Well.... kind of, in name only, like Atari still exists, just much more successful.

Gates rescued the company so that he would not have a complete monopoly, IMO. Not that it helped him in the eyes of the courts too much.
That deal got Jobs back his company, and the rest is history.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

That's not the point. What I was getting at was with the Quadra/Centris 605, the 68LC040 (I misread it as EC - my bad) lacked the FPU, but was roughly twice the price of an A1200 with a similar-sized hard disk.

FPU is useless for Doom. 68040/80486's FPU is not fast enough for real-time 3D like Quake. $20 DSP3210 is designed for 3D IEEE FP32.

From USA's Amiga World Magazine (November 1993), page 58 of 100,
Price listed in USD in November 1993

A1200/020, 2MB, price $379
A3000/030 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 105HD, price $899
A3000T/030 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1199
A3000T/040 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1599
A3000s are missing the AGA chipset. Amiga graphics weren't partitioned for the CD32 card insert.

The cost estimate for A3640 (68040) card, $1599 - $1199, cost for the 68040 card is about $400.

A1200's $379 + 68040 card's $400 = $779. $52 for 80 ns access 2 MB FP DRAM. With A1200's profit margins with 68040 CPU and 2 MB Fast RAM, it's about $831. 68LC040 is cheaper than the full 68040. This price range is usually covered by Commodore 486-25 based PCs.

Commodore didn't master the 68040's memory controller.

A no-brainer as to why Motorola lost the game console business when Commodore's Amiga Hombre dual chips has $40 cost range. 68EC040-25 reached about $100 in 1992-1993, but it's useless for DMA'ed devices.

Motorola should have included 68030 cache control behavior for 68EC040.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Mid-range? The 605 was the cheapest desktop Mac on offer - it was Apple's idea of a budget model!

1993's $999 USD range is similar to PC's 486SX-25 to 486SX-33 price range.

This is about $1500 in AUD or 799 UKP price range.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

AmigaOS couldn't make full use of the MMU out of the box, so it didn't make any difference.

The same problem for 68000-based Dragonball VZ (33 to 66 Mhz) that was displaced by ARM9T (ARMv4T e.g. ARM925T @ 120 to 144 Mhz) in the smart handheld market.

ARMv4T has MMU.

Intel mass deployed X86's standard MMU for mass memory-protected OS deployment. Install base is important.

You can try to defend Motorola, but it's futile. Motorola has exited the CPU business and Freescale itself was purchased by NXP.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

I'm reasonably sure that I used one.

[ Show youtube player ]
Macintosh Performa 575 with 68060 failed boot results. F@#king Motorola.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/m...forma_575.html
Macintosh Performa 575 has 68LC040 @ 33 Mhz.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

What link? The post I was responding to claimed 1.2million PowerMac sales in 1994 with no source to back it up.

For the entire 1994 sales year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...r-of-the-apple
Article Date: Jan 1995, paywall.

"Introduced last March, Power Macs are selling so well that analysts now say the company will ship 1.2 million units the first year"

https://www.sfgate.com/business/arti...le-3040630.php

A big part of the reason has been Apple's inability to meet demand for its Power Macs, the computers based on the big-muscled PowerPC chip. Since their introduction in March, 1.2 million Power Macs have been sold, but Apple has fallen behind in production, with customers reporting waits of up to two months for high-end machines.

Apple's PowerMac strength can be maintained as long as PowerPC vendors can keep up with Intel/AMD's 1990s Mhz race.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Barely. Without the iPod/iTunes push, Apple would have died on their arse before 2010.

iPhone/iPod still runs on the MacOS X variant on ARM CPUs.

Apple supported ARM (Advanced RISC Machines Limited) before PowerPC.

on November 27, 1990, Apple, Acorn and VLSI Technologies jointly formed a new firm called Advanced RISC Machines Limited. Apple invested $3 million to own 43% of the company. That investment was specifically to fund the design and development of the ARM processor for what would become the Apple Newton MessagePad

The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

I know. The point I was getting at was that they made Excel for the Mac first so they'd have a good idea how how to improve it when the Windows version shipped,

Steve Jobs made sure the Macintosh platform had a large enough business customer base and was aware that the Macintosh solution needed to do better than the text-based PC's Lotus 123/Word Perfect incumbents.

Originally Posted by TuRRIcaNEd

Steve Jobs was a charlatan and a fraud, and he took credit for far too many things he had no right to.

Futile. Steve Jobs is less of a problem when compared to Motorola and Hector Ruiz.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by r.cade

Well.... kind of, in name only, like Atari still exists, just much more successful.

Gates rescued the company so that he would not have a complete monopoly, IMO. Not that it helped him in the eyes of the courts too much.
That deal got Jobs back his company, and the rest is history.

Microsoft's $150 million investment meant that it owned seven percent of Apple with 150,000 shares of preferred stock. Microsoft agreed to continue developing software such as Microsoft Office for the Mac platform for at least 5 years.

Like in the early 1980s, Steve Jobs made sure the Macintosh platform still has MS Excel and MS Word in the late 1990s. This deal was announced by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs at the 1997 MacWorld Expo. Microsoft's Office products still dominates on the Macintosh platform.

[grelbfarlk]

Steve Jobs got diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer. His doctor who was a childhood friend, was happy because it was treatable.
Instead Steve Jobs decided to double down on drinking fruit juice and by the time the cancer had spread into his liver and thought maybe eating carrots and juicing celery was not a cure all or an immunity to everything spell, he agreed to surgery.
He got to skip the line and got a perfectly good liver installed and then died.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Steve Jobs got diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer. His doctor who was a childhood friend, was happy because it was treatable.
Instead Steve Jobs decided to double down on drinking fruit juice and by the time the cancer had spread into his liver and thought maybe eating carrots and juicing celery was not a cure all or an immunity to everything spell, he agreed to surgery.
He got to skip the line and got a perfectly good liver installed and then died.

The main reason for cancer is mutant cells are unable to shut down (i.e. damage to shutdown pathways in the DNA sequence) and gain stealth capability against the body's immune system.

Drinking fruit juice wouldn't solve mutant cells' ability to evade the body's immune system.

[copse]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Steve Jobs got diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer. His doctor who was a childhood friend, was happy because it was treatable.
Instead Steve Jobs decided to double down on drinking fruit juice and by the time the cancer had spread into his liver and thought maybe eating carrots and juicing celery was not a cure all or an immunity to everything spell, he agreed to surgery.
He got to skip the line and got a perfectly good liver installed and then died.

Can we avoid posts on media personalities and their life choices and focus on topics related to A1200 please. I enjoy reading smarter people than me bickering over the on-topic nuances and there's no shortage of that.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Steve Jobs got diagnosed with a rare pancreatic cancer. His doctor who was a childhood friend, was happy because it was treatable.Instead Steve Jobs decided to double down on drinking fruit juice and by the time the cancer had spread into his liver and thought maybe eating carrots and juicing celery was not a cure all or an immunity to everything spell, he agreed to surgery.He got to skip the line and got a perfectly good liver installed and then died.

You can't be effing serious

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

From 1992, Intel's revenues are mostly from 486s.

And the reason was?

Intel & AMD: The First 30 Years

At an Intel technical show in 2006, then-Senior Vice President - and now CEO - Dr. Pat Gelsinger logged onto a computer onstage for a demo.

His password was "I HATE AMD"....

Finally in 1990 the neutral arbitrator - retired Judge J. Barton Phelps - found that Intel breached the 1982 contract. Seemingly validated, that year AMD moved to sell its Am386 - a reverse-engineered version of the Intel 386 chip...

The chip was functionally identical to the Intel 386. But since AMD produced their 386-compatible chip using a slightly more advanced process node - 0.8 micron rather than Intel's 1-micron - it ran about 20% better, ran cooler, and used some 30% less power than its Intel counterpart.

By the end of 1992, AMD had produced 9.5 million of these chips, generating a billion dollars in revenue.

Intel's 386DX maxed out at 33 MHz and was more expensive than AMD's 40MHz 386DX. Dropping the price by 35% didn't stop AMD from capturing 60% of the 386 CPU market by the end of 1992.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

A1200/020, 2MB, price $379
1993's $999 USD range is similar to PC's 486SX-25 to 486SX-33 price range.

So you admit that a typical gaming PC was around 3 times the price of an A1200?

Where could you get a PC for anywhere near $379? Nowhere. The SVGA monitor alone would be close to that.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

1993's $999 USD range is similar to PC's 486SX-25 to 486SX-33 price range.

This is about $1500 in AUD or 799 UKP price range.

Not forgetting that the UK had 17.5% VAT, and PC prices were usually quoted without VAT (which everybody had to pay, but a business could claim back if the computer was a stock item that they intended to resell). A PC advertised at 799 UKP ex GST would actually cost 939 UKP.

PC Zone April 1993 page 108

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

So you admit that a typical gaming PC was around 3 times the price of an A1200?

Where could you get a PC for anywhere near $379? Nowhere. The SVGA monitor alone would be close to that.

It depends on the delivered gaming experience.

From 1992 to 1994, 386DX-33 or 386DX-40 with 4MB RAM is the entry-level texture-mapped 3D gaming.

For example,
[ Show youtube player ]
1995's Star Wars Dark Forces (PC DOS) has a playable frame rate on 386DX-33 i.e. Chips and Technologies J38600DX-33 clone.

Pentium class PC is needed for PS1 era games.

A1200's gaming experience is similar to SNES's strong 16-bit 2D. SNES has a $199 price.

Commodore has a choice and these are;
1. deliver a similar 2D gaming experience as SNES which has $199 price range. Sega Mega Drive is easier to beat, but SNES is a strong 2D gaming competitor.

2. deliver texture-mapped 3D gaming experience above SNES's 2D gaming experience. Gaming PC's texture-mapped 3D gaming experience is above SNES's 2D gaming experience.

In the hot seat, Lew Eggebrecht correctly identified competitors and planned for DSP3210's inclusion for all Amigas SKUs. Lew Eggebrecht is aware that the Amiga platform is not a Mac platform. Lew Eggebrecht's Commodore would be similar to NVIDIA's business model i.e. workstation graphics for the masses, partitioned Amiga graphics. DSP3210's 8 KB local on-chip memory doesn't affect Amiga's cache coherency issues.

DSP3210's 8 KB local on-chip memory is like PS2 Emotion Engine's and PS3 CELL SPE's on-chip local memory.

It's too bad Lew Eggebrecht wasn't in the hot seat in 1988.

When I purchased my UK A1200 that was advertised as "not working"(it works, the seller is ignorant), my next immediate action was to purchase an A1200 Fast RAM card, and a few months later, TF1260. Without TF1260 or PiStorm32, Vampire and TF1230 are on my list. My A1200 purchase pattern is to configure a 386DX-33 class machine as my minimum.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not forgetting that the UK had 17.5% VAT, and PC prices were usually quoted without VAT (which everybody had to pay, but a business could claim back if the computer was a stock item that they intended to resell). A PC advertised at 799 UKP ex GST would actually cost 939 UKP.

PC Zone April 1993 page 108

UK 17.5% VAT is applied for A1200 and PCs i.e. the British population has to pay it, hence it's a neutral factor.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php

ASI 486SX-25 for £699, includes 2 MB RAM, 120 MB HDD (17ms), 1 MB SVGA card, 14" Tandon colour SVGA monitor (.28 dot pitch), 102-key keyboard, DOS and Windows 3, and mouse.

Commodore DT486dx-25 for £760, 4 MB RAM, 52 MB HDD, MS-DOS 5.0, Win3.1, mouse, 14" colour VGA monitor.

Morgan Generic 486SX-25 for £799, MB RAM, 120 MB HDD (17ms), 14" colour VGA monitor, 102-key keyboard, DR DOS 6 and mouse. Incl. Lotus SmartSuite, Windows 3.

Your cited PCs have larger hard disk storage.

If my family lived in the UK at our 1992-1993 income level as a state government employee, Commodore DT486dx-25 would be selected. Commodore had a Doom-capable machine and it wasn't the Amiga.

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According to Amiga Computing Issue 062 Jul 1993, page 3 of 164, page 4 of 164
Amiga 1200 Comic pack with 60 MB HDD is £539
Amiga 1200 Comic pack with 120 MB HDD is £679

M1230XA with 68030 at 50Mhz and 4MB RAM is £499

Total price:
£1,038 for 60 MB HDD
£1,178 for 120 MB HDD

Australia's cost of living and currency strength are close to Canada's and very close to "Far East" PC manufacturers.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And the reason was?

Intel & AMD: The First 30 Years
Intel's 386DX maxed out at 33 MHz and was more expensive than AMD's 40MHz 386DX. Dropping the price by 35% didn't stop AMD from capturing 60% of the 386 CPU market by the end of 1992.

Intel's Itanium (IA-64) was another attempt to block AMD. Intel's mistake with Itanium is poor IA-32 performance which is similar to "Pentium Pro's degraded 16bit X86" mentality.

AMD used 386 style evolution for 64bit computing i.e. K8 (X86-64, AMD64) to beat Itanium. Microsoft's ex-DEC Dave Cutler and his team supported their ex-DEC Alpha counterparts at AMD, hence Windows XP X64 with excellent IA-32 PC gaming performance aided by NVIDIA's GeForce drivers. Before AMD purchased ATI (ex-Motorola Hector Ruiz's ego), AMD and NVIDIA had a close partnership.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/AM...gra,14795.html

Report: AMD Considered Buying Nvidia Before ATI Purchase

Former AMD employees told Forbes that the company approached Nvidia about a possible acquisition long before it pulled out the wallet to purchase ATI for $5.4 billion back in 2006.

At the time, AMD was out to get ahead of rival Intel by grabbing a piece of the GPU market and fusing the technology with its own CPU offering. Thus AMD would be in a position to provide a CPU/GPU solution that Intel really wasn't ready to offer.

But during the talks, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang reportedly insisted that he become chief executive of the combined company. Naturally AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz wasn't going to let that happen, so he chose to acquire rival ATI instead.

In the end, Hector Ruiz was removed (due to the Bulldozer debacle) and AMD's CEO has Jen-Hsun Huang's distant relative, Lisa Su. Jen-Hsun Huang is a superior CEO when compared to Hector Ruiz. Good quality leadership matters.

IBM's second source insurance AMD worked as expected against Intel's IA-64. The lesson is single source CPU designers and suppliers have higher platform-ending risk.

Both IA-64 and AMD64 have Windows XP 64-bit editions, only one version has good performance for IA-32 games and desktop apps.





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FYI, Intel 386DX-33 can be overclocked to 40 Mhz. Intel's fastest CPU for the 386DX socket platform is RapidCAD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidCAD Without L1 cache, 486-based RapidCAD delivers about 10% to 35% integer performance uplift vs i386DX-33.

Intel's 1-micron process node is also used for 486DX-50. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/80486/486dx-50 Intel wants customers to buy their up-sell 486s. AMD's 386DX-40 didn't follow Intel's product segmentation policy.

486DLC clones targeted the 386DX socket platform.





Again, http://archive.computerhistory.org/r...-05-01-acc.pdf
Page 86 of 417, DataQuest 1995

1994 Worldwide Microprocessor Market Share Ranking.

For 1994 Market Share
1. Intel, 73.2%
2. AMD, 8.6%
3. Motorola, 5.2%
4. IBM, 2.2%

Motorola's revenue in 1994 was less than AMD's.
-------------

Supply Base for 32-Bit Microprocessors—1994,
For Product's Share of Total 32-Bit-and-Up MPU Market 1994
Page 89 of 417,

68000, 17%
683XX, 9%
68040, 3%
68020, 3%
68030, 1%

80486DX, 21%
80486SX, 16%
Pentium, 4%
80386SX/SL, 3%
80386DX, 3%

80960, 4%
AM29000, 1%
32X32, 3%
R3000/R4000, 1%
Sparc, 1%
Others, 10%

Motorola wasn't able to convert 68000's success for 68020, 68030 and 68040.

AMD (2nd source X86) vs Motorola

AMD
80386DX = 3%, AMD has 85%, 2.55%
80386SX/SL = 3%, AMD has 56%, 1.68% of 3%
80486SX = 16%, AMD has 5%, 0.8% of 16%
80486DX = 21%, AMD has 16%, 3.36% of 21%
AM29000 = 1%
Sub-total: 9.39%

Motorola
68040, 3%
68030, 1%
68020, 3%
683XX, 9% (68000 and semi-custom-CPU32)
Sub-total: 16%

AMD's AM29000 = 1%
AMD's 3rd gen CPU market share = 4.23%
AMD's 4th gen CPU market share = 4.16%
Subtotal: 9.39%

Motorola's 2nd gen CPU market share = 3%
Motorola's 3rd gen CPU market share = 1%
Motorola's 4th gen CPU market share = 3%
Subtotal: 7%

Motorola couldn't convert 68000's success for 68020/68030/68040.

683XX was a sloppy copy-and-paste with 68000 and kitbashed 68EC020 as CPU32.