The most detailed information about the Amiga A300?

[grond]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The real question is what would you want that would be appropriate for the A600?

Which is exactly why I say that they should have left it away altogether. It's very useful now for compact flash and wifi adapters but back then it wasn't. This would have been one of the few instances where Commodore spent a few bucks on something that I believe they should have saved. They should rather have added a socket for IDE instead of the connector to prevent false connection of the 2.5" IDE cable. I personally converted one IDE ribbon cable to smoke because I was too stupid to connect it correctly.

IMO most of the objections were just a knee-jerk reaction to change.

No, I think the insert-disk-play-game crowd didn't care for the new A600 anyway because they already had an A500. Those who did care and complain were those that wanted to see the platform move forward and not stagnate or degenerate into cost-reduced models.

BTW: sorry for pointing out stuff that had already been written by others, I was replying to comments while reading through the new postings.

[TCD]

Replacing the C64 with a low spec Amiga would have been a dead end. At best it buys you a year or two, but those who would have bought an A300 like David Pleasance imagined it would have moved on to a console rather quickly. The A500+ and A600 were dead ends and no matter how you change those machines they wouldn't have changed the trajectory Commodore was on.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by TCD

Replacing the C64 with a low spec Amiga would have been a dead end. At best it buys you a year or two, but those who would have bought an A300 like David Pleasance imagined it would have moved on to a console rather quickly. The A500+ and A600 were dead ends and no matter how you change those machines they wouldn't have changed the trajectory Commodore was on.

*Maybe* (and its a big maybe) if they released a Amiga GS with a cartridge port for £199 in 1991 instead of the 64GS but the Amiga would be expandable with more RAM, Floppy drive and a keyboard so that you could gradually turn it into an A500+ ;-)
Even so, it likely wouldnt have lasted past 1992..

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by TCD

Replacing the C64 with a low spec Amiga would have been a dead end. At best it buys you a year or two, but those who would have bought an A300 like David Pleasance imagined it would have moved on to a console rather quickly. The A500+ and A600 were dead ends and no matter how you change those machines they wouldn't have changed the trajectory Commodore was on.

By 1991/92 Commodore removed the tape deck, shoved in a multigame cart and those horrible C64GS joysticks in the box and sold it at Argos for £99.99.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

*Maybe* (and its a big maybe) if they released a Amiga GS with a cartridge port for £199 in 1991 instead of the 64GS but the Amiga would be expandable with more RAM, Floppy drive and a keyboard so that you could gradually turn it into an A500+ ;-)
Even so, it likely wouldnt have lasted past 1992..

I'd give it until 1993 (honestly) The CD32 wasn't a bad idea, but they half behinded it and the software let it down. If they would have gone full 'CD console that can turn into a computer' I think that might have worked, but you'd have to focus on that and market it properly. The A300/A600 idea was just bad.

[seb132]

I have 20-25 A600 and some of them, randomly, are A300s.
They behave the same, only the recapping is much more painful on an A300… but not as bad as a Cd32…
Nothing to make a story, really…

[TCD]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

By 1991/92 Commodore removed the tape deck, shoved in a multigame cart and those horrible C64GS joysticks in the box and sold it at Argos for £99.99.

Yeah That's my main problem with David's approach to the Amiga 'situation' in the 90s. Surely you could milk it for a few more years, but that's it then.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

*Maybe* (and its a big maybe) if they released a Amiga GS with a cartridge port for £199 in 1991 instead of the 64GS but the Amiga would be expandable with more RAM, Floppy drive and a keyboard so that you could gradually turn it into an A500+ ;-)
Even so, it likely wouldnt have lasted past 1992..

Yanks would never buy Amiga so that market would always be a minority for Commodore by 1990 unless some miracle of engineering and marketing occurred.

Europeans wouldn't buy expensive cartridge games in 1990/1991 unless they were up to the standard of Gauntlet IV/Castle of Illusion/Thunderforce 3+4 etc in 1990/91. The reason why ALL these consoles from computer companies failed is because the worst possible thing you can do is try and sell the mostly mediocre output of EU action/arcade game designers with a poor 'that will do' attitude to making games and put them on expensive cartridge format.

Besides, computers didn't ever stop selling for family environment in the home, people just chose not to buy Commodore, Atari, Acorn, Amstrad (non DOS compatible Amstrad's like 6128plus etc) computers for whatever reason.

The magical success of SNES and Megadrive is not because the games came on cartridge, it's despite those consistently professionally developed games came on £50-65 cartridges. The reason they were so popular is because they were extremely powerful for the loss making RRP cost of the console and the properly developed games by mostly top end talent (in Japan anyway).

Commodore couldn't force all racing games to be written as as well Lotus series, most were cack like PowerDrift/Chase HQ/Turbo Outrun, they couldn't sell the hardware at a loss and they had nothing in financial reserves to manufacture millions of Amiga consoles in each production run to even approach the sort of price/performance benefit Sega could deliver with their system. I am also sorry to say the Commodore engineers were nowhere near as talented as people who designed the Lorraine prototype too. Add all these together and an Amiga console is never going to rescue them. It would have failed as miserably as the CD32 and C64GS, and also the GX4000, Jaguar and any other computer manufacturer's console did.

[Megalomaniac]

Largely true, but by 1991 the standard of Amiga games had generally improved (most of the Amiga's best action games were released then or later, the bad ones you mention were all ST ports), the CD32 did pretty well in Europe during its short lifespan before Commodore folded (though it would have been crushed by the Playstation within 2 years ultimately) and Commodore could have vetted the quality of games being released on cartridge before allowing them to (though the poor quality of some of the games they bundled with the Amiga and CD32 at various times suggests that this may not have hugely helped)

[TCD]

Some? At least with the CD32 more than half of the games that came out while Commodore was still kicking were shovelware. You'd look at the exactly same game that you played on your Amiga 500 (and in most cases not even with CDDA) and wonder why the hell you bought a new '32 bit CD console'.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

What benefit would a faster processor, in itself, have been to an Amiga with limited upgrade potential and no keypad? Would developers have designed games for it knowing that they'd play much slower for the majority of Amiga owners? Console-style games won't have benefitted much from a faster processor, it's 3D stuff and maybe strategy games that would.

This is exactly the issue with Amiga, it was a custom chip driven design. Just like with the 1982 C64 having the 1mhz 6510 is not a disadvantage for 1982 game dev mentality because VIC-II and SID are superior to everything, there were few "3D" home computer games in 1981 when VIC-II and SID was designed and the VIC-40 project was started. Pole Position on the Atari 800 is not exactly ripping the C64 port a new one due to double the CPU speed is it?

7mhz 68000 + OCS was fine except for the sprites. All Commodore's engineers had to do was find a way to shove Megadrive/PC Engine quality hardware sprites into the OCS chipset. If you only need to scroll the EHB 6 bitplane screen with minor tile updates one 32 pixel row/column now and then via blitter for the bits scrolled into view it's absolutely fine.

So a "free" upgrade there to the visuals as you can now use 6 bitplane 64 colour bitmaps with scroll registers and blitter just for the mundane background layer of the game with all the cool stuff done in the upgraded sprites. Even AGA sprites are inferior to 1987 PC Engine sprite pixel achievable every frame.
================================================

If you could get a £249 (or equivalent EU currency) computer with the specs of the A500plus onto the market it would sell to families in 1991 with or without the numeric keypad. How long would this last? That is the question. In 1991 a family purchasing a known brand Wintel computer from a retail outlet (families do not build their own PCs from mail order parts) is going to be something like Amstrads 2086 series of VGA 8086 PCs which cost about £700-800 without a hard drive, a single floppy disk drive, and some naff CRT tubed SVGA colour monitor. By 1992 the spec was the same except the CPU was now a 14mhz 286 for the same price around the time the A1200 came out. So basically the rival 1991 cost reduced Amiga £249.99 machine just needs a £149.99 14" Amstrad/Matsui equally crap CRT tubed TV with SCART socket. That's HALF the price, WB 2.0 is good enough for home users for the 10% of the time they are not playing games anyway and Windows before 95 is not really suitable for family computer, sorry but that is a fact in the real world, hence poor sales of home PCs in the EU compared to US who jumped on that bandwagon in 1984 in the DOS era, anything is better than DOS as your OS for a home computer, even the VIC-20 screen editor lol.

There is no way an £800 8086 VGA PC can do Shadow of the Beast, Lotus II, Turrican 3, Lionheart quality games that I play on my A1000 etc. Bit of a no brainer, bad sales of such a machine == bad marketing at C=

FYI the PCMCIA sound cards I know are all 16bit original PCMCIA format. Couldn't tell you when the first ones came out.

[Megalomaniac]

To me, the missing keypad stopped the A600 having any hope of looking like the kind of computer anyone considering buying a PC would want. It could have been more powerful than a £1000 PC for business tasks and 'serious' games, but the perception would have still stopped it being taken seriously. Even many existing Amiga owners felt that it looked like a toy, and they were used to the all-in-one styling and may have had a keypadless 8-bit computer beforehand.

I don't know that people buying PCs for the home in Europe in the pre-Doom early 90s were doing so with the intention of playing action games, most people who wanted games probably already had at least an 8-bit computer or console for that. Did people really notice the likes of Commander Keen and the 2D Duke Nukem games this side of the pond?

And could you really still get PCs without a hard drive as late as 1991?

For performance on like-for-like systems, Windows 3.x was no better than Workbench 2/3, except perhaps the little build-in apps, but it had the advantage of being the same as what dad used at work, and it was running the same software. Even by 1991 that was probably more important than actual ease of use or performance.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Did people really notice the likes of Commander Keen and the 2D Duke Nukem games this side of the pond?

I remember that when Wolfenstein 3D became a thing people who owned a PC at that time would also show off Commander Keen and Apogee games. So yes, those games were a thing here in Germany at least. Maybe not so much in 1991, but surely in 1992.

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

And could you really still get PCs without a hard drive as late as 1991?

That is actually a good question. I don't think I've ever seen a PC without a hard drive being sold in a computer shop and I went into those for my C64 needs since 1985.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

For performance on like-for-like systems, Windows 3.x was no better than Workbench 2/3, except perhaps the little build-in apps, but it had the advantage of being the same as what dad used at work, and it was running the same software. Even by 1991 that was probably more important than actual ease of use or performance.

With PC floppies compatibilities out of the box and good office software from the start, things would have been perhaps different.

[grond]

Originally Posted by TEG

With PC floppies compatibilities out of the box and good office software from the start, things would have been perhaps different.

This hasn't got much to do with the A300/600 any more, has it? Personally I never was happy with those Amiga bundles Commodore did (Commodore UK?). It was always games that got bundled and supported the image of a toy computer with hardly any practical use.

Why didn't they make a mixed bundle or productivity bundle? Perhaps this wouldn't have worked in the market but imagine a bundle with harddisk and a complete installation of some reasonable typewriting software and an option of an added printer that would have worked out of the box. But yes, the A600 form factor wasn't a viable choice for this, it should have been either A1200 form factor or a cheap big box with external keyboard (A1500?).

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by seb132

I have 20-25 A600 and some of them, randomly, are A300s.
They behave the same, only the recapping is much more painful on an A300… but not as bad as a Cd32…
Nothing to make a story, really…

The story is: Why do you have 25 A600s??
And this is from a guy that has 20+ Amigas ;-)

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

To me, the missing keypad stopped the A600 having any hope of looking like the kind of computer anyone considering buying a PC would want.

People who might have bought a £250 A300 are in the grey area between a family who had no choice but to buy a PC compatible computer for the home mainly for productivity software and the occasional bit of gaming vs people who bought a console just for little Johnny knowing full well it would 'rot his brain' playing games all day. Well in the EU that's how it was, hence the roaring success of the hideous but A500 priced Amstrad PC1512 512k 8086 CGA machine.

The lack of a numeric pad is nothing next to the 'toy computer' perception people get when looking at the all in one form factor home targeted machines like the STFM, A500, Acorn 3000 etc. The kind of person who would even be bothered by a missing numeric keypad on a £250 A300 certainly wouldn't look twice at something like an A500plus for £400

The Amiga was always in the middle ground. You paid £250 more for an A500 vs NES Deluxe Pack in 1987/88 sure because NES == 1983 8bit tech (and already being annihilated by PC Engine sales from day one of launch in 1987 in Japan). The issue by 1990 became would you pay £250 more for a base model Amiga 32 colour computer vs a Megadrive on display running Thunderforce III or Castle of Illusion? Methinks not.

Not really anything to do with the numeric keypad, if you give people an Amiga compatible computer for a 40% price reduction they will buy it if they are in this grey area. They wouldn't pass on an A300 for £249.99 and get an Atari 520STFM for £199.99 instead because it has a numeric keypad unless they were interested in something the ST had better software for like MIDI Sequencing. In 1990/91 the only people buying mostly Windows PCs for use at home as a family computer were Americans to be honest, people in the EU didn't really care what kind of extra stuff you put on the keyboard area, not important unless you are running an accounts package anyway.

There was also a magazine article (could have been ACE, TGM, CU Amiga or AF) that reported a third party company reduced the C64 motherboard down to the size of a pack of 20 cigarettes too.

[redblade]

Amiga Computing Issue 050 July 1992 Review
Above is a link to the Amiga computing review, (How can I upload these 2 pages to amr.abime.net ?)

The A600 RRP at 399GBP or A600 W/20MB HD RRP

A600 W/ Deluxe Paint III, 1 Year warranty 374GBP
A600 W/ Deluxe Paint III, 1 year warranty, 20MBHD 474GBP (Both Page 9)

Dynamite Computers (Page 15)
A600 starter pack, 364.95GBP
A600HD (20Mb), 459.95GBP

A500 (K1.3) standard 259.95GBP
A500+ standard 309.95GBP
A500+ cartoon pack 324.95GBP
A500 Series II HD 8 + 52Mb 334.95GBP

Silica Computers (page 23)
A500(K1.3) standard 512K Ram, W/ Photon Paint 2.0, Arcade Action Games Pack, GFA Basic V3.5 and 16 Nights Holiday accommodation 299GBP
A500+ Cartoon Classics W/ PP2.0, Arcade games, GFA 16 Nights 359GBP,
A600(std), DPIII, Mystery Game, Photon Paint 2.0, Arcade games pack, GFA Basic, 16 nights free, 399GBP,
A600(20MB HD) with the above for 499GBP
GVPHD8+ 52MBHD for A500, Unpopulated RAM 379GBP

Hobbyte Page 25
A500(1.3)
512K 279GBP
1MB 299GBP,
A500+
1MB 309.00GBP (Alone)
2MB 349.00GBP
A600 W/ DP III + Game 364.95GBP
A600 W/ 20Mb HD 459.95 GBP

A3000@25Mhz, 100MBHD, 4MB Fast, Scala, DP IV, AmigaVision (No screen) 3289.00GBP.

The A500+ with 2Mb Ram sounds OK for 349.00GBP but it depends on the user, The cheap HD upgrade with the Amiga 600 does make sense but don't know what the cost of the 1MB Ram upgrade Vs the A500+ was.

On Page 30:
Starting at 699.95GBP for a 40MB, Mac Classic with Monochrome monitor and 4MB RAM

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by redblade

A600 W/ DP III + Game 364.95GBP
A600 W/ 20Mb HD 459.95 GBP

A500+ Cartoon Classics W/ PP2.0, Arcade games, GFA 16 Nights 359GBP
GVPHD8+ 52MBHD for A500, Unpopulated RAM 379GBP

A3000@25Mhz, 100MBHD, 4MB Fast, Scala, DP IV, AmigaVision (No screen) 3289.00GBP.

The A500+ with 2Mb Ram sounds OK for 349.00GBP but it depends on the user, The cheap HD upgrade with the Amiga 600 does make sense but don't know what the cost of the 1MB Ram upgrade Vs the A500+ was.

On Page 30:
Starting at 699.95GBP for a 40MB, Mac Classic with Monochrome monitor and 4MB RAM

Pretty obvious the A3000 and Mac Classic were off the table, so it was matter of which out of the A600 and A500+ you liked best. The A500+ was more expandable but cost more to do it. The A600 with hard drive was much cheaper than the A500+ with hard drive.

By the time you add a hard drive to the A500+ it's becoming a real handful - OK if you have a desk to put it on but not very portable. The A600 wasn't much larger than a gaming console, so you could stick it in a back pack with power supply and joystick, go 'round to your mate's place and have lots of fun with it hooked up to a TV - just like you might do with a gaming console. And it was a full computer too! Apart from the price it was everything David Pleasance wanted it to be and more.

For me it came down to how the review in that magazine described the A600 - "Cute beyond compare". Cuteness won out for me in 1987 when I bought an A1000 instead of the newly released A500, and again in 1992 when I saw an A600 and just had to have it. Finally in 2018 when I had to decide which machine to put a Vampire card in, the thought of all that power in the A600 won me over. I haven't regretted it. With a PCMCIA network card and internal 2GB CF Card it's awesome! Never needed a numeric keypad either (even my PC doesn't currently have one).

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

The story is: Why do you have 25 A600s??
And this is from a guy that has 20+ Amigas ;-)

Hoarders!

I turned down several opportunities to buy more Amigas recently because I already have 3 and that's enough for me. I hope the people who did buy them are actually using them and not just hoarding.

I have to tell you too, when you put them up on eBay for several thousand pounds each expecting to make a killing, I still won't be buying any.