You betray the Amiga by playing DOOM!

[lmimmfn]

What killed Amiga wasnt Doom and while i would like to say was Commodore it was good innovative games that the Amiga was incapable of rendering effeciently.

Doom pushed the boundries, the appetite for 3D gaming was strong the PC delivered that until the PS1 came along. There were various "3D" consoled in the mid term but those failed to deliver.

As much as i love the Amigs, it just could not compete, it was way ahead of the competition in 85 but in 92 was desperately lagging.

[DungeonMaster85]

I don't wanna flex or anything, but my Amiga can run Quake :0

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by DungeonMaster85

I don't wanna flex or anything, but my Amiga can run Quake :0

Don't start!!!!!

The A1200 with Blizzard PPC / Bvision I once had ran Quake pretty smooth actually. (Once you installed the correct drivers, put some extra fans on it, upgraded the power supply, added some extra power wires and when mars and venus aligned correctly that is)

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.

Bruce, I slept on this. And now as I prepare for my own A1000 adventure, I have had the time to evaluate what you have done here closer, and have to tip my hat to you sir. Especially with the power supply - which I cannot do myself.

However, I will do my best to impress! To be continued.

[ShenLong]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

What killed Amiga wasnt Doom and while i would like to say was Commodore it was good innovative games that the Amiga was incapable of rendering effeciently.

I'd say Commodores biggest mistake was sticking with Motorola as long as they did. The 68k CPU's weren't mass produced like Intels x86 cpu's especially in the U.S.A. the better 68k cpu's like the 040 and 060 were expensive to upgrade to. It was before most things tech/puter related were mass produced so prices weren't very friendly.

I've always thought if Commodore would have gone to the x86 cpu's with a full x86 native port of Workbench they would have made it until 2020's Covid disaster.

I jumped ship the same week Windows 98 second edition hit the market. I was saving up for a DKB Wildfire060 card to put in my A2500. When the time came time to decide if I want to pay $2000.00 for an 060 card or build a pc, I went with the pc. $2000.00usd was a decent amount of money in the late nineties. My 2500 wasn't ridiculously slow but, times were achanging and it was either keep up with the times or be left behind. It had a CSA Derringer 030/50/50 accelerator with a 32megabyte 60ns 72pin simm. I gave the stock 030 cpu card it came with to a friend with a bone stock 2000. It also had a P-IV video card, I used a butchers knife to 'modify' the scan doubler off the card so it'll work in Z-II mode compatible with the A2xxx series. Prior to the P-IV I suffered with interlaced 640x400 on a 1084s. The thought of a flicker free higher rez workbench with more than 16 colors appealed alot to me at that time. I bought a very heavy 20inch crt monitor to go with the card. After getting used to how slow the P-IV is in ZII mode I was a little bummed by its less than stellar performance. Oh well, live&learn. I also had a DKB RapidFire SCSI-II card in it, I loved the RapidFire card it worked well an external ZipDrive and internal CD-R drive. Before the rapidfire I had the stock scsi the 2500 comes with which wasn't fast at all. The RapidFire was noticeably faster.


Right now I'm trying to make a stable WinUAE install of WB3.1 to fart around with. Why must AWeb and IBrowse require so many external libs and gui files.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by khph_re

It isn't split by use, a lot of those PC machines will be for business proposes.



My personal view is, if the A500 had been released in 1985, and not the A1000, the Amiga would have gained a bigger market share over those two important years, and if a decent chipset upgrade in 1990/1991, it might still be here today - though running on standard parts. I'd have given 8bit owners a rebate to upgrade to amiga.

I talked about this in the other thread but I don't think so.

I think an A500 with ECS released in say 1986, which would have been doable I think, would have made a world of difference.

Without either a text mode like the IBM AT or non-interlaced higher resolution graphics modes like the Mac had I don't see how the Amiga could have broken out of being a niche.

It is baffling that it took Commodore so long to release ECS and the Amiga 500.

[Mad-Matt]

Originally Posted by ShenLong

Right now I'm trying to make a stable WinUAE install of WB3.1 to fart around with. Why must AWeb and IBrowse require so many external libs and gui files.

Because your starting off from a base 1993 configuration. Start with OS35 or better yet 3.9 and you'll have everything ready out of the box.

be sure that setting up a 1993 Win3.1 and netscape config would be equally as fun

[ShenLong]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

Because your starting off from a base 1993 configuration. Start with OS35 or better yet 3.9 and you'll have everything ready out of the box.

be sure that setting up a 1993 Win3.1 and netscape config would be equally as fun

I'm not a fan of WB3.5/9. I prefer WB3.1 . It took a lil bit but I did get a decently functioning 3.1 install going thats stable and runs AWeb, IBrowse.
I tried Novacoders AmiDoom too.

I won't be doing the mac or pc emulator with Netscape thing via emulation. I did plenty of that when I ran the real Amiga hardware.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Without either a text mode like the IBM AT or non-interlaced higher resolution graphics modes like the Mac had I don't see how the Amiga could have broken out of being a niche.

You just described 2 niches. How many PCs today run in text mode? How many only have a single 1 bitplane graphics mode with a resolution of only 512×342?

The Atari ST had a non-interlaced higher resolution graphics mode. Did this enable it to break out of its 'niche'?

It is baffling that it took Commodore so long to release ECS and the Amiga 500.

Commodore purchased Amiga Inc in August 1984, but they didn't have a finished product. They released the A1000 in July 1985 (less than a year later) but the OS wasn't finished so they put an extra memory board in to load it from disk, allowing users to upgrade to later versions without having to install new ROMs. The first stable version was WB1.2, which was released in 1987 with the A500.

There was little point in releasing another Amiga model before the OS was stable, so the reason for the two years delay has to be - because it took them that long to produce an OS stable enough to put into ROM.

Perhaps if Commodore had followed the PC way of doing it and produced a purely disk-based OS they could have released the A500 earlier. But would we have wanted that?

As for the time frame,

Microsoft Windows

The history of Windows dates back to 1981 when Microsoft started work on a program called "Interface Manager". It was announced in November 1983 (after the Apple Lisa, but before the Macintosh) under the name "Windows", but Windows 1.0 was not released until November 1985...

Windows 2.0 was released in December 1987, and was more popular than its predecessor. It features several improvements to the user interface and memory management...

Windows 3.0, released in 1990, improved the design...

Windows 3.1, made generally available on March 1, 1992...

The next major consumer-oriented release of Windows, Windows 95, was released on August 24, 1995

So it seems that 2~3 years was the typical time frame required to produce a sophisticated graphical OS.

But what about ECS? Surely Commodore could have a produced an enhanced chipset a lot sooner? I mean, 3 years from the previous chipset improvement (1987 to 1990) - what took them so long?

IBM introduced the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) in August 1981 with the PC, but didn't have a monitor for it until March 1983. Until then customers were expected to either buy a suitable 3rd party monitor, or connect it to a TV (NTSC only!) via the composite output.

The next graphics card IBM produced was the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), released in October 1984. This was an 8 bit card with 64k RAM on board, which enabled a maximum resolution of 640×350 in 4 colors. It obviously wasn't TV compatible, so they had to produce yet another monitor to support it.

It is baffling that it took IBM over 3 years after introducing CGA to produce a color card with non-interlace hires output.

[YouKnowWho]

Bruce Abbott, I got it! I found a way to really step up the game! PREPARE YOURSELF! If spring doesn't come too soon, I'll get it done. It will be amazing! OH...SO SO GOOD! Trust me, the hype is worth it on this idea. SO EVIL, it is AMAZING!

Thanks for the A1600 shots, they came in really useful in determining that he ports on the 600/1200 motherboards are a bit higher and thus ports on my custom plate need to be moved up 2mm before I cut it.

[8bitbubsy]

Betraying the Amiga by playing a game that wasn't the cause for killing it? The Amiga was dying anyway, because of bad decisions from Commodore. Blaming it on DOOM is not fair, as it was bound to happen anyway.

[Mad-Matt]

Doom should have come out on Amiga around the same time as PC and Mac versions. It may have had a similar effect and got people to buy those accelerator upgrades. Or maybe that money was better spent on buying a pc anyway!

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

Doom should have come out on Amiga around the same time as PC and Mac versions. It may have had a similar effect and got people to buy those accelerator upgrades. Or maybe that money was better spent on buying a pc anyway!

Id Software weren't interested in the Amiga, they were formerly Apple ][ and later IBM PC specialists.

The Masters of Doom book mentions them dealing with an Amiga specialist at one point, but the name Amiga only gets one mention in the whole book, and that it was a console. WTAF?

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

Doom should have come out on Amiga around the same time as PC and Mac versions. It may have had a similar effect and got people to buy those accelerator upgrades. Or maybe that money was better spent on buying a pc anyway!

I wouldn't think anyone was willing to play doom at 3 frames an hour back then.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by freehand

I wouldn't think anyone was willing to play doom at 3 frames an hour back then.

The A4000/040 was released in October 1992. Doom was released on December 10, 1993.

Many PC users ran Doom on 386SX's that could only manage a few frames per second in the smallest window size. Why? Because they could, and since Doom was shareware it cost them nothing to try. But without an Amiga version none of us could try it, even if we had an Amiga that might be more capable than most PC owners had.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The A4000/040 was released in October 1992. Doom was released on December 10, 1993.

Many PC users ran Doom on 386SX's that could only manage a few frames per second in the smallest window size. Why? Because they could, and since Doom was shareware it cost them nothing to try. But without an Amiga version none of us could try it, even if we had an Amiga that might be more capable than most PC owners had.

And many users did not run doom on a 386 but a fair point.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by freehand

And many users did not run doom on a 386 but a fair point.

Don't forget that back in the day we were far more tolerant of low frame rates. My PC was slow when DOOM was released but I was still blown away and played it to death.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Don't forget that back in the day we were far more tolerant of low frame rates. My PC was slow when DOOM.was released but I was still blown away and played it to death.

Absolutely I played elite on the spectrum and was in heaven didn't give slowdown a thought.

[NovaCoder]

Actually I was just playing the excellent Back to Saturn on my Amiga using ZDOOM RTG

[Valken]

@ Novacoder - most impressive.

Maybe one day we can have GZDoom or LZDoom running!