Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Yes, for future hardware which did not suit to their own design?
The A-1011 drive was designed to be the extrenal drive for the Amiga 500, and afaik came AFTER the Amiga 500 release, but did not have a passthrough.
It was simply stupid design of this drive.

It was just a cheaper an smaller version of the A1010 that came out before the A500 (as external drive for the A1000).

The A1010 has a passthrough and you can use it with a A500 just fine.

The A1011 came later, is smaller an has no passthrough. So you can use it e.g. as 3rd or 4th drive.

You can also add the A1020 5,25" floppy drive to the chain with also has a passthrough.

[Overdoc]

Some guys here simply cannot admit that there ARE actually flawas in the Amigas system design, and whenever someone makes that visible and these guys are running out of arguments, then all they can come up with is telling me that I don#t understand that, it's like that by design, it had to be like that for futire developments, or simply just telling me I am a troll or stupid etc.
This is really poor, guys, and only shows me that you obviously have no arguments againt my objections?
@

kee pin mind that this thread is about things which were not so perfectly designed for the Amiga, and there are definitely some of them which I have pointed out.

Fortunately, some posters here stick to the facts - Thanks Gorf!
Ok, then the DF2/3 issue was due to bad design of the A-1011 drive, not the Amiga in general.
But I am pretty sure that the A-1010 was not sold any longer than maybe up to 1990 or so? So, if you bought your Amiga 500, 600 or 1200 after that point, you were stuck with DF0 and DF1 only, unless you bought a 3rd party drive.

And sure, the 1541 drive was slow, got hot, was a heavy part, expensive, etc. I have no problems to admit that, it's true!
But, it didn't allocate any Ram, which was an advantage compared to the Amiga drives. The 1541 had it's own ram and did not have this problem.
There is no advantage of hardware eating up ram of the main computer.

Also, the argument that 1541 drives were less reliable than 3,5 Amiga ones is absolutley not true!
I have repaired and aligned both drives up to component level repairs, and the 1541 drives are much more reliable. This is not very surprising, since a 3,5 drive is smaller, more filigree, double sided, and despite that writes 2x so many tracks on less disk space.
This is not an Amiga topic, but a 5.25 against 3.5 drives topic.

[Chucky]

There is no advantage of hardware eating up ram of the main computer.
--- Ohhh you have no idea what buffers will do?

anyway.. the amiga sure had many flaws. but none of them what you have lined up.. your complaints is just not getting what it was and you think it is a c64 and not a multitasking machine..

the biggest flaw in the amiga is maybe: not enforcing people to actually code proper. and by that the machine got blame of "incompability" when it was poor inmature coders (oh yes. I was one of those aswell. damn my code was dirty )

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Chucky

well on a machine that had max 64K of adressable ram. there was no room for luxery as buffers!

No, but because the drive has it's own ram buffer
It was simply better designed regarding that topic.

It is again my words (same like the OS not being ready to use st startup):
On the Amiga they tried to solve hardware tasks in software, and all these annoying issues was the result.

Originally Posted by Chucky

It is not a "bad design" just as you do not understand it.

Ohh, what a great argument.

What I really don't understand is how they came up with such bad design? Or do you want to tell me that it is such a high sophisticated rocket design advantage that the pass through port is missing on the drive?

Originally Posted by Chucky

It sure is. software however was not written by the set rules. again.. do not blame the hardaware when people programmed it as if it was a C64.
(oh seing your arguments here. it makes sense. they as you belived this was a c64...)

No, it is NOT!
Hardware compatibility means that every piece of software runs. Not only the ones which were specifically design like according to some programming rules.
I suggest you search google what it means, as it seems you have no idea

Originally Posted by Chucky

It was fully compatible! it was just bad coders doing shit. nothing else. again. do not blame hardware for bad programmers.

Again, do a google search what hardware compatibility means, then come back here.

[Chucky]

No, but because the drive has it's own ram buffer

but that would be on the wrong end of the bus. maybe as the c64 had no choise due to. tadaa.. 64k of ram.

again. .the Amiga was not a c64

Hardware compatibility means that every piece of software runs. Not only the ones which were specifically design like according to some programming rules.
I suggest you search google what it means, as it seems you have no idea

no.. they had some set hard rules how you should program it to be compatible for future updates.. people coded it as it was a c64. same as you is thkning the amiga was a c64.. this created the issues. they did not follow the rules.

if they had created the next amiga due to those programmers. it would be a dead machine quite fast.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

No, but because the drive has it's own ram buffer
It was simply better designed regarding that topic.

And it has its own CPU und was more expensive as the C64 itself.

You can buy a second A500 and connect it via nullmodem cable to the first one. This way you can have disk-access without any buffers on the first machine...

This would be a "better design" according to your criteria. I doubt anyone else sees it this way.

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by Gorf

And it has its own CPU und war more expensive as the c64 itself.

You can buy a second A500 and connect it via nullmodem cable to the first one. This way you can have disk-access without any buffers on the first machine...

This would be a "better design" according to your criteria. I doubt anyone else sees it this way.

This is very good example. Thanks for that. The 1541 disk drive is a separate entity, acting like a data server with it's own CPU, RAM and even Operating System. It is expensive, heavy to move around and SLOW! I still wonder how the more inferior Apple II can have pretty fast disk operation with a simple disk drive connected to the computer, (released much earlier), while the Commodore engineers decided to keep that slow serial interface for disk drives! It's good that the Commodore engineers weren't the designers of the floppy drives for the Amiga!

When I switched from Apple II (and Oric clone with similar disk drive), first thing I noticed was the extremely slow disk loading of the C64, considering it's amazing graphics and sound capabilities. The Amiga on the other hand had pretty fast loading for the old single file games and the scene productions. Of course there were some annoying slow loading games, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, but it was still acceptable, compared to the inferiorly designed 8-bits (C64, Sinclair).

I had Amiga 500 with external drive and I almost never had issues because of the allocated extra buffers. Many of the games and scene productions were programmed with single drive in mind, so when loading them I don't think they allocated any extra RAM for the external drive. The RAM was allocated by Workbench, where it was hardly noticeable with the 512 KB expansion that I had.

Also, please don't ruin my thread with useless off topic, not wrong doings of the Amiga. If you consider the release date (1985) most of the design decisions were pretty novel for the time. Of course anyone who comes from 8-bits would find not having BASIC interpreter at his hand from start as obstacle, but it was proven with later BASIC compilers (AMOS and Blitz BASIC), that it is better to have them loaded from external media.

What's next? Moans that the Amiga was so colourful at release, that it looked bad on monochrome monitors and black and white TV?
Of course it does look bad on inferior displays, because it is multimedia machine, designed to be used with good displays.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Some guys here simply cannot admit that there ARE actually flawas in the Amigas system design

Who, exactly? Most of the people you're not listening to are well versed on all things Amiga, and will be very familiar with many of the Amiga's flaws.

and whenever someone makes that visible and these guys are running out of arguments, then all they can come up with is telling me that I don#t understand that, it's like that by design, it had to be like that for futire developments, or simply just telling me I am a troll or stupid etc.

And maybe those are actually the reason for your perceived "flaws", but you're too stuck in your own little hole to realise that the "flaw" is actually just that you don't like something.

This is really poor, guys, and only shows me that you obviously have no arguments againt my objections?

People have been very clearly pointing out the issues with your objections, over and over again, and presenting valid arguments against them. Hence the suggestions that you simply don't know what you're talking about, that you're too sure of your own limited knowledge, or that you're trolling.

I probably shouldn't bother, but it's a quiet day here so I'll bite:

Ok, then the DF2/3 issue was due to bad design of the A-1011 drive, not the Amiga in general.

Why a bad design? Just because it doesn't have a feature that the OS supports? Or just because you always want 4 drives? Or just because you thought there were no alternatives?

But I am pretty sure that the A-1010 was not sold any longer than maybe up to 1990 or so? So, if you bought your Amiga 500, 600 or 1200 after that point, you were stuck with DF0 and DF1 only, unless you bought a 3rd party drive.

Commodore deliberately opened the market for 3rd party peripherals in many areas, deciding instead to concentrate on other tasks. The A1010 was a monstrous thing that was well and truly obsolete in terms of size by the time of the A600 and A1200. Nobody would buy one when there were 3rd party alternatives that were a fraction of the size and cost, and it wasn't worth Commodore's effort to try and compete in such small parts of the market.

And sure, the 1541 drive was slow, got hot, was a heavy part, expensive, etc. I have no problems to admit that, it's true!
But, it didn't allocate any Ram, which was an advantage compared to the Amiga drives. The 1541 had it's own ram and did not have this problem.
There is no advantage of hardware eating up ram of the main computer.

The 1541 was also ridiculously and unnecessarily expensive, and even though it had that RAM on board, it was embarrassingly slow to access it from the computer. Maybe if there had been some buffers allocated on the C64 side of things, the access times for some operations could have been much less pitiful. Therefore, not having buffers is a serious design flaw in the C64. (See how this works?)
The floppy drive controller was built into the Amiga, not the drive, which is partly why the Amiga had such excellent floppy drive support as well as lots of flexibility around things like buffers.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

No, I listed arguments, even gave extremely simply examples (listing disk contents) in difference to others who childishly just say 'no, no no'.

You mean the arcane string of random characters you have to type in, the results of which overwrite the program you're working on without so much as a warning? Oh yeah, that's just the perfect system. I'm astonished Microsoft haven't adopted it for Windows 11.

User daxb started asking if I had mental problems, talked about 'stupid' etc, etc., because he ran out of arguments?

No, because you seem to have severe difficulty in understanding his arguments.

If you like we can get proof of my example. I bet for something that I will be faster listing a disk's contents on the C64 than on the 'so well designed and perfect' Amiga system.

And what will you do with the disk's contents then? Load them? Because as soon as you start talking about transferring data, things on the 1541 grind to a halt. And, in the interest of fairness, you should time someone who isn't a C64 zealot and doesn't know the exact command to type in and has to go look it up in the manual, since that's an intrinsic part of the operation. Doing a single isolated task faster doesn't mean squat, because convenience and power comes with overheads. It sounds like you think we should all still be stuck in the 8-bit era...

the C64 beats the Amiga in facts in this case, no matter what Amiga fanatics talk.

A sample set of one person (who happens to be a C64 fetishist) is a pretty poor basis from which to try and derive a fact.

And, what's the difference?
if those issues were already designed as that, then it is exactly what I have already mentioned: bad design!

Because if it works as intended then it's not a flaw. Once again, you're confusing not being the Homermobile you want with being flawed, when clearly the flaws are simply your perception of things.

Yes, for future hardware which did not suit to their own design?

Because they knew what the future hardware would look like? Can you not see how ridiculous you sound?

It was simply stupid design of this drive.

See above. Just because it wasn't designed for your particular use case and budget, doesn't mean it was a bad design. Buy something else that better suits your needs. And the same goes for anything - there's no product on the planet that is everything that everyone needs from it. And thinking that the 1541 is that product just shows how out of touch with reality you are.

If there had not been 3rd party companies helping Commodore out, then Amiga 500 users would have never ever seen a DF2 or DF3 drive.

See above. Commodore deliberately concentrated elsewhere when there were 3rd party alternatives that weren't worth competing with. GVP were a big one for example.

Again, compare this to the C64.
I can connect up to 4 drives without that stupid buffer issues. None of the drives uses up any ram.

*yawn*

Think about how crazy this is in fact! As a programmer, you need to know how many diskdrives your customer/user has connected, otherwise your program might not run.

Only if you're going to program with an 8-bit, single-tasking mindset. If you're doing that on a 16-bit (or 32-bit), multitasking machine, of course you're going to have issues.

Haha, so I need to buy another extra hardware (ram expansion) to get the other badly designed hardware (diskdrive) working without issues?

Nope, the disk drive isn't badly designed, despite your rabid insistence, and nope, you don't need to buy extra hardware for it to work without issues. You need to buy extra RAM because you're pushing your machine so close to the limit or with such poorly written software that even 10kB less RAM causes you problems.

Man, seriously, this cannot be true!!
You all keep telling me that this is such a well thought design which was ages in advance of it's time ?!
What a joke!

And this is why people think you either can't, or won't, understand what's going on.

Ok, but then it is not 'hardware compatible' at all.

Yep, it is. Having the extra 512kB of RAM there doesn't stop the first 512kB from working in any way, shape or form. What's not compatible is the software that assumes the machine will only ever have 512kB of RAM fitted, and all your waffle about RAM expansions simply shows that you really don't understand, or refuse to understand, what the issue are that you're talking about.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

No, but because the drive has it's own ram buffer
It was simply better designed regarding that topic.

How is that a better design? It's more expensive, far slower, and far less flexible. On the Amiga, you can decide how many buffers to apply. The default of about 10kB per drive seems pretty reasonable, given it's less than 2% of the machine's RAM, the user can add or remove those buffer allocations with a simple command if they really wanted to, and of course it's far, far faster because the CPU can actually access that buffer, unlike the 1541 (another major flaw...)

It is again my words (same like the OS not being ready to use st startup):
On the Amiga they tried to solve hardware tasks in software, and all these annoying issues was the result.

Providing a far more user-friendly, far more flexible and far more powerful system as a result. Just because you only want things directly from the 8-bit era doesn't mean everyone else thinks that way. And it certainly doesn't make a more advanced design, bad.

Ohh, what a great argument.

Well, it's looking more and more valid as you keep digging this hole for yourself

What I really don't understand is how they came up with such bad design? Or do you want to tell me that it is such a high sophisticated rocket design advantage that the pass through port is missing on the drive?

You really are bizarrely obsessed with this passthrough. If the lack of passthrough made the drive cheaper, and 90% of the market had no need for a 3rd or 4th drive, then that's an excellent design decision. The 10% can pay for the more expensive drive with a passthrough, or a cheaper, 3rd party alternative.

No, it is NOT!
Hardware compatibility means that every piece of software runs. Not only the ones which were specifically design like according to some programming rules.
I suggest you search google what it means, as it seems you have no idea

Aw bless, you really can't understand this bit, can you? Are you suggesting that no Amiga could ever have more than 512kB of RAM? If you've ever tried coding a game on the Amiga, you'll know that 512kB is a seriously tight limit. All those 1MB games simply wouldn't be possible if RAM couldn't be expanded. But expanding RAM by its very nature changes the hardware. Is it 100% identical to the 512kB machine? Of course not, it can't be. Is it compatible? Yes, it absolutely is. Software that uses the first 512kB can still use the first 512kB and it will work just fine, completely ignoring the extra RAM. Software that pulls dodgy tricks beyond the scope of the machine's design that depends on it only having 512kB, that's a different story, and nothing can possibly make that work because that software is fundamentally broken by design.

Show me the properly coded software that fails to work with the RAM expansion in place.

[Predseda]

What a patience you have, Daedalus

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Chucky

There is no advantage of hardware eating up ram of the main computer.
--- Ohhh you have no idea what buffers will do?

You might be right, here, I don't know what it's task is on the Amiga, and what would be different if the Amiga would not do/need this ram?

I only know buffers from the 1541, which buffers data so that the drive can decode it while it is reading new data from the disk. It helps loading faster and doesn't need to wait for the disk to do another rotation every time. But all that is ofcourse done in the diskdrive itself and does not allocate any ram on the C64.

But it doesn't make a difference for the arguments again it.
It is simply not a good thing when parts of the computer#ss RAM is not free any longer after an additional diskdrive is connected, compared to a computer where this is not the case.
Otherwise, please tell me the advantage, I cannot think of any, and noone mentioned any argument for it other than some irrelevant 'you don't understand it' messages.

Originally Posted by Chucky

anyway.. the amiga sure had many flaws. but none of them what you have lined up.. your complaints is just not getting what it was and you think it is a c64 and not a multitasking machine..

I don't think the hardware is a multitask system. The 68000 is not a multitask processsor afaik. So why would connecting another piece of hardware like a diskdrive need to consume ram at this point?
If Workbench would need it for multitasking, then it could have been allocated by Workbench.
But afaik, this problem also affected games which did not run from Workbench?

Originally Posted by Chucky

the biggest flaw in the amiga is maybe: not enforcing people to actually code proper. and by that the machine got blame of "incompability" when it was poor inmature coders (oh yes. I was one of those aswell. damn my code was dirty )

I see this quite different.
A programmer should not have to think about different hardware configurations such like a connected diskdrive if he developes an application.

It also shows that one of the big problems of later Amigas was that they were not really backward compatible. Problems with different Kickstarts, different Ram Configurations, etc.
I think everyone remembers the fate of the Amiga 600 with it#s incompatible Kickrom 2.0?

[ajk]

The amount of buffers allocated for a drive is entirely up to the OS - it's not a fixed quantity. You can even reduce already allocated buffer space using the addbuffers command with a negative argument. I don't think you can bring it down to 0, but something very small (1-2 kB perhaps?)

If you take over the system, you can just ignore the extra drives and no resources will be spent on them (as far as I know at least - not really a hardware banging programmer).

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

You might be right, here, I don't know what it's task is on the Amiga, and what would be different if the Amiga would not do/need this ram?

Floppy access would be slowed down without them. You can of course try it for yourself by reducing the number of buffers allocated.

I only know buffers from the 1541, which buffers data so that the drive can decode it while it is reading new data from the disk. It helps loading faster and doesn't need to wait for the disk to do another rotation every time. But all that is ofcourse done in the diskdrive itself and does not allocate any ram on the C64.

And, because it's on the drive and not the C64, much of that performance advantage is wasted, because getting the data from the buffers to the C64 RAM to actually do something with it is so slow.

But it doesn't make a difference for the arguments again it.
It is simply not a good thing when parts of the computer#ss RAM is not free any longer after an additional diskdrive is connected, compared to a computer where this is not the case.
Otherwise, please tell me the advantage, I cannot think of any, and noone mentioned any argument for it other than some irrelevant 'you don't understand it' messages.

Using RAM to cache various file operations is an extremely good use of RAM. It's very odd that you still don't seem to be able to grasp that concept.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

drives use buffers to greatly increase performance in certain activities.

If you want a more specific explanation, just ask rather than pretending to yourself that nobody has already tried to explain it.

I don't think the hardware is a multitask system. The 68000 is not a multitask processsor afaik. So why would connecting another piece of hardware like a diskdrive need to consume ram at this point?

You *really* don't get it, do you? Or are you going all in with your trolling at this point?

If Workbench would need it for multitasking, then it could have been allocated by Workbench.
But afaik, this problem also affected games which did not run from Workbench?

I know you like to believe that the OS doesn't exist, but it's still responsible for initialising and booting the machine, even if a game decides to shut it down afterwards. It mounts drives, enumerates expansions, loads drivers, and allocates RAM as needed for these tasks. If a programmer treats it as a static, single-tasking, fixed-configuration system like the far more primitive C64, then no wonder they have issues with their software.

I see this quite different.

Yes, yes you do.

A programmer should not have to think about different hardware configurations such like a connected diskdrive if he developes an application.

Again with the 8-bit thinking, that every machine should be identical, that no machine should have more RAM or be doing anything else. If a programmer decides to go against the guidelines for coding for any machine, then it's on the programmer if it doesn't work when something changes.

It also shows that one of the big problems of later Amigas was that they were not really backward compatible. Problems with different Kickstarts, different Ram Configurations, etc.
I think everyone remembers the fate of the Amiga 600 with it#s incompatible Kickrom 2.0?

Again, so every Amiga should only have 512kB of RAM? It's quite an odd idea you have of what a machine should be, especially when that machine was designed from the ground up to be expandable and flexible. But hey, who needs more than 64kB, right?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

You might be right, here, I don't know what it's task is on the Amiga, and what would be different if the Amiga would not do/need this ram?

You probably don't understand the difference between the Amiga floppy, and the 1541. The Amiga floppy is a pretty much standard industry part, which was relatively cheap to buy, with no intelligence whatsoever, transfering raw MFM encoded data to the machine, to decode the data with the blitter. No extra RAM on the drive was required, no CPU on the drive was required, no extra power supply was required. The design purpose was to reduce the price, but keep the design flexible.



The 1541 was an intelligent drive that includes its on Os, its own CPU and its own RAM. It was a fairly expensive add-on, and extra unit users would have to invest into.


The Amiga design came with a floppy right from start because its designers anticipated that users would require a floppy anyhow, and as such, they tried to come up with a hardware as simple and flexible as possible.


Those two designs are quite the opposite. Look where the 1541 ended: A mis-designed snake-slow interface with a hard-coded DOS in the drive, expensive to build, and anyoingly slow to use. The Amiga floppy was fast, cheap and flexible. Just by software, it can read PC formats, Atari formats, and plenty others. The 1541 can read... 1541 formats. For probably ten-fold the price.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

I only know buffers from the 1541, which buffers data so that the drive can decode it while it is reading new data from the disk. It helps loading faster and doesn't need to wait for the disk to do another rotation every time. But all that is ofcourse done in the diskdrive itself and does not allocate any ram on the C64.

But it allocates RAM in the drive itself, and a CPU, and a serial interface port, and a power supply, all of which the user had to pay for. On the Amiga, it just uses what is already there. So there is an entire 6502 wasted just for controlling the drive, something the 68K can do with ease, and a blitter, that can offload the work of decoding the floppy data.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

But it doesn't make a difference for the arguments again it.
It is simply not a good thing when parts of the computer#ss RAM is not free any longer after an additional diskdrive is connected, compared to a computer where this is not the case.

That is pretty much 8-bit thinking. On the C64, you knew every RAM cell by name because you had so few. On the Amiga, this didn't make sense anymore. RAM was getting cheaper, though CPUs, serial controllers, and power supplies - all of which you would have needed *in addition* for an intelligent drive - were not.


Today, it is again reverse: You have your interface logic on the system anyhow (it is called USB), embedded CPUs and USB controllers cost nothing, so it does not matter to put one on a drive. Thus, if you get a CDROM these days, it is cost efficient just to put that on the drive, and make the CDROM an "intelligent drive" like the 1541. As most users don't need CDROMs anymore, it is also an external component.


What can we conclude? That every computer design is a child of its time, and the design constraints that were set at its time. The Amiga was designed with relatively cheap RAM, costly CPUs, costly interface logic, costly drives, and users that require a drive anyhow. The PC is designed around other constraints, and the C64 yet again.


Given the design goals back then, the Amiga design was sane - it provided flexibility to the user, with little price, and removing costly components the C64 required with its limits of RAM.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Otherwise, please tell me the advantage, I cannot think of any, and noone mentioned any argument for it other than some irrelevant 'you don't understand it' messages.

Many. As stated already, the "intelligent" 1541 could not read other formats. The Amiga can. The Amiga does not have a floppy controller. That is cheaper, simpler, and more flexible. All at the cost of a little bit of RAM. I'd say that this was a a good decision.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

I don't think the hardware is a multitask system. The 68000 is not a multitask processsor afaik.

You know wrong. A processor is not "multitasking or not". This is not up to the processor to decide. It is up to the operating system to implement it. A 6502 is probably a bit too primitive for that with its fixed 256 byte stack in page 1, but even a 6800 could multitask - just that there is not room for many tasks, so nobody did that.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

So why would connecting another piece of hardware like a diskdrive need to consume ram at this point?

Because it would otherwise need cumbersome RAM in the drive, and a CPU, and a controller. You seem to forget that you need that RAM *somehwere* in the design anyhow. Either within an intelligent drive (the 1541) or on the main board. Now, what's simpler and more flexible? Use the RAM on the board you already have, and the CPU already on the board you have.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

A programmer should not have to think about different hardware configurations such like a connected diskdrive if he developes an application.

That's what we have an operating system for. An Os that, unfortunately, was ignored by many games authors.


Of course, as an 8-bit guy, you don't really have an idea what the Os is good for, and why to use it, but that was part of the flaw - the software author base who approached the machine from a completely wrong angle as a "glorified C64", which it certainly wasn't.


The Mac64 manual "Inside MacIntosh", comes with a chapter upfront labelled "A horse of a different color", explaining software authors in great detail what was so different in the Mac design compared to the Apple II design, and how software on the Mac works compared to how it worked on the Apple II. I just wish CBM had done the very same thing: Leave hardware undocumented, and explain in great detail how to use the Os interfaces towards it. It would have been a much more future-proof system.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

It also shows that one of the big problems of later Amigas was that they were not really backward compatible. Problems with different Kickstarts, different Ram Configurations, etc.

Not? That's what the Os is good for. Look at the PC platform: It is even more diverse, and yet it runs the same applications on top. Just because the authors that write software for it are "a bit more disciplined" on it, and probably also because its Os vendor (Microsoft, like it or not) keeps care of "certifying products". CBM had never the idea to define their system through software. They just "pushed boxes". This limited intelligence of their management was the demise of the system.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

I think everyone remembers the fate of the Amiga 600 with it#s incompatible Kickrom 2.0?

WTF? The A600 did not die because of its "incompatible kick rom", but because it was still based on the back then already outdated ECS chipset, a really fairly stupid management decision of CBM for not investing into the platform. That was the problem.


The kickstart is quite compatible - I can still run the Kick 1.2 applications on my Os 3.2 today. They aren't pretty, but they work. That's called "engineering".

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Who, exactly? Most of the people you're not listening to are well versed on all things Amiga, and will be very familiar with many of the Amiga's flaws.

And maybe those are actually the reason for your perceived "flaws", but you're too stuck in your own little hole to realise that the "flaw" is actually just that you don't like something.

Yes, it really shows that most of those guys with 'deep Amiga insight' seem to be a bit lost in their Amiga world, and completely ignore that other, better solutions exist, even if I show them such BASIC comforts of other systems, like not having to play diskjockey for a simple directorxy listing.

Just because you have simply accomodated to the Amiga's system and not looked beyond this limit doesn't mean that is is so perfect. It is only perfect in your and other 'deep Amiga insight guys' eyes.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

People have been very clearly pointing out the issues with your objections, over and over again, and presenting valid arguments against them. Hence the suggestions that you simply don't know what you're talking about, that you're too sure of your own limited knowledge, or that you're trolling.

Not at all.
There is still no better solution for the disk-swapping and endless waiting for the DOS commands to load issue.
If you got balls, simply accept my challenge. I will measure how long it takes me to list a disk directory of any disk after I turn on a stock C64.
You can try to do the same on a stock Amiga 500, and we will see the results.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Why a bad design? Just because it doesn't have a feature that the OS supports? Or just because you always want 4 drives? Or just because you thought there were no alternatives?

Why do you think had every 3rd party drive a passthrough port?
Think hard!
Maybe because it was missing on the original ones?
So, maybe, just maybe the original drive design was not sooo good after all, what do you think?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Commodore deliberately opened the market for 3rd party peripherals in many areas, deciding instead to concentrate on other tasks. The A1010 was a monstrous thing that was well and truly obsolete in terms of size by the time of the A600 and A1200. Nobody would buy one when there were 3rd party alternatives that were a fraction of the size and cost, and it wasn't worth Commodore's effort to try and compete in such small parts of the market.

I don't think they deliberately opened up any market. Their drives were simply bad designed and missing the switch and pass thru port, so noone bought them, ofcourse.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

The 1541 was also ridiculously and unnecessarily expensive, and even though it had that RAM on board, it was embarrassingly slow to access it from the computer. Maybe if there had been some buffers allocated on the C64 side of things, the access times for some operations could have been much less pitiful. Therefore, not having buffers is a serious design flaw in the C64. (See how this works?)

In contrast to you living in your perfect Amiga world, have no problem with that argument. You are very correct that the 1541 was expensive and slower than an Amiga drive (but you have to keep in mind it was developed much earlier than the Amiga)

The difference is that I know very well the things which were not done right from the start on the C64, while you do not or do not want to acknowledge those such flaws on the Amiga side.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

The floppy drive controller was built into the Amiga, not the drive, which is partly why the Amiga had such excellent floppy drive support as well as lots of flexibility around things like buffers.

I don't think there is much difference to the 1541. The 1541 drive could also load data in thousands of different formats, speeding up loading times etc.
You could still do all this despite it had it's controller in the drive.
Not a valid argument.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

You mean the arcane string of random characters you have to type in, the results of which overwrite the program you're working on without so much as a warning? Oh yeah, that's just the perfect system. I'm astonished Microsoft haven't adopted it for Windows 11.

Every child was able to remember those commands after typing them the first time. Once you know them, you can work fast and easy.
But on the Amiga, there is no way around diskswapping and loading that stupid command into ram first, when they could have been instantly available from rom.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

No, because you seem to have severe difficulty in understanding his arguments.

What 'arguments'?!
Telling me 'you don't understand' is absolutley no argument, but just stupid talking.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

And what will you do with the disk's contents then? Load them? Because as soon as you start talking about transferring data, things on the 1541 grind to a halt. And, in the interest of fairness, you should time someone who isn't a C64 zealot and doesn't know the exact command to type in and has to go look it up in the manual, since that's an intrinsic part of the operation. Doing a single isolated task faster doesn't mean squat, because convenience and power comes with overheads. It sounds like you think we should all still be stuck in the 8-bit era...

I am not talking about a single operation. I am talking about the same annoying disk swapping and waiting forever for every command to load from a 'system disk' first, over and over again, with no good solution.

It seems you actually never worked with an Amiga 500 with no second drive, and also never actually worked wit ha C64 system.
It was a pain in the ass from day one after I unpacked the Amiga 500 for the first time.

I know have had both systems for 30 years, so I know what I am talking about.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

A sample set of one person (who happens to be a C64 fetishist) is a pretty poor basis from which to try and derive a fact.

Just because the numer of 'Amiga is soo perfect' guys here is MUCH higher is aso not a fact at all.
If I post the same arguments in a C64 forum, things will be quite differen, believe me

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Because if it works as intended then it's not a flaw. Once again, you're confusing not being the Homermobile you want with being flawed, when clearly the flaws are simply your perception of things.

Just because something is 'intended to work like this or that' does by far not mean that it is good!
You seem to play the 'it is not a bug, it is a feature' game, right ?
But it does not depend in which package you are trying to sell it.
In the end, what counts for me is the user experience.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Because they knew what the future hardware would look like? Can you not see how ridiculous you sound?

Ermm, they did not 'know' that their drives will consume up ram?
I thought it was like that 'by design' already before external drives were available?
But then they didn't think that such a design could lead to problems with software which needs that ram? And they didn't bother to install a switch to turn off that drive?
Come one, they knew it very well, but still produced those stupid drives without a switch and without pass thru.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

See above. Just because it wasn't designed for your particular use case and budget, doesn't mean it was a bad design. Buy something else that better suits your needs. And the same goes for anything - there's no product on the planet that is everything that everyone needs from it. And thinking that the 1541 is that product just shows how out of touch with reality you are.

Again, I see you don't read my text, I never said the 1541 is perfect, it never every was! It has it's flaws, ofcourse.
But the A-1011 driver also has it's own flaws, which you don't seem to understand because you obviously never had anything than an Amiga and therefore have no way to compare.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

See above. Commodore deliberately concentrated elsewhere when there were 3rd party alternatives that weren't worth competing with. GVP were a big one for example.

I can bring the same argument for 1541 drive speeders. You could get them from 3rd party developers, and your 1541 was loading super fast afterwards. Like I mentioned, I had Dolphindos from about 1 years after I started.

But having some third party alternatives doesn't mean that the original designed hardware is any better.
The 1541 still had it's flaw of slow loading times, just like the A-1011 had it's flaw of a missing switch and pass thru port.

It is really impressing how you lack comprehending this.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Only if you're going to program with an 8-bit, single-tasking mindset. If you're doing that on a 16-bit (or 32-bit), multitasking machine, of course you're going to have issues.

Ok, that is a point. I have not enough knowledge about it from a programmer's point of view, so I accept this.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Nope, the disk drive isn't badly designed, despite your rabid insistence, and nope, you don't need to buy extra hardware for it to work without issues. You need to buy extra RAM because you're pushing your machine so close to the limit or with such poorly written software that even 10kB less RAM causes you problems.

Ok, so it is 'good design' when it is not possible to use the system up to the limits because a diskdrive is limiting it, which I cannot switch off but need to disconnect on the back of the computer?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yep, it is. Having the extra 512kB of RAM there doesn't stop the first 512kB from working in any way, shape or form. What's not compatible is the software that assumes the machine will only ever have 512kB of RAM fitted, and all your waffle about RAM expansions simply shows that you really don't understand, or refuse to understand, what the issue are that you're talking about.

I can understand that, but if this is a known issue, then why didn't they install a switch to turn off the ram expansion, like all 3rd party developers pretty much knew about?

It seems the most shit design is always good design in your eyes since it came from Commodore Amiga. But since EVERY other ram expansion had that switch, you think they were ALL wrong?
Really funny to read this as an argument for the flaw of the A-501 not having a on/off switch.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

How is that a better design? It's more expensive, far slower, and far less flexible. On the Amiga, you can decide how many buffers to apply. The default of about 10kB per drive seems pretty reasonable, given it's less than 2% of the machine's RAM, the user can add or remove those buffer allocations with a simple command if they really wanted to, and of course it's far, far faster because the CPU can actually access that buffer, unlike the 1541 (another major flaw...)

Ok, but then why didn't they think about a possibility to turn off that buffer at all, if it is not used by a program?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Providing a far more user-friendly, far more flexible and far more powerful system as a result. Just because you only want things directly from the 8-bit era doesn't mean everyone else thinks that way. And it certainly doesn't make a more advanced design, bad.

Any examples for this?
What can I do so much better on a Amiga diskdrive than I can do on a 1541 diskdrive?
Like I mentioned, you can do extremely fancy things with a 1541 drive.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

You really are bizarrely obsessed with this passthrough. If the lack of passthrough made the drive cheaper, and 90% of the market had no need for a 3rd or 4th drive, then that's an excellent design decision. The 10% can pay for the more expensive drive with a passthrough, or a cheaper, 3rd party alternative.

Ok, I accept the missing pass thru, but the missing switch was really annoying.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Aw bless, you really can't understand this bit, can you? Are you suggesting that no Amiga could ever have more than 512kB of RAM? If you've ever tried coding a game on the Amiga, you'll know that 512kB is a seriously tight limit. All those 1MB games simply wouldn't be possible if RAM couldn't be expanded. But expanding RAM by its very nature changes the hardware. Is it 100% identical to the 512kB machine? Of course not, it can't be. Is it compatible? Yes, it absolutely is. Software that uses the first 512kB can still use the first 512kB and it will work just fine, completely ignoring the extra RAM. Software that pulls dodgy tricks beyond the scope of the machine's design that depends on it only having 512kB, that's a different story, and nothing can possibly make that work because that software is fundamentally broken by design.

Show me the properly coded software that fails to work with the RAM expansion in place.

Ofcourse I understand this.
But then why did the A-501 devlopers not understand this, and install a switch?
It was completely foreseeable that such issue will happen with some 'not so perfect programmed' software.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Yes, it really shows that most of those guys with 'deep Amiga insight' seem to be a bit lost in their Amiga world, and completely ignore that other, better solutions exist, even if I show them such BASIC comforts of other systems, like not having to play diskjockey for a simple directorxy listing.

Hold on. I have a background in Atari 8 bits, also using an intelligent (but much faster) disk drive, and I also write software for the PC, for Windows and for Linux. I also write software for Mac. So please don't tell me what I don't know. You seem to be pretty ignorant and short-sighted. An Amiga is not a C64, and yes, it is different.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

It is only perfect in your and other 'deep Amiga insight guys' eyes.

I don't think anyone here considers the Amiga "perfect". It is far from perfect. The kludgy BCPL-based Tripos patch-work, the lack of resource tracking in the Os... many. For you, its not perfect because it's not a C64. However, that is intentional. It is not a C64, and was never designed to be one, so get over it.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

There is still no better solution for the disk-swapping and endless waiting for the DOS commands to load issue.

Yes, there is. Get a harddisk. The AmigaOs was designed to be a much larger system than an 8-bits.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

If you got balls, simply accept my challenge. I will measure how long it takes me to list a disk directory of any disk after I turn on a stock C64.

And what does that prove? How long does it take to load a game on the C64? Got balls? I tell you how long it does on the Amiga. You put the disk in the drive and turn the system on, then it loads, and you are done. On the C64, you type, and type, and then it loads... and still loads.... and still loads.... and minutes(!) later, you are maybe done.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Why do you think had every 3rd party drive a passthrough port?

I don't know whether this was true or not, but what do you want to prove? That CBM had a bad product policy? Accepted, they did.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

I don't think they deliberately opened up any market. Their drives were simply bad designed and missing the switch and pass thru port, so noone bought them, ofcourse.

Why they needed a switch?

Originally Posted by Overdoc

In contrast to you living in your perfect Amiga world, have no problem with that argument. You are very correct that the 1541 was expensive and slower than an Amiga drive (but you have to keep in mind it was developed much earlier than the Amiga)

Hold on. The Atari 810 disk drive was surely ahead of time of the 1541, and it was a lot faster than the 1541. Which is not exactly a challenge. And it an intelligent drive, with its own CPU and RAM.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

The difference is that I know very well the things which were not done right from the start on the C64, while you do not or do not want to acknowledge those such flaws on the Amiga side.

The drive was surely not "done right", and the Basic surely wasn't either. Even very basic things required "peek and poke". Atari Basic wasn't perfect, but at least you could create some elementary graphics and sounds. It was a Basic that fit to the machine. C64 was just "off the shelve" Basic. From Microsoft. It did not fit to the machine at all, it did nothing to service the hardware of the machine - not at all. No graphics, no sound.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Every child was able to remember those commands after typing them the first time.

What's better: A command "easy" to remember, or no command whatsoever. Think hard. The Amiga worked like the Atari. You want to boot the machine? Put a disk in the drive, turn it on. Simple enough, eh?


You are just used to the quirky "load $,8", but that is not a good design. It is just complicated and quirky. Being used to something does not mean it's good.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Telling me 'you don't understand' is absolutley no argument, but just stupid talking.

*cough* Look in the mirror.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

It seems you actually never worked with an Amiga 500 with no second drive, and also never actually worked wit ha C64 system.

Years long. With an A2000, though. A single drive, initially. I did what people always did. I cleaned up all the harddisk re-assignment junk from the startup-sequence (That was really a bad job), and then put the programs I needed on the disk. The assembler, back then. That worked just fine. I didn't need or want a stupid Microsoft Basic the C64 came from, and which couldn't be used to do anything interesting without all the PEEK and POKE crazy stuff.

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Floppy access would be slowed down without them. You can of course try it for yourself by reducing the number of buffers allocated.

Ok, thanks for the explanation.
If it really was possible to shut these buffers off to 0, then I agree with you all that it was programmers fault if a software would not work with a second drive connected.
I always had the impresson that some ram was allocated by the drive from hardware side, right after you staretd the computer, which you couldn't get free again?

Originally Posted by Daedalus

And, because it's on the drive and not the C64, much of that performance advantage is wasted, because getting the data from the buffers to the C64 RAM to actually do something with it is so slow.

Using RAM to cache various file operations is an extremely good use of RAM. It's very odd that you still don't seem to be able to grasp that concept.

This is a matter of slow data transfer to the computer. With a parallel connection like Dophindos, the buffer ram in the drive makes good sense.

Biting off ram just for buffering data transfer from the drive is not a good idea imho. Ram can be used in a better way and should be free for applications/games data to be accessed by the CPU.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

If you want a more specific explanation, just ask rather than pretending to yourself that nobody has already tried to explain it.

Problem is that very often you guys here come up with no other arguments than saying 'no', wihtout explanation....

Originally Posted by Daedalus

You *really* don't get it, do you? Or are you going all in with your trolling at this point?

And here we have it again....mo arguments, just lame words....
If you think I don't understand something, then let me know, or explain so that it makes sense.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I know you like to believe that the OS doesn't exist, but it's still responsible for initialising and booting the machine, even if a game decides to shut it down afterwards. It mounts drives, enumerates expansions, loads drivers, and allocates RAM as needed for these tasks. If a programmer treats it as a static, single-tasking, fixed-configuration system like the far more primitive C64, then no wonder they have issues with their software.

That's actualy what I would expect from being 'fully hardware compatile'.
But please think back what I was adressing?
Sure I understand that the system changes when you add extra memory, for instance.
The ONLY thing I mentioned is that there was NO SWITCH to turn the damn thing off!! And that made it not 100% compatible any more, which developers obviosuly didn't care about, but which I think is always good to have on any system.
And since all the other 3rd party memory cards had that switch tells me that I am very very right with my argument.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Again with the 8-bit thinking, that every machine should be identical, that no machine should have more RAM or be doing anything else. If a programmer decides to go against the guidelines for coding for any machine, then it's on the programmer if it doesn't work when something changes.

Again, so every Amiga should only have 512kB of RAM? It's quite an odd idea you have of what a machine should be, especially when that machine was designed from the ground up to be expandable and flexible. But hey, who needs more than 64kB, right?

Like mentioned above, ofcourse it makes sense to have memory expansions etc, but why did they not install an on/off switch?
I did not criticize anything else!!

[Chucky]

if the C64 was so superior.. sit there. write your basic program you program for hours...

now. ahh I need to save this stuff. do I have a disk with enough free space on. lets do a directory of the disks and see. <FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU>

(on a diskdrive that costs aprox the same amount that a Harddrive would on the amiga.. btw)

[ajk]

I think you will find that many, if not the majority of original Amiga users had a C64 first. That is certainly the case around these parts. I had one, then moved to a C128, then an A500. Fond memories from all of these (and I still in fact have all of them).

The C64 had great features for its time in the SID and VIC chips, which have made possible some quite extraordinary games and other titles. However, the actual user experience with a standard C64 is, frankly, garbage.

Sure, you can get the directory of a disk, but it will wipe your BASIC program listing*. There is no sensible reason for a user interface to be designed that way. Deleting, renaming or otherwise working with files is a total mess overall and the simplest mistake can result in all kinds of corruption.

You have BASIC at the touch of the power switch. Yes. But that BASIC is quite terrible. Not only are there clear bugs in the limited commands and syntax that do exist, but more importantly there are no provisions to actually make use of the graphics or sound capabilities of the system. The only way to do anything useful is to poke values into registers which is - for an average user - arcane at best. Add to that the utterly miserable text editor, or lack thereof...

Plugging in a Simons BASIC cartridge or similar addresses some of these issues, but out of the box, plain awful. GEOS was pretty cool, but also pretty useless on a standard setup. Users did persist, of course, as there weren't many better options for a home computer.

The C128 was a little better. BASIC was extended to cover a bunch of the graphics and audio features, there is a built-in sprite editor and even an assembler/monitor. The 1571 is a much better disk drive. Unfortunately, arrived a bit too late to really make an impact. The Amiga came half a year later.

I don't think anyone has claimed that the Amiga was or is perfect, but it sure as heck provided a much better user experience even with the shortcomings. Kickstart/Workbench 1.2/1.3 was not exactly refined, but reasonably well thought out and perfectly usable for most tasks.


* It is of course possible to move the BASIC program to a different location, but I doubt many users knew how to do this

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Ok, thanks for the explanation.
If it really was possible to shut these buffers off to 0, then I agree with you all that it was programmers fault if a software would not work with a second drive connected.
I always had the impresson that some ram was allocated by the drive from hardware side, right after you staretd the computer, which you couldn't get free again?

No that is of course not the case.
You really should stop making wrong assumptions based on your obviously rather limited knowledge about the Amiga.

This is a matter of slow data transfer to the computer. With a parallel connection like Dophindos, the buffer ram in the drive makes good sense.

Which is of course a third party expansion. The unbelievable slow serial connection, the C64 floppy suffers so much from, is a result of a malfunctioning chip and quite famous.
It stems from the VIC20 days but Commodore never really bothered to fix it, except for the C128. There the serial connection with the right floppy-drive is as fast as your Dophindos.

But as mentioned 1000 times before: any third party solutions are rather irrelevant to the question of this thread.

Biting off ram just for buffering data transfer from the drive is not a good idea imho. Ram can be used in a better way and should be free for applications/games data to be accessed by the CPU.

That is how ALL modern operating systems do it.
No matter if you use Linux, BSD, Windows, MacOS, iOS or Android - every operating system uses RAM to buffer its drives.
They do it all, because it is clearly the best solution.

Problem is that very often you guys here come up with no other arguments than saying 'no', wihtout explanation....

No.

That's actualy what I would expect from being 'fully hardware compatile'.

Maybe - but then again nobody knows what the word 'compatile' means...

But please think back what I was adressing?
Sure I understand that the system changes when you add extra memory, for instance.
The ONLY thing I mentioned is that there was NO SWITCH to turn the damn thing off!!

Why would there be a switch??
No PC has ever done this, no Atari, no Mac, no SUN, no SGI, no Achimedes ...
That is totally illogical thinking.

Please stop that obvious trolling now!

[Chucky]

I was a user of VIC20 and C64 for years.. even ZX80 and 81. when switching to amiga I must say I missed: NOTHING.. actually litterly NOTHING!
I loved the CLI (never used workbench until I got a harddrive) it was so powerful..
and you could multitask. sure annoyment with dir etc missing but it was solved easy by having my small bootdisk that was a template disk for all my setups. (as I had a disk for copying disks. one for programming. one for dpaint. etc etc) and I quite quickly got a 2nd diskdrive. it solved all my small "dir" issues.. and 1MB ram was a natural choise. some games stopped to work. but I understood quite quickly it was due to bad programming..

then within a year I got a harddrive. it was a new world. I could use a computer "professionally" got a 2MB expansion. wow. what a machine..

if it had been as @overdoc wanted. harddrive, more memory etc would be impossible,.. then the Amiga would be well. "mehh" nothing else.

i just do not understand his trolling. it is weird..