Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The Amiga was the first Commodore product I owned, not because I couldn't get one before but because the VIC-20 and C64 both sucked.

Sigh... I do like to point out myself that C64 had some serious flaws (eg colour palette, BASIC) - like all the other micros - but overall it was the best choice at the time. Which is the reason it sold as much as it did. VIC was no slouch either, first computer ever to sell more than 1 mil units.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Gave it a C64 compatibility mode that meant no C128 games needed to be produced

And if they didn't, nobody would buy it. As it is, it sold ~as much as Amiga 500.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Sigh... I do like to point out myself that C64 had some serious flaws (eg colour palette, BASIC) - like all the other micros - but overall it was the best choice at the time. Which is the reason it sold as much as it did. VIC was no slouch either, first computer ever to sell more than 1 mil units.

At last, someone else acknowledges that the C64 colour palette (at least in PAL) was (is) BAD! As for the BASIC, I have little experience of the C64 dialect, but I did hear that it was filled with PEEK and POKE statements to achieve anything beyond rudimentary. But then again, the Atari 800XL (the machine I had as a child) was just as bad, but there were alternatives to Atari BASIC available that were a lot more versatile, faster and could even be compiled.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I have little experience of the C64 dialect, but I did hear that it was filled with PEEK and POKE statements to achieve anything beyond rudimentary.

Small example: clear screen

Sinclair: CLS
C64: Print CHR$(147)

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The things Commodore didn't get right about the Amiga are nothing compared to the mistakes they made with other machines.

Truer words have not often been spoken.

Actually everything they did inhouse after the C64 was bonkers.

The whole 264 range with its "TED" chip was a step backwards except the color palette. No wonder it flopped hard.

And the C128 is a weirdo hybrid of 3 machines that most people use as a C64.

[fxgogo]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...The Amiga was the first Commodore product I owned, not because I couldn't get one before but because the VIC-20 and C64 both sucked.....

Wow, I have no words. I think someone is trying to get me angry...


To give a critical look at the 8bit machines, they all had areas in each machine that sucked and areas that were brilliant. I think that is part of the charm of that era of machines. They are a product of us humans learning how to make personal computers.


The 16bit machines were a leap forward in design and foresight. In hindsight, the Amiga got a huge amount right, but I am sure I could pick some holes. So here is a very picky list:



No hardware synthesizer
Support for flicker free high res displays

A better built in basic

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by fxgogo

Wow, I have no words. I think someone is trying to get me angry...


To give a critical look at the 8bit machines, they all had areas in each machine that sucked and areas that were brilliant. I think that is part of the charm of that era of machines. They are a product of us humans learning how to make personal computers.


The 16bit machines were a leap forward in design and foresight. In hindsight, the Amiga got a huge amount right, but I am sure I could pick some holes. So here is a very picky list:



No hardware synthesizer
Support for flicker free high res displays

A better built in basic

The Amiga has no 'built in Basic'.
Hardware synths were on their way out at the time, with sampling based synthesis replacing the oldschool subtractive analog synths everywhere by the time.
I give you the point with the displays, though.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Steril707

The Amiga has no 'built in Basic'.
Hardware synths were on their way out at the time, with sampling based synthesis replacing the oldschool subtractive analog synths everywhere by the time.
I give you the point with the displays, though.

I agree with Steril:

A 16-bit machine should have support for many more programming languages than BASIC.

Samples should be the way to go for everything in audio, I never understood the appeal of "FM synthesis" as used on consoles.

The display thing, however, I also agree with both of you. Interlace may be great for TV and for displaying photographs, but anything else sucks HARD. I've seen PCs with interlaced displays, and they looked fucking HORRIBLE.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Samples should be the way to go for everything in audio, I never understood the appeal of "FM synthesis" as used on consoles.

I like it, it sounds "computer gamey". If done right of course, it can also sound like a cat is screeching into your ears. The appeal should be clear - less resources needed for the music.

It was also used to great effect by companies like Lucasarts to create music which would dynamically react to the situation in the game.

[fxgogo]

I agree Steril707, samples were the trend back in the day. But as with all these things, it is swings and round abouts. Synths have a certain charm to them. And put in the right hands, I could imagine some awesome music.

I should of worded the 'basis' things better. Yeah not built in, but bundled. I actually felt a little less capable of programming when I moved to the 16bit machines as a kid. With the 8bits, I would switch on and it was there ready to code. Now of course, basic is not great, but as Foebane says, maybe we should of had a few coding languages bundled in. I loved AREXX though, especially the way it was supported by so many applications.

[Tigerskunk]

As an electronic musician, I love synths AND samplers off course.
It's just that in the mid to late 80ies, samplers and PCM/sample-based synthesis were all the rage (see Art of Noise, Yello, Janet Jackson and the way her voice was sampled and cut, etc). So the Amiga was very very forefront with that. At that time, all the synth chip based solutions sounded very oldschool to me.

Off course, now in hindsight Paula is a kind of shit sampler, and SID is still an amazing unique sounding synth, though..

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Steril707

The Amiga has no 'built in Basic'.

It certainly had. Actually from the same vendor, Microsoft. It wasn't ROM based, but ROM-based solutions were out of fashion already back then.


Anyhow, Basic was already declining as users cared less about the Basic than other system abilities.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Foebane

A 16-bit machine should have support for many more programming languages than BASIC.

Well, CBM did not provide more programming languages, but support for many programming languages exist.

Originally Posted by Foebane

Samples should be the way to go for everything in audio, I never understood the appeal of "FM synthesis" as used on consoles.

The point is probably how much RAM you need to get a particular sound effect. Paula is sample based, and therefore requires RAM to keep the samples. FM synthesis is parametric, and thus only requires very few parameters to generate a desired effect. If you have a RAM constrained system, then FM is a "simpler" way to go.

Originally Posted by Foebane

The display thing, however, I also agree with both of you. Interlace may be great for TV and for displaying photographs, but anything else sucks HARD. I've seen PCs with interlaced displays, and they looked fucking HORRIBLE.

Indeed. Interlace was pretty much useless, and unbearable. Ok, it came more or less "for free" without much additional hardware.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

It certainly had. Actually from the same vendor, Microsoft. It wasn't ROM based, but ROM-based solutions were out of fashion already back then.

So you are saying the Amiga had built-in BASIC but it wasn't built-in?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by grond

So you are saying the Amiga had built-in BASIC but it wasn't built-in?

It was part of the package the consumer received. Does it matter whether it is on ROM or on a floppy?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by fxgogo

No hardware synthesizer

Thank all the gods it did not have one!
We would have terrible tunes like the Atari!
(Nothing you could not provide in software anyways...)

Support for flicker free high res displays

This one ist true of course - here the Atari did it right and it gave it a little more professional/office/work touch.

And it would have been quite possible with the technology Commodore had back then (see MOS 8563 VDC)

A better built in basic

yes ... the first version was from Metacombco (as was the DOS part), but quickly replaced by MS Basic ... Both were not really well integrated in the system and took no advantage of the hardware ...

Metacombco's Basic showed some better preliminary system integration ... CBM should have stuck with it and keeping on developing it.

But not iterating software-development to produce besser products was symptomatic for CMB back then.

Textcraft and Graphicraft were not bad at all for a 1.0 Version ... but they did not update it (or only poorly)

Later on Arexx was actually a good choice - in this case CBM did something right.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

It was part of the package the consumer received. Does it matter whether it is on ROM or on a floppy?

OK, so originally the Amiga came with a BASIC included? Which versions and until when? I came late to the Amiga but I don't remember by neighbour who had an A500 with kick 1.2 having a BASIC floppy disk.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by grond

OK, so originally the Amiga came with a BASIC included? Which versions and until when? I came late to the Amiga but I don't remember by neighbour who had an A500 with kick 1.2 having a BASIC floppy disk.

All of them up to KS2.0 had Amiga BASIC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaBASIC

And it was terrible. Sinclair BASIC on something as powerful as an Amiga would have been heavenly.

[deimos]

Originally Posted by Dunny

All of them up to KS2.0 had Amiga BASIC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaBASIC

And it was terrible. Sinclair BASIC on something as powerful as an Amiga would have been heavenly.

Except for the very early ones that had Metacombco's ABasic.

I'd like to know why all the hate against AmigaBasic? I remember it being pretty decent, for a Basic, just very very slow. It was of course incompatible with 32 bit addressing, but we never knew that at the time.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grond

OK, so originally the Amiga came with a BASIC included? Which versions and until when? I came late to the Amiga but I don't remember by neighbour who had an A500 with kick 1.2 having a BASIC floppy disk.

WB 1.0 and 1.1 came with Metacompco's "AbasiC"
WB 1.2 and 1.3 came with Microsoft's "AmigaBASIC"

here a collection of small games written in "AbasiC"

http://aminet.net/package/dev/basic/ABasiC_progs

and a patch to run this Basic on KS 2.0:

http://aminet.net/package/dev/basic/ABasiC_patch

[grond]

Thanks guys, I didn't know that!