Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Chunky pixels were needed for texture-mapped 3D games, not just Doom.

For Magic Carpet for CD32,

Magic Carpet was released in November 1994, 2 years after the A1200. When AGA was developed there were no texture-mapped 3D games to speak of. The first commercial game to use it was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released in March 1992. It had a small playing window and needed a 486 CPU for good frame rate.

With mass production, 50 Mhz 030 equipped CD32 would be pretty good.

And much more expensive.

A high-performance serial port is for MIDI and modems.

AGA eliminated the main problem with the serial port, which was lack of bandwidth when running in hires with 8 or 16 colors.

A fast 72 Hz display would also improve lower display modes e.g. improved Blitter and raster.

The difference between 60Hz and 72Hz isn't much.

The problem with all these high scan rate modes was that you needed an expensive multi-scan monitor to show all the screen modes. 99% of games ran in standard PAL or NTSC, and most would not handle mode promotion. Most existing Amiga users had a 15kHz monitor or TV, so a 72Hz mode was useless unless they paid extra for a new monitor. This goes against the core principle of the A1200 being very cheap and not needing expensive addons to make a complete system.

You're not correct with "I'm guessing practically nobody"...

During Q4 1993 and 1994, a typical PC purchase was a computer featuring the Intel 486 chip.

You contradict yourself.

Intel reached its 6 to 7 million Pentiums shipped goal during 1994. This is only 23 percent unit volume.

Furthermore Intel wasn't the only one making 486 CPUs. 37 million PCs were sold in 1994, so only 17-18% of them had a Pentium CPU - and most of those would be business machines. And I was talking about 1993, not 1994.

As I said before the average upgrade cycle was about 2 years. To put that in perspective, the Amiga 1000 was announced in 1985. I desired one but they were very expensive and hard to get. Amstrad also released the CPC664 in 1985. So what did I do, put up with my ZX Spectrum for another 2 years or so until Amigas came to New Zealand at an affordable price, or buy the CPC664 now and get 2 good years of enjoyment out it? I chose the latter of course, and I'm glad I did - even though the Amiga blitzed it in every department.

Intel announcing the Pentium didn't cause 486 sales to drop off a cliff. People bought what they could get now at an affordable price. Few were willing to spend the premium required to be on the 'bleeding edge', and most of those few were high-end business users for whom money was no object. Totally different market from the A1200.

In 1993 you could buy an A1200 now and upgrade it as the technology improved and your desires increased - or not if they didn't. This was a good strategy because the low price made the A1200 so affordable that it was hard to turn down, increasing sales (or would have Commodore had made enough of them!) and making it more viable for the future. Compare that to the Atari Falcon which was bristling with new features but significantly more expensive.

Most PC users expected to buy a whole new machine in 2 years time. This strategy was even recommended in the Local PC World magazine, where the author showed that in the long run it was cheaper to buy lower-end machines and upgrade regularly than buy a high-spec machine and expect it to last.

The difference with the A1200 was that many owners expected to extend its life by expanding it. And they weren't disappointed. By 1996 accelerator cards were coming down in price, RAM and hard drives were much cheaper, HD floppy drives, buffered serial ports and CD-ROM drives were available. Fast forward to today and a PiStorm provides insane performance that we couldn't even conceive of last century, for a very reasonable price. Combine that with huge storage capacity, high speed networking and a vast library of 'free' software at our fingertips, and the A1200 is still a winner 30 years later!

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Magic Carpet was released in November 1994, 2 years after the A1200. When AGA was developed there were no texture-mapped 3D games to speak of. The first commercial game to use it was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released in March 1992. It had a small playing window and needed a 486 CPU for good frame rate.

Legends of Valour use texture mapping on the Amiga (not AGA) and was released and the end of 1992.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Legends of Valour use texture mapping on the Amiga (not AGA) and was released and the end of 1992.

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that one. It was released for the PC in November 1992, one month after the A1200 was released.

The AGA chipset design was firmed up between November 1991 and February 1992 (it was supposed to be finished and delivered in the A1000 Plus by October 1991, but for various reasons that didn't happen). At that time chunky pixel texture mapped 3D games didn't yet exist, so it's understandable why Commodore didn't give chunky pixels high priority. The AGA chipset was oriented towards 2D graphics because that's what everyone was doing at that time, and it was a natural extension of OCS/ECS. I wish they had put a 256 color chunky pixel mode in it though, if only to reduce PC envy.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The AGA chipset design was firmed up between November 1991 and February 1992 (it was supposed to be finished and delivered in the A1000 Plus by October 1991

Holy crap. First time I hear about the 1000 plus...

Imagine they had released this beautiful thing in a nice flat pizza carton desktop design in 1991 with AGA and a decent price.


That's so desirable..

Also, LOL that we got the horrible A600 instead.

Commodore really deserved to go bankrupt.

[sandruzzo]

think about Aga as it is but with 1 cycle chip-ram + a trap door ram without bit planes' penalty and +512k for o20 and HW registers with their own bus! Even without faster ram we could have a lot more bitwidth! Just optimizations!

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

Holy crap. First time I hear about the 1000 plus...

Imagine they had released this beautiful thing in a nice flat pizza carton desktop design in 1991 with AGA and a decent price.


That's so desirable..

Also, LOL that we got the horrible A600 instead.

Commodore really deserved to go bankrupt.

That has to be an early prototype. No way anyone is buying that with a missing keyboard garage.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Dunny

That has to be an early prototype. No way anyone is buying that with a missing keyboard garage.

Which other Amiga had that except the old 1000? Nor did any of the Apples with a similar form factor at that time.

Weird argument.

[Dunny]

jfc sometimes I despair of this forum I really do.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Dunny

jfc sometimes I despair of this forum I really do.

You should probably move to a remote island since you are so much more clever than anybody else.

[Dunny]

See my previous response

Good lord the lack of any sense of humour is what causes so much despair. How do you guys get through life living like this?

[abu_the_monkey]

I don't know.

you can't call something A1000+ and not keep one of it's (the A1000 'the Amiga' as it was known as at launch) obvious visual/aesthetic features.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

I don't know.

you can't call something A1000+ and not keep one of it's (the A1000 'the Amiga' as it was known as at launch) obvious visual/aesthetic features.

I mean, that was kinda what I was hinting at, but it wasn't at all serious. An A1000 upgrade that came with a slimline A4k kind-of-style case? I'd have been all over that.

...and a teeny bit disappointed I couldn't slide the keyboard under

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I mean, that was kinda what I was hinting at, but it wasn't at all serious. An A1000 upgrade that came with a slimline A4k kind-of-style case? I'd have been all over that.

...and a teeny bit disappointed I couldn't slide the keyboard under

Yeah, I Know

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Dunny

a teeny bit disappointed I couldn't slide the keyboard under

You can, just not very far. I would prefer that to a garage that can't take a standard size keyboard.

A1000 Plus

During the early 1990's Commodore were rumoured to be developing a machine called the A1000+. These rumours died down with the release of the A4000 and A1200 but resurfaced after Commodore went into liquidation. In an interview during 1994, Mike Sinz described the machine.

The A1000+ was a super-low-cost 2-slot AGA-based Amiga. Goal was to have this thing list at $999 including hard drive, 2 or 4 megs of RAM depending on RAM prices, keyboard, etc. It would have been about the size of the A1000 but without the keyboard storage area (no room for it) Really nice system. (And it was going to be either 14MHz or 28Mhz 68020 or 68EC030 system)

In the end there was no point having a keyboard storage drawer because the computer (A1200) was the keyboard. And now it only had 1 internal slot, but it was 32 bit so all good! And it also had an external industry standard 16 bit slot based on the PC ISA bus (PCMCIA) so even better! But the best part was the price - even cheaper!!!

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Dunny

jfc sometimes I despair of this forum I really do.

You have to admit, your response would have been perfectly possible in this forum and especially the wider Amiga world.

Impossible to discern if joke or true.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

In the end there was no point having a keyboard storage drawer because the computer (A1200) was the keyboard. And now it only had 1 internal slot, but it was 32 bit so all good! And it also had an external industry standard 16 bit slot based on the PC ISA bus (PCMCIA) so even better! But the best part was the price - even cheaper!!!

True, the 1200 is a nice package. But a Performa style flat case desktop AGA Amiga for a nice price instead of the 4000 would have been amazing as well.

Would be literally my dream Amiga.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

You have to admit, your response would have been perfectly possible in this forum and especially the wider Amiga world.

Impossible to discern if joke or true.

Such is the state of this place that nobody can tell if we're messing around or not. It's all good; no harm done.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Such is the state of this place that nobody can tell if we're messing around or not. It's all good; no harm done.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Who cares? The game sucked anyway.

Minimum system requirements for the PCDOS version were a 33Mhz 486 with 4MB RAM, Pentium 75 or faster highly recommended.

According to lifeschool at lemonamiga,
5-8 fps from the CD32 with akiko when the DOS version needed a 33MHz 486 minimum? I'd say that was pretty amazing.

'the Akiko chip was in fact rather pathetic and worthless' - right. What did they think it was, a 3D graphics accelerator? The CD32 wasn't going to run Magic Carpet at a good frame rate even if it had chunky pixels and 2MB of FastRAM. Why did they even attempt it?

[ Show youtube player ]
Magic Carpet running on AO486.

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=5855
AO486 at 90 Mhz is slower than the 486DX-33.
AO486 at 56 Mhz is slightly faster than the 486SX-25.

Magic Carpet needs around 68LC040 level CPU.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Magic Carpet was released in November 1994, 2 years after the A1200. When AGA was developed there were no texture-mapped 3D games to speak of. The first commercial game to use it was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released in March 1992. It had a small playing window and needed a 486 CPU for good frame rate.

[ Show youtube player ]
PC's Catacomb 3D was released in 1991 by IDsoftware.


[ Show youtube player ]
1992 Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss has 3D texture map game play.


CD32's Wing Commander has used Akiko which needs to be patched for unofficial Wing Commander AGA WHDLoad.

Akiko has some benefits, but without 32-bit Fast RAM, the 68EC020 operates like 32-bit 7 Mhz effectively.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And much more expensive.

This is a problem for countries with weaker currencies or without 3rd party game tax subsidies business model.

3DO has a 2 million units installed base higher than the under 1 million installed base for AGA. Unfortunately, 3DO has directly faced Sony's Playstation 1.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

AGA eliminated the main problem with the serial port, which was lack of bandwidth when running in hires with 8 or 16 colors.

It wouldn't solve interrupt time intervals with the serial's tiny buffer.

The only problem was that in a multitasking environment, it was easily possible to overrun the serial receive buffer when reading MIDI commands from a synthesizer keyboard e.g. pressing 10 keys at once, with each one sending 3 bytes for key down.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The difference between 60Hz and 72Hz isn't much.

Double NTSC 640x400 with 256 colors is still slow.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The problem with all these high scan rate modes was that you needed an expensive multi-scan monitor to show all the screen modes. 99% of games ran in standard PAL or NTSC, and most would not handle mode promotion. Most existing Amiga users had a 15kHz monitor or TV, so a 72Hz mode was useless unless they paid extra for a new monitor. This goes against the core principle of the A1200 being very cheap and not needing expensive addons to make a complete system.

AGA's 72Hz is not a 15kHz mode.

VGA includes built-in frequency promotion for its non-VGA legacy modes e.g. CGA and EGA.

[ Show youtube player ]
StarCraft running on Trident TVGA 8900CL-B 1MB ISA and Pentium 133.

[ Show youtube player ]
StarCraft running on ET4000/W32i ISA.

For Doom, Trident TVGA 8900CL ISA is comparable to ET4000AX ISA.

640x400p with 256 colors, AGA will be unable to match Trident 8900CL ISA or ET4000 ISA.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

You contradict yourself.

For Doom's Q4 1993 release context.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Furthermore Intel wasn't the only one making 486 CPUs. 37 million PCs were sold in 1994, so only 17-18% of them had a Pentium CPU - and most of those would be business machines. And I was talking about 1993, not 1994.

That's a useless argument when the PC market is large i.e. gaming PC minority is still larger than the entire Amiga install base!

Are you claiming the AGA install base is larger than the Pentium's 1993 install base?

Prove Commodore has shipped 250,000 AGA machines in Q4 1992.

Prove there are 1 million 68030 @ 40 Mhz to 50 Mhz A1200/CD32 install base.

4 million units for PC Doom 1 and 2 shows minority gaming PC still kills Amiga's "32-bit" install base.

Your arguments are absurd.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

As I said before the average upgrade cycle was about 2 years. To put that in perspective, the Amiga 1000 was announced in 1985. I desired one but they were very expensive and hard to get. Amstrad also released the CPC664 in 1985. So what did I do, put up with my ZX Spectrum for another 2 years or so until Amigas came to New Zealand at an affordable price, or buy the CPC664 now and get 2 good years of enjoyment out it? I chose the latter of course, and I'm glad I did - even though the Amiga blitzed it in every department.

Amiga 500 had "power without the price" from 1987 to 1990.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Intel announcing the Pentium didn't cause 486 sales to drop off a cliff. People bought what they could get now at an affordable price.

That's a useless argument when the PC market is large.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Few were willing to spend the premium required to be on the 'bleeding edge', and most of those few were high-end business users for whom money was no object. Totally different market from the A1200.

That's a useless argument when the PC market is large. The gaming PC minority still outnumbers the Amiga's install base.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

In 1993 you could buy an A1200 now and upgrade it as the technology improved and your desires increased - or not if they didn't. This was a good strategy because the low price made the A1200 so affordable that it was hard to turn down, increasing sales (or would have Commodore had made enough of them!) and making it more viable for the future. Compare that to the Atari Falcon which was bristling with new features but significantly more expensive.

It wouldn't change the fact that 3DO has a 2 million install base that smashed AGA's less than 250,000 install base.

Disprove this http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/sales.html

Atari Falcon had "no games" worth buying into this platform.

Most Amiga games from Q4 1992 to Q1 1994 are OCS Amigas against SNES's strong 2D game library.

In Q4 1992, AGA competed against SNES which started to build its install base in 1990.

Nintendo handled its NES to SNES transition better than Commodore's OCS/ECS to AGA. AGA's transition should been started earlier than Q4 1992.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Most PC users expected to buy a whole new machine in 2 years time. This strategy was even recommended in the Local PC World magazine, where the author showed that in the long run it was cheaper to buy lower-end machines and upgrade regularly than buy a high-spec machine and expect it to last.

If I'm a student, it's another "Pentium 150 in 1996" or "Celeron 300A in 1998" value price segment i.e. Ryzen 5 or Core i5 price segments in modern times.

A gaming PC should follow game consoles' hardware specs in a similar generation.

My current gaming PCs are beyond "core experience" gaming PCs with Xbox Series X and PS5 level hardware specs.

For 1995:
https://archive.org/details/Australi...ont_Studios_AU
The Amiga returns in the Australian 1995 market
From Australian Amiga Review, Nov 1995
Page 2, Cybervision 64 (S3 trio 64U), $1099

Page 8,
DKB Mongoose 030 @ 50Mhz, 882 @ 50Mhz, 4MB RAM = $869
GVP 40Mhz 68040, 4MB RAM = $1399

Page 34
DKB Mongoose 030 @ 50Mhz, 882 @ 50Mhz = $599 (needs Fast RAM)

Page 82
Warp Engine 040 40Mhz = $2299
A1200HD = $1245
A4000T/040 = $4945
A4000T/060 @ 50 Mhz = $5445

A1200HD's $1245 + DKB Mongoose 030/882 @ 50Mhz with 4MB RAM's $869 = $2,114. This is the cost for new users.

Phase 5's Blizzard 060 price in Australia is LOL.

For the 1995 Australian market, 486DX and Pentium-based PCs killed the Amiga AGA in performance vs price ratio.

VS

https://archive.org/details/EA1995/E...e/n67/mode/2up
December 1995 Xmas month. Page 88 of 68.
Ritron Computers System in the Australian state of Victoria
Pentium 90-based PC has $1872 including tax or $1535 without tax.
Includes: 1.44FDD, 8MB RAM, 540MB HDD, 256KB L2 cache, PCI video card, keyboard, 14-inch SVGA monitor.

Multimedia upgrade kit with CD-ROM 16-bit sound card, speakers, MS Encarta/Works/Money/Golf/Dangerous Creatures
CD-ROM 2X = $329
CD-ROM 4X = $399

I purchased Pentium 150-based PCs when there were higher SKUs like Pentium Pro 150/180/200 and Pentium 166/200 Mhz.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The difference with the A1200 was that many owners expected to extend its life by expanding it. And they weren't disappointed. By 1996 accelerator cards were coming down in price, RAM and hard drives were much cheaper, HD floppy drives, buffered serial ports and CD-ROM drives were available.

You lost the 1995 price comparison.

FYI, the Australian Amiga Review magazine went bust in 1996.

https://archive.org/details/Australi...ont_Studios_AU
Jan 1996 from Australian Amiga Review magazine, prices in AUD.
Page 2 of 84
DKB Cobra 40 = $549 (68030 @ 40 Mhz with 4 MB Fast RAM)
DKB Mongoose 50 = $849 (68030/68882 @ 50 Mhz with 4 MB Fast RAM)
Escom's A1200 from $1199

Page 10 of 84
Cobra 030EC = $449 (with 40 Mhz EC030, 4 MB RAM)
Escom's A1200HD = $1349 (with 170 MB HDD)

Page 14 of 84
A1200 = $1070
A1200HD = $1195 (with 170 MB HDD)
A4000/040 = $4945 (6 MB RAM)
A4000T/060 = $5445 (6 MB RAM)

SCSI Tower of Power with 200 watts PSU for A1200 = $220
A1200 Tower of Power = $149

DKB Cobra 40 Mhz = $299 (68??030 @ 40Mhz)
1438S Multisync Monitor = $699
A1200HD with 200MB HDD = $1299

Page 40 to 84
A1200 DKB Cobra 68030/40Mhz inc. 8Mb RAM = $649
Blizzard 1230 50 Mhz = $510 (68030 @ 50 Mhz)
Blizzard 1230 50 Mhz with FPU = $560 (68030 @ 50 Mhz)
Blizzard 1260 coming soon.
Cybervision 2MB = $830
Cybervision 4MB =$980
Picasso II 2MB = $640

Cyberstorm 040/40Mhz = $1850
Cyberstorm060/50Mhz = $2399

Amiga Walker prototype in Page 70 of 84.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Fast forward to today and a PiStorm provides insane performance that we couldn't even conceive of last century, for a very reasonable price. Combine that with huge storage capacity, high speed networking and a vast library of 'free' software at our fingertips, and the A1200 is still a winner 30 years later!

What insane performance? ARM Cortex A72 @ 1.8 Ghz with Emu68 is fast compared to MC68060 Rev 6 and AC68080. The emulated 68040 is like a scalar-only Pentium II/III @ 733 Mhz or SAM460ex (PPC440 @ 1.15 Ghz)