Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by modrobert

Well, at least you didn't have to partition hard drives bigger than 32mb.

Really? Wow

Originally Posted by TEG

I'm confuse with Super-High Res (1280x256).

Super hires is still useful for still images, though.

Originally Posted by TEG

So the problem was the lack of colours, 4 instead of 256 for this resolution on the PC at the time.

On ECS. On AGA you have 256 colors and HAM8 in all modes. However, productivity will be pretty slow with 256 colors or HAM8. Productivity and those other double scan modes are still great for text editing where you don't need many colors (16 colors is fine for syntax coloring, for example).

Originally Posted by TEG

should have been managed by default by the machine.

Definitely. Should actually be trivial to implement. That it has to be turned on in the Prefs is just stupid, because you've already told the OS that you want to use those modes. Makes no sense.

[Gordon]

I was disappointed but it's like being disappointed with one of your family, you ignore the negatives and love it anyway.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Super hires is still useful for still images, though.

Yes but for everyday work we were stuck at 320x256 or 640x256.

Originally Posted by Thorham

On ECS. On AGA you have 256 colors and HAM8 in all modes. However, productivity will be pretty slow with 256 colors or HAM8. Productivity and those other double scan modes are still great for text editing where you don't need many colors (16 colors is fine for syntax coloring, for example).

Yes but the standard was now 256 colours in 640x480. Compromises was no more acceptable. And if I remember well, 16 millions colours cheap cards, coming from China, will be here soon.

Originally Posted by Gordon

I was disappointed but it's like being disappointed with one of your family, you ignore the negatives and love it anyway.

Yes, well said :-)

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Stejjie

Not sure about that: according to http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/sales.html, it's difficult to find detailed sales figures; but in Germany- up until December 1993 - the A600 comfortably outsold the A1200. Presumably that changed somewhat from 1994 onwards and I don't know how representative Germany was/is, but certainly for the first year or so of the A1200's life it was outsold by the A600 (which didn't have a massive headstart time-wise and presumably didn't have many 500/500+ owners upgrading to it).

According to Commodore Germany's official numbers in the beginning of 1994, they had sold 193 000 A600s and 95 500 A1200s.

So the A600 had outsold the A1200 by a factor of two, although the A600 was discontinued by then while the A1200 had a few years left.

By comparison, the A500 had sold a bit over one million and the A2000 had sold 124 500 machines in Germany.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by thorham

ffs isn't much better than fat to be honest. Glad we have pfs now.

youarewr.ong

[Seiya]

amiga was a computer, Commodore rightly didn't watch to compete with Consoles.
Amiga 1200 maybe could be more competitive with others computer of its era.

[Gunbot]

I think after the initial euphoria wore off, I was a little disappointed. In the end, my A3000 became my primary computer again and the 1200 got put under the spare TV, only being used for some head to head games like Brutal Sports Football.

[mrbob2]

I was very happy with the 150mb hard drive as that made life SO much easier for saving files and installing games.

I was dissapointed with the speed, didnt really feel much faster than the 500 and only 2mb of ram.

when i upgraded to an 060 blizzard and 32mb of ram, THAT was how the A1200 should have been from the start.

Unfortunately, the computer i bought in 1995 which was finally at full speed by 1996, was now on par with its rival from 1992/3 the ability to play doom at a decent speed.

by this time the pc was onto quake 2 or 3 and the psx was light years ahead of what my amiga could do.

but for those 3 years before i got my psx is 98, the a1200 was amazing and still is to this day.

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by TEG

Yes but for everyday work we were stuck at 320x256 or 640x256

With the display devices of the 90's this was true. But I have used workbench on PAL: Super-high-res laced up to 64 colours quite comfortably for my WorkBench and many applications on a modern display.

[edd_jedi]

Another thing worth bearing in mind is that computing power alone does not dictate success. Yes with hindsight it's easy to say Commodore made some major mistakes with the A1200 (IMO the difficulty of adding standard RAM was the biggest blooper) but it was still a successful machine due to the software. Look at the Atari Falcon - on paper it's better than the A1200 in almost every way. Yet it was so unsuccessful, I hadn't even heard of it until 20 years after it was discontinued.

[vulture]

I wasn't disappointed at all. In hindsight, I'd like what was mentioned, some standard simm sockets on board to easily upgrade both chip and fast RAM. But other than that....It could be that I had the HDD model and all applications, adventures, rpg and what not (stuff which could be installed) would load so fast.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by edd_jedi

Look at the Atari Falcon - on paper it's better than the A1200 in almost every way.

Not only on paper.

[Samurai_Crow]

I have said it before and will continue saying it. If the blitter used buffered look ahead to take advantage of fast page mode the clock speed of the chipset could have been quadrupled. An 030 and fast memory would have been cost effective as well.

Commodore mismanagement messed up everything.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by idrougge

youarewr.ong

Not really. Both FFS and FAT are crappy. Yes, FAT more so than FFS, but FFS is still crappy enough to be full blown crap. PFS is where it's at.

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

Not only on paper.

Pity about the stupid 16 bit data bus for the 68030, though. What the hell were they smoking/snorting/injecting? Seems like a fine machine otherwise.

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Commodore mismanagement messed up everything.

Indeed.

[eXeler0]

Wow popular topic it seems.

I can say that I was *very* dissapointed with the A1200 when it was released.
Mostly, I hated that it only got a 14MHz 020 and even that one was crippled by slow chipmem. I was expecting 25MHz 030 minimum.
Also, I was hoping for AGA being closer to AAA rumours.

Anyhoo, I bought one anyway.. Only new Amiga in a decent price range for a student..
I wasnt very impressed with it. Dpaint AGA was neat however so I spent alot of time with that.

BUT..
The minute I got my first accelerator, a Blizzard 1220 + FPU + 4MB RAM I started loving it!
And there has been love since ;-)
Later I got a Blizzard 1230, then I kind of maxed out at Blizzard 1260 + SCSi + 80MB RAM back in 1996/97..

During the dorment years I sold the accelerators but kept the 1200. Then when I dusted it off a while ago it got an Apollo 1240 then had it upgraded to a A1260.

In retrospect I get the Commodore tactics of selling it at an affordable price point while making it upgradable enough to allow a pile of creative upgrades.
One could say CBM missed the performance mark but obviously they didn't think this would be their last low/mid range Amiga...

[Phantasm]

Back when i first got my A1200 with 120mb IDE hard drive I wasn't in the slightest dissapointed with my purchase. Having only had my A500 since 1990 purchased with 1mb of ram and then upgraded with a 20mb A590 and then later with an additional 1mb of fast ram my brand new A1200 seemed like a decent upgrade. I bought it pretty much as soon as it was released and It served me well for a couple of years until I upgraded to a 4000.

However looking back now - given the fact that the A500 had already been around for quite a few years by the time I got one it seems like a pretty poor upgrade. If i had bought and A500 back when it was first released I'm sure it would have seemed like a very long time waiting for an upgrade aimed at the same audience. I think the A1200 should probably have come out around 1989/1990 - that would have been amazing for the time.

It does seem strange though that there werent any competitors out there producing anything either. Atari simply put out upgrades to try and bring the ST up to the capability of the Amiga and failed to do so with the STE. The Falcon pretty much turned up around the same time as the A1200. It seems that home computer development pretty much stalled for around 5 years between 1985 and 1990. We went from the Spectrum 48k in 1982 to the Amiga 1000 in 1985. I guess these two werent really at the same price point though so its not a fair comparison.

All in all i think if that was the best they could manage for the price point then i think its a reasonable compromise. £400 pounds seems like the right price to aim for and it worked well for them in the past. I think a higher price point with better specs probably wouldnt have worked. If they hadnt taken their foot off the gas though after the A500 I think we could have been so much further along by 1992.

[dirkies]

Agree with the lack of WOW​ factor. Myself having in 83 a C64, in 88 an A500 which was mind blowing (never had an HDD on my A500) and in 95 an A4000/040 with 420mb HDD and tandem cd-rom was still WOW but to a lesser extent, but still better than brother's 486pc. Initially i was contemplating am A1200 but expansion needs for University work swayed me to save for one more year and go A4000. Otherwise it would have felt like an A500 v2.
I prolonged the WOW​ a bit with rtg, 060/scsi and toccata in 96. But due to job needs Windows creeped in and C= was gone, so around 2001 the WOW was gone completely.
But in hindsight still a good decision to not go A1200, otherwise Amiga would have been shelved way sooner with me.

At least I was never disappointed with Amiga, it gave me great fun and productivity and games for many years.

[majsta]

I m disappointed because constantly think how to get back in time and just say to them don't put f*****g 150 card edge connector on A1200 because in 2017. won't be possible to find them!

[UberFreak]

majsta, you win

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by majsta

I m disappointed because constantly think how to get back in time and just say to them don't put f*****g 150 card edge connector on A1200 because in 2017. won't be possible to find them!

Haha, it's a classic Commodore move to save some bucks by inverting the port.
But.. Majsta, at one point there were news that this issue was "fixed" (a supplier found). What went wrong?