Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Promilus]

Polish press welcomed AGA machines rather warmly. I don't recall any news about bad financial situation. Of course at that time A1200 was widely used the same way as A500. So floppies and no OS. I can hardly imagine anyone would really appreciate even that limited improvement when only playing in floppy games.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Just another question, did anyone predict commodore was going on a crash course in 1994? For me it came with a surprise

It wasn't a complete surprise. We all knew about Commodore's financial troubles and declining sales, but hoped they would pull through. With the A1200 doing well and the CD32 just released it seemed like things were turning around, and then boom - it was all over. The sad part is that many of Commodore's subsidiaries were still viable, but without the parent company it all collapsed.

I was quite familiar with that scenario because it had seen it before with the local computer shop. I got friendly with the manager and used to help out in my spare time. Then the chain owner (who lived in Auckland) went bankrupt and that was it - no more shop selling Amigas in Hastings! I had just been made redundant from Telecoms with a good severence package and was looking for a way to get more income (developing Amiga software wasn't cutting it). I knew the local shop had been profitable so I bought the assets off the receivers for NZ$9000 and restarted the business with a different name and the same manager. I ran it for 12 years before getting too bored with PCs, then switched to selling radio control model airplanes (my other hobby).

The most painful part of Commodore's collapse was the aftermath. If the subsidiaries had been able to buy the assets promptly and carry on, they might have continued to develop and sell Amigas while transtionaing to PCs for their 'bread and butter' like I did. But that wasn't to be, in part because the Amiga brand was considered too valuable to sell off cheap - wrongly IMO.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Just another question, did anyone predict commodore was going on a crash course in 1994? For me it came with a surprise

to me too... I was a child at school and read amiga magazines but there was no information. Internet was not there so as long you were not directly interested people not knew about it. So either you were active in financial market and knew more about Commodore or you were directly in contact with Commodore (as developer or trader). The rest propably was surprised.

[Gorf]

Some figures:

Year 	Revenue 		 Profit
1989	  $939,000,000.00	  $50,100,000.00
1990	  $887,300,000.00	   $1,500,000.00
1991	$1,040,000,000.00	  $48,200,000.00 
1992	  $911,000,000.00	  $27,600,000.00
1993	  $590,800,000.00 	-$356,500,000.00
1994	   $70,100,000.00 	 -$17,500,000.00

What a difference a year makes!
So obviously the A600 was a total disaster and the AGA machines did not convince enough customers (nor did the PCs) …

PS: the fiscal year ends on June 30th

https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-f...ory-1978-1994/

[oscar_ates]

That 1993 tragic blow was swift and decisive. Years of accumulated wrong decisions and strategies.

[grond]

The record sales of 1991 were probably in a good part due to the fall of the Iron Curtain, i.e. a short-lived catch-up effect. If you read about how commercial dealers reacted to the news of the A600, you'll see that even in 1991 it was clear that yet another 7 MHz ECS machine wasn't going to take the Amiga anywhere.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by grond

The record sales of 1991 were probably in a good part due to the fall of the Iron Curtain, i.e. a short-lived catch-up effect. If you read about how commercial dealers reacted to the news of the A600, you'll see that even in 1991 it was clear that yet another 7 MHz ECS machine wasn't going to take the Amiga anywhere.

After the fall of iron curtain Commodore sold lots of C64. But that of course was only a short effect

@Gorf

the problem was Commodore had already produced lots of A600 when they announced A1200. Of course then nobody wanted to buy A600 anymore so they had to sell it with very low prices and big losses

[grond]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Having the floppy drive on an angle is more ergonomic. This was (AFAIK) a unique feature of the A600 and A1200. It also contributed to the 'wedge' shape, with that brilliant step you could stack up floppy disks along. An A1200 without these features wouldn't be an A1200, it would be just another boring 'flat box with sloping front for the keyboard' like all the others.

This is a rather ridiculous argument. You really mean that not being able to put in a 3.5" harddisk is compensated by the FDD being placed more ergonomically by having it put in slanted? I never heard of anyone having difficulties to insert a floppy disk into an A500. The should have made the A1200 case so that both the FDD and the HDD bay (large enough for a 3.5" harddisk) would have been oriented horizontally. There simply is no compelling reason for not doing so.

Commodore saved a dollar, the customer saved $10. Might not seem like much, but you would apply the same principle to everything else

I would not apply the same principle to everything else, you make that up. I made very specific points. They could have compensated for the extra cost by eliminating the RF modulator and PCMCIA which didn't have any use in 1992. It took several years for meaningful updates to appear on the market that didn't cost as much as an entire A1200. Of course, today we are happy the A600 and A1200 came with PCMCIA but that doesn't help Commodore any more. They had to sell computers while they were alive under the market conditions of that time.

Making the case and power supply bigger would raise the cost, compromise the ergonomics and make it look ugly.

Wow, ugly looks, now that's a reason! Ugly looks didn't hurt the VIC20, the C64 (prior to the C64c) nor the A500.

For those who didn't need a hard drive that would be a lose-lose situation - to satisfy the whims of a few who wanted a cheap hard drive no matter what else it affected.

I wonder why they ever electrified typewriters. For those who didn't need it, the expense wasn't justified!

Not sure what you mean by this, but the A590 needed a separate power supply because the A500 PSU (despite its size) wasn't deemed powerful enough. Commodore obviously wanted to avoid that with the A600 and A1200. The obvious answer was to use a 2.5" drive.

Even if that was so, this obvious answer doesn't mean that Commodore had to make it (almost) impossible to use a 3.5" harddisk, right? In most cases 3.5" harddisks in A1200s only spun up too slowly for a coldstart resulting in an "insert floppy disk" prompt. After a reset the A1200 would boot from the harddisk.

But I bet you heard of people whose hard drives started getting errors and eventually died, right? This was a common problem with 3.5" drives, particularly if they were roughly handled during operation.

Why would that be of concern to Commodore? That was user error. Again, no reason to impede the use of 3.5" harddisks.

There's no room to put a 3.5" drive in horizontally.

Again a "my left hand is holding my right hand" type argument. They should have designed the case to accept 3.5" drives in horizontal orientation in the first place.

Of course as you say, only a few very slim models would fit. I know because I have done it myself. Didn't like to though. I would rather pay a little extra and have a 2.5" drive properly installed.

You gladly paid almost as much for a 2.5" harddisk as the A1200 cost new. Well, you seem to be an exception (and so was I). Commodore had to buy the expensive drives themselves to offer A600HD and A1200HD models. I bet that's when they eventually realised what a shit idea it was.

Depending on what your 'daily' usage is. If it's playing pirated game disks then floppies are fine. 'Power' users would want a hard drive for sure, and they got it - either built in or as an upgrade. Many users would start at the low-end and then move up as their needs changed.

Not enough users did that. Playing games from floppies in 1992-94 was getting very old.

See FAX image below (received using GPFAX on an Amiga 1200, in 1996!)

OK, end of November 1996, 2.5 years after Commodore died, five years after the A600. Commodore wanted to sell Amigas with 2.5" harddisks starting in 1991 when prices for 2.5" harddisks were much, much higher. Posthumous drops in prices didn't help them at all.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grond

Commodore wanted to sell Amigas with 2.5" harddisks starting in 1991 when prices for 2.5" harddisks were much, much higher.

March 1992

[Karlos]

You can fit a 3.5 inch drive into an a1200 without slanting or rehousing the whole thing. This whole argument is a strawman. For years before I went to a tower conversion my 3.5 inch slimline HD was sat horizontally over the board on a custom bracket that moved it slightly out of the way of the keyboard. I did have to remove the upper shielding, but I could just have cut it if I'd wanted. You could buy these brackets from various Amiga specialists at the time (wizard developments was a regular advertiser), or just make your own.

[Korban]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Just another question, did anyone predict commodore was going on a crash course in 1994? For me it came with a surprise

I didnt predict it as such, but it wasnt exactly a surprise.
Magazines had been reporting on their *heavy* losses for a few years already at that point. Even a few years further back their financial records looked better on paper than the true shape they were in, with sell-offs and employee cuts and so on (ie. doing anything they could do to not be even further in the red).
Me being a clueless teen and big Amiga fan however didnt really think much of it and blind faith had me just counting down the days until the time when everyone else came around to my favorite machine and they became profitable again and took over the world.

I was still somehow shocked when the inevitable happened, even though the writing, which I'd been reading about for years was on the wall for a long time for years.
I really expected the fantasy in my head to come to fruition despite evidence to the contrary (I'll refrain from commenting on my amusement that there's still a handful of people in the "community" who *still* live in that fantasy scenario).

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

the problem was Commodore had already produced lots of A600 when they announced A1200. Of course then nobody wanted to buy A600 anymore so they had to sell it with very low prices and big losses

Sure. They released the A600 in March and the A1200 in October of the same year - what were they thinking

The A600 was completely unnecessary - wasted development and manufacturing resources. Instead they should have concentrated on bringing out the A1200 earlier. (Which could have been easily 91 and should have been 90)

We can appreciate the A600 now for being nice and small - but in the situation Commodore was in 91 92 this was just a crazy decision…

And obviously Commodore was too much relying on just 2 models:
the C64 and the A500 - they made up for >70% of all sales of the company in the previous years. With them going out of fashion and/or being axed, without the "one more thing" moment of a fantastic new product…. boom.

[Promilus]

@Gorf well they did initially wanted cost reduced A500 which would fill the void after original A500(+) would have been taken off the shelf. Instead they (yet again) created internal competition.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Promilus

@Gorf well they did initially wanted cost reduced A500 which would fill the void after original A500(+) would have been taken off the shelf. Instead they (yet again) created internal competition.

might be that they thought A600 could be the new A500. But that only shows how they lived in their own bubble. The market had changed, A600 would have had no chance to succeed because it was technological inferior.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Promilus

@Gorf well they did initially wanted cost reduced A500 which would fill the void after original A500(+) would have been taken off the shelf. Instead they (yet again) created internal competition.

Plus the A600 really came at the wrong time and at the wrong price ...

• cost reducing the A500: good idea!
• integrating more circuits on the board: go for it!
• integrate the FM modulator: very questionable with more and more SCART TVs out there in Europe
• new case design: why?
• new model: why?
• canceling the A500: stupid!

in 92 everyone was waiting for a meaningful and significant update for the Amiga line ... and probably waiting since 90 or earlier.

And then Commodore is presenting the A600 *tataaa*
What a letdown!

This was the first blow ... and the rather weak AGA machines later that same year
a) could not fully compensate for that image disaster.
b) where of course killing the A600 sales
c) where not available in numbers due to mismanagement

So customers either left the platform or waited - and so there was no Christmas for Commodore in 1992.
(in addition to the exchange rate disaster of the pound)

I mean a breakdown in revenue by almost 50% is just remarkable - especially after almost 7 years of more or less constant figures

Compare that to Apple's revenue in the same time period:

1990 5,558M
1991 6,308M
1992 7,086M
1993 7,977M
1994 9,188M

Even the bad Newton (93) numbers did not hurt them...

[BigD]

Originally Posted by Karlos

You can fit a 3.5 inch drive into an a1200 without slanting or rehousing the whole thing. This whole argument is a strawman. For years before I went to a tower conversion my 3.5 inch slimline HD was sat horizontally over the board on a custom bracket that moved it slightly out of the way of the keyboard. I did have to remove the upper shielding, but I could just have cut it if I'd wanted. You could buy these brackets from various Amiga specialists at the time (wizard developments was a regular advertiser), or just make your own.

Those were not widely know about IMHO. My friend just balanced a USA sourced (hence cheaper) 3.5" HD on TOP of the shielding! I'm not sure how to make a proper 3.5" bracket myself! It is probably pointless these days with so much choice with IDE2SD/CF Adapters! Just copy your files and bin the old 3.5" walking dead drives!

[grond]

Originally Posted by Gorf

March 1992

Oh, for some reason I thought the A600 had come out in 1991. Still ludicrous to make a budget A300 (that comes out more expensive than the computer it replaces) and add connectors for laptop computer peripherals, 2.5" IDE and PCMCIA, stuff that was super-expensive at the time. With a little more foresight they could have made an A500+ in a smaller case (A1200-size) and cost reduced while maintaining compatibility with trapdoor expansions, possibly adding a 3.5" IDE port soon after the A3000 came out.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by grond

Oh, for some reason I thought the A600 had come out in 1991. Still ludicrous to make a budget A300 (that comes out more expensive than the computer it replaces) and add connectors for laptop computer peripherals, 2.5" IDE and PCMCIA, stuff that was super-expensive at the time. With a little more foresight they could have made an A500+ in a smaller case (A1200-size) and cost reduced while maintaining compatibility with trapdoor expansions, possibly adding a 3.5" IDE port soon after the A3000 came out.

A600 was introduced 1992, only months later A1200 was announced. That the announcement of a much better amiga would affect A600 sales should be logical, who buys something that is outdated already when you buy it and not upgradeable. You really wonder what the overpayed management at Commodore thought.

[Gorf]

Washington Post - June 21, 1993

Commodore International is in a jam.

The computer maker, which keeps its headquarters in West Chester, Pa., but does most of its business in recession-weary Europe, already is in default on a $33 million loan and has until July 31 to restructure its debt.

...

Sales plummeted to $120.9 million in the fiscal third quarter, 40 percent less than sales during the same quarter a year earlier, and the company lost $177.6 million, erasing all but $30 million of its net worth. For the first nine months, it lost $273.6 million on sales of $517.2 million, compared with a profit of $49.5 million and sales of $770.3 million a year earlier.

...

In its last full fiscal year, which ended June 30, 1992, Commodore derived 87 percent of its sales from Europe and just 8.4 percent from North America. The rest came from Asia and Australia.

...

In 1991, Commodore made 13.4 percent of the personal computers sold in Europe, more than any other manufacturer (...) however, Commodore had to slash its prices to maintain that position.

...

Its dollar-value share, in a market that saw consumers spend $22.6 billion on personal computers, was just 4.4 percent in 1992, according to Dataquest. In 1991, Commodore accounted for 5 percent of the $21 billion Europeans spent on personal computers, the research firm said.

So that's a 13.4% (12%) market share in device numbers ... but only 5% (4.4%) of the money..

Only 16 percent of the machines sold by Commodore in Europe use those Intel-type chips, while the rest use a Motorola Inc. chip

According to Commodore's annual report in 1989 the PC business reached 24%.
In 1992 or 1993 it is down to 16%.
(and probably not profitable for years)
Ergo: all the effort Commodore put in the PC was in vain and would have been much better spent on the Amiga.

After it achieves that debt restructuring, Alexander said, the company will look to Christmas in Europe for its salvation. "There aren't many companies that can take two bad Christmas seasons in a row," Alexander said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-2ac02659370a/

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Gorf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-2ac02659370a/

Interesting article. This part is a bit strange thought.

Only 16 percent of the machines sold by Commodore in Europe use those Intel-type chips, while the rest use a Motorola Inc. chip that is largely unique to Commodore's products, according to Dataquest. That key difference means most of the machines Commodore sells in Europe can't run the vast library of software available for the Intel-compatible machines. Commodore's unique microprocessor has discouraged software developers, who aim for the widest possible audience, from devising programs for the company's machines. Instead, most have focused on programs for Intel-based or Macintosh computers.