Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive

[Gorf]

Well Tripos is only one halve of the operating system - especially the kernel and the gui (exec and intuition) are not based on tripos but Amiga Inc.’s own creation. So the preemptive multitasking part is Carl Sassenrath’s brainchild.
(Tripos was actually only the third choice for the DOS part, as Amiga was running out of time and could not create it fast enough on its own and the first contracted company could not deliver ...)

[grond]

Originally Posted by Gorf

the Mac classic had a max resolution of 512x350 - that are 179k pixels
the A1000 (NTSC - non interlaced) has 704×242 - that are 170k pixels

So I guess because of 5% more pixels the Mac was "high resolution" and the Amiga was not?

Numbers of pixels aren't relevant as such (and you cheated by using overscan). If they were, NTSC-SuperHiRes with its 1280x200 would be just as good and useful as 640x400. The problem of the very poor 200 lines because of the limiting fixed 15kHz horizontal frequency remains. This wasn't as bad for PAL which had 256 lines. I do believe that this is part of the reason for the USA/Europe-divide in popularity of the Amiga.

[Thomas Richter]

That Amiga didn't have any flicker-free high-quality monitor output, but rather depended on the 15kHz TV specifications was probably some form of limitation. However, CBM had simply no business idea around the machine. CBM was a home-computer company, and they only understood home computers, not professional products for business applications.

For that, they would have had to create a whole infrastructure around their product: Providing some basic software for business applications, and providing services for professional customers. That was entirely the opposite of CBM's model "Sell the product, then leave the consumer alone" - was more their line of thinking. Of course, that is not appealing if you have no idea about computers, and want to equip your "accounting department" with some computing power.

IBM understood this business very well, and could sell underpowered and poorly designed hardware to their clients, but provided the services around their machines. Even an operating system they couldn't implement - but it didn't hurt them (at least for a while).

Face it, CBM was simply the wrong company, with the wrong attitude, and their business model was already outdated when Amiga fell into their hands. (Not that CBM did anything to develop the Amiga - it was just by pure chance as Atari became just too greedy. And I doubt Atari would have been the right company for it either).

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by grond

The problem of the very poor 200 lines because of the limiting fixed 15kHz horizontal frequency remains. This wasn't as bad for PAL which had 256 lines. I do believe that this is part of the reason for the USA/Europe-divide in popularity of the Amiga.

Which makes me wonder why such a low number was chosen in the first place:

NTSC standard is 262.5 scan lines per field with 243 of them visible - so it should have been save to use at least 220 lines as default...

The other advantage of PAL is here of course the aspect ratio: pixels are not square, but they are at least 2:1 rectangles (with a little bit of overscan), while on NTSC was really hard to get real circle printed out correctly ...

so yes: this might have added to the problems the Amiga was facing.

[matt3k]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

That Amiga didn't have any flicker-free high-quality monitor output, but rather depended on the 15kHz TV specifications was probably some form of limitation. However, CBM had simply no business idea around the machine. CBM was a home-computer company, and they only understood home computers, not professional products for business applications.

For that, they would have had to create a whole infrastructure around their product: Providing some basic software for business applications, and providing services for professional customers. That was entirely the opposite of CBM's model "Sell the product, then leave the consumer alone" - was more their line of thinking. Of course, that is not appealing if you have no idea about computers, and want to equip your "accounting department" with some computing power.

IBM understood this business very well, and could sell underpowered and poorly designed hardware to their clients, but provided the services around their machines. Even an operating system they couldn't implement - but it didn't hurt them (at least for a while).

Face it, CBM was simply the wrong company, with the wrong attitude, and their business model was already outdated when Amiga fell into their hands. (Not that CBM did anything to develop the Amiga - it was just by pure chance as Atari became just too greedy. And I doubt Atari would have been the right company for it either).

Well said.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Which makes me wonder why such a low number was chosen in the first place.

For TV, the pixel aspect ratio doesn't matter as the camera has the same aspect ratio. The difference between PAL and NTSC is simply the vertical frequency, and a lower vertical frequency gives you more pixels in vertical direction. Why the TV standard was picked as such I can only guess. NTSC with its 59.94 Hz vertical frequency looks quite like an odd-ball today (or rather, 60/1.001 Hz, to be fully precise).

Amiga picked 200 lines because its output is supposed to be displayed on a TV, and TVs overscan. It is rather model dependend how many lines it actually displays, and 200 lines is not too uncommon, it was a rather frequent considered-safe choice for home computers at this time. The Atari 8bits even displayed only 192 lines, both in PAL an NTSC, though one could re-arrange the display to get more lines - same as for CBM.

However, I doubt it was really the 200 lines that created much of a problem. It was the whole "environment" around the machine that made the package unattractive for professional customers. It was observed as a "home computer", not as a "buinsess machine".

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

That Amiga didn't have any flicker-free high-quality monitor output, but rather depended on the 15kHz TV specifications was probably some form of limitation. However, CBM had simply no business idea around the machine. CBM was a home-computer company, and they only understood home computers, not professional products for business applications.

For that, they would have had to create a whole infrastructure around their product: Providing some basic software for business applications, and providing services for professional customers. That was entirely the opposite of CBM's model "Sell the product, then leave the consumer alone" - was more their line of thinking. Of course, that is not appealing if you have no idea about computers, and want to equip your "accounting department" with some computing power.

IBM understood this business very well, and could sell underpowered and poorly designed hardware to their clients, but provided the services around their machines. Even an operating system they couldn't implement - but it didn't hurt them (at least for a while).

Face it, CBM was simply the wrong company, with the wrong attitude, and their business model was already outdated when Amiga fell into their hands. (Not that CBM did anything to develop the Amiga - it was just by pure chance as Atari became just too greedy. And I doubt Atari would have been the right company for it either).

+1

and hardware limitations evoked here, added to the problem. At least did not help to overcome the problem with the business model despite some intrinsic qualities of the machine.

But didn't CBM have some experience in the professional field with the PET? Perhaps the PET had some success in the educational field only, I don't know very well this machine. If someone know...

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by TEG

+1

and hardware limitations evoked here, added to the problem. At least did not help to overcome the problem with the business model despite some intrinsic qualities of the machine.

But didn't CBM have some experience in the professional field with the PET? Perhaps the PET had some success in the educational field only, I don't know very well this machine. If someone know...

Indeed. CBM (Commodore BUSINESS Machines) had a lot of experience selling into businesses.

But this is the post-Tramiel era and they had on their hands this thing that had, in today's dollars a $3000 price tag (before second drive and monitor). And they had, by contrast, the Commodore 64, with a 1541 drive cost $199 ($500 in today's money).

So if you were in charge of Commodore in 1985 and were in charge of the Amiga what would you have done? I asked my dad this morning this question.

Who do you market the $3000+ (in today's money) machine in an era where the Commodore 64 is 1/6th the cost, the Mac, which costs more, already has Aldus Page Maker that looks super sharp (monochrome, higher resolution) and the clones (which were inferior to the Amiga in most ways except in the area of being able to run Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar with much sharper displays when running monochrome and could use EGA if they wanted color with sharper text.

Here's what my dad said: He would have marketed the Amiga as an entry level WORKSTATION just like the Commodore was an entry level home computer, two amazing machines that were ahead of their time. He also said it would have supported having a "21.8Khz" monitor OPTION (I am quoting that because I've never heard of that frequency. I know 15 and 31 khz but 21.8? Sounds like witchcraft.

But he says that even in 1985, 21.8mhz monitors were common and not substantially more expensive and would have let the Amiga have its amazing color and also destroy the Mac as the PC alternative as the world's first Personal WORKSTATION that just happened, wink wink, to be an amazing game machine.

p.s.
Also, I've seen a couple posts talking about using overscan. Where is the overscan feature in Workbench 1.1? I can't even tell how to change the screen resolution in 1.1 let alone use overscan.

This is what Prefs looked like in 1985. It wasn't a folder.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

For TV, the pixel aspect ratio doesn't matter as the camera has the same aspect ratio....

that is not what I was talking about - AT ALL.

The difference between PAL and NTSC is simply the vertical frequency...

also not what I was talking about

Amiga picked 200 lines because its output is supposed to be displayed on a TV, and TVs overscan.

finally - and I argued it would have been save to set the minimum to 220 lines.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Frogs

By the time the Amiga shipped, the choices were MDA (for monochrone) or EGA. I'm not sure why CGA keeps getting brought up in this discussion. CGA came out in 1981, 4 years before the Amiga. EGA came out in 1984, a year before the Amiga.

October 1984 to be precise. But the vast majority of IBM PCs sold up to that time were equipped with CGA or MDA. EGA was intended for use with the just released PC-AT, and earlier machines needed a ROM upgrade to work with it. Many people continued to use CGA long after EGA was introduced, both in genuine IBM PCs (I was one of them!) and clones such as the Tandy 1000.

The problem, is that Commodore didn't fill the Amiga with advanced hardware in all cases. It was objectively inferior when it came to do doing the work most people in 1985 were using computers for (word processing, spread sheets).

EGA was objectively inferior to PGA, so why weren't PC users demanding PGA instead of EGA? Answer:- because they didn't actually care that much about having the most advanced hardware. The most important thing on PC users' minds was simply "Is it IBM compatible?". A PC with CGA or EGA was, an Amiga wasn't. Sure, EGA produced a nicer looking picture if you had a suitable monitor, but it wasn't a deal breaker - CGA still did the job. A computer that couldn't run PC programs OTOH...

Mac went with a high resolution monochrome graphics display and the PC users could choose between monochrome (and crisp text) or EGA if they wanted color and crisp graphics (most businesses were still monochrome).

The Mac went for 'high resolution' graphics because it needed graphics for its GUI, and Apple supplied it with the minimum (2 colors, pokey little CRT) to do the job. Apple played to the niche market (desktop publishing) that it filled, but it never gained anywhere near the popularity of the PC.

It's not about what people "wanted". We keep going around in circles. What, theoretically, would someone DO with an Amiga 1000 in 1985? What, specifically, are you multitasking? What, specific, multimedia feature (outside of games) would you be doing with the Amiga that could earn you a living in 1985? 1986?

Video production, computer graphics, educational software (I was doing that), and even (gasp!) business applications such as spreadsheets and word processing - all at the same time!

But of course you would not be running PC software on it, and since the applications you wanted to run were those that everyone was using on their PC's....

In 1985 the Amiga was a brand new machine with very little dedicated software, as would be expected. And since it wasn't IBM compatible it couldn't take advantage of the huge and growing library of PC programs. What most people 'wanted' was a computer that did - and the Amiga wasn't it. It would not have mattered how good the Amiga's graphics were in any department - without software it was dead in the water.

But what was Commodore to do? When they bought Amiga Inc in 1984 the OS wasn't finished and the hardware was a bunch of circuit boards that had yet to be shrunk down into custom chips. In less than 12 months they had the hardware sorted, but the OS would take another 2 years to perfect (about the same amount of time it took Microsoft to produce each major new version of Windows). So they sold machines with an upgradeable 'beta' OS to get them into the hands of developers and early adopters. Could they have done more? Sure, but the path they followed was the right one - proved by the fact that that the Amiga did not become dead in the water and sink out of sight shortly after (unlike some other similar attempts).

Some people argue that Commodore should have just concentrated on the games market and produced an A500 style machine (or even a console) from the start. But this would have produced a very different result because it would not have attracted home users and developers who wanted a more professional machine - people (like me) who were just as interested in the multitasking OS as they were the flashy graphics and sound. People who didn't relish the idea of having to purchase a dedicated 'development system' consisting of an overpriced PC and compiler etc. to explore its possibilities, or struggle with an antiquated single-tasking OS.

The truth is, the Amiga did thrive once it got its 'sea legs', particularly among home users upgrading from 8 bit machines. It extended the life of the home computer through the 1990s and even right up to the present day! For a while it was also favoured for video production and CGI, kiosks and some industrial control uses - until the PC finally got proper multitasking and video moved from PAL/NTSC to digital formats.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Indeed. CBM (Commodore BUSINESS Machines) had a lot of experience selling into businesses.

Yes, and they produced a lot of machines you probably never heard of because they were poor sellers.

But this is the post-Tramiel era and they had on their hands this thing that had, in today's dollars a $3000 price tag (before second drive and monitor). And they had, by contrast, the Commodore 64, with a 1541 drive cost $199 ($500 in today's money).

Tramiel sold more C64s than competing manufacturers by cutting the price to the bone and rushing out the machine with flawed hardware and antiquated software.

You make it sound like the Amiga and C64 were somehow equivalent, but this is not at all true.

The C64's OS was a joke, with no support for advanced features of the hardware. Commodore's answer to was to tell you what (decimal!) 'pokes' to do in BASIC to make the hardware work. Pathetic. In contrast the Amiga's reference manuals explained the hardware in detail and showed you how to control it using the system libraries for multitasking friendly operation. I read the ROM kernel manuals even before I bought my first Amiga, and it was this more than anything that convinced me to get one.

The C64's disk drive interface was fatally flawed, resulting in performance 10 times slower than it should have had (and the IEC bus wasn't fast even when working properly). Why users put up with a bulky unreliable drive that cost more than the whole computer and loaded slower than other brands' cassette tapes is a mystery.

The C64 lacked 'industry standard' RS232 and Centronics parallel ports, which savvy home computer users pined for and were jealous of PC users having. The C64 had no RGB video output (another thing we pined for) or any way to add it, so you were stuck with blurry composite. The keyboard had no proper cursor keys, and joysticks interfered with it because the ports were a disgusting hack, whereas the Amiga had dedicated ports that also had hardware mouse counters (when PCs were misusing their serial port as a mouse interface).

Of course the Amiga had a far more powerful CPU with orthogonal 32 bit instruction set and 16 Megabytes of memory space, with possible future expansion to 4 Gigabytes via the external bus (a mind-boggling amount in 1985). No comparison to the clunky overtaxed 6510 in the C64.

The C64's SID chip could create funky synthesized sounds, but the Amiga's 4 channels of true 8 bit PCM sound were in a completely different league. No other home or personal computer had anything like it.

And finally the Amiga's graphics chipset was so much more advanced, with its Blitter and Copper and extremely flexible display system that was properly documented from the start. Then there was the huge color palette, and genlocking capability that screamed "video production!" - a standard feature of the machine.

In short, the Amiga was a hobbyist computer user's 'dream machine', with everything in it that the computers we owned lacked. When you tallied up all the features and what you would have to spend to get them on another platform, the price didn't look bad at all. When you considered that all those features were supported by an advanced multitasking OS with intuitive GUI, it was a no-brainer - if you could afford it the Amiga was the home computer you had to have.

Originally Posted by Frogs

So if you were in charge of Commodore in 1985 and were in charge of the Amiga what would you have done? I asked my dad this morning this question...

Here's what my dad said: He would have marketed the Amiga as an entry level WORKSTATION just like the Commodore was an entry level home computer, two amazing machines that were ahead of their time. He also said it would have supported having a "21.8Khz" monitor OPTION (I am quoting that because I've never heard of that frequency. I know 15 and 31 khz but 21.8? Sounds like witchcraft.

If Commodore had marketed the Amiga as a workstation they would have failed. How do we know? Because when they tried to do that with the A3000 they failed. The reason they failed was that the workstation market was driven by support as much as hardware, which Commodore was not set up to do. The A3000UX was much cheaper than competing products, but without strong support nobody wanted it. Wikipedia says:-

At one point, Sun Microsystems approached Commodore-Amiga, Inc. with the offer to produce the A3000UX under license as a low- to mid-range alternative to their high-end Sun workstations. That this offer was declined was one of the many management decisions that led to the popular belief that the Amiga platform would have been a real success story but for Commodore management.

Originally Posted by Frogs

But he says that even in 1985, 21.8mhz monitors were common and not substantially more expensive and would have let the Amiga have its amazing color and also destroy the Mac as the PC alternative as the world's first Personal WORKSTATION that just happened, wink wink, to be an amazing game machine.

Your dad is wrong. EGA monitors were significantly more expensive because they needed extra circuitry to switch from 15.7kHz to 21.8kHz scan rates. But EGA only did 64 colours max, with a fixed garish palette which would have made the Amiga's amazing color look no better than a PC.

p.s.
Also, I've seen a couple posts talking about using overscan. Where is the overscan feature in Workbench 1.1? I can't even tell how to change the screen resolution in 1.1 let alone use overscan.

This is what Prefs looked like in 1985. It wasn't a folder.

As I have stated before, WB1.1 was a 'beta' OS that didn't have all the features which would eventually be included. Prefs was a simple program for adjusting some of the essential settings, but programs were allowed to create custom copper lists for full overscan control. This was all fully documented and system friendly, unlike other platforms that may have allowed 'poking' the CRT controller but results were unpredictable.

This overscan thing is a bit of a red herring anyway, since 640x200 was quite adequate. The one flaw in the A1000 that did have an impact was that the chipset was either PAL or NTSC, not switchable between them. This meant US users were stuck with 200 lines, when if they had been able to switch to PAL and do 256 lines they might have been happier (in PAL the pixels are square, and the display is a bit smoother because the lines are closer together).

However most 'power' users bought A2000's anyway, which could take a flicker fixer. Most people I knew with an A2000 had one, and then I got an A3000 which has it built in. The flicker fixer produced a sharp rock-steady VGA output in all screen modes - ideal for desktop publishing, CAD etc.

So Commodore did get there in the end, but it was way too late to swing PC users over to the Amiga. Could they have done it quicker? Perhaps, but considering the time frame and available finances I don't see how they could have done it - even with perfect management. And frankly I don't care. They still managed to produce a raft of amazing machines that we are enjoying even today, and that's what matters in the end.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Why the TV standard was picked as such I can only guess. NTSC with its 59.94 Hz vertical frequency looks quite like an odd-ball today (or rather, 60/1.001 Hz, to be fully precise).

Something close to 60Hz was required to reduce the visual effect of electromagnetic interference on the display, due either to insufficient filtering in the power supply (early TVs used crude valve circuits with no voltage regulation) or directly from mains wiring to the CRT. 59.94Hz was chosen for NTSC to prevent the color subcarrier frequency from producing a fixed pattern on the display. The exact frequency difference was chosen to cause the subcarrier 'dots' to crawl fast enough on screen to merge together producing smooth color edges.

On systems which have a separate composite modulator with its own crystal you can often see the dot crawl, as the subcarrier frequency is not synchronized to the video display but drifts over time.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Frogs

Also, I've seen a couple posts talking about using overscan. Where is the overscan feature in Workbench 1.1? I can't even tell how to change the screen resolution in 1.1 let alone use overscan.

From 1.2 onwards you can change between progressive and interlace.

PPrefs from fish disk 242 allows you to change the overscan, again kick 1.2 needed. Rev 33.180 seems to work, 33.166 shows a garbled screen when the system-configuration has a non-standard screen size. Please note that you must save + reboot to see the result.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Frogs

He would have marketed the Amiga as an entry level WORKSTATION just like the Commodore was an entry level home computer, two amazing machines that were ahead of their time.

The problem with this solution is that you lost the Amiga strong personality. But it's a real dilemma. Would the mass business market able to accept the perfect Amiga? I mean with a better and sharper resolution and Word+Excel and the right advertise and right support from CBM.

Perhaps it would have be seen as not professional machine because too much colours, too much sound capacities, in a word: too much distractions for employees. Let's keep our green screens and insipid PC.

But the small companies and independents would have been receptive I think.

Originally Posted by Frogs

CBM (Commodore BUSINESS Machines)

To be fair, Jack Tramiel explained he named his companies CBM to copy IBM name. The name does not do all but it can help for sure. Typically, being named Atari, was not something helpful to sell to the business market.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Jope

From 1.2 onwards you can change between progressive and interlace.

PPrefs from fish disk 242 allows you to change the overscan, again kick 1.2 needed. Rev 33.180 seems to work, 33.166 shows a garbled screen when the system-configuration has a non-standard screen size. Please note that you must save + reboot to see the result.

I am aware. But this didn’t exist at the time. So someone trying to say the Amiga 1000, of 1985/86 had 720x240 or whatever resolution is not being accurate.

[pandy71]

Main issue with Amiga was Amiga architecture unable to cope with speed of changes on market. Chipset was designed in times where 512KiB RAM was considered as enormous amount of memory (famous "640KB is enough), there was other limitations as RAM chip speed - all Amiga's are designed around fundamental "color clock" being 280ns - simply in Amiga times there was no DRAM chips faster than 200ns, this together with 16 bit bus created limit for both refresh rates and prevented Amiga to quickly grow with market demands and progressing technology.
btw
It was possible to use Copper (and/or CPU) to create non interlaced video display modes over 200 lines (but with reduced refresh rate and thus forcing to use CRT with long phosphor persistence - not an issue for mid 80's monitors - transition in CRT phosphors toward short persistence begin at the start of the 90's) - aliased fonts (doable at 4 color gray scale screen) for sure will deliver better font quality than Mac or PC.
Interlaced modes can be used productively with properly configured brightness and contrast (also use of gray scale will help) - most of those issues could be solved in properly written software but... Amiga was attractive for software companies not in way similar to Mac or PC - Amiga was first Personal Computer capable to deliver multimedia at sane price and with A500 also as a home computer - something between two worlds - typical PC (Mac) and Workstations - it can be considered as first Personal Workstation.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Frogs

I am aware. But this didn’t exist at the time. So someone trying to say the Amiga 1000, of 1985/86 had 720x240 or whatever resolution is not being accurate.

True. 3rd party MegaWB hacks and such also need a more recent version of the OS. I wonder whether OS friendly overscan screens worked at all before 1.2?

I've seen people mention things that the hardware was capable of in this thread, such as a blitter based text mode. This is not OS friendly though and 1985/1986 software is mainly OS friendly. Many of the games as well, even though they forbid you from switching their screen to the back.

1.0/1.1 life was rather terrible I would imagine. 1.2/1.3 was when it started to be usable.

[luncheon]

Amiga just needed a C64 compatibility mode - instead of launching the (excellent) C128 they should've made a 6510 + VIC-II + SID expansion card for the A1000/A500 to keep momentum and enable an upgrade path for their millions of users.

Ultimately the failure of CBM was too many incompatible systems in quick succession:

PET > VIC20 > C64 > C128 > TED/C16/+4 > Amiga

What if CBM could back then capitalize on their existing users being able to upgrade to a compatible-ish system, being able to reuse existing software and peripherals...

Or maybe, an MSDOS compatible C128 instead of a CP-M compatible one? (a 4mhz NEC V20 instead of a 2MHz Z80)

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by luncheon

Amiga just needed a C64 compatibility mode - instead of launching the (excellent) C128 they should've made a 6510 + VIC-II + SID expansion card for the A1000/A500 to keep momentum and enable an upgrade path for their millions of users.

You CAN'T be serious? Don't be silly.

You DID know that Jay Miner, Father of the Amiga, was behind the Atari 8-Bits and not the C64, right?

[luncheon]

Originally Posted by Foebane

You CAN'T be serious? Don't be silly.

You DID know that Jay Miner, Father of the Amiga, was behind the Atari 8-Bits and not the C64, right?

I do, yes. The Amiga is the spiritual successor to the Atari 8-bit family, which in turn is the design successor of the 2600 (all Miner creations). I know where you're going at with the architectural differences. But CBM made the Amiga into production and got it to market... At the same time the internal team at CBM was developing the C128 to give C64 users a more "business-like" upgrade path.

So in '85 they launched a $800 (ish?) advanced 8-bit machine (with great features but an unnecessary and slow Z80/CPM mode), and a $1500 (ish?) 32/16 bit machine practically at the same time. It's just my opinion that it was either one or the other.

CBM/Amiga made the 1060 sidecar for the A1000 and the XT/AT/386 bridgeboards for the A2000 but by that time PC clones were gaining strength and it was too little, too late (to buy an A2000 with a bridgeboard and ISA cards you might as well buy an A500 AND a PC-XT clone).

Anyways, if the CBM engineers were able to design a very complex and foreign architecture into the sidecar and a very complex and advanced dual processor 8-bit micro they surely could design a C64 sidecar for the A1000/A500/A2000...

Clearly CBM had more than enough grey matter to make it happen, maybe marketing / management failed but in this point? Why not offer everyone that invested on CBM's C64 from 82 to 85 an upgrade path? I mean they missed that shot with the PET, then again with the VIC20, and again with the 64.....

Apple tried something similar with the Apple II PDS card but it arrived a bit late (i think with the Apple LC?), after dragging the Apple 8-bit platform far too long (Apple II-GS anyone?).