Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Lord Aga]

I hear ya
Music and sound were indeed much better in the DOS version.

Too bad we never got an AGA version

[oscar_ates]

I had Amiga 1200 in 1996 and before that year I was using A500. In 1997, I got a Blizzard 1230/50MHz turbo card and HD. It was a good machine but was not keeping up with the technology. Was late in the market with little power. When Doom hit on shelves, it was understood that the Amiga fell way behind in technology. Around 1998 little new games were coming to Amiga and the few new games that were released done by some Demo groups or individual enthusiasts. So they were lagging in one or more aspect. For example Genetic Species was very good in graphics, but gameplay was a bit odd. No company was releasing any new games on Amiga, so in 1998 I jumped to PS1 ship. Commodore management was the culprit, not invested enough in R&D. I think those guys should had not even managed a cafe They thought they can sell the same old C64 and Amiga for 10s of years.

[Vstech]

the big problem with the A1200 in my opinion was the same as the A600... it was a toy Commodore came out with to keep attention of the game kids, and not loose sales of the 4000crowd...
AAA had been touted for years in the mags, and amiga comes out with this AGA "interim" chipset...

the 2000 was the beast machine, and the 3000 was a workhorse upgrade. commodore only cared about sales quantity... they didn't support their developers or their hardware team... make it cheap and volume was their mantra... I remember reading an interview when Commodore went belly up. and it was of a hardware team member discussing his PCI and AAA board team... he just tossed the plans and hardware and walked out.

Amiga 500 will always hold my interest. I upgraded mine SOOO much back in the day. I wanted a 3000, but was in no way in my budget until the used market opened up in the later 2010's I got one off ebay, and love it.
I finally bought a 1200, non working, and fixed it mostly. I have several 1000's and 1200's now... they are fun machines to tinker with... I hate the blank key on the keyboard... and the odd placement of some keys. but it is what it is.
I even have a 1200 in a tower case... that's fun!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Vstech

the big problem with the A1200 in my opinion was the same as the A600... it was a toy Commodore came out with to keep attention of the game kids, and not loose sales of the 4000crowd...
AAA had been touted for years in the mags, and amiga comes out with this AGA "interim" chipset...

the 2000 was the beast machine, and the 3000 was a workhorse upgrade. commodore only cared about sales quantity... they didn't support their developers or their hardware team... make it cheap and volume was their mantra... I remember reading an interview when Commodore went belly up. and it was of a hardware team member discussing his PCI and AAA board team... he just tossed the plans and hardware and walked out.

So much wrong in there I'm not sure where to start.

AAA was never more than a rumor. In reality they never managed to get working silicon. Eventually Commodore management told them to dump it and get something out that worked - which they could have done 2 years earlier if the engineers didn't have such lofty goals.

But hey, it's not like they were the only ones. Intel sunk 11 years and untold resources into the iAPX 432 before finally admitting defeat in 1985. Luckily they also produced a slightly enhanced version of their 'toy' 8 bit CPU line called the iAPX 88, which became a roaring success after IBM chose it for their PC. This then showed the way for desktop computer development.

The PC's success was achieved by not inventing radically new hardware, but gradually improving it bit by bit and letting the market decide which direction to go, while maintaining full compatibility with earlier machines. The AGA 'interim' chipset followed that principle, but was too late because they tried to do much at once with AAA.

The A2000 was a workhorse upgrade from the A1000. The A3000 was a 'beast' in performance and price, but not so useful (I know because I had one!). The A500 was Commodore's 'toy' computer, but at its core was 99% the same as the A2000 and almost as expandable (just not so conveniently).

Commodore didn't have to worry about an A500 upgrade (which is what the A1200 was) competing against the A4000 because at that level the competition was 486 PCs. Sales of the A4000 were so low that there hardly was a 'crowd' (most Amiga users thought it was far too expensive, as any 'big box' machine would have been in their eyes).

The truth is the Amiga could only make it in the 'cheap and volume' market because everything above it was being squeezed out by PCs. The press and users were expecting an A1200 style machine from the start. It would have been a better seller if Commodore had been able to make more of them - and even better if it had arrived earlier (I would have bought one instead of the A3000 in 1991 if it was coming out then, and saved $5000!). Then they could have had the CD32 out 2 years earlier instead of the CDTV, and it would have been a killer too!

Commodore could perhaps have supported the Amiga hardware team more. But funny thing is once they changed tack it didn't take long to produce AGA. I am dubious of the claims of engineers when their own plans were essentially unworkable. As for 3rd party developers, I remember getting plenty of support as a small-time software developer - far more than I would have expected from IBM or Sega etc.

Amiga 500 will always hold my interest. I upgraded mine SOOO much back in the day. I wanted a 3000, but was in no way in my budget until the used market opened up in the later 2010's I got one off ebay, and love it.
I finally bought a 1200, non working, and fixed it mostly. I have several 1000's and 1200's now... they are fun machines to tinker with... I hate the blank key on the keyboard... and the odd placement of some keys. but it is what it is.
I even have a 1200 in a tower case... that's fun!

Yes they are all great machines to tinker with (though the A3000 is probably also the most frustrating). I did crazy stuff like putting an A1200 and Pentium PC in the same case (linked together with the Siamese System to use the same keyboard and mouse), putting an accelerated A600 motherboard with IDE hard drive and CDROM in an A1000 case, running a PC MFM hard drive and controller off my A1000, and installing an internal floppy drive into the side of my CD32. Good times!

The blank keys on the A12000 keyboard don't worry me - they will be a good source of spares if one of the other keys goes faulty!

Wish I could get an A1000 at a reasonable price (mine was stolen in 1991), though in practice my current machines (A1200 w/ 50MHz 030, A600 with Vampire, and stock A500) are plenty enough to keep me occupied.

[Spedez]

Lets dig this thread back shall we . Never had an A1200 but I had A500 and a bit later A2000. Wonderful machines both. I remember waiting for and finally reading A1200 review in our best (and only) games magazine Pelit. I was wondering what took Commodore so long to release A1200, and when I finally got to read the review I was a bit disappointed. Mostly because of the clock rating of 14MHz for CPU which was an absolute let down and secondly that they didn't upgrade the sound chip. Having the same Paula chip from 1985 in 1992 was unacceptable. When I finished reading the article I knew Amiga was done which was so sad, because I rooted for Amiga and hated PC (soulless corporate box). I hanged on Amiga till 1993-1994 being envious to PC folks having all those nice adventure, RPG and action games in 256 colors that never came to Amiga even in 32-colors. What really broke my Amiga back was Master of Orion. Doom of course was final nail to coffin. A1200 could have handled easily MOO, MOM, Lands of Lore and other great games (of course not Doom) but developers just dropped the gloves with Amiga which was sad.

I went to PC but I still hoped A1200 would survive for few years and would have most of those great 93-94 games ported. Really sad story and Commodore management not only screwed up everything but I think they were hired to bring Commodore and Amiga down just like Elop was hired to bring Nokia down. Such was their stupidity on every level and decisions they made. Amiga could still have been number one in games and multimedia if their engineers would have been given free hands to innovate and decent funding.

As others said, either the A1200 should have been launched as is at least half a year or rather year before in 1991. Then it would have kicked ass with those specs and devs would have been on board much longer. Or if that late launch date was necessary something like 25Hmz processor (even 020) and properly updated co-processors including audio would have been sufficient. Of course the price is issue but better specs were needed at that time to keep casual Amigists on board and interested. Looking back A1200 was a quality piece but just too little too late.

What I don't get some of the board members arguing about how some 386 was better and blah blah. 386 was crap. My best buddy had one and only good thing it had was the ability to run 256 color graphics (albeit slowly). I think it was SX. A1200 would have had no problem beating the crap out of 386 in general. Some members here seem to hate Amiga (A1200 especially) so badly they have to diss it like nothing else. Pretty stupid. A1200 is a legendary machine on its own and is still remembered and collected having high price tag. Nobody cares about old 386 or 486 or Pentiums. They are nowadays junk and bulk.

I'd like to travel back in time and kick those Commodore managements butts to stop destroying the most epic piece of computer hardware ever existed and save Amiga, haha. Oh well...

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Spedez

Lets dig this thread back shall we .

Sure, why not - let's have a reasonable discussion about the old days, see what new perspectives and opinions you can bring to the table.

Originally Posted by Spedez

[...]386 was crap.[...]. A1200 would have had no problem beating the crap out of 386 in general. [...] Some members here seem to hate Amiga [...] Nobody cares about old 386 or 486 or Pentiums [...] they are junk and bulk.

That didn't last long, did it now Oh, well...

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Spedez

As others said, either the A1200 should have been launched as is at least half a year or rather year before in 1991. Then it would have kicked ass with those specs and devs would have been on board much longer. Or if that late launch date was necessary something like 25Hmz processor (even 020) and properly updated co-processors including audio would have been sufficient. Of course the price is issue but better specs were needed at that time to keep casual Amigists on board and interested. Looking back A1200 was a quality piece but just too little too late.

What I don't get some of the board members arguing about how some 386 was better and blah blah. 386 was crap. My best buddy had one and only good thing it had was the ability to run 256 color graphics (albeit slowly). I think it was SX. A1200 would have had no problem beating the crap out of 386 in general. Some members here seem to hate Amiga (A1200 especially) so badly they have to diss it like nothing else. Pretty stupid. A1200 is a legendary machine on its own and is still remembered and collected having high price tag. Nobody cares about old 386 or 486 or Pentiums. They are nowadays junk and bulk.

Yes 386DX games at the time required a 386@25Mhz CPU (Jurassic Park, DOTT, Sam and Max). It would have been great if the A1200 was released with the 68EC020FG25 but I wonder what frequency they would have clocked it at?

The Blizzard 1220 clocks it at over 25Mhz to 28Mhz and Commodore down clocked the 68EC020FG16 to 14Mhz, I guess better safe then sorry

[Spedez]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Sure, why not - let's have a reasonable discussion about the old days, see what new perspectives and opinions you can bring to the table.


That didn't last long, did it now Oh, well...

We have this old saying that goes something like this "the dog yelps to whom the stick clanks onto". I imagine you being the PC-guy from the old add [ Show youtube player ] .

I gave my opinion about the subject and I don't care if some PC-connoisseur don't find it "reasonable" for their taste.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by redblade

Yes 386DX games at the time required a 386@25Mhz CPU (Jurassic Park, DOTT, Sam and Max). It would have been great if the A1200 was released with the 68EC020FG25 but I wonder what frequency they would have clocked it at?

"So for our low-end AGA replacement for the A500, the 68000 CPU..."

"Whoa! Hold on there. Can't we do better than that? We could throw in a 16MHz 68EC020 for almost the same price, and if we clock it synchronously at 2x bus speed it will need hardly any more support circuitry. And with a RAM expansion it will be twice as fast again! Wouldn't that be great?"

"OK, so for our not quite so low-end AGA replacement for the A500, the 68EC020..."

"Whoa whoa whoa! If we use a 25MHz 68EC020 we can sneakily overclock it at 4x the bus speed and be even faster! (with a really fast RAM expansion, which we would have to include to make it worthwhile). Then we can also add 16 bit sound, a synth chip, chunky pixels and a kitchen sync! And... hold on, I just heard a rumor that Motorola will soon release a new super-fast (and super-expensive) CPU called the 68060 - I bet they have an EC version in the works!"

[Spedez]

Originally Posted by redblade

Yes 386DX games at the time required a 386@25Mhz CPU (Jurassic Park, DOTT, Sam and Max). It would have been great if the A1200 was released with the 68EC020FG25 but I wonder what frequency they would have clocked it at?

The Blizzard 1220 clocks it at over 25Mhz to 28Mhz and Commodore down clocked the 68EC020FG16 to 14Mhz, I guess better safe then sorry

Not sure would have clocked further easily but I think better clocks would have been a deal breaker for some people not to jump to PC bandwagon. And of course developer support for games which was piss poor at least for adventure/strategy/rpg front which I liked most. US based dev houses didn't seem to like doing Amiga ports in 1993. Piracy wasn't to be blamed since PC had equal amount of piracy. Perhaps ASM 68k coding wasn't so popular anymore at that point or it took too much resources? But if I understood correctly only one guy did Wing Commander port to Amiga which was awesome feat.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Spedez

Not sure would have clocked further easily but I think better clocks would have been a deal breaker for some people not to jump to PC bandwagon. And of course developer support for games which was piss poor at least for adventure/strategy/rpg front which I liked most. US based dev houses didn't seem to like doing Amiga ports in 1993. Piracy wasn't to be blamed since PC had equal amount of piracy. Perhaps ASM 68k coding wasn't so popular anymore at that point or it took too much resources? But if I understood correctly only one guy did Wing Commander port to Amiga which was awesome feat.

Of course piracy on PC was equal but the market much bigger so still enough potential sales. Piracy harmed the smaller amiga market more than the PC market.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

"Whoa whoa whoa! If we use a 25MHz 68EC020 we can sneakily overclock it at 4x the bus speed and be even faster! (with a really fast RAM expansion, which we would have to include to make it worthwhile). Then we can also add 16 bit sound, a synth chip, chunky pixels and a kitchen sync! And... hold on, I just heard a rumor that Motorola will soon release a new super-fast (and super-expensive) CPU called the 68060 - I bet they have an EC version in the works!"

OK so you can safely overclock the 25Mhz to 28Mhz I thought that might have increased chip failures and they would have set the clock speed to 21Mhz

[Lord Aga]

Well even at 21MHz, with a FAST RAM expansion, the A1200 would be a fiery little beast.

Too bad we never had a truckload of cheap(ish) 2MB FAST RAM cards, so that the 2MB+2MB standard would be established for games. In the same way that 512+512 became the standard for the A500.

[Tigerskunk]

Yep, A1200 in 1991 would have been a beast.
Would have definitely bought one.

In early 1993 I didn't even hear about it getting released anymore since everybody who I knew was already in IBM AT land and playing all the cool new stuff you never saw on the Amiga.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

In early 1993 I didn't even hear about it getting released anymore since everybody who I knew was already in IBM AT land and playing all the cool new stuff you never saw on the Amiga.

Seeing games like Strike Commander, Ultima Underworld and to a lesser degree Wolfenstein 3D in 1993 and reading that those games will never come to the Amiga was big point in a lot of my friends switching to PC.

[matt3k]

The 4000D was much more of a disappointment than the 1200 for me.

The 4000D was slower and crappier than the computer it replaced. The 3000D was a distinct difference over the 2000 and better in almost every way, certainly comparing a stock 2000 and 3000 is night and day really.
1. 3000D had better build quality than the 4000D.
2. 3000D had SCSI and not the dismal IDE of the 4000D.
3. 3000D had much better ram access over the 4000D. Even more so if you had SC memory and Ramsey settings set.
4. 3000D had a flicker fixer and you could toss a nice large format monitor on it easily and cheaply, 4000D had no flicker fixer (YUCK) and you had to buy a few monitors that were very lackluster at the price point to use all the capabilities of AGA.

We put a stock 3000D (As from the factory) against a brand new 4000D-030 a club member purchased back in the day and the 3000D walloped the 4000D all over the floor. Members at the time looked at each other and said I'll keep the 3000 thank you very much (especially since video cards were out and nicer ones coming and you could toss in some card like a CV 64 and you were happy all the way). The 1950 snap, crackled, and popped with screen flicker and the Viewsonic 17 was quiet and crisp, easy on the eyes and the 3000 went along its way.

4000D ram access speeds and simm sockets were crap, the Seagate IDEs were slow and loud (thwap, thwap) and Quantum SCSI was faster and quiet. Seeing the 3000D on a Viewsonic 17 and the 4000 on a 1950 (with all the great noises it made when you switch resolutions) also hurt the 4000.

Side by side the 3000 looked better, booted much faster, had a better display, and when you had WB up it was a better experience for most things, sure you lived with less colors but that was it.

This hurt even more, when we know that AAA and DSP's were all possibilities. Having those two items alone release a year or two earlier would have made a great different. Sorta like Hese's AA3000+ with AAA and perhaps updated SCSI, being where Commodore should have ended up. It really seems like Hese finished what Dave H. started, even the PCI cards is where he was going. This really is the machine that should have been released in 91. The 1200 could have had pieces from this to make it more compelling (AAA, DSP, etc.).

The 1200 was faster than its predecessor the 500. Could it have been more, sure... faster cpu, etc. But it did the job by being better than the 500, given the X86 market was really advancing at the time... That made the 1200 seem less for sure. AGA should have been much more for the time it was released, the market moved and sadly the Amiga was running backwards trying to cheapen the brand by the IBM PC Jr guy...

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Spedez

I went to PC but I still hoped A1200 would survive for few years and would have most of those great 93-94 games ported. Really sad story

For me personally.. I think we underestimate A1200 expandability strength (back then, even much less then now (when we know pretty much everything that happened).
Again, in my humble opinion, PC overcame Amiga completely, not in '94, not in '97, but somewhere around 2002-2003.
I'll tell you a little story:
My friend (that had SNES before), told me recently, that he (and his parents) wanted to buy some computer somewhere in period of '94 - '95.... and the choise was Amiga or PC.
The computer dealer convinced them to buy a PC, because Amiga was DEAD.
So they purchased back then, some weak 486, that he expanded later,.. then switched for Pentium.. and so on...
He was VERY DISSAPOINTED with the machine.. but of course... nobody loves crappy PC
So I was thinking a little bit, and came to conclusion that if he (actually his parents) choosed A1200 back then, he would spend much less money and had much more enjoyments.
So, let's get back to that '94 or /95... if he purchased A1200 with some Fast Ram and HD.... BAM... A beast at that time...
Next year ('95 '96) He could purchase some Blizzard 030 card.. again best...
Somewhere in 98' he could purchase 060 - again - great computer for that time.
After that.. PPC.. until 2002-2003... and he would be perfectly OK.. much happier... and much less money spent...

About your other points, it's interesting for me to address and it's about 256 colors PC games.
Bro... I seen them all at that period in my (rich) friends houses at that time, with very strong PC's at that time... I wasn't impressed at all.
Ok - 256 colors - what about so huge pixels, that you can actually see them all the time? I see often here talk about 256 colors.. but common guys.. nobody see these huge pixels (I'd say.. size of a sprite) on PC's monitors 14.. 15 inches.. whatever... the graphics was so jagged.. rough.. I don't know bad enough English word for that.
While on Amiga, you had that sweet CRT hardware (unintentional) soft blur (sure, on SNES and Genesis too... and every other computer or console that operates in similar way).
Long story short: Give me any OCS 32 colors game on CRT before any 256 PC jagged rough looking game on PC

I am very convinced that if you show some child, some strictly OCS adventure games (Simon, Monkey, Ween, Goblins 3.. etc), or any platformer (Ruff n' Tumble, Lionheart.. etc) with their 32/64(halfbrite) , and their competitors on 386/486 PC games, with "mighty" 256 colors, the kid would choose A500.

.. now.. that's a long post, I just realized... lol

[sandruzzo]

We can agree that Amiga is not about cpu per se, but about Chip-set and its' strength. Maybe with some inexpensive fixes on the chip set, we would have had another story..

[Promilus]

Again, in my humble opinion, PC overcame Amiga completely, not in '94, not in '97, but somewhere around 2002-2003

Oh, did I miss something ... like C&C (95), Tomb Raider (96), Warcraft II (95), MK III (95), Diablo (96), Need for speed (94) and similar on Amiga back then? Rebuilding Amiga with more and more expansions like 060 turbo, pci bridge etc. was bound to cost more than fairly modern PC at that era. And with less usable software. I'm sorry, while I admit that Amiga did handle things very well for quite some time the second part of 90s was just out of PC and console league.

[oscar_ates]

Amiga 1200 030/50mhz 16 mb configuration ran Doom worse than a 386 PC.