Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1

[sandruzzo]

I think OCS chip set was an unfinished project. It should have had:

- enough Memory bandwidth to display ham6 on 640*512.
- even only 32 kb of fast for 68000
- 68000 8mhz
- hw registers out of chip ram bus
- 15 bit palette, not 12 bit
- some sort of interlived blitting to avoid mask reloading
- asynchronous copper to it almost 2x faster
- byte aligned for blitter in order to not was 1 word blit for shifting
- better line drawing without that stupid octants system
- 8mhz chip set for internal operations like 68000

[Twiggy]

Surely MIDI via the serial port is perfectly acceptable? Just another case of Commodore not doing its bit to push certain bits of hardware (like two button joysticks).

[Solo Kazuki]

Reading this topic I planned not to answer, but after all there are some weird "flaws" mentioned.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Okay let me start:

1. Digital joystick

What's wrong with it? Amiga ALWAYS has 2/3 buttons (on latter A1200/CD32 even 7 with CD32 joypad), but programmers really didn't care about it. But it NOT means that there are no games with more buttons. Look on this list, how many games have 2 buttons support in standard. Moreover there are many WHDLoad patches to use 2 or more buttons.

There's also user's fault. Some people tend to dislike pads or more than 1 button. Even today there are users who WANTS only 1 button joystick, and that's weird.

About analog joystick, they are also usable with Amiga, even I had one. But for sure analog is not handy in normal arcade games, just for racers or simulators.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

2. No MIDI port!

But with cheap interface you can use MIDI (e.g. here!), so it's really a problem? There's lots of software (e.g. on Aminet) which are using MIDI. And never saw this as problem, rather more useful port (in MIDI port you can use only MIDI, on Amiga you can use MIDI interface or many other hardware).

Originally Posted by drHirudo

3. HAM mode

I don't get it. For me better is have something more. Are HAM modes attacks you in sleep, or what? You don't like HAM then just don't use them instead of nagging.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

4. Non standard floppy disk format, very error prone!

Again some weird idea. Never saw any proof of that. Moreover, I had some "bad" disks from PC (they had errors) which are "repaired" after formatting it on Amiga.

Other thing is mentioned before by someone, that on Amiga there's just different track handling.

And about disks - do You know that many original games has own file formats able to save 1MB of data on DD disk! Think about it. Let's say Dune II - not 5, but 6 (or even 7) disks. Curse of Enchantia? Biiing? Innocent Until Caught?

For me, again, it's more and better option: Amiga could use both 720kB (PC/ST/others) and 880kB. Also HD disk have 1.44MB or 1,76MB if you have HD floppy drive.

Originally Posted by drHirudo

5. No hard disk controller on board.

As someone before mentioned - do You know that in mid 80s many PCs also hadn't hard disk controller onboard?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by twiggy

Surely MIDI via the serial port is perfectly acceptable? Just another case of Commodore not doing its bit to push certain bits of hardware (like two button joysticks).

MIDI is a serial protocol. So yes: MIDI via serial port is the logical way to do it.
If you buy any expensive keyboard or other MIDI equipment, you can not spare $10 for an adapter?

[idrougge]

Yeah, but what's the point if you need a sequencer? Why would you choose the computer without MIDI ports and with a monitor that pollutes your studio environment with a constant 15 kHz hum?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

Again some weird idea. Never saw any proof of that. Moreover, I had some "bad" disks from PC (they had errors) which are "repaired" after formatting it on Amiga.

I always wondered why people keep saying that floppy disks in general (and Amiga specifically) where so error prone. I think I had one or two disks out of a couple of hundred that failed during the 90's.

And now, 25+ years later, the vast majority of my Amiga disks still work. Even ones I abused back then.

[idrougge]

When I try to format a disk nowadays, I usually need to throw two away before finding a working one.

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Yeah, but what's the point if you need a sequencer? Why would you choose the computer without MIDI ports and with a monitor that pollutes your studio environment with a constant 15 kHz hum?

Really? Do You know, that there was GOOD monitors without "15kHz hum"? And why 15kHz? What about ~30kHz modes (Productivity, Double Modes)?

Sorry, but putting cheap and messy hardware as "professional" and saying about noises because of this is... well... little inconsistent.

[idrougge]

There were no ~30 kHz modes before the A3000, which instead pollutes the studio with fan noise that is unbearably high. It also cost more than most studio equipment. And it was released in 1990. This thread is about the things the Amiga didn't get right from day 1. When the Amiga gained ~30 kHz modes, the Atari ST already had five years of successful studio use behind it, which had given birth to the world's richest ecosystem of MIDI software. Too late to take over that market.

And why buy an expensive multisync monitor when you can have the SM124 72 hz monitor at half the price and with crisper graphics to boot?

Oh, and have you seen the RF emissions of the A1000? That's not the kind of thing you want to put in a studio with any equipment beyond pure MIDI.

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Oh, and have you seen the RF emissions of the A1000? That's not the kind of thing you want to put in a studio with any equipment beyond pure MIDI.

Now that's an interesting point - was the ST significantly better in that regard?

[Dunny]

Disclaimer: I work in the music industry and spend quite a bit of time in studios.

If fan noise were a thing, Apple Macs wouldn't have gained such traction in the studio. Even slightly raising their workload causes the fans to blow, and if my 2015 MBP is anything to go by, it sounds like a jet engine

PCs aren't much better either...

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Dunny

If fan noise were a thing, Apple Macs wouldn't have gained such traction in the studio. Even slightly raising their workload causes the fans to blow, and if my 2015 MBP is anything to go by, it sounds like a jet engine

PCs aren't much better either...

Much truth here. Those Powermac G5s and the Mac Pros that came after it are a noisefest. I love my G5 in the studio but I hate the noise it makes. Yet they are to be found in every studio. Portables are no good either.
I don't usually make music with an Amiga monitor on, but I have to say I don't really mind it much. It's worse when the signal is off but if you have an image displayed, it's OK. Some people are more sensitive to the hum though.

In any case, I can understand how the Atari ST or a Mac Classic would have been better on a studio, but not because they could be used with higher refresh monitors, but because they had CUBASE, and the Amiga didn't. That's your killer deal there. Who cares if the MIDI ports are internal or you need an adapter, if the monitor is 15 or 30 Khz, the deal-breaker here is Cubase.

So if we are to complain about what Amiga didn't do right from the beginning, that probably was, not teaming up with more cool, innovative software companies on launch day to get the killers apps exclusively on Amiga. We got Deluxe Paint, but music-wise, we only got Aegis Sonix :/

[Dunny]

Yeah, Cubase still rules the roost on Mac. At least until we release FL Studio for MacOS

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

Now that's an interesting point - was the ST significantly better in that regard?

Don't know, but the STE certainly isn't great when it comes to RF. Even with all that super-heavy shielding. But the A1000 was of the kind that could cancel out FM stations.

[amiga_Forever]

no HD disk support ... Single Density drive only, so if u have a formatted high density disk, it won't read unless formatted 880k which means u waste space of the floppy... at least maybe that works.

I wonder if that trick really works.. covering other side with sticky tape....

Mixed reactions.

[ajk]

Single density? It's double density in most Amigas.

Covering up the high density hole has no effect, as double density drives don't have a sensor for it anyway. Only if you need to fool a high density drive.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by amiga_Forever

no HD disk support ... Single Density drive only, so if u have a formatted high density disk, it won't read unless formatted 880k which means u waste space of the floppy... at least maybe that works.

I wonder if that trick really works.. covering other side with sticky tape....

Mixed reactions.

As mentioned before: there were no HD-floppys in 1985.
So this was not something, that was done wrong by Amiga or Commodore.

And Amiga hat no support for "Single Density" but "Double Density" from the very beginning.

True, they should have upgraded to HD support with ECS or at least with AGA.
Or build in at least the slow HD drives with halve speed, like the did in the A3000 - at least in every A2000 since it was overpriced already...

[Gorf]

space for registers.

Originally Posted by ovale

The original team was wise enough to leave the CLUT at the end of the registers address space. Was ECS that put new registers after the CLUT breaking forward compatibility with bigger CLUT. They should had add a new pin to the RGA bus and respin all the 3 chips.

Maybe one of the experts can help me here.
The Amiga memory map shows a lot of reserved regions, that could have been used for additional chipset registers. What about A80000-BEFFFF?

Ok - the registers would no longer be in one single region, but is that really a problem?

[sandruzzo]

what about having dma slots as we know, only were bitplanes read datas, and have all slots available with the rest of chip mem?

What about having some kind of move next with copper, were you load a start address and put values with other moves and copper advace the initial address?

[Tigerskunk]

As a 12 years old "customer" back then in 1987, getting my Amiga 500, there were not many things I disliked about the Amiga.

A few things which I didn't like back then were:
* I like(d) about the C64, that you could switch it on and being productive on it immediately, even if it was just the shitty basic. No need to put in disks for the machine to be useful or fun like you had to do on the Amiga.

* Amiga Basic was interesting (even if it was shitty and crashed the machine all the time), but even on the C64 you could do more "professional looking" stuff with the sprites and Charsets in Basic. The Amiga felt so much more closed if you wanted to produce something, and didn't have knowledge about Assembler and the Amigas interior. C64 Basic may have not been good, but you could save your program to disk and have other people play it without the need to start the basic from the disk as well.

* The drive clicking was horrible.

...............

These days, having some ASM coding knowledge, and my view being very different because of this, I'd say:

* 6 Bitplanes but only 32 Color registers is a joke. EHB is better than nothing, but in reality it's hard to find any useful case for it's usage except for shadows.

* obviously, Sprites on the Amiga have kind of a weird implementation. Should have been 24 or 32 pixels wide and more normal sprite pointer and position registers. The way they are, they are mostly useful for stuff you wouldn't typically use Sprites for on other systems. See Codetappers sprite tricks page. If you are into Atari VCS coding as well, you know where this subsystem originated from, though, partly.

* there should have been a way to split up the six bitplanes in more flexible way for Dual Playfield mode. Imagine being able to use 16 colours in the front and 4 colours in the back (4 - 2) or 32 in Front and 2 Colours in the back (5-1).

These are the only bad things I can think of where I wonder why they were implemented the way the were.

For the rest I'd say they were amazing features for the time they were developed, and are fun to use.
And it's incredible fun and super creative to code and design something for OCS, if you put enough time into it for understanding the basics.