Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: jahc on January 19, 2006, 03:30:59 AM
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http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=19
I remember hearing about them, but has anyone actually seen one in real life before? or even own one?
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Nope... interesting item though - sort of an A1200 desktop, or a "broken A4000", depending on your point of view!
Given the delays sometimes with technology reaching NZ, I'd expect a shipment here in the next month or so! :-D
- Ali
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This is hardware that supposedly came out in the mid-90's when there was no company making Amigas at the time. I heard it ran system friendly stuff only. But I think it was a hoax.
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Wasn't it released in Germany only? I think German Amigas had some slightly different specs and nomenclature. It's listed as vapourware on some U.S. sights. Some German sights seem to list it as released in 1992, with specs, though I can't read German terribly well at all.
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CatHerder here on AO has said he has one. I'm hoping he posts some pictures.
Doomy also claims (claimed) to have one, but we know that can't be true. :-D
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@Matt H
OMG. You should never let the words of "He Who Must Not Be Named" cross your lips, lest your slip into eternal damnation with wraiths. :sealed:
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Matt_H wrote:
CatHerder here on AO has said he has one. I'm hoping he posts some pictures.
Doomy also claims (claimed) to have one, but we know that can't be true. :-D
It is 100% impossible for anyone else to have an A2200. I have the only working prototype in existence and I also have all the Agent-88 prototype boards (every version) for it. Anyone out there that claims to have an A2200 is simply lying for the sake of conversation I suppose.
I've been working on the A2200 story, and history, but just haven't gotten around to finishing it to post here.
Ten myths to put to rest:
#1 -- it was NOT a Commodore developed computer or product line
#2 -- the primary motherboard WAS a Commodore developed pcb (Fact: it used the Spellbound PCB)
#3 -- it was NOT anything to do with the post-AGA chipset
#4 -- it was NOT a predecessor to the A1200 or A4000
#5 -- it was NOT a "stepping stone" between any Amiga models
#6 -- there were NOT any of these shipped to developers or distributors or retailers (although there were 2 distributors waiting to place orders and a dozen retailers waiting to sell A2200 units)
#7 -- it did have OS 3.1 on a single ROM
#8 -- it did have expansion capabilities including accelerators, RAM, hard drives, IDE devices (but no native scsi)
#9 -- it was NOT a ready-for-distribution product when it was abandoned due to Commodore's bankruptcy (and more importantly the seizure of assets, including 65,000 motherboads destined for these A2200s, in their warehouses by creditors)
#10 - it used a standard PC slimline case, including a standard AT slimline case power supply (a very common varient at the time, with a single bezel change to "brand" it, to keep cost of production down) and it used a Sony high density (PC) drive that could read Amiga/Mac/Atari/PC DD and HD floppies (again keeping costs down and going with the one remaining supply channel that guaranteed to supply drives).
I get a real kick out of some of the websites out there that post information (quite often citing "sources") about the A2200. A good chunk of what they post is correct, but 100% of the additional information provided by other people is invariably something made up (I guess some folks want to look "cool" by pretending to know something others don't?).
Like I've said to quite a few people on here, and out there... when people finally understand what the A2200 was (is) they will be disappointed for various reasons. Other than it's an interesting peice of Amiga history, it's nothing earth shattering (although it could have single-handedly kept the Canadian and UK Amgia markets alive for an additional year or two ...or more). The biggest "bummer" in the whole A2200 story is, to me anyway, that it never got to market because of the seizure of Commodore's assets -- otherwise there could have been over one hundred thousand A2200s out there in 1994-95. The A2200 was NOT a product manufactured by Commodore, but it's primary motherboard was; motherboards that were already manufactured and according to Commodore Canada and Commodore UK "virtually unlimited in supply".
I hope to get the whole A2200 story done sometime this month, including photos of the prototype I have, it's internals and some screen shots (or photos of it working).
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CatHerder wrote:
...there could have been over one hundred thousand A2200s out there in 1994-95...
What happened to all those motherboards? Landfill? A shame that events conspired against this machine...
- Ali
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(I guess some folks want to look "cool" by pretending to know something others don't?).
yeah your hit the nail on the head there matey... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
________
No2 vaporizer (http://vapirno2.net)
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Every time I read a story like this or watch the Commodore Deathbed Vigil I get all nauseous thinking of the potential that Commodore had and the idiots that just let it all go to waste.
Ugh. I need to go lie down... :cry:
Pete
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Isn't the Spellbound pcb for the CD32? I have one of these somewhere that I bought from Centsible Software. It had no rom nor chip ram chips soldered on but otherwise appears to be a complete CD32 motherboard. Maybe I have one of the 65,000 m/b's from that warehouse?
Not to throw myths out there, but a 1995 edition of AmigaWorld I was just reading says that the A2200 was a 'cut down' A3000 with ide, implying an ECS machine. However, a Computer Answers vendor advertisement in the same magazine advertised the A2200 as a AGA machine. Hmmmm????
I still find it hard to believe that C= went belly up right at the US launch of CD32, and within a year of releasing both the A4000 and A1200. That's three product launches in a period of 18 months, if you don't include the A4000T. Maybe too little too late since the A3000 debut in 1990.
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Every time I read a story like this or watch the Commodore Deathbed Vigil I get all nauseous thinking of the potential that Commodore had and the idiots that just let it all go to waste.
Everytime I think "What if Dave had gotten through to Commodore about producing and implementing the AAA chipset into the Amigas back in 1990" I get this really unpleasant feeling.
I think things would have evolved in an entirely different direction. Not that I do believe that the Amiga would have conquered the world, but I do think that it would have finally been looked upon as a "serious" computer and a serious competitor against the Mac and the PC (which it, in general, really never was looked upon as).
Sometimes I am even thinking, what if Commodore would have produced and released a low-cost cartridge based gaming-console in Japan, based upon the A500 technology. Could it have been a serious competitor against the NES and the SEGA Genesis? And, most important of all, would we have seen giants like Capcom, Konami and other developing their classic series of games for the Amiga? As a console it would have crushed ALL competition hardware wise, and developer-friendly it would have been to the extent of using ordinary Amiga computers (not that the Amiga ever was easy to develop games to) but maybe it wouldn't have been possible to reach a price that the market could deal with.
There's so many ifs and whys that I can't handle it. Commodore can't have had any real insight into promotion and what technology they actually held in their hands. They could have done so much right, but did so much wrong, to the extent that it is almost unbelievable.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
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@ CatHerder
Neat-o. Thanks for that information. Looking forward to the full story. :-)
@ Argus
Yes, Spellbound is the codename for the CD32.
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CatHerder:
Interesting Read, However, according to Rainer Benda (german only) (http://www.rbenda.de/commodore/story8.html) who worked for Commodore back that time, the Amiga 2200 had indeed at least its origin from a planned Commodore machine.
To be more precise, the A2200 should have been a variant of what later "just" became the A4000, one out of four planned Versions:
A3200 with 020 and AA
A3400 with 030 and AA
the other two should have been cheaper ECS!! machines,named
A2200 with 020 and ECS
A2400 with 030 and ECS
well, except the A3400 which became then the A4000, everything else was dropped (thanks god)
btw, if you look at the 3630 CPU Card (http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/download_photos/a3630_1_big.jpg), you will notice at least one sign that the above is correct, you will find "68020/030 BOARD REV 1.0 A3200/A3400" printed on it.
AFAIK no Prototype of the Commodore A2200 or 2400 where ever made.
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Sometimes I am even thinking, what if Commodore would have produced and released a low-cost cartridge based gaming-console in Japan, based upon the A500 technology. Could it have been a serious competitor against the NES and the SEGA Genesis? And, most important of all, would we have seen giants like Capcom, Konami and other developing their classic series of games for the Amiga? As a console it would have crushed ALL competition hardware wise, and developer-friendly it would have been to the extent of using ordinary Amiga computers (not that the Amiga ever was easy to develop games to) but maybe it wouldn't have been possible to reach a price that the market could deal with.
An NES has the CPU, PPU, 4KB of SRAM, and not much else, I don't think a cutdown A500 could come close to that price. Then the sprite capabilities of an A500 are well below what the PC-Engine or Megadrive could do. Japan was littered with home computers at that time also, and I think the manufacturing technology was generally better than what Commodore had (my Sony MSX2 has a 100-pin SMD with .3mm wide pins). Amiga did have some fans over there though (http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/amiga3.jpg)
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Legerdemain wrote:
I think things would have evolved in an entirely different direction. Not that I do believe that the Amiga would have conquered the world, but I do think that it would have finally been looked upon as a "serious" computer and a serious competitor against the Mac and the PC (which it, in general, really never was looked upon as).
I certainly agree that if Amigas with AAA had been available in 90/91, and if Commodore had maintained development - releasing newer upgraded machines every year or two - then Commodore would still be here and Amigas would be hovering up there in second or third place behind Windows and Mac.
In an alternate reality, we could all be discussing the new 'AmigaPro Duo' laptops and comparing benchmarks with the 'old' PowerAmiga G5's we've been using for the last couple of years.
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DamageX wrote:
Then the sprite capabilities of an A500 are well below what the PC-Engine or Megadrive could do.
That's not true. The sprites on the Amiga were SLIGHTLY more restricted on a single horizontal line (max of 8 unless you reused a channel), but they were far more flexible, especially since they could extended the entire height of the display. Add the blitter on top as well as real bitmapped graphics (the SEGA had no bitmapped graphics at all) and the OCS/ECS was more than a match for any of the game systems out. Remember that the Amiga was originally designed to be a game system to compete against the SEGA Genesis (Megadrive) and SNES. CBM bought it to replace the ST which Jack took with him to Atari.
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The Amiga couldn't have been designed to compete against the Megadrive and SNES since they didn't exist yet. In the US, the Megadrive came out in 1989 and the SNES I think in 1991.
So it's okay if they beat the Amiga in some respects. They're newer.
It's sad that the Megadrive versions of many Amiga games tend to be better technically. Although I'd chalk that up to programmers doing a straight port rather than taking advantage of the Amiga's copper and blitter. The Amiga versions could have been as good, or better.
The same thing happened with the Saturn and Playstation. Saturn versions of many PSX games were straight-through, barely operational ports, whereas 'native' Saturn games pulled some absolutely amazing tricks out of the (arguably superior but much harder to program) hardware.
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Commodore Germany may have had an internal marketing idea called an A2200 but there was never a Commodore engineered A2200 or Amiga 2200.
The reason the A2200 was called an A2200 (as advertised by Computer Answers (AMITech)in Amiga World and Amazing Amiga) and not an Amiga 2200 was entirely because it was not a Commodore product. Naming it "A2200" did not break any copyright laws. This was confirmed and encouraged by Commodore Canada at the time: they saw the A2200 as a saving grace for their market -- there were over 100,000 CD32's in the pre-distribution channel including unassembled Spellbound motherboards. The additional $1.5-$2 million in sales to CA/AMITech (who, at the time were already >60% of Commodore Canada's sales channel) was viewed along the lines of "we all will have jobs at Commodore Canada for another year" (Commodore Canada never had a year in the red, even when C=USA went bankrupt Commodore Canada was still making money).
As somebody else noted, Spellbound is the name of the CD32 motherboard (I hoped somebody would pick up on that). The A2200 was designed entirely around the Spellbound motherboard, and thus it has the AGA chipset (the Akiko varient and the single "3.1" ROM).
The Agent-88 board was designed to attach directly to the expansion port of the Spellbound (there were also a couple other physical post-factory changes made to the Spellbound, but it didn't include chip changes). The Agent88 literally turned the Spellbound motherboard into a new motherboard that was 1.75 times as wide, it attached and then both boards were mounted as one single motherboard in the case. (The Agent-88 was similar in regards to an SX-32 or an SX-1 but with additional expansion capabilities including an accelerator slot, optional scsi module, etc. The big difference was it wasn't a CD32 game console expansion product, it was an actual new "Amiga clone" inside a real desktop case with the ability to expand it -- it would have been considered an AGA 3000 with CDROM market-wise).
The brilliance behind the A2200 was in its focus on a segment of the Commodore inventory that had the only available Amiga product supply channel that wasn't, as far as Commodore Canada knew, threatened by the bankruptcy of Commodore USA. While all other Amiga product lines had already been halted due to bankruptcy and frozen assets by creditors, the Spellbound (CD32) motherboard had upwards of 100,000 units sitting complete in a warehouse -- a warehouse that was not yet frozen by any creditor. Sadly, when Commodore filed for complete chapter 7 in Bahamian courts this last remaining invetory became lost.
The Spellbound (CD32) motherboards were built in one factory and then shipped to an assembly plant where the cases and other parts (shields, cd drives, controllers, packaging etc) were finally assembled into a CD32. From what I understand, the company that held the motherboards eventually recycled them for scrap (copper & other rare earth elements, etc). The vast majority of those motherboards could have ended up inside A2200 units, but like everything else the Commodore curse prevailed.
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The same thing happened with the Saturn and Playstation. Saturn versions of many PSX games were straight-through, barely operational ports, whereas 'native' Saturn games pulled some absolutely amazing tricks out of the (arguably superior but much harder to program) hardware.
Well, considering that games like Burning Rangers for the Saturn even found a way to use the sound CPU to render transparencies, its pretty safe to say much could have been done if the system had been explored a bit past its, way too early, bitter end. Just look at Radiant Silvergun, now that is magic (even though it still would have been very doable on a PSX).
The main problem was with the support CPU's as far as I've heard (in a way a bit like the new PS3 is designed). The programmers didn't really know how to make the code make use of them in an efficient way, and thus the code often fell back on executing most instructions on the main CPU. Just like all the worthless Atari ST ports appearing on the Amiga early on which didn't make use of the Amigas native chipsets (oooooh, holy hell, do I miss smooth scrolling on many many many many Amiga games, even games that were coded directly for the Amiga). Oh well.
But... since I have absolutely no clue what I am talking about here I will not say more.
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Was it military grade hardware? ;)
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So reading this topic after 13 years, I wonder if we will ever see pictures of the A2200 :-)
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It was shown at the Amiga 30 event in 2015 in California, or, at least, the motherboard was. For some reason I didn’t snap a picture of it, but it looked similar to an A3000 motherboard with yellow silkscreening.
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It was shown at the Amiga 30 event in 2015 in California, or, at least, the motherboard was. For some reason I didn’t snap a picture of it, but it looked similar to an A3000 motherboard with yellow silkscreening.
Was it this one?
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=2015
https://www.facebook.com/AEonTechnologyLtd/posts/rare-amiga-a2200-prototype-listed-for-sale-on-ebayhttpwwwebaycomitmcommodore-ami/1065089730168078/
I can't find anything about the other A2200, but it reminds me of the Index Information systems
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=39
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=40
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It was shown at the Amiga 30 event in 2015 in California, or, at least, the motherboard was. For some reason I didn’t snap a picture of it, but it looked similar to an A3000 motherboard with yellow silkscreening.
Was it this one?
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=2015
https://www.facebook.com/AEonTechnologyLtd/posts/rare-amiga-a2200-prototype-listed-for-sale-on-ebayhttpwwwebaycomitmcommodore-ami/1065089730168078/
Yup. Not sure if it was that exact unit, but that’s the model that was shown.
I can't find anything about the other A2200, but it reminds me of the Index Information systems
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=39
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=40
You mean the one that was supposedly based around a CD32 motherboard?
https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=19
I believe that one remains unseen.
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I seem to remember Commodore Canada exclusively (?) had a machine on sale/ready to go on sale which was a lot like a little brother to the A4000/030 and that possibly used the CD32 motherboard with AKIKO but it would have had an Atari Mega/Acorn or A3000 style slimmer pizza box style slim case not the A4000 look-a-like mentioned on the [non functioning] link above. It may have had a 14mhz 020 not 28mhz too. If I ever remember the name of it I will be glad to see it again.
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Wow.. serious Thread Necromancy here! But it caught my eye because I own an A2200 motherboard. Check it out here!
https://youtu.be/6UO8qxPBb8o