Amiga 1300[What ifs]

[Digiman]

I guess maybe this was just a local thing but I dont know many, if any people who sat and compared specs and bought their computer based purely on that.
 
People bought an amiga because they wanted an amiga and the software eco system that went with that. Same for people who bought a PC or a Mac.
 
Buying a 2000 dollar PC is no dice if you want to run an amiga application, and no amount of 68060 will help you run a PC or Mac application (well, actually.. it might for mac )

Hmmm in the UK at the time of 4000/040 and 1200 launches home user PC sales were more hype than substance.

The new buyers looked at demos running and picked a format in their budget ie 386/Mac LC III, Falcon, Acorn or Amiga. 4000=too much,1200=old style toy computer look and 'slow' 14mhz with expensive HDD/no HD FLOPPY/Little RAM

A1200 and Atari Falcon looked cheaper than 3 box design of Mac/PC but options cost 200-300% more. CPU/RAM upgrades not sold in regular High St stores here either.

Nobody cared about crappy DOS/WIN at that time in the UK, and PC home users were viewed as fools though. Funny thing is things were back to the early 80s of UK home computing where only the creative/educational/gaming potential mattered for new comers NOT the brand of the CPU or OS. Amiga had everything it needed AND CHEAPER than SEGA/Nintendo cartridges or Mac/PC creative/small business software.

Of course owners would become viciously loyal fans of their Alt. format choice.....hey it worked for Mac sales in mid 90s :roflmao:

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP209

That is what Commodore needed to copy, the ethos of the Mac LC3 030/25 in pizza box case with no excessive expansions, the 4000/030 couldnt compete with 040 based LC475 by 94! madness was rife @ Medhi Ali central...is he dead yet?

[Digiman]

I think the Canadian mail order house advertised an A2200, with an expanded CD32 motherboard.

*Googled*

In Mar 1992 via Usenet.....


A  "killer  no-nonsense"  midrange  Amiga system is finally here.  The Amiga  2200 is actually more like a "slightly scaled down Amiga 3000." Housed  in  a box which is actually smaller than the A3000's case is a mother  board  which  holds  a 68020 CPU clocked at 14.3MHz.  There is also  a  socket  for  an  optional 68881 FPU.  This is a "real 32 bit" system  running  on  a 32 bit memory bus.  The Amiga 2200 includes the ECS  to support 2MB of Chip RAM.  Up to 8MB of additional Fast RAM may be  added  to the mother board using 4Mbit RAM chips (or 2MB RAM using 1Mbit  RAM chips).  Stock systems will ship with 1MB Chip and 1MB Fast (system) RAM.  A de-interlacer circuit is included on board as well as a  32  bit  SCSI hard drive interface similar to the A3000.  There are three  expansion  slots  including two full 32 bit bus expansion slots "ala  A3000  style"  on  a  verticle  daughter  board and a direct CPU expansion  connector  which can take a 68030 or 68040 CPU accelerator. The  Amiga  2200's low-profile, compact case has room for two internal 3.5"  drives.  

Stock  systems  will ship with either one 1.76MB High-Density  floppy  drive  and a 52MB Quantum hard drive or two HD floppy drives.   I/O  ports  include  standard  serial,  parallel, dual mouse ports,   dual   audio,   SCSI,  floppy  drive  port,  NTSC  video  and de-interlaced  31KHz  video.  The Amiga 2200 with hard drive is priced substantially  less  then the A3000/16/50 which is being phased out of production.   The  Amiga  3000/25 will continue as the high end of the Amiga personal computer line.

Notes:

This system is for the true  Amiga enthusiast.  Due to the very "cost reduced" mother  board and  system enclosure it is NOT BridgeBoard  capable.  It also has  "only" two main expansion slots.  However, with SCSI and up to 10MB RAM on board (2MB Chip, 8MB Fast) you  may not  need an expansion slot for a while.  With a  14.3MHz 68020 running on a true 32 bit memory bus, you've  got enough  processing power to handle almost any task.   When you are ready to expand, go ahead and fill one of the two 32 bit  expansion slots with
a 32MB memory board.  And  add a  28MHz  68040 to  the CPU expansion slot.  You'll  be  in  "Amiga Heaven"  with this kind of power.  This system enclosure only holds two 3.5" drives. This is the most useful low-cost configuration and
is due to  the  low-cost, small  footprint inclosure.  But you can still add floppy and hard drives externally to the built-in floppy and SCSI ports if necassary. The 68881 FPU is not included in stock  systems, but at least the socket is there when you decide to  plug one in.  The  A2200 will significantly out-perform the  Mac Classic II and Mac IILC because these Macs use a  16 bit memory interface to their 32 bit processors.  At list  $1295  with  one high-density floppy drive, a 50MB hard drive and 2MB RAM (1MB  Chip and 1MB Fast) this system will sell like  hot cakes.  At  $995 street price  this is a  low-cost-Mac and clone killer for sure. In fact, a new factory may be needed to keep up with demand. The A2000 will remain in  production for those who
need a system where they can plug in the "kitchen sink."



If 92 then fine, if 94 then suicide $1300 for 14mhz & 2mb RAM.

[NovaCoder]

Reading a bit through the wonderful Amiga History webpage and found this...



Ok, A1300 never been confirmed to existed so it's just a hypothetical, but is it just me or this sounds awfully underpowered for the time? Or maybe it was their intention to sell it as a (very)cheap PC alternative? How did the A1200 compare to a cheap 286/386 system pricewise?

Commodore UK were always way ahead of the rest of the company so yes, I can believe they had something like the 1300 on the cards.   Of course it still would have struggled to compete against the emerging PC but those specs are at least close to what the 1200 *should* have been in 1992.

[runequester]

We had a thread awhile abck about what specs peoples amigas were in 94, when commodore folded.
Most of them were /extremely/ modest.

[Amiga_Nut]

Fascinating, well done for the research everyone, never knew about an A2200.

I think the price is too close to the A4000/030 that came shortly after though (1993). And a 14mhz 020....that's just too slow for 92 and probably distributors saw that it would age to the state of being unsellable in 3-6 months really.

[Amiga_Nut]

We had a thread awhile abck about what specs peoples amigas were in 94, when commodore folded.
Most of them were /extremely/ modest.

Hmmm think the problem is if you go to the shops on the street you couldn't even buy an A1200 with more RAM let alone a faster CPU installed.

Your only option was the hideously expensive hard drive....great marketing their haha

[utri007]

Commodore UK also tried to buy Commodore after bankruptcy. They were separated companies. They say that they could pay commodre deps etc. Just wonder what they did later.

[Khephren]

A2200 looks like a nice machine, and would have launched at the same time as the A1200? Not bad, but I still think a lot of it's specs are what the A1200 should have had. I would probably have missed out the A1200 and gone for this. What would that have been in £, anyone know?

[psxphill]

PS1 and Saturn are red herrings, if you needed a computer you still needed a computer so they make no difference.

 
Not everyone who owned an amiga needed a computer. There were alot of people who only ever saw workbench when they ran xcopy.
 

A2200 looks like a nice machine, and would have launched at the same time as the A1200?

It says Kickstart 3.1, so it would have been later.
There were loads of people trying to sell a1200 motherboards in PC cases in the UK. I was even tempted to buy a micronik tower back in the day.

[Amiga_Nut]

With a 14mhz 020 I certainly wouldn't be interested in 2mb RAM for an extra £350 however.

[stefcep2]

You could do a lot with an '030 and 2 meg chip and 2 meg fast back in those days.

I added an '030 plus fpu and 16 meg fast ram (i hardly ever used more than about 6 MB in total, but it was so cheap at $200..)  plus a 1.7 GB hard drive and CDROM in an external side tower, around about 1995. It opened so many options that made computing a joy, especially the aminet cd's and mag cd's.  

I started off wanting to play cheaply-attainable games, but ended doing so much more.  I did animation, video-titling, 3D rendering, Image processing with ImageFX in Ham8 split screen, grey-scale video capture with Prograb.

Most PC users I knew did a bit of browsing, email, Word, and played chunky games.  And their mags were full of crap game demo's.

So who has the more "powerful" computer?

I really believed this could've kept many Amiga users from jumping ship until PPC arrived.  But having to buy an '030 for $600, plus ram plus a cdrom plus $1400 for basic A1200 plus $700 for a microvitec or $500 for an NEC 3D monitor was insane.

[pwermonger]

I don't think the 1300, or any machine made based off the 1200, would have been more than a drop in the bucket.

Commodore had already screwed up their lead and squandered it. 1200/4000 should have been released around 3000 timeframe but instead they kept on basically the same chipset from 1000 in 1985 through 3000 in 1990 not to release any significant update until 1992. That 7 years saw PC games start to move to VGA even before Win95 was released and already showed the Amiga as dated. To have another 1 to two years just to get a slightly faster processor wouldn't have brought in new users.

[dougal]

I think back then what would have made sense considering prices etc, would have been a full 030 50mhz processor, 2mb Chip + 6/8Mb fast ram, CD-ROM, hard drive as standard and a proper built-in scandoubler/flickerfixer VGA output and possibly or optional RTG graphics.

[Khephren]

@Powermonger and dougal
I think Powermonger's right. The ship had already sailed. The Amiga succeeded or failed based on the strength of it's chipset. Does not matter what you bolt onto that. Updating the chipset was too long in coming, and not thorough enough. I mean, no sound update at all in 7 years?

Jay miner and co were geniuses. Commodore engineers post Amiga A1000 were good, but merely stood on the shoulders ofgiants and tinkered, and were later stifled of cash by the management.

They could still have competed with PC's on price, but not tech, the 2200 might have helped with that. And maybe held out long enough to rectify their loss with the next generation.

[pwermonger]

Well if you read the accounts from people like Haynie it appears the 3000 was originally supposed to be the 4000, with a DSP. That means AGA chipset on an 030 back in thereabouts of 1990 unless I have read the accounts wrong. Thats the only thing I can see that would have helped, not cancelling machines with advanced chipsets and stagnating on Agnus/Denise/Paula for so long. People bought machines back then based on capabilities not OS. Only way to enhance the capabilities was with new chipsets on the Amiga.

So, a chipset that could compete with early VGA relatively well, years sooner. Many projects that could have kept Amiga competitive longer cancelled not because it couldn't be done but because of management.

This is why I don't consider any retread of the existing Amigas as able to make a dent to change the outcome. Maybe just forestall it a few more months with some added sales to existing customers but to justify it, the costs of retooling an assembly line have to be factored in. They had a retread, remember? the CD32. It didn't change the outcome.

[runequester]

Well if you read the accounts from people like Haynie it appears the 3000 was originally supposed to be the 4000, with a DSP. That means AGA chipset on an 030 back in thereabouts of 1990 unless I have read the accounts wrong. Thats the only thing I can see that would have helped, not cancelling machines with advanced chipsets and stagnating on Agnus/Denise/Paula for so long. People bought machines back then based on capabilities not OS. Only way to enhance the capabilities was with new chipsets on the Amiga.

So, a chipset that could compete with early VGA relatively well, years sooner. Many projects that could have kept Amiga competitive longer cancelled not because it couldn't be done but because of management.

This is why I don't consider any retread of the existing Amigas as able to make a dent to change the outcome. Maybe just forestall it a few more months with some added sales to existing customers but to justify it, the costs of retooling an assembly line have to be factored in. They had a retread, remember? the CD32. It didn't change the outcome.

Well, part of the CD32 problem was that they couldn't make enough of them to meet the sales demand, and weren't allowed to sell in the US.

This is as far as Dave Haynie's deathbed vigil video goes anyways. I figure he knows what he was talking about