[Speculation] How to keep Commodore afloat

[Digiman]

The problem was that you couldn't convince someone to buy an Amiga for games because no games were written for a 25mhz 030 Amiga until early '96. A lot of the market is permanently lost to PC. Then in 96 the internet was the big seller.

Also 030 = rubbish. 020 @28mhz in Blizzard 1220 proved this. 1993 PC 486 33mhz 4mb = £600 with monitor. A1200+25mhz 030 4mb = £500-550 28mhz 020 = £100 less and same performance. £150 less if designed on motherboard like for A1400 prototype

A4000/030 = slowwwww and toooo expensive for A1200/500 market hence PC dominated.

£500 A1400 4mb 28mhz 020 desperately needed by C= users in late 93. A1400 sales figures=better games option.

edit remember 486=040 levels of performance. 030 was a terrible minor improvement in performance/mhz for general gaming CPU. 486 FPU was awesome too btw not that gaming uses FPU.

[runequester]

Never found a PC at that price point in those days. Maybe it was different in the UK. Our first PC was about the equivalent of 1200 us dollars in 98 or 99, and that was the cheapest piece of crap the store had.


As an aside, once PCI became a standard, commodore if still around could have jumped on it, to take easy advantage of cards like the voodoo. 3D gaming for the win.

[runequester]

CD32 (400 bucks for inferior gamesto 16bit SEGA/Nintedo

Dave Haynie disagrees with you, for what its worth
Apparently the CD32 sold well, at least in the UK and had developer interest. He pinned the fact they couldn't produce enough of them for the 93 christmas season as a big reason Commodore didn't have enough cash flow to stay alive.

Yeah, it'd have needed significant upgrade quick, but that was doable.

[x56h34]

I think that Commodore since the early 80s lacked focus. They would never decide to attack one particular market, but have wasted funds chasing everything....the 8-bits, the Amiga, the PC, the media center / set top box, the console market.

I think they would have done much better especially in the 90s, had they've decided to focus on one market and push heavily into it, be it Amiga or the PC clones.

[Khephren]

Also 030 = rubbish. 020 @28mhz in Blizzard 1220 proved this. 1993 PC 486 33mhz 4mb = £600 with monitor. A1200+25mhz 030 4mb = £500-550 28mhz 020 = £100 less and same performance. £150 less if designed on motherboard like for A1400 prototype

A4000/030 = slowwwww and toooo expensive for A1200/500 market hence PC dominated.

£500 A1400 4mb 28mhz 020 desperately needed by C= users in late 93. A1400 sales figures=better games option.

edit remember 486=040 levels of performance. 030 was a terrible minor improvement in performance/mhz for general gaming CPU. 486 FPU was awesome too btw not that gaming uses FPU.

never saw a pc new for that price. iv'e got copies of ACE magazines and they are never under a grand.
even when i got a pc years later, it was still 800 quid. agree with the 020 though,not sure the 030 was ever all that.

as for A1200 with an 28 020, ditch the pcmcia and it would free up some cash. I read years ago it cost almost $45 wholesale for that part.

[runequester]

Out of curiosity. whats the fastest the 020s were ever clocked at?

[ChuckT]

If Jack Tramiel met someone else than Irving Gould to help him stay afloat, there would have never been Atari (Jack Tramiel) to compete with Commodore.

The Amiga market killed Amiga

Price gouging from third party developers
Nonstandard Amigas due to Amigas constantly being upgraded (the Amiga 500 didn't have a hard drive).
Forced people from the C-64 market who were at a lower economic level to compete with ever evolving prices in the Amiga market which was much higher and broke users at a lower economic level.


Commodore should have done the first two layoffs earlier.

[ChaosLord]

Get more software developers onboard. Commodore wasn't terrible at this, but try to lure developers of PC office software onboard to get more stuff like amiga version of Wordperfect.

They got WordPerfect.  What more do you want?

[itix]

I mean, we are getting use out of PCMCIA now, but it was a (very expensive) white elephent then. The money should have went on fast ram/processor. And they should have had high density floppies and a slimline CDROM slot.

I disagree. PCMCIA slot was much better idea than any proprietary expansion slot. It is just that A600/A1200 was never big success comparable to Amiga 500.

HD floppies could have been nice bonus but it would have been outdated by CDROM/CDRW.

[Buzzfuzz]

Though one, but let's give it a go.

First of all like AmigaNG I would ditch the plan for a USA HQ.
UK and Germany, combined with the Netherlands was by far the better option.
So I would have the UK as HQ, Germany for production and distribution.
Netherlands also for distribution to like North and South America, Asia and Australia, while Germany focuses on Europe.

I also would have started with finding partners and get them on the inside working with the Amiga team, like GVP, Phase 5 and all others.

After the A1000 I would have skipped ECS for the A500 and went for AGA right away.
They were already drawing up the plans in the early 80's.

I would have more focus and ideas on Workbench, keeping it fresh and modern.


I also would have fitted every model with at least 4MB's of fast ram and got rid of the 2MB chip limit.
Following the market with the introduction of new memory modules, I would have integrated these in newer models right away.


Straight away I would have combined chips into 1 chip, start making it smaller and if possible cheaper to produce.

With the introduction of newer pc's I would have integrated those connectors and bus bridged to the Amiga side, making it also capable of running DOS and later Windows.

With the introduction of CDROM I would have fitted every model standard with CDROM.

For the top models like the A3000/4000 I would have stuck to towers like the A3500 and A4000T.
The top models should have gone with the pc standard, thus making PCI the standard bus later.

Of course sound was what an Amiga was very good at, so I would have made it with the better sound, from 8 to 16 bits and then to 24.
Maybe even do the impossible and make it 32.

Following the pc trend, I would have started moving production to Asia and then press on with graphics and sound.

Then just maybe, things would have looked a lot more different and the Commodore Amiga might have been alongside the pc just like Mac's do these days.
Maybe even better, but I would have doubt it, Microsoft Windows and Office and all others software was a far bigger success than anything else and Workbench would have had to do a lot better than that.

[EDanaII]

spot on with the 'head of a pin'

As for some of the arguments on here, they date from the actual era- not hindsight, and some from the engineers on the ground at the time.

The PC did not move that fast, anything it did, commodore could have bought off the peg as well. And moore's law was a known quantity.

It's more to do with faults at commodore's end (and atari before them) than the superfast PC dev. Besides, consoles had as much as an impact, if not more.

Sure, some of these responses are just blowing smoke...but I smoke, so that's fine!

Not to be argumentative, but...

As the PC industry began to specialize, it did move faster and faster. Graphics card development accelerated when certain companies made it their sole focus. Commodore, on the other hand, simply tried to do everything at once. Not a good strategy back then or even now. Which is why my suggestion was that it split off Amiga graphics into a specialized company.

And, with regards to Moore's law, I said "nobody _fully appreciated it_ back then." In other words, I was referring to the fact that Commodore didn't fully appreciate it, so instead of focusing on where they had the advantage (graphics) they tried to do everything.

Not claiming your points are invalid, just wanted to point that out.

Super off-topic: I notice your from Northhampton, UK. I've been to that part of the world. Beautiful country.

[KThunder]

The custom chipset has been mentioned a few times recently on a couple threads and I thought I would comment on it.

The custom chipset wasn't the reason Commodore, or the Amiga had trouble, because it was Commodores chipset, as in not only did they own it they owned Mos tech which produced it all the way up to AGA.

"Vertical Integration" was the reason the Vic and C64 were less expensive than the competition, had generally better chipsets, and the c64 had a custom 6502. It was the reason Commodore could take on the Amiga chipset in the first place and sell for less than most of the competition, whilst having better features etc.

The problem came because Commodore didn't put enough money into Mos tech. By '85 rather than produce a 16bit cpu they went with a 68000 (the 16bit 65816 which is 6502 compatible works pretty dang good in the Apple IIgs and snes) And by the time AGA came around they couldn't fabricate some of the chips so they had to outsource.

So much of the cost savings of having your own chipfab were negated by the early '90s and commodore had to charge more and more while giving less and less in features. The cpu manufacturer of most of the 80s computers didn't plan ahead. The computer company that holds a guiness world record for the most systems sold of any single computer line, died.

As much as I like the 68000 the Amiga should have had a 65816 style 16bit chip. By the 90's they should have transitioned over to a 32bit 6502 compatible risc chip. All the ram and chipset components should have been Mos tech produced. And the Amiga chipset and OS should have been licensed out and chip fab services as well.

[WolfToTheMoon]

...

My answer to the post above from the other thread... it's probably more appropriate to discuss this here


Whatever happened to Terbium?(WDC's 32 bit 6502 evolution)

But your idea is interesting... 65816 was shown to be roughly comparable  to early 68K Motorolas. It's probably much cheaper as well. But since  Lorraine was based on 68000 it would mean building a whole new chipset  basically. I do not think that's likely to have been approved.
But 65816 maybe should have been used in the 128 or a similar C= branded machine.

[KThunder]

Thats the thing though, the chipset probably wouldn't have had to be changed much at all. And they should have been able to handle it easily. The 68000 has a 16bit interface and kinda funky control bus setup but nothing too weird. I have seen 68020's connected to Apple II's so even if a little glue logic was required for OCS it could be completely fixed by ECS.

The amiga could have been a c65 in 1985 with the amigaos. Kindof like the Apple IIgs. and the gs sold more than the mac did until Apple killed it.

I don't think the terbium got enough funding and died. WDC does embedded stuff now mostly i think.

[pwermonger]

What would have kept Commodore alive? Tough question. I think its a range of things
 
1. Not having paid so much for Amiga. I know, we all love Amiga and are probably happy that they got the money per share they got. But Commodore should have known they were in a weak position. They didnt have the money to pay Atari and were about to lose their work. They did not have to pay so much for Amiga which would have left more money for advertising which is something that would have helped more more product as well as for further development post aquisition.
 
2. Not sitting on development while other companies are moving forward around you. Amiga 1000, 500/2000, 3000 all are not a large change from the 1000. The 3000 timeframe should have have been when the 1200/4000 were released. Histories seem to show that they could have been released in that timeframe but mismanagement caused delays. 1200/4000 in the 3000 timeframe could have put the AAA machines in the 1200/4000 timeframe and Hombre/move to standardizided PCI type hardware in the bankruptcy timeframe. Not sitting on the original Jay Miner group chipset for so long would have kept Amiga competitive and ahead of Mac/PC for a much longer time.
 
3. Don't compete with people with lowest install base. The fighting with Atari was a fight for last place. Winning against the person at the back of the race still puts you at the back. Amiga 1000 should have been positioned against the Mac at a minimum (color and multitasking vs black and white and single tasking) not the IIGS and STs which were on life support from their birth.
 
4. Don't cancell things that will sell! When your own people are already getting orders for the LCD which is not on sale yet it shows there is a market hungry for it. Don't decide based on a competitor not to bother selling it when you already have spent to make it and almost have it ready for market.
 
5. Don't compete against yourself. C64 vs Plus/4, Amiga 2500 vs 3000, 500 vs 600. They should have been more carefull not to position products in the same market for the same price, and not even waste time developing products that would end up if released in the same price point and market C65 vs 500. It confuses customers and a confused customer is free to go elsewhere.
 
6. Educate your customers. "an educated consumer is our best customer". Don't assume people will realize what good multimedia, multitasking, Object Oriented Programming (Amiga Vision) etc is. Teach them what these things are and why they need it, and that your competition doesn't have it. Don't just expect the word to sell your product for you.