Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmiDelf on March 06, 2003, 08:38:13 AM
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If you where Commodore and still lived today. What sort of Amiga would you made? AmigaONE, a new super hyper fast AGA custom based chipset, or what else?
20bit Paula? AGA++ 32 bit Virtual3D chip? Zorro8 with 800mhz bus? Anything?
Do you really miss the Amiga days or not? Tell me. That would be just interesting...
Regards,
Michal Bergseth, editor of Amitopia
url: www.amitopia.tk
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I want an Amiga that could drive me to work and back, then when there do
all my work for me.
I think people assume that C= had infinite resources to develop anything
but even at the time of the chickenhead death it had got to the point
where custom development of four chips was looking prohibitive.
If C= had been alive today it would have gone back to building PCs and would
have queitly dropped the Amiga. The lure of the 1995-2000 market would have
been too much for them.
We like to believe that but for C=s demise the Amiga would be at least as mainstream as the Mac.
Very unlikely in the extreme.
Don't believe it.
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DaveP wrote:
If C= had been alive today it would have gone back to building PCs and would
have queitly dropped the Amiga.
With an intelligent management, I don't think so. The BIG mistake (al least, one of them :-) that made C= was to use the HUGE incoming cash flow from the Amiga sales to develop a PC line, leaving the Amiga side without advertising and even with a good repairing and customer service. They wanted to enter the "serious" market, forgetting the "multimedia" one, and the last one was the good one.
Perhaps the Amiga was too advanced even in the business side, or they were too short-sighted...
Anyway, this is just a "what if...".
Saluditos,
Ferrán
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If Commodere would still be alive that would mean that the PC market wouldn't be as big as it is today. ( hey, someone has to be the biggest, right? :-) )
Much of the performance race that we have seen in the PC market would never have happened.
The hardware platform would probably have been closed, so third party hard ware would be rare.
Commodore would most likely have developed some kind of new chipsets for sound and video. The sound would have been controlled by a DSP ( didn't they do that in some models of the A3000? ) and the video chipsets would have been 3D capable and controlled by something like D3D.
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Any one listen to Alan Redhouse MP3 from the London show last november.
He mentioned a new CD32.
The next Artica is alleged to support onboard video and at a higher AGP rate.
On the A1 mailing list Alan mentions reading his article in total Amiga coming soon.
[speculation]
New Amiga Games Console Perhaps
[/speculation]
What about all those A1200 that are in peoples lofts and cupboards etc. gathering dust.
Get them interested and get them in use again.
How about a A1 mobo with the same layout as the A1200 mobo, onboard ATI Video and 256MB Ram. Socketed G3 or G4.
You could just swap out your mobo, useful for people who have already invested in Power Towers / Eyetech Towers Micronik Towers etc.
The Lack of PCI slots is not a problem as the Expansion edge connector could be the PCI Bus for a PCI Daugther card, this would match up with existing towers like it does with mediators and grex etc.
Just an idea :-? :-P :-P
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@ferran
Your assumption is based on the market conditions remaining static.
C= entered the PC market as a clone manufacturer with too high
expectations for the time. If they had survived 1994/5 market conditions they
would have dropped the Amiga ( which did not have enough sales to
support them AFTER they dropped the PC business ). They took the wrong
gamble ( that the PC business would remain loss making and that the
Amiga business would grow ) and died.
The Amiga was NEVER popular as a serious PC contender for
desktop or small office use and sales were dipping in 1993-1994
anyway.
Even the PC sales fuelled by Doom would not have been hindered by
the A1200, A4000, A4000T trio and there was no way that AAA based
machines were on the horizon as contenders for the games niche
before 1996 based on C=s development to shelf typical lifecycle.
I know its nice to look back with misty eyes and say "The Amiga woulda
been a contender" but it just isn't true. Within a very narrow definition
the Amiga was a success.
For once it would be nice if people could accept the realities of the
situation and the past. Without that they are easy pickings for the
non Amiga zealous and have unrealistic expectations of what
Amiga Inc and co can and should do.
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Intel P4 3.06Ghz
Nvidia Gforce FX
Soundblaster Live 5.1
UW SCSI 3 200Gb
And ofcourse AmigaOS4
Dont see the point of making custom made boards/chipset etc whatever when you only really care about is the OS :-o
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Even the PC sales fuelled by Doom would not have been hindered by
the A1200, A4000, A4000T trio and there was no way that AAA based
machines were on the horizon as contenders for the games niche
before 1996 based on C=s development to shelf typical lifecycle.
A very true statement. I totally agree.
Never underestimate the power of the games market - there are people I know who have 'games machines' comparable in cost and power to my editing system (and that takes some beating), all to get the upper hand in UT (or whatever the FPS game of the second is).
I remember seeing Castle Wolfenstein for the first time on a friends PC when it came out - and even then I felt a chill that was the beginning of the end.
Through the late 80's I'd seen folks that had PC's ditching them for Amigas, mainly for playing games (this was in Australia, my old home, timelines may vary elsewhere). But then in the 90's these same folks were the first to switch back as a plethora of FPS's hit the markets.
Then the blows of Windows 3.1 - Windows95 - suddenly your average Joe User decided that taking work home from the office AND playing games made the PC a very attractive deal.
I stuck it out till 97, when I moved to the U.S... I sold my systems and put the money in the bank to buy a new Ami with... It's still in the bank too, waiting :-)
As for what I'd like to see...
When I saw the first screenshots in Australian Personal Computer, my jaw dropped.. I'd like to relive that moment.
At a time when the PC did 16 colors - the Mac did 2 - and the best selling home computer was the C64, it was so incredible that I was stunned.
Apart from the 'aint it cool' factor - I'd like to see a decent instruction set for ASM programming.. That was my first and longest love with the Amiga. I stopped programming the x86 in ASM after 3 days, and I never did it again (only C nowadays - on the linux box).
Lastly - something that a company can't really provide - a rekindling of the community spirit (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it doesn't exist , I'd like to see it grow). That's what attracted me to Linux when I eventually did go x86. They have their flamewars and zealotry as much as the next group - but there's also a sense of freedom and sharing.
The Microsoft mentality seems to be 'make a buck' - go browse Tucows to see what I mean.. scribble some source, cripple it and charge 30 bucks. In the linux community there is more 'Hey, check this out -- ain't it cool?'. I think this is the great strength of the Linux community, and I'd like to see it propagate.
Then again - we could have this right now, no need to wait for a new set of hardware to hit the market.
Siggy.
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Wel they did have the (mythical) AAA chipset...
with 24bit screen and 16 bit sound.. And that was way back
They were opting voor a RISC processor aswell...
If that got trough and the PC open structure never got up maybe it'd still be relative custom hardware.
Mac in some way is also closed...
Can't say. Would the custom hardware structure be broken by outside companies?
PC plug-in cards gave way to new companies, but a closed system would have braked that development.
But if it'd be custom i'd would have worked 1001%
My 2 cents as they say.
No time to close every hole in this post... so fire away :-D
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Ooh, I love these ones.
Regardless of whether Commodore had survived or not, I think one thing's for certain - the PC was always going to become as big as it did. If Commodore hadn't folded, they probably would have realised that the future (at least the immediate future) lay not in custom hardware but in off-the-shelf hardware.
What they may have done was eventually drop the Amiga or perhaps license out its chipset to interested parties to generate revenue. Maybe we would have seen Amiga clones. Either way, we'd soon have seen the end of the custom Amigas we all knew and loved as it simply would not have been financially viable for Commodore (who weren't in a financially robust state anyway from the early 90's on) to keep designing and producing custom computers. Competing with the likes of NVIDIA and Voodoo would have required major spending. Where would this money have come from?
By 1993 Commodore were hemorrhaging cash. It was reported that if sales of the CD32 had been slightly better, the company may have been saved but for how long?
For anyone who has seen the excellent Deathbed Vigil Video by Dave Haynie, I think the newspaper cutting posted on one of the walls at the West Chester plant sums it all up: PC Giant Fails To Adapt.
Commodore failed to adapt like so many other companies. The fact that their hardware was streets ahead of the PC and Apple equivalents of the time wasn't enough. They couldn't cut it competitvely in what is possibly the most vicious, cut-throat industry there is.
Of course a lot of companies in similarly tight spots did adapt and pull through. But this required strong managament and a clear understanding of the computer market. Commodore (mis)management is something we're all sadly familar with.
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"New custom based Amiga, ...?"
Every cent is better spent in updating tha AmigaOS. Sorry.
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I'd rather like to see AmigaOS for x86. Really.
Maybe an option to buy a custom machine based on x86 technology, somewhat like the SGI PCs.
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DaveP wrote:
Your assumption is based on the market conditions remaining static.
I'm not assuming nor guessing nor speculating. I have been a computer salesman for almost 10 years, and I have sold both Amiga and C= PC, amongst other.
Commodore offered me to be the official promotor of the Amiga computer in Spain (when they even had an office in my country), but I did not accepted (one of my best friends did), so I can speak with a little knowledge at least... :-)
C= entered the PC market as a clone manufacturer with too high
expectations for the time. If they had survived 1994/5 market conditions they
would have dropped the Amiga
The Commodore PC range was one of the WORST line of computers I have ever seen: they were poorly equipped and very expensive compared to many other brands.
In the meantime, the Amiga was selling very, very well, with nearly no advertisement.
They took the wrong
gamble ( that the PC business would remain loss making and that the
Amiga business would grow ) and died.
I cannot agree. When they jumped into the PC market wagon, it was already moving, faster and faster. But they did it with the wrong foot... And, meanwhile, they let the Amiga market slowly die, with no support and a wrong and late developing of new models. A1200 and A4000 were more a patch than a new development: they were good designs cut down just to reduce costs, since they were already losing money in the PC side.
The Amiga was NEVER popular as a serious PC contender for
desktop or small office use and sales were dipping in 1993-1994
anyway.
It was in multimedia (graphics, sound) and games, which has proved to be the most powerfull market.
Even the PC sales fuelled by Doom would not have been hindered by
the A1200, A4000, A4000T trio and there was no way that AAA based
machines were on the horizon as contenders for the games niche
before 1996 based on C=s development to shelf typical lifecycle.
That was one of the main mistakes: too much time between new machines, but they were occupied developing and promoting PCs... :-(
For once it would be nice if people could accept the realities of the
situation and the past.
To accept something you have to know it first, and to know it the right way, not with half-truths and misinformations.
Without that they are easy pickings for the
non Amiga zealous and have unrealistic expectations of what
Amiga Inc and co can and should do.
That's why we all should know the truth about the past, if we don't want to repeat it.
Saluditos,
Ferrán.
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Isn't AmigaOne some kind of computer with custom chip set? Today everything which is non-X86 could be considered being custom.
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itix wrote:
Isn't AmigaOne some kind of computer with custom chip set? Today everything which is non-X86 could be considered being custom.
That would be an incorrect assertion. The "new" "Amiga" uses industry standard BIOS (some tweaking by Hyperion aside), board logic, and system buses. It is, in effect, a PC system board with a BIOS and onboard logic configured to utilize a PPC CPU instead of an x86 (Intel, AMD, Via-Cyrix etc.)
So in the over all the new mainboards use commodity parts instead of parts built specifically for that mainboard.
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Ferry wrote:
DaveP wrote:
Your assumption is based on the market conditions remaining static.
I'm not assuming nor guessing nor speculating. I have been a computer salesman for almost 10 years, and I have sold both Amiga and C= PC, amongst other.
You are assuming that the market conditions remained static. Let me show you:
The Commodore PC range was one of the WORST line of computers I have ever seen: they were poorly equipped and very expensive compared to many other brands.
Right. There. Thats a static assumption. The A600 and A500+ were
the WORST Amiga computers I ever used. Complete waste of space - you know
what C= did? Brought out a new version. Now the market conditions
for the PC changed significantly in 1994/5. There the rebranding and
re-using of off the shelf parts in common started to increase and prices dropped.
Dell and IBM ( I happen to know one of those inside out btw ) started
to cut their costs by outsourcing component manufacture. The cost
of producing a GOOD PC compat machine dropped like a stone.
Because C= stopped investing in its line ( because it got burnt ) by
over-reacting and misunderstanding the problem in its PC line they
did the wrong thing. They dropped the PC market which boomed enormously
in the following three to five years which could have cross subsidised
the already falling sales of Amigas.
In the meantime, the Amiga was selling very, very well, with nearly no advertisement.
That might have been true in Spain, it was even partly true in the UK but
you are ignoring the market trend which was away from the Amiga. Again you
are assuming static market conditions.
They took the wrong
gamble ( that the PC business would remain loss making and that the
Amiga business would grow ) and died.
I cannot agree. When they jumped into the PC market wagon, it was already moving, faster and faster. But they did it with the wrong foot...
No you just agreed with me. I said that the PC business was loss making
and they took the gamble that it would REMAIN loss making and were wrong. The
market factors changed within a year of them exiting the PC business
licking their wounds. If they had changed their business approach within
the PC market then they would have ended up cash rich.
And, meanwhile, they let the Amiga market slowly die, with no support and a wrong and late developing of new models. A1200 and A4000 were more a patch than a new development: they were good designs cut down just to reduce costs, since they were already losing money in the PC side.
Hang on. You just said that the Amiga market was doing really well. Now
you agree with me - they let the Amiga market slowly die. In fact the
A1200 and A4000 would never have made inroads into PC magnitude
sales - at best they would have kept even for say 12 months.
The Amiga was NEVER popular as a serious PC contender for
desktop or small office use and sales were dipping in 1993-1994
anyway.
It was in multimedia (graphics, sound) ..
Wrong on one count there - sound was the Atari domain and then
PC solutions took over early 90s in the sales ranks. The second count
graphics. C'mon. Even in 1991 we were using PCs with 24bit graphics
cards that could run rings around the Amigas for image quality.
The specific TINY niche of "multimedia" displays the Amiga had
a small and SHRINKING market in.
and games, which has proved to be the most powerfull market.
The Amiga was practically dead as a games machine that could
contend with the PCs running Doom, Heretic etc in 1994. Akiko was
not powerful enough to reverse that issue and with ID software saying
"there will never be an Amiga port from us" signed and sealed the
death knoll of the Amiga game head apart from the obsessioonal
and delusional.
Even the PC sales fuelled by Doom would not have been hindered by
the A1200, A4000, A4000T trio and there was no way that AAA based
machines were on the horizon as contenders for the games niche
before 1996 based on C=s development to shelf typical lifecycle.
That was one of the main mistakes: too much time between new machines, but they were occupied developing and promoting PCs... :-(
No. I disagree. Their biggest mistake was not including a flicker fixer in
the A1200 and A4000 as standard so even those of us stupid enough
to buy monitors ( increasing the cost of the machines beyond that of a
bog standard PC with a 24 bit graphics card ) got permenant eyestrain
and were laughed at for the ultra-slow display.
For once it would be nice if people could accept the realities of the
situation and the past.
To accept something you have to know it first, and to know it the right way, not with half-truths and misinformations.
Without that they are easy pickings for the
non Amiga zealous and have unrealistic expectations of what
Amiga Inc and co can and should do.
That's why we all should know the truth about the past, if we don't want to repeat it.
You said it. Read it and weep.
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@JurassicCamper
I like the idea of a replacment motherboard for an A1200 :-) It would
be nice to have a computer that I would have on my desk without taking
up all of the desksapce!
It wouldn't be the best machine to try and upgrade but as you say the
old "trap door" slot could really just be a PCI header and if you
wanted to you could put it into a tower as well.
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My feeling is that, had the innovation at the start continued, with NINE more years development .... a 2003 Commodore Amiga could have done a lot more that just "talk" to its operator!!!!!
(http://home.iprimus.com.au/vortexau/images3/A1girl.jpg)
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DaveP wrote:
You are assuming that the market conditions remained static. Let me show you:
Oh, no! You ARE assuming that I'm assuming -pfew, this is getting difficult :-) -
No, perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough. What I was trying to say was:
The market was changing so fast (opposed to static :-) ) that C= failed to analyse correctly the situation. 1992, when A1200 and A4000 were presented, was simply too late. No company can compete in such a growing and changing market without a single update -and I mean a REAL update, not a cosmetic one (i.e., A500+, A600)- in nearly 7 years. SEVEN YEARS! This period of time is way too long in computer industry. And when the update comes to light, it turn out to be a cut down design.
In the meantime, they jumped into the PC market with a line of computers that were already DEAD as competitive product
Right. There. Thats a static assumption. The A600 and A500+ were
the WORST Amiga computers I ever used. Complete waste of space - you know
I agree here. But no with the assumed assumption :-)
what C= did? Brought out a new version. Now the market conditions
for the PC changed significantly in 1994/5. There the rebranding and
re-using of off the shelf parts in common started to increase and prices dropped.
Dell and IBM ( I happen to know one of those inside out btw ) started
to cut their costs by outsourcing component manufacture. The cost
of producing a GOOD PC compat machine dropped like a stone.
That's the REAL question! Why C= did not joined this way of doing things, just as Apple did? Simply bad management decisions. Now you can see where both companies are...
Because C= stopped investing in its line ( because it got burnt ) by
over-reacting and misunderstanding the problem in its PC line they
did the wrong thing.
The real problem was that they didn't recover their investment made in the PC line, and nearly abandoned the line that was really selling well. Of course, any abandoned thing only gets worse and worse...
No you just agreed with me. I said that the PC business was loss making
and they took the gamble that it would REMAIN loss making and were wrong.
No, I don't agree. They wanted to enter the PC market because they thought it was the 'serious' market and profitable, but they did it the WRONG way with uncompetitive products. Bad management decisions=bad investments, bad investments=losses, too many losses=bankruptcy.
Hang on. You just said that the Amiga market was doing really well. Now
you agree with me - they let the Amiga market slowly die. In fact the
A1200 and A4000 would never have made inroads into PC magnitude
sales - at best they would have kept even for say 12 months.
Agreed. They appeared too late and were not as good as expected, but that was a very bad management decision.
Wrong on one count there - sound was the Atari domain and then
Atari domain was MIDI, not sound, at least not by itself.
PC solutions took over early 90s in the sales ranks. The second count
graphics. C'mon. Even in 1991 we were using PCs with 24bit graphics
cards that could run rings around the Amigas for image quality.
Agreed again. But read my previous comments on A1200 and A4000: too late and less than expected.
The specific TINY niche of "multimedia" displays the Amiga had
a small and SHRINKING market in.
Again, I think it was due to a bad C= move. As we say in my country, "Quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta", or "Don't byte off more than you can chew" .
No. I disagree. Their biggest mistake was not including a flicker fixer in
the A1200 and A4000 as standard so even those of us stupid enough
to buy monitors ( increasing the cost of the machines
Agreed again. The good direction was the A3000. That was a modern design, and its evolution was even better and could have been ready long before, but as said previously, they wanted to cut it out.
That's why we all should know the truth about the past, if we don't want to repeat it.
You said it. Read it and weep.
Too old for weeping for such things :-)
Saluditos,
Ferrán
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What they should have done is take an NVidia GPU and a standard audio chip and make a custom card, with a custom 2d 256 bit blitter, or multi-register blitter (I don't know how it works), and have upto 512 Megs of "chip" ram on the card. Then an x86 AOS4.0 would only work in conjunction with it.
Or something like that. Would have been easier than the MB stuff they're going through now.
AmigaOne! "She's so unusual!", says Amy the mascot.
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What killed the Amiga?
First, they should have used a 68020 in the A1000. (They wanted to, but cost-cutting got in the way.)
From here 68020 (no EC's), min. Also, interject, here and there, unit shortages, some of which were caused by wasting their time with the pc's.
A2000 and A500
Flaws, no fast ram, no sockets for extra ram (with a 68020, an A2000 could have had 8 SIMM sockets for upto 32 megs, system memory). 16 instead of 32 bit Zorro bus (not sure about that). Should of had a MIDI port. A500 no real time clock. A2000, unremovable battery. (How much did those rat-finks make people spend on ram expansion cards, if you had that money now, you could buy an A1).
Bridge board that cost more than a whole pc. (8086, and 80286).*
A600*
Spending money on designing and selling PC 10-III, the whole line.*
CDTV TOOO expensive and underpowered.*
A3000, why the heck did they make the 16 MHz version? Not enough slots.
AGA, 2 meg limit, too low.
A1200, no clock, no fast ram (Should of had 2 chip, 2 fast.), no sockects for ram, should have been a 68020, not the EC.
CD32 tooo expensive, no fast ram, and needed 68030.
A4000, not enough slots, also didn't they release an EC version (THAT they shouldn't have done). Not enough SIMM sockets on the MB.
*I'd like to get my hands on the guy who dreamed that up. Total disaster.
But the last nail in the AMIGA coffin was the EOL 680x0 by moto.
Because, if they had made a 900 MHz 68070, even today, someone would make an accelerator card with it.
AmigaOne! Alternate timeline.
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A well oiled, smooth running, efficient AOS (4.5?) running on the latest AMD or Intel CPU would be my dream.
Oh to be out from under MS....Linux is looking better and better. :-o
Bob C.
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"New custom based Amiga, Whats your dream Amiga then?"
My dream Amiga is of course No Amiga, so to speak.
No more custom jobs please, the current direction with using third-party hardware is the right thing to do (minus the compulsory licensing/dongling/bundling stupidity of course, since that removes the advantages with using off the shelf stuff. Sadly, someone's still pretending that there's a need for "Amigas").