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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Aniway on July 07, 2012, 11:29:06 PM
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Has anyone ever had a problem when working intimately with the 680xx of being disturbed by clarity from mobile analog 680xx's in action?
I was wondering if this was what had bankrupted Commodore, because of perceived peace-of-mind vulnerabilities and superceding the unbroken cohesion of the home computing experience.
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Has anyone ever had a problem when working intimately with the 680xx of being disturbed by clarity from mobile analog 680xx's in action?
I was wondering if this was what had bankrupted Commodore, because of perceived peace-of-mind vulnerabilities and superceding the unbroken cohesion of the home computing experience.
No, Commodore was a company with idiots at the helm.
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I've gotta agree with Pentad. Commodore went bankrupt due to repeated, well-aimed shots at their own feet.
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No, Commodore was a company with idiots at the helm.
Hi,
Yeah, thats what happens when you let them foreigners run the helm, they stop all progress, bankrupt the company, and then take off with the money.
Everything was fine when Jack ran the company.
smerf
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Keep in mind that the ruthless despots who ran Commodore (into the ground) had some absolute geniuses designing there actual hardware (not the frigging models) and software; who else runs a sewer through a playground? No, wrong punch line; who else runs preemptive multitasking in a Gaming Machine?
Oh, that's right, that earlier answer was to what type of engineer is God -- a civil engineer. Now the earlier punchline
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Smerf,
You are aware that Jack Tramel was a Polish emigrant who was in Auschwitz concentration camp (for being Jewish, not Polish). After the war he came to Canada and established his typewriter repair company. So he actually was a foreigner, at least to non-Polish, non-Canadian persons.
Actually if you believe that "native Americans" crossed the Bering Straits via a land bridge thousands of years ago, all Amercans are "foreigners." The Latin origin, Foras, means [coming from] outside [lands]. Hence everybody is a "foreigner" when not from a common land
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Has anyone ever had a problem when working intimately with the 680xx of being disturbed by clarity from mobile analog 680xx's in action?
I was wondering if this was what had bankrupted Commodore, because of perceived peace-of-mind vulnerabilities and superceding the unbroken cohesion of the home computing experience.
In a word, no. In the last couple of years, Commodore was run by thieves. Why Gould and Ali were never prosecuted is beyond me....
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Who owned Commodore?
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Who owned Commodore? The investors. Who killed Commodore? Gould primarily with help from others. How did they kill Commodore? With greed, poor advertising, and stupid marketing decisions that are complex: the C64 should have progressed to a 16-bit version and the Amiga line should have been cleaned up (read Steve Jobs bio on how he turned Apple around from near failure). This is my opinion
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Who owned Commodore? The investors. Who killed Commodore? Gould primarily with help from others. How did they kill Commodore? With greed, poor advertising, and stupid marketing decisions that are complex: the C64 should have progressed to a 16-bit version and the Amiga line should have been cleaned up (read Steve Jobs bio on how he turned Apple around from near failure). This is my opinion
Yes, a 65816 based C64 successor. A big missed opportunity, IMHO.
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There was a window of oppertunity for a C64 with a Z80 for some more processing power ;)
What screwed Commodore was downsizing essential development (R&D), nonexistant advertising, lack of straight line of model features. This seems to be caused by Gould allowing Ali (and other?) which lacked visions and were technological incomptent in to a controlling position.
Customers just won't spend money on the same crap in different packaging. It better have some cool features in the hardware.
Conclusion: Spend R&D, advertise, save money for hard times, have a vision!
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Ok, 'nuff said on that
Back to the 68000: an excellent CPU choice for its memory map. Straight up memory access with plenty of helpful traps to catch errors. The 8086 (please, only a cheap fool would use an 8088, OOPs!) had a paged based memory map and fewer traps for errors. Now both were readily available and reasonably priced. Both were simple without FPU & MMU. Speed ranges were similar. The 68000 was a better design for a multitasking environment with the 8086 requiring the LIM 4.0 paged memory model to use more than 640k. In upward development the 80386 began to show slightly better advanced and costs fell with licencing to AMD.
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Alpha seemed neat too, Guess PowerPC were too. But all good processors seems to vanish. Or is there any currently nice processor that is resonable priced?
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Yes, a 65816 based C64 successor. A big missed opportunity, IMHO.
G65SC816? Ugh.
In upward development the 80386 began to show slightly better advanced and costs fell with licencing to AMD.
AMD had licenses stretching back to the 8086.
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In a word, no. In the last couple of years, Commodore was run by thieves. Why Gould and Ali were never prosecuted is beyond me....
I thought the beauty of the corporate model -- I presume C= was a corporation -- was that the stockholders hold regular elections and can vote out anyone who does a bad job. If Gould and Ali did such a bad job, why not vote them out "next election" and hire more popular leadership?
But of course it's too late for that. Still, I gotta wonder why the corporate model failed.
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I thought the beauty of the corporate model -- I presume C= was a corporation -- was that the stockholders hold regular elections and can vote out anyone who does a bad job. If Gould and Ali did such a bad job, why not vote them out "next election" and hire more popular leadership?
Gould was the major stock holder & he liked Ali, because he said all the right things to him.
Jack Tramiel wasn't the nicest person, but he had a vision and managed to screw people to achieve it. I don't think that Gould ever appreciated how much he needed Jack, money from the c64 was rolling in and he could afford to pay for some yes men to massage his ego.
The problem with stock holders is that all they have brought to the table is money, they don't necessarily know if someone is doing a good job or not.
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Because Gould likely believed he had hired a competent manager and stuck with it until it was too late.
Money doesn't equal good judgment, though they may coincide. He might still be smart but in this case it failed.
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Gould was the major stock holder & he liked Ali, because he said all the right things to him.
Jack Tramiel wasn't the nicest person, but he had a vision and managed to screw people to achieve it. I don't think that Gould ever appreciated how much he needed Jack, money from the c64 was rolling in and he could afford to pay for some yes men to massage his ego.
The problem with stock holders is that all they have brought to the table is money, they don't necessarily know if someone is doing a good job or not.
In fact, when the bodily excrements really made contact with the air circulation device, Commodore had moved the company to the Bahamas. Mainly for taxation reasons, I guess, but it was also an efficient way to stop shareholders attending any kind of election. IIRC a small group of shareholders raised money for one person to go there and voice their complaints, which was of course ignored.
Also, the downfall went fast and not all of it is to blame on Gould/Ali. In 1992 things might have looked bleak but Amiga was still the leading games/home computer (in Europe at least). Buying a PC was not only seen as weird but rather downright irresponsible - they were too expensive. Then in 1993, Doom came along and changed everything. By 1994, PCs were so cheap and powerful that custom hardware simply couldn't compete. Not only C= but also Atari went bust. By 1995, my friends had at least 66 MHz 486 boxes while I bought a 28 Mhz 030 card for my A1200 which cost more than the computer itself. Except for Apple (arguably - they have made the switch to X86 and what really turned their luck was the iPod), there hasn't been a single successful maker of "custom hardware" home computers since the mid-1990s.
Still. With better marketing and sounder R'n'D desicions, the classic Amiga as we know it might have lasted a few years longer as a fringe element for the already initiated. But then again, it kind of did anyway. If it would have been around today, it would probably be kind of like a Mac or Linux box: A PC with another OS (Much like the AmigaOne actually is).
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Also, the downfall went fast and not all of it is to blame on Gould/Ali. In 1992 things might have looked bleak but Amiga was still the leading games/home computer (in Europe at least). Buying a PC was not only seen as weird but rather downright irresponsible - they were too expensive. Then in 1993, Doom came along and changed everything.
That was their lack of vision. They thought that they could keep repeating the same success without the right r&d.
It all started going wrong after the a500 was released, before it even became successful. That was when they should have been designing the A1200 & it should have had chunky video modes.
AAA was never going to make them the same kind of money.
With the correct management they had the people to build it. In the end it was Sony that designed the next great games machine hardware.
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Maybe FPGA:s is the "new Amiga". In the sense that they offer custom power. NOT in the sense that they can implement the original Amiga.
Thought the PS2 analogy is interesting.