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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: SysAdmin on April 08, 2014, 03:09:13 PM
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News from Fran Blanche on YouTube.
Dave Haynie talks at VCF East on April 6, 2014 about developing the various Amiga systems, up into the last days of Commodore in April 1994. Introduction by Bil Herd. This was a fascinating hour of must-hear stories for any serious Commodore fan. Dave even wears his Commodore Death-Bed Vigil shirt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcr2CFV0T4I
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News from Fran Blanche on YouTube.
Dave Haynie talks at VCF East on April 6, 2014 about developing the various Amiga systems, up into the last days of Commodore in April 1994. Introduction by Bil Herd. This was a fascinating hour of must-hear stories for any serious Commodore fan. Dave even wears his Commodore Death-Bed Vigil shirt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcr2CFV0T4I
Really enjoyed watching that. Ta very much.
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Dave talks about the past again.
Ever notice he never has anything good to say about the present?
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Dave talks about the past again.
Ever notice he never has anything good to say about the present?
Well, quite a few of us, amigans and in general, do have a certain degree of intrest in the past.
On my harddrive there are tons of historical documentary being narrated by the heros/innevators of the past.
Jim Lowell, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz....long list (yes, I have a semi-unhealthy admiration of the old NASA crew).
They still do documentaries and speeches on their past developments and expiriences. I for one find it intresting to listen to, even tho its "anicent" history, with archaic technology.
The same could be said about people like Haynie, the guys that have first hand information about the research and development of Commodore technology. I would not be suprised him (like others) are invited with a speech on the birth of Amiga in mind.
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I could listen to stuff/stories like that all day. I was hoping to attend VCF but couldn't justify a trip knowing there would be videos a few days later. :)
I'd still love a trip to CommVex, or maybe AmiWest. I went to VCF a couple years back, but no one else close to me is interested in the retro scene and not enough C= content at VCF for me to justify the trip on my own again. Boring ride. :)
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NASA I can understand, Haynie...not so much.
Jay Miner on the other hand...
Actually, there are a lot of people in the Amiga community I greatly respect, some of whom are still around developing.
Dave gets too much attention.
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Iggy, why rate their "worth" in that way?
And either way, Jay Miner has been dead for a good while, so Im sorry to say they "have to settle" for Haynie.
Gene Kranz gets tons of attention for example thru the Apollo 13 ordeal, while Chris Kraft was his mentor and "inventor" of Central command/mission control. Its not until you watch some documentaries/read some history you realise each of them are important parts of the whole construct.
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NASA I can understand, Haynie...not so much.
Jay Miner on the other hand...
Actually, there are a lot of people in the Amiga community I greatly respect, some of whom are still around developing.
Dave gets too much attention.
Understand where you're coming from Iggy, and forums are for the expression of ideas and opinions but expressing a negative opinion of someone you're branding as negative is.. Well you know, hypocritical.
I'm not really interested in what Dave Haynie has to say either but I'm not gonna bag him.
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The people with the negative comments, didn't actually watch the video that is linked too?
He covers some of the technical apsects and that was very interesting.
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Loved the video! loved the talk of AAA and AA as well as the nyx.
Also I have one of those German A2K's and the memory card to go in it (although there a 2630 in the slot)
really nice talk touching on very interesting subjects!
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Dave talks about the past again.
Ever notice he never has anything good to say about the present?
Dave's a hardware guy, he talks about hardware... There is no new Amiga hardware, so he doesn't talk about the present.
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Fantastic video with some great history! :)
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Thanks a lot! I had a great time listening last night when I couldn't sleep :)
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Dave's a hardware guy, he talks about hardware... There is no new Amiga hardware, so he doesn't talk about the present.
Dave's done plenty of talking about software, which might be the core of why I resent his opinions.
Although the point about being negative about negativity sounds pretty valid.
As far as there not being any new Amiga hardware...
What's the stuff the runs OS4 (when you're not running it on modified legacy hardware)?
Then again, I don't feel like arguing that point yet again.
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Loved the vid! Some tidbits in there I was unaware of and glad to see people like Herd and Haynie are still around to talk about this stuff that is so important to us. :)
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Dave talks about the past again.
Dave Haynie's talk was limited to CBM from 1986-1994, and he barely finished his presentation within his alloted time. Hardly, any time for questions and no time to expound on the current state of Amiga.
Back from VCF East in New Jersey,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Dave's done plenty of talking about software, which might be the core of why I resent his opinions.
Although the point about being negative about negativity sounds pretty valid.
As far as there not being any new Amiga hardware...
What's the stuff the runs OS4 (when you're not running it on modified legacy hardware)?
Then again, I don't feel like arguing that point yet again.
So you think Dave has an arrogant attitude toward AmigaOS 4 because he doesn't recognize it as a true successor to the Amiga? He has a history in and a connection to what once was a big technology leading achievement in computing. Even though the Amiga is rarely recognized, it was an early innovation in multimedia computing that sold millions. Dave has no connection to AmigaOS 4. What did AmigaOS 4 achieve? How many hundred active users are there? You have a right to your opinion but I don't agree. Dave Haynie and Bil Herd are both really kool and nice guys. It's not like they are getting rich going to these shows.
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So you think Dave has an arrogant attitude toward AmigaOS 4 because he doesn't recognize it as a true successor to the Amiga? He has a history in and a connection to what once was a big technology leading achievement in computing. Even though the Amiga is rarely recognized, it was an early innovation in multimedia computing that sold millions. Dave has no connection to AmigaOS 4. What did AmigaOS 4 achieve? How many hundred active users are there? You have a right to your opinion but I don't agree. Dave Haynie and Bil Herd are both really kool and nice guys. It's not like they are getting rich going to these shows.
I could be wrong, but if I recall what I've read in the past accurately I don't think Dave doubts OS4 is a true successor. I think he just doesn't really see the point of the current path OS4 and related hardware are taking. Not that it matters, but I agree.
I also think he has made comments in the past indicating that he suspects MorphOS uses or used illegally obtained AmigaOS source code, which may be Iggy's big issue with him.
I could very well be wrong however, so if anyone can correct me please do.
I do have this to say - I have never thought he was one to run his mouth or lie or even exaggerate. He seems very down to earth, very nice, and very well informed. If he has an issue with something I think there's probably something there.
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I could be wrong, but if I recall what I've read in the past accurately I don't think Dave doubts OS4 is a true successor. I think he just doesn't really see the point of the current path OS4 and related hardware are taking. Not that it matters, but I agree.
I also think it was the wrong path but that is easier to say now that PPC is becoming less competitive and new AmigaOS 4 hardware costs thousands of dollars and sells in the hundreds of units. Ironically, it was the arrogance of some of the people behind AmigaOS 4 that turned me off to going that route. The AmigaOS 4/MOS split and the high price of hardware also turned me off. It was never the choice of PPC although I do like 68k better.
I also think he has made comments in the past indicating that he suspects MorphOS uses or used illegally obtained AmigaOS source code, which may be Iggy's big issue with him.
I could very well be wrong however, so if anyone can correct me please do.
I heard the same. I recall that Piru challenged him on it which he basically ignored. Dave may have regretted he said it but everyone listens to a celebrity. It's not like it matters at this point anyway.
I do have this to say - I have never thought he was one to run his mouth or lie or even exaggerate. He seems very down to earth, very nice, and very well informed. If he has an issue with something I think there's probably something there.
I agree again :).
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The entire reason for these talks was the history of development of the computers.
Chuck Peddle back in 2007 was brought in to talk about the PET. no one expected him to talk about the current state of the PET. Bob Russel and Bill Herd were also there to talk a bit about post Peddle and PET 8Bit
Bill Herd in 2012 was brought in to talk about the development of the 8bit line he was involved in through the 128.
Dave Haynie was brought in to talk about Amiga development he was involved in under Commodore.
Are there other people who could have talked about these things? Yes. Haynie gets a lot of buzz since he goes out and talks about it. Herd is the same, he goes out and talks about it.
I don't see a reason to be negative about the guy for, when asked, saying yes he will go give a talk about the time at Commodore
Evidenced by the people who attend these, there are folks interested in Computer history like this. Not just people who were into the scene back then but also people who are new to it or were owners of competing computers back then.
Don't bust on the guy because he doesn't talk about OS4 or MorphOS (and I do use and love MorphOS on my PowerBook) since those aren't what he was involved in engineering for.
He talks about what I expect him to. Amiga 2000-4000 era and AAA which was in development when Commodore went under.
And finally, Dave gave his explanation about the MorphOS statements back on April 2011. Seem pretty cut and dry to me.
Far as I've seen, not that my research is exhaustive on it, the MorphOS folks haven't exactly come out and stated they have not used any Amiga code, or Phase5 code which is the code in which Commodore owned code was seen
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I also think it was the wrong path but that is easier to say now that PPC is becoming less competitive and new AmigaOS 4 hardware costs thousands of dollars and sells in the hundreds of units.
Custom hardware in small units is always going to be less competitive. If they were selling millions of units then PPC could be competitive, it worked for the PS3/360. The only way to be as cost effective as a PC is to use an off the shelf PC motherboard.
I think Dave didn't mention post commodore because he went off and lived his life and did other non-commodore things.
The talk was interesting, but like most of these talks a lot of the information has been talked about before.
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And finally, Dave gave his explanation about the MorphOS statements back on April 2011. Seem pretty cut and dry to me.
Far as I've seen, not that my research is exhaustive on it, the MorphOS folks haven't exactly come out and stated they have not used any Amiga code, or Phase5 code which is the code in which Commodore owned code was seen
No your "research" on this is pretty lame.
And Dave's comments were based on hearsay.
When you consider the differences in hardware and the basic structural differences between Amiga OS and MorphOS, the idea of using any Amiga code is pretty ludicrous.
OS4 made that attempt and that was probably a large part of the delay in releasing it.
While you all seem enamored by the "huge" developments of the past (none of which were particularly original), I stay in the present.
BTW - Maybe its just that I was never that impressed with Commodore, its hardware, or its engineers.
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I for one enjoyed the talk and learned or relearned a few things, always interesting to hear about the history, particularly the models that never made it public. Don't see how these talks can be a bad thing in any way.
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Don't see how these talks can be a bad thing in any way.
Some people are just never happy! :)
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Dave's done plenty of talking about software, which might be the core of why I resent his opinions.
Although the point about being negative about negativity sounds pretty valid.
Hehehe :-)
As far as there not being any new Amiga hardware...
What's the stuff the runs OS4 (when you're not running it on modified legacy hardware)?
Very boring commodity hardware with an overpriced, underpowered CPU originally designed for embedded applications.
[/quote]
Then again, I don't feel like arguing that point yet again.[/QUOTE]
I have loads of different platforms, including a bunch of PPC machines (and a BlizzPPC), so I'm happy to discuss the point.
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While you all seem enamored by the "huge" developments of the past (none of which were particularly original), I stay in the present.
BTW - Maybe its just that I was never that impressed with Commodore, its hardware, or its engineers.
Those who don't learn from the past end up repeating the same mistakes. The Amiga was very innovative out of the box. The technology was amazing in 1985. The Amiga had high resolution blitter (Amiga coined the term and had patents) accelerated gfx with 4096 colors possible on screen, 4 voice stereo sound which still sounds good today and pre-emptive multitasking in a near real time OS with bitmapped graphical GUI in color. Compare this to the 1st Macintosh which came out less than a year earlier and the PC of the time.
Dave talks about the Amiga 3000+ with AGA, 68040 and AT&T DSP the engineers had ready in 1991 but C= management killed it. The Amiga engineers approached AT&T and added the DSP before Apple or Atari but C= management killed it. The AAA chip set would have been industry leading but C= management delayed it by being cheap before they killed it. Dave and another engineer were able to slip a few extra lines for video in the expansion/video slot of the Amiga 2000 fortunately as that allowed the Video Toaster to happen which C= management had nothing to do with and couldn't even figure out what kind of machine to sell for it (they cut SCSI from the 4000 which was commonly used for video hard drives and it barely had a big enough power supply). C= engineers were able to slip a few ideas past the incompetent management. The initial Jay Miner Amiga was tremendously innovative before C= bought them. What has AmigaOS 4/Hyperion innovated? What patents do they hold? What OS features have never been done before?
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Original?
Not really.
Xerox laid the ground work for this type of system, and then over priced their systems (as did Apple with the Lisa).
The Amiga was also slightly over priced, but in comparison it was much more of a commodity priced appliance.
Inevitably everything went in this direction.
Ease of adoption and intuitive use sold this approach.
But again, original?
No.
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Original?
Not really.
Xerox laid the ground work for this type of system, and then over priced their systems (as did Apple with the Lisa).
The Amiga was also slightly over priced, but in comparison it was much more of a commodity priced appliance.
Inevitably everything went in this direction.
Ease of adoption and intuitive use sold this approach.
But again, original?
No.
There's nothing new under the sun, but at the time it was made and even a few years thereafter, the Amiga was untouchable for the price. Nobody can deny that. If they do they're lying.
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Original?
Not really.
Xerox laid the ground work for this type of system, and then over priced their systems (as did Apple with the Lisa).
The Amiga was also slightly over priced, but in comparison it was much more of a commodity priced appliance.
Inevitably everything went in this direction.
Ease of adoption and intuitive use sold this approach.
But again, original?
No.
The Amiga brought together a bunch of different technologies in a single well thought out package in a format that people found useful to use. I consider that original.
There was nothing original about the components that made up the iPad, but until Apple put the right parts into the right package, no one was even slightly interested in tablet computing.
Engineering is always about compromise, and it takes a while to get the balance right.
The Amiga was a breath of fresh air when released and was such a strong design, it held its own for almost 6 years with little or no serious upgrades!
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The Amiga brought together a bunch of different technologies in a single well thought out package in a format that people found useful to use. I consider that original.
There was nothing original about the components that made up the iPad, but until Apple put the right parts into the right package, no one was even slightly interested in tablet computing.
Engineering is always about compromise, and it takes a while to get the balance right.
The Amiga was a breath of fresh air when released and was such a strong design, it held its own for almost 6 years with little or no serious upgrades!
"with little or no serious upgrades" - funny, most A.org posters would object to that, but I'd agree. Dave and company's enhancements were minor.
The iPad isn't that impressive. And, as stated before, the elements that made up the Amiga had their foundations in other company's research.
Edit - Then again, looking back over my posts, my attitude in this thread has been pretty fecal eyed.
I like old Sun systems for similar reasons, and they didn't invent a great deal of their earlier technology either.
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Amiga had the CDTV. It was expensive and there wasn't really an upgrade path for it.
For something like that you need a lot of adopters. With a large market you have an awesome appliance.
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"with little or no serious upgrades" - funny, most A.org posters would object to that, but I'd agree. Dave and company's enhancements were minor.
I agree with that and I think Dave Haynie would also. C= management had their heads somewhere in a dark place that doesn't smell good. They didn't understand the technology they bought and owned. They didn't know what to do with it. Computers before that were generally created and then upgraded and/or cost reduced and then went on to a whole new design. Many of the engineers did see the potential though. They created the hardware of the future in many cases only to have it stopped by management and budget shortfalls (also management's fault). The engineers were frustrated. Jay Miner was not happy with what happened to the Amiga either. He wanted to make upgrades. Very few of the original engineers survived the C= purchase and relocation. Dave doesn't talk about this because he wasn't there yet. I wish Bil Herd would have given some more C= history before Dave and the reasons why he left when he did.
Edit - Then again, looking back over my posts, my attitude in this thread has been pretty fecal eyed.
I like old Sun systems for similar reasons, and they didn't invent a great deal of their earlier technology either.
The Amiga is pretty special even it ultimately did not live up to it's potential. Don't blame the Amiga/C= engineers for it's failures though.
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Fair enough.
Commodore management and their bean counters screwed the pooch.
I'll try to lay off Dave over resentment about an old comment.
It is worth noting, though, that he didn't address Piru's post.
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"with little or no serious upgrades" - funny, most A.org posters would object to that, but I'd agree. Dave and company's enhancements were minor.
If you take the time to watch Dave's awesome talk, he says clealy that the C= engineers were constantly trying to push the technology... But the C= management would cancel any project that looked even slightly expensive... We were stuck with OCS for 5 years... Followed by ECS, and as Dave explains in the video, a very slight upgrade to AGA... Which was basically ECS where the C= had managed to figure out how to double the data rate on the bus for no extra cost...
The iPad isn't that impressive. And, as stated before, the elements that made up the Amiga had their foundations in other company's research.
I said nothing about impressive, I answered your original assertion of original. The only thing impressive about the ipad (other then the battery life) is the quantities in which people purchased it...
The iPad was an original approach to building table computers, by taking well established technologies and put them them together in an original package. :)
Edit - Then again, looking back over my posts, my attitude in this thread has been pretty fecal eyed.
I like old Sun systems for similar reasons, and they didn't invent a great deal of their earlier technology either.
You don't have to like Dave Haynie to watch and enjoy the video :)
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If you take the time to watch Dave's awesome talk, he says clealy that the C= engineers were constantly trying to push the technology... But the C= management would cancel any project that looked even slightly expensive... We were stuck with OCS for 5 years... Followed by ECS, and as Dave explains in the video, a very slight upgrade to AGA... Which was basically ECS where the C= had managed to figure out how to double the data rate on the bus for no extra cost...
It is not always so simple. A failed research project could drain all money out of the company and Amiga didnt boom until Amiga 500 was launched in 1987. In Amiga history 1987 is quite late.
I said nothing about impressive, I answered your original assertion of original. The only thing impressive about the ipad (other then the battery life) is the quantities in which people purchased it...
Hey, its 2048x1536 retina display on 10 inch display is quite nice. Many new laptops dont support more than 1920x1080 pixels.
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Hey, its 2048x1536 retina display on 10 inch display is quite nice. Many new laptops dont support more than 1920x1080 pixels.
Maybe you want to squint at a 2048 by 1536 resolution displayed on a 10 inch device, but I find even 1920 by 1080 on a 15 inch display a little too small.
Sure, great for pictures, lousy for most text displays.
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No your "research" on this is pretty lame.
And Dave's comments were based on hearsay.
When you consider the differences in hardware and the basic structural differences between Amiga OS and MorphOS, the idea of using any Amiga code is pretty ludicrous.
OS4 made that attempt and that was probably a large part of the delay in releasing it.
While you all seem enamored by the "huge" developments of the past (none of which were particularly original), I stay in the present.
BTW - Maybe its just that I was never that impressed with Commodore, its hardware, or its engineers.
Iggy: You are always an endless source of astonishment. I love reading your quirky interpretation of Amiga history. Facts be damned, you weave some of the most unique and entertaining conclusions of anyone here. I could buy you a beer and listen to your stories all night!
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It is worth noting, though, that he didn't address Piru's post.
Dave Haynie didn't address Piru's post on amiga.org but he did make some follow up statements on amigaworld.net:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=33564&forum=25&start=540&viewmode=flat&order=0#611325
hazydave wrote:
More importantly, the MorphOS guys have always vehemently denied that they stole any code.
The MorphOS project came from Phase V... after Phase V ended, former employees started up BPlan (eg, "Plan B"), who eventually merged with a couple folks from Thendic France to form Genesi.
Now, I do not have direct personal knowledge of all MorphOS sources. But back when Phase 5 was working on their "C Exec" and other things, starting to re-create AmigaOS themselves in the mid-1990s, I was working with Andy Finkel at Amiga Technologies. The Phase 5 guys were really after AT to use tome of their stuff (and pay them, natch). Andy did a code review of the C Kernel, and found it was copied from AmigaOS source code. In fact, even the comments were copied, assembler to C.
Maybe MorphOS is clean, maybe not. Maybe no one actually knows. But that's such a transgression, I wouldn't trust anyone involved in Phase 5, or any code that can be traced back to Phase 5.
And:
hazydave wrote:
@itix
They still don't understand clean room development. If you have seen the Amiga source code, you cannot produce a legally separate work-alike. So any copied comments are absolute proof that the code is dirty. And they're not rejecting my claim, if you go back into those linked documents, that the comments were copied.
Point in fact -- I just don't care about MorphOS. It's not AmigaOS, it might as well be Windows for all I care. If you like it, I'm pretty certain at this point no new legal entanglements are going to happen. If the MorphOS people would like to swear in public that not a line of code or comment is copied from the AmigaOS sources or derived from the Phase 5 code (fruits of a poisonous tree, in legal terms), I will not mention MorphOS again.
Personally, it doesn't matter as whoever owns the Amiga technology isn't using it (was the Amiga Inc. transfer quid pro quo?). Even if the MOS developers did copy the sources, it's like stealing from a dumpster. I hope they make good use of anything they have been able to save.
It is not always so simple. A failed research project could drain all money out of the company and Amiga didnt boom until Amiga 500 was launched in 1987. In Amiga history 1987 is quite late.
It did take a while for the Amiga to become popular as the price was high but C= was still making a lot of money off the C64 and paying it's high level executives millions as Haynie mentioned in the speech.
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No your "research" on this is pretty lame.
And Dave's comments were based on hearsay.
[...]
BTW - Maybe its just that I was never that impressed with Commodore, its hardware, or its engineers.
Hearsay only matters in court. But it really is totally irrelevant to me.
Something to keep in mind is, if not for the Commodore Hardware and its Engineers, there would be no Amiga OS 4 right now, or MorphOS.
They made Amigas that could hold accelerators, that allowed Phase 5 to make the PPC accelerator that needed PPC software that started them adding it to Amiga OS, that eventually evolved into MorphOS.
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It is not always so simple. A failed research project could drain all money out of the company and Amiga didnt boom until Amiga 500 was launched in 1987. In Amiga history 1987 is quite late.
But the C64 was selling well and the executives were very well paid... It wouldn't have hurt to put some money back into the Amiga ;)
Hey, its 2048x1536 retina display on 10 inch display is quite nice. Many new laptops dont support more than 1920x1080 pixels.
I was referring to the original iPad (which ignited the table computer revolution), and I agree... You'll have to prise my iPad out of my cold dead hand :)
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Maybe you want to squint at a 2048 by 1536 resolution displayed on a 10 inch device, but I find even 1920 by 1080 on a 15 inch display a little too small.
Sure, great for pictures, lousy for most text displays.
??? -Parse error...
Actually text is what makes the ultra high resolution iPad display worth it... Pictures are naturally antialiased, with few sharp edges and so looks fine even at low resolution (as long as you have a high colour gamut)... But text looks horrible on low res displays no matter what... On the iPad it looks like printed text!
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??? -Parse error...
Actually text is what makes the ultra high resolution iPad display worth it... Pictures are naturally antialiased, with few sharp edges and so looks fine even at low resolution (as long as you have a high colour gamut)... But text looks horrible on low res displays no matter what... On the iPad it looks like printed text!
Iggy made assumption that higher resolution would mean cramming more text and images to 10 inch display which is not case here. It is just that text and images are displayed in higher detail.
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hazydave:
If the MorphOS people would like to swear in public that not a line of code or comment is copied from the AmigaOS sources or derived from the Phase 5 code (fruits of a poisonous tree, in legal terms), I will not mention MorphOS again.
Personally, it doesn't matter as whoever owns the Amiga technology isn't using it (was the Amiga Inc. transfer quid pro quo?). Even if the MOS developers did copy the sources, it's like stealing from a dumpster. I hope they make good use of anything they have been able to save.
By the way... AmigaOS 4 is toxic. AmigaOS 4 is poisoned by developers who have seen MorphOS and AROS source code. I dont know if any of MorphOS developers have seen AmigaOS source code but I know that RJ Mical has seen AmigaOS source code and did consult MorphOS developers long ago. But it doesnt end there. AmigaOS developed at Commodore was poisoned by developers who had seen source code from other operating systems and ideas were adopted to AmigaOS.
But hazydave's view are understandable. He is not a software guy and he is just wrong about everything software related.
It did take a while for the Amiga to become popular as the price was high but C= was still making a lot of money off the C64 and paying it's high level executives millions as Haynie mentioned in the speech.
But Amiga had not been proven successful.
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Iggy: You are always an endless source of astonishment. I love reading your quirky interpretation of Amiga history. Facts be damned, you weave some of the most unique and entertaining conclusions of anyone here. I could buy you a beer and listen to your stories all night!
Quirky?
Ah, your probably right.
I get a lot more "quirky" when discussing politics, religion, or history (then again, we are talking history).
...He is not a software guy and he is just wrong about everything software related.
Thanks for the pointer to the AmigaWorld post.
Same vague hearsay from Andy, no real evidence.
And again, 68K machine code would be of limited utility.
And doesn't "trust" Phase 5 personnel? Why? They fought to keep the platform alive. And Ralph Schmidt (who is at the core of Finkel's accusations) is an amazing programmer who created the MorphOS kernel (which in no way resembles Amiga OS).
On the iPad, You're all right, it hadn't occurred to me that the text could simply be more detailed.
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But the C= management would cancel any project that looked even slightly expensive...
They didn't cancel AAA fast enough. The way I see it please like Dave were supposed to be the caretakers who kept the old Amiga going until the "real heroes" delivered the AAA chipset. Top management wouldn't want to waste money on the old technology with AAA coming.
When you have someone at the top that doesn't understand the technology and yes men at every level down then things go wrong real fast.
Someone from engineering should have foreseen that AAA was going to be a disaster from day one.
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By the way... AmigaOS 4 is toxic. AmigaOS 4 is poisoned by developers who have seen MorphOS and AROS source code. I dont know if any of MorphOS developers have seen AmigaOS source code but I know that RJ Mical has seen AmigaOS source code and did consult MorphOS developers long ago. But it doesnt end there. AmigaOS developed at Commodore was poisoned by developers who had seen source code from other operating systems and ideas were adopted to AmigaOS.
But hazydave's view are understandable. He is not a software guy and he is just wrong about everything software related.
I wouldn't say Dave is wrong about everything software related but his comment was ill advised because:
1) he is not a lawyer
2) he probably didn't really know
3) he doesn't seem to really care
It's not his legal battle. The Amiga is already dead in his eyes. As Bil said, "The dead may never die." In my eyes, any companies or individuals that loot the dead C= and try to do something good with what they salvage are much better than scum companies like Amiga Inc. that try to make as much money as possible and care nothing about the intellectual property. I wish there was a law that any software that is not updated in 7 years would become free.
But Amiga had not been proven successful.
True, but I believe the Amiga sales were increasing at least (with very little advertising). It was a tough economy to sell a high priced home computer into. The video game industry had recently collapsed and the price of computer hardware had plummeted. Early Macintosh sales were not good either. Many users stayed with the cheap old 8 bitters that had an abundance of cheap software and waited for the prices to fall and new software for the next generation computers. There was a question at the time whether high end computers were viable and could be profitable at all. C= was better at cost reducing the cheaper designs like the C64. They put Atari out of business (no bankruptcy but it was sold cheap). Apple was saved by a niche in education with the Apple II. The Apple IIgs outsold the Macintosh despite being released in September 1986.
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Someone from engineering should have foreseen that AAA was going to be a disaster from day one.
I guess that depends on when "day 1" would have been...
AA was waaaaaay late and so was AAA/Nyx.
If engineering had it's way (and the resources) the A3000 would have gotten AA from the start (or shortly after), about 2 years before it went into the market with the A4000.
So with a little bit of willpower they might have had AAA ready in 94, at which point it would have been quite competetiv.
"The next big thing" was Hombre, some PA_RISC(?) design running WindowsNT, completling cutting of any connection with Amiga, and making C= soley depending on MS far worse than in the 8bit days with MS_Basic.
Sure would have sold o.k. on the HW base, but would have ended C= as being just another novelty PC-maker with maybe some extra live being donated by offereing the chips as a PCI-GFX-card going the successfull road gone by 3DFX, 3DLabs, S3, Matrox etc.
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I guess that depends on when "day 1" would have been...
AA was waaaaaay late and so was AAA/Nyx.
If engineering had it's way (and the resources) the A3000 would have gotten AA from the start (or shortly after), about 2 years before it went into the market with the A4000.
So with a little bit of willpower they might have had AAA ready in 94, at which point it would have been quite competetiv.
"The next big thing" was Hombre, some PA_RISC(?) design running WindowsNT, completling cutting of any connection with Amiga, and making C= soley depending on MS far worse than in the 8bit days with MS_Basic.
Sure would have sold o.k. on the HW base, but would have ended C= as being just another novelty PC-maker with maybe some extra live being donated by offereing the chips as a PCI-GFX-card going the successfull road gone by 3DFX, 3DLabs, S3, Matrox etc.
So basically Haynie and friends legacy of work would have died and Amiga would have become yet another Windows machine (albeit on a RISC platform). Sounds like a losing proposition.
Frankly, this part of the story make me MORE satisfied with where we, the community, took the platform.
We're still here, and Haynie is history.
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AA was waaaaaay late and so was AAA/Nyx.
I read that AA was finished earlier than expected, IIRC the project was started in late 1990 and the first working silicon was in early 1991.
If engineering had it's way (and the resources) the A3000 would have gotten AA from the start (or shortly after), about 2 years before it went into the market with the A4000.
When the A3000 was started AA didn't even exist on paper, in the talk Dave says they couldn't get any custom chip changes due to all the chip guys working on AAA. The A3000 was purely supposed to get money in to pay for AAA development & it couldn't be too good or it would compete with their coming soon AAA machines.
AA could probably have made it out a year earlier if the A3000+ had not been canned. But we're talking about late 1991 instead of 1992. That does seem to have been a management issue, however company politics are never simple and it wouldn't surprise me if there were people in engineering that were throwing in hand grenades because they didn't want AAA resources to be cut.
We know that engineering wasn't cohesive. The C65 project was one engineers dream to build the ultimate 8 bit computer, because they didn't like the Amiga. There were a few people who did all the stuff that got sold and there were a ton of others who spent more time creating things that were never going to happen. The view that management sucked and engineering were perfect is overly simplistic and not true.
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If you watch the Video, Dave says the AA (as it became known) was just a side project to extend the life of the Original Chipset (or more technically the "Enhanced Chipset"). they called it AA because that was one "A" less than AAA :)
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If you watch the Video, Dave says the AA (as it became known) was just a side project to extend the life of the Original Chipset (or more technically the "Enhanced Chipset"). they called it AA because that was one "A" less than AAA :)
The side project was only started years after AAA because they realised it was several years off (if ever) and they needed something to compete. The A500 had gone through it's most successful sales period by then and they couldn't rely on momentum any longer.
AA was called Pandora during development. I haven't read whether that name came from a person or the greek myth.
I don't know how long the AA was around for, it changed because of existing usage. Both AGA and AAA suffered from this though.
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The Amiga section was making sales. Commodore was losing money because they kept trying to compete in the PC sector and failing.
There were a few things that should have been done quickly: High density disk drives and hard drives. An Amiga felt old when PCs came with them as standard.
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So basically Haynie and friends legacy of work would have died and Amiga would have become yet another Windows machine (albeit on a RISC platform). Sounds like a losing proposition.
Frankly, this part of the story make me MORE satisfied with where we, the community, took the platform.
We're still here, and Haynie is history.
Actually the processor being developed for Hombre was chosen because, though it didn't have 68k emulation modes like the PowerPC, its instructions were close enough to 68k to make porting easier. The designers of the Hombre wanted AmigaOS, management didn't since they wanted a machine to sell more quickly to make money which Commodore was running out of (or had run out of) at the time. So taking an OS off the shelf (Windows NT) was a faster way to do that.
You can see easily from the documents he has released from the later days at Commodore, that the designs as documented never had an intention of omitting the Amiga Operating System but making the Amiga modular to make it easier to adapt it to the accelerating developments in hardware by companies dedicated to specific parts. Something Commodore could not do as a general developer anymore especially with less money going to chip development.
Their work on the DSP that should have been in a 3000+ (I recall reading about that machine in magazines back in the day and being excited at what it could do) was proven a winner by the well regarded Macs that came out much later. It certainly wasn't the engineers choice to drop that.
Having the first 040 card during the 3000 debut which was apparently so impressive that Motorola would come with a gold chip just to show it, only to have management decide not to show it was another thing you cant fault the people creating the designs.
Commodores desire to sell (when they did try to sell something) for a low price was more a threat to the company then the designs. Amiga was a much more complex and capable design than Macintosh. Apple could surely build the Mac for a lot less than an Amiga just take a look at the motherboards to see that and couple that with less software development the original Macs being black and white and single tasking, but sold them for more money. Same thing they still do to this day with their iPhones and iPads and did with the Apple II. Each Mac (or anything else) Apple sold put more money in their bank. They never cut price to the bone like Commodore did. Not something that can even remotely be blamed on the engineers developing the products.
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Actually the processor being developed for Hombre was chosen because, though it didn't have 68k emulation modes like the PowerPC, its instructions were close enough to 68k to make porting easier.
The PowerPC didn't have any 68k emulation modes, it could run in big endian mode though.
They chose the HP RISC because they could buy modify the core and Ed Hepler was big on that type of design. It's the same reason the Arm took off.
The Amiga section was making sales. Commodore was losing money because they kept trying to compete in the PC sector and failing.
Not really. It was the parent company that went bankrupt first. The local sales companies only went under when they couldn't get any stock in. It was commodore Germany that was building the pc's.
The parent company had a couple of problems with lawsuits and tax bills and no cash flow. The cd32 that they had made weren't allowed to be imported until they paid their tax bills, they couldn't pay their tax bill because without the cd32s they couldn't make any money.
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The view that management sucked and engineering were perfect is overly simplistic and not true.
The point of having "managment" is to weed out brainfart projects (C65,A600,Plus4...) and steer resources towards (potential) money cows (like AAA-Amigas).
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The point of having "managment" is to weed out brainfart projects (C65,A600,Plus4...) and steer resources towards (potential) money cows (like AAA-Amigas).
The A600 and Plus 4 started out as good projects.
The Plus 4 started out as the C116 & C264, which would have been really cheap and sold a lot. I believe marketing killed that by heaping stuff on it.
The A600 started out as the A300, which would have been really cheap and sold a lot. Bil Sydnes was responsible for heaping stuff on it.
AAA however was not really the type of project that commodore ever did well, it was never going to work.
The C65 probably shouldn't have ever existed, but commodore were making a load of money by selling C64's so I can see how it kept going. I imagine it got killed when they admitted it wasn't really C64 compatible at all and so it would be hard to sell it.
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The PowerPC didn't have any 68k emulation modes, it could run in big endian mode though.
They chose the HP RISC because they could buy modify the core and Ed Hepler was big on that type of design. It's the same reason the Arm took off.
Not a developer so not sure how it does it. Just that when it was finally done, PowerPC could run 680x0 code reasonably.
But I do know from interviews posted with Dr Ed Helper that it still was not complete in the PowerPC at the time they were developing Hombre, and no one even knew at that time if it would ever be done so it was not a cut and dry choice. That Motorola was leaving the 68k architecture was clear. So a solution had to be found to keep making machines that continued to advance.
CD64 design ideas were based off Hombre and included Kickstart loading from CD (to save on ROMs and make updating easier). Which shows that it wasn't the engineers idea to leave out AmigaOS.
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All very educational, guys.
Keep it up.
Are you sure the choice of an HP processor wasn't influenced by the fact that they already had a relationship with HP fabbing chips?
And the C65 a "brainfart project"?
No that was the C128.
The C65 was a much better successor to the C64.
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All very educational, guys.
And the C65 a "brainfart project"?
No that was the C128.
There simply was NO point in an C64-incompatible 8bit after they allready had the far more powerfull Amiga line in stores.
There was some limited point in a C64-compatible upgrade, it's just that the 128 was overengineered, something much simpler at a rock-bottom price point could have made a ton of cash.
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I've looked at all the potential moves Commodore might have made, there were no moves that would have keep the company solvent until the turn of the century, let alone beyond. They all died, Atari, Sinclair, Coleco, Acorn, et al. The PC was establishing a dominance that would last 2 decades.
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they should have made C128 with a 65816. Yes, it would be close to Amiga in some regards, but it would be able to tap into C64 market and software library, something that the A1000 couldn't and why it took a few years untill A500 for Amiga to take off.
Than a 32 bit compatible in the early 90s in lieu of C65.
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And PC manufacturers followed Commodore. 1st Escom, then most of the others.
Amiga could have gone in several directions. Some of the 3rd party add on makers charge way too much. No cheap sound for example.
I would have preferred x86 at the time instead of the more expensive PowerPC. No one ever told me why PowerPC was chosen, except for the endian thing.
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They all died, Atari, Sinclair, Coleco, Acorn, et al. The PC was establishing a dominance that would last 2 decades.
Lets see...
- Atari, far to small user base and an OS that was hard to modernize to 1990s standards
- Sinclar,Coleco, pretty much stuck in 8Bit land
- Arcon, well the Archimedes/RiscPC was quite o.k. and modern but the userbase was even smaller than that of the AtariST
C=/Amiga in the early 90s did not only have good enough HW, but also a large userbase, big SW-library and all that running an OS that was superior to the mainstream of that time (Windows3.1/95,MacOS7-8).
So yes, with proper managment Amiga could have a bigger marketshare today then Apple has.
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C=/Amiga in the early 90s did not only have good enough HW, but also a large userbase, big SW-library and all that running an OS that was superior to the mainstream of that time (Windows3.1/95,MacOS7-8).
Amiga was powerful hardware for the price in 1985, but by 1990 things had changed. By 1992 the consoles were beating it for games at the cheap end of the market and the pc was beating it for games and applications at the high end.
Windows 95 was ok compared to AmigaOS, it had a lot of things that we were missing.
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So yes, with proper managment Amiga could have a bigger marketshare today then Apple has.
Not very likely, because by early 90s the biggest Amiga advantage and the reason why people bought it, the price/performance advantage, was largely gone, and so was the technical advantage. Apple appealed and was bought by upper classes and pros, that's probably the only reason why it survived - higher margins.
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Not a developer so not sure how it does it. Just that when it was finally done, PowerPC could run 680x0 code reasonably.
The emulator that Apple wrote for the PowerMac to run 68000 code was just really good.
they should have made C128 with a 65816. Yes, it would be close to Amiga in some regards, but it would be able to tap into C64 market and software library, something that the A1000 couldn't and why it took a few years untill A500 for Amiga to take off.
The C64 was mostly selling in Europe to run games that mostly required cycle accuracy and illegal opcodes. A 65816 wouldn't be very useful, even the C128 wasn't compatible enough & it was expensive.
The A1000 was also expensive and there wasn't a lot of software. Once the A500 hit and European games developers started pumping out games then things improved.
The A500 was another project that was basically one persons dream, there were other people in engineering who weren't coming up with great ideas. It's unfortunate that as part of fat agnus project they didn't manage to increase the bandwidth and squeeze some more colours in. The only improvement other than cost was 512k of slow ram, if they'd gone straight to 1mb chip ram it would have been better.
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Well Win95 was released over a year after C= went under, so we need to compare Win3.1 to AOS3.1 a comparisons AOS wins hands down on thechnical merits. On the other side it was lacking in "completeness" and implementation.
HW wise there wasn't much difference between a 030 and 386 or a 040 and a 486, only that the later was crippled by the SW still running them in 8088 mode.
ECS/AGA GFX was lacking in resolution and color compared to most VGA-cards of that era but could more than compete on speed.
So yes, if C= had woken up in 1990 or so and had invested heavily in modernizing HW and SW Amiga could have come out ahead by 95.
They didn't do that and so we ended with a minimal HW-update to late and an OS full of great concepts but also bugs and outright holes.
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The emulator that Apple wrote for the PowerMac to run 68000 code was just really good.
The emulator Apple wrote for the 1st PPC Macs was a total turd, right to the point where those units ran native SW slower than a 68k running a the same code in 68k due to the OS still being (emulated) 68k.
Allmost killed Apple and it took them to the release of the 1st PCI based Macs over a year later till they added some JIT-like speedups (and having more of the OS in actual PPC code) to really regain a level of performance comparable to the x86s.
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Allmost killed Apple and it took them to the release of the 1st PCI based Macs over a year later till they added some JIT-like speedups (and having more of the OS in actual PPC code) to really regain a level of performance comparable to the x86s.
Yeah, they hired someone in with experience to do the JIT IIRC.
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In 1985 Amiga had the potential to become a niche video/sound machine, unfortunately they were way too far ahead of the curve. No youtube, no www, no cheap digital cameras. The niche wasn't developed yet. On top of that hardware and operating system updates were late or bungled.
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ECS/AGA GFX was lacking in resolution and color compared to most VGA-cards of that era but could more than compete on speed.
ECS did have 640x480@60Hz capability however, albeit in 4 colours IIRC. For business use that would have been fine at the time, I know it would have been going up against 16 colour Win 3.1 systems eventually, but most people were still using DOS at that time.
So yes, if C= had woken up in 1990 or so and had invested heavily in modernizing HW and SW Amiga could have come out ahead by 95.
They didn't do that and so we ended with a minimal HW-update to late and an OS full of great concepts but also bugs and outright holes.
The problem was the lack of hardware design investment after the original Amiga came out. ECS was a tweak, AGA was a bit of a hack. Commodore recognised the value of a cost-down Amiga, the A600, but hadn't invested in the single-chip version of ECS, nor did they get it out at a suitable time - 1991 was probably a year too late. Commodore limited the range of Amigas too - A1200 and A4000/040 was either low-end, or very high end - the 030 version took a while to arrive and there was still a massive gap. An A1400 (A1200 in an A1000-style case, maybe 21MHz 020), as speculated at the time everywhere, was an obvious product (at £599 say) but never appeared. I think this was because they didn't have the money to do a proper job even in 1990.
Yeah, Commodore couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag filled with way out signs. Underinvestment and underselling the Amiga killed them. That foray into PCs showed a lack of commitment to their core range of computers. And that's just a small part of it.
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I wouldnt say it was "too late" already by 90-92. At that time I had Amiga only while a few friends got the PC, and it was much more userfriendly than what my buddies had.
They had no problem agreeing with that back then, but in quite short period of time after that Amiga was left trailing in the dust.
I still remember tweaking the autoexec.bat and config.sys or whatever it was called when I needed to get hardware to work on the old PCs.
PCs was horrible back then, but it almost feels like Amiga has traded places with the PCs now in that regard, requiring some level of OS knowledge to get exotic (or programs with bad installers) programs to work.
Then again, Ive probarly become so spoilt with everything being plug and play these days, that I consider the minimum of tweaking requirement to be "horrible userfriendliness". The "problem" with this is that IF something doesnt work as expected the general OS/Hardware knowledge is so low that the user is left with a blank stare at the monitor instead of knowing how to work around it. :)
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I wouldnt say it was "too late" already by 90-92. At that time I had Amiga only while a few friends got the PC, and it was much more userfriendly than what my buddies had.
By 1991 Id had started writing wolfenstein 3d, if he'd written it for the Amiga then things would have been different. The momentum that game created was enough to kill the Amiga.
The Amiga would have needed chunky 256 colours in 1990 to have built any kind of market lead. If it weren't for AAA then I believe that something like AGA but with chunky graphics could have been shipped in 1990. Even if 256 colour mode was low res only and lacked smooth horizontal scrolling (depending on how you could graft chunky pixel fetching on to the bitplane fetching might upset the horizontal scrolling).
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The C64 was mostly selling in Europe to run games that mostly required cycle accuracy and illegal opcodes. A 65816 wouldn't be very useful, even the C128 wasn't compatible enough & it was expensive.
Both C= and Amiga were big sellers in Europe.
65816 was compatible enough for Apple.
C128 sold a few millions, I think a nicer 65816 based system could have even sold more. MOS could have had developed a 32 bit CPU in house, freeing C= from shackels of Motorola and their pricing.
Amiga, as nice and as advanced as it was, lost Commodore 3 years of momentum and a lot of money untill A500 took off.
The PC model of backwards compatibility could have been applied on the C= 8(C64) -> 16(C65816) -> 32(6532) bit line. The C64 was the 2nd biggest platform in the 80s, it was foolish not to take advantage of that.
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Both C= and Amiga were big sellers in Europe.
65816 was compatible enough for Apple.
C128 sold a few millions, I think a nicer 65816 based system could have even sold more. MOS could have had developed a 32 bit CPU in house, freeing C= from shackels of Motorola and their pricing.
Amiga, as nice and as advanced as it was, lost Commodore 3 years of momentum and a lot of money untill A500 took off.
The PC model of backwards compatibility could have been applied on the C= 8(C64) -> 16(C65816) -> 32(6532) bit line. The C64 was the 2nd biggest platform in the 80s, it was foolish not to take advantage of that.
The view of an obvious C64 fan.
Frankly, rather than trying to morph the 8 bit C64 into a 16 then 32 bit machine, a investment in evolving than Amiga platform would have made more sense.
After all, the Amiga had an operating system.
To this day people with any sense focus on evolving that, rather than focusing on fixed hardware specs.
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Both C= and Amiga were big sellers in Europe.
65816 was compatible enough for Apple.
Apple II didn't have VIC and SID with all the cycle accurate requirements that go with it.
a investment in evolving than Amiga platform would have made more sense.
Unfortunately their investment was AAA. The engineers that rode that train ought to be ashamed of themselves.
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The view of an obvious C64 fan.
Frankly, rather than trying to morph the 8 bit C64 into a 16 then 32 bit machine, a investment in evolving than Amiga platform would have made more sense.
After all, the Amiga had an operating system.
To this day people with any sense focus on evolving that, rather than focusing on fixed hardware specs.
The morphing worked for PC, and in a way, for Apple.
Operating system can always be written, several million C64s sold by 85' and the software market around it are worth a lot more than an operating system, no matter how advanced.
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@WolfToTheMoon
I can't think of a single legacy PC app I use, but I'm still using Windows.
If I want to run C64 apps (or Amiga for that matter) I can always run an emulator.
Software is the crucial issue here, not hardware, so in the end I think I made my point.