[Speculation] How to keep Commodore afloat

[Khephren]

Matt H sums up the main point

Bill Syndes and his 'PCJnr' ideas killed the A600/A1200

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

And Mehdi Ali scuppered research money for AAA.
quoting Haynie 'revolutionary if released in 1990, pretty cool in 1992, ok in 1994'    -bang goes your 16bit sound, chunky, and HAM10, 24bit hybrid mode, 4mb floppies etc.

Other things i'd change:

--Release the A500 first, give Atari and the other formats a severe kicking earlier on.

--Realise the Amiga is the only egg you have left in your basket, and throw money at it.

--Realise your mid way between consoles and PC's (for wedge Amigas at least) emulate both, buy the best games developers (get some exclusives), make sure you have a good office suite.

--Stop making them baige boxes! your not a PC manufacturer, your used by artists, musicians, gamers and hobbyists. Stand out from the crowd!

--If your going to update to ECS, make it worth updating to.

--Don't sack the original Amiga team, they had more good ideas in one product than commodore had in it's whole history. Some of the stuff Mical and Needle went on to do, we could have had!


But really, If we could change history, i'd have commodore not getting hold of Amiga at all. They did not understand it or promote it enough, or spend enough money on its development.

[Khephren]

Crunch point was the A1200, which did not meet expectations. A lot of my friends who had held on to their A500/+ switched after seeing how undernourished it was. Selling a machine that is hobbled to half speed out of the box goes way beyond dumb.

the sprite scaling the lynx got would have been handy for this, as would the 3DO tech. All of which was developed by original Amiga staff that short sighted commodore let go.

[Khephren]

Well, had such a path been adopted, I doubt that you would have seen any of those things, but this is all just speculation. We might as well as "how many Amigas could fit on the head of a pin?"

But all arguments in this thread benefit from hindsight. I don't think, back then, anyone appreciated fully how aggressive PC development was to become or fully appreciated the implications of Moore's law.

Two cents.

spot on with the 'head of a pin'

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

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

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

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

[Khephren]

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

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

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

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

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

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