Top 3 worst ideas in Amiga history?

[quarkx]

I forgot about that.  IIRC it was able to link more than 2 Amigas, but was spendy everytime you wanted to add a node.  What was it called and has anyone seen them on the used market?

Amitrix had a product called Amiga-link, when the German company that made it decided to discontinue the product, Amitrix tried to buy the rights to produce and make it themselves. The story according to Craig, is that they wanted way too much money for the rights, and they could not come to an agrement to satisfy both Amitrix and the manufacture, so Amitrix had no choice but to stop selling and supporting it.If it were up to Craig, they would still be manufacturing and upgrading it and supporting it today. it sad that they were so greedy, but Craig has many examples of Amiga products and hardware, that they would still be making today, if the owner's had not been so greedy.

[quarkx]

Hi,

1st -- The Amiga 2000
2nd-- The sidecar
3rd-- Amiga 3000 without the AGA chipset or ide support.

Also the PC10 and the PC20 they invested to much money trying to compete with the PC clones, they should have just supported the Amiga by making productivity software.

smerf

First, The A2000 was a great upgrade for businesses, way ahead of its time. The Video Toaster was one such card that without the A2000, would never have been made, in fact if Dave had not taken on the A2000(he was suppose to originally work on the A500), the Amiga would have died right there and then. The funny thing is that the A2000 is by far, the most expandable Amiga ever made and the upgrades are relatively cheap and easy compared to all the other models.

If you read the book "On the Edge" you would have a very different view on this.
The Colt, PC10 and PC 20 were all made by Commodore Germany, without any knowledge
or sanction from Commodore US, and all the higher ups. The only reason it even got out the door, was the fact that in Germany at that time, Commodore could sell anything they wanted to and the Germans would just buy it without question. That is why the C116 was only sold there, CBM used Germany as their dumping Zone for all the products they didn't think would sell anywhere else in the world, but they could sell them in Germany. After the Commodore PC's started to sell, they then released them in limited quantities elsewhere in the world.

[quarkx]

No.

What?
please elaborate. The A2000 (although not pretty) is the best even today for versatility, upgrade ability, and available parts. No other Amiga has the flexibility that it has. The A3000D was a very small chassis, and no room for a 5 inch Drive bay, it also brings more price for accelerator cards and such. The A4000 also does not have the room inside, and upgrades are 3-4 times as expensive. The A2000 was a very important Amiga to prove it was more than just an expensive gaming machine, it proved to the world that Amiga was a very serious computer.

[quarkx]

Well, you've forgotten the 3000T and the 4000T, but lets take a step back.

Cost wise, are you saying it'd be cheaper to buy a Picasso II board for an A2000 than it would be to buy one for an A4000?  No, they cost the same because most of the hardware the A2000 can use is usable in the A4000 as well.

Accelerator cards are comparably priced across the range as well, depending on the processors.  The A2000, however, requires an accelerator card to be useful, while the A3000 has a 68030 built in, and the 4000 wasn't available with anything less (not counting the odd prototype '020 card.)  If you want a 68030 in your A2000, you're spending $100-$200, putting your A2000 in the price range of an A3000 machine. Going up the range, 68040 cards are available for all and are similarly priced (though a 3640 is cheaper than any '040 card you'll find for the 2000,) and '060 cards are expensive for any machine (but easier to find for the 3000/4000 range.)  Those Blizzard 2060's aren't growing on trees.  Oh, and if you want 2MB of chip RAM in your A2000, you're spending another ~$100 for a MegAChip.

The A2000 is expandable, yes, and they require a bunch of it to be useful.

edit: I'll take a step back myself and say I'm not agreeing with those who said the A2000 was a bad idea.  It was clearly superior to the A1000 in terms of expandability, but it was most definitely surpassed by later machines.

Actually, I was talking desktop models, but, I think we are on the same page here. You have to remember that Commodore built the A3000, on the fact that people were buying all the cards for the A2000 (in one of the computer Chronical episodes) they state that they looked at all the upgrades people were putting into the A2000 and designed the A3000 around that.
But, for the time, the A2000 was ALMOST perfect for the market. Much better that the A2000 that the German team put together (which infact was an A1000 with 3 Zorro slots) and it didn't work at all until Dave got his hands on it.)

Yes, I agree if you put all the "High End" upgrades in it, you are going to spend a whole lot of money, but to get a 8 meg Scsi card,HD, CD-rom Drive and lets say a '30, and an amber board or even now an Indivision, it is much easer and cheaper than trying to get those upgrades for an A500, In fact, if you hunt a bit, you can probably pick up one with all these upgrades in it for a lot less than a stock A3000 or A4000. A A2000 Video Toaster unit is a whole lot easier to find than a "complete" A4000 Toaster and only about half to a third of the price.
I have seen a lot of A2000 's on Ebay with an '30 card go for less then $150, infact most people that sell the A2000 don't even know what they have in them, so if you are lucky enough to have a picture of the back of the unit, you can usually tell if there is an CPU card inside. Over the last 4 months, I have seen some Amazing deals on A2000 not sell on Ebay, because of this "stigma" that is somehow attached itself to the A2000. Just in November, December alone (and I had no cash) there was a complete Video editing studio with the A2000 Video Toaster, 4 monitors and a Sony VT editing station. Anotherwords a complete turnkey Studio with EVERYTHING, and the guy could not get $200. He had it listed 3 times with a last time BIN of $185. now the shipping would have been increadible, but those deals pop up all the time on the 2000.

[quarkx]

Interesting, I got almost $300 for my A2000 Toaster which was complete but just a stock Toaster 2000. And I thought the $159 buy it now price that I started the auction with was maybe a bit high.

The main disatvantage of the A2000 for me is the space they take up. One is good, two was too much. I could have picked up a Mac G5 in perfect shape last week for free but turned it down for the same reason: nowhere to put it, it was huge, even bigger than an A2000. The A4000D is much more ergonomic. And, in spite of it's shortcomings, I like AGA. The AGA desktop is disappointing but the AGA ham modes are beautiful and unique.

And back to the main theme of the thread, I would say the number one shortcoming, lack of foresight, of the Amiga is the difficulty of expanding memory. It doesn't matter what model, there is some hangup: On the A 2000, going beyond 8mb depends on the accelerator, On the A3000, the zip ram on the mother board is expensive and hard to find and there aren't many zorro III memory cards, 3 that I can think of off hand, and on the A4000, the motherboard uses inexpensive simms but going beyond 24mb(16mb ram +8mb slow zorroII ram,) requires an expensive accelerator with simm sockets or one of the 3 zorro III memory cards and the only one that shows up for sale very often is the Fastlane Z3. The A4000 has great compatibility with modern hard drives for a machine that old but it would be so nice if you could use 16 and 32mb simms on the motherboard instead of 4mb ones like some of the Macs made in the early 90s.

I agree totally with you, I never said the A2000 was the BEST Amiga, but it certainly was no where even close to the top 3 worst Ideas of Commodore. I keep stating "At the time" the A2000 was a great machine, but the 3000 and 4000 were all improvements on it. I had 3 at one time, and have all sold them off due to space issues. Although I still say that for a newbe to Amiga, Start with an A2000, and slowly build it up. Much easier and cheaper to find cards for it, then let's say an A500. The price difference is not all that much between a stock A500 and A2000, but finding anything for an A500 (other than trapdoor Ram) is very expensive and hard. In fact I know of 3 Right now, that I can get for anyone very cheap and easy, I believe on is a factory A2500.

[quarkx]

All these pages and no one's mentioned the death bringer Commodore PC Colt? Multi-Millions wasted on a poor clone when they should have been expanding development and marketing for the Amiga Technology.

When the Colt appeared, it was Commodore raising the white flag and laying prone to the rest of the industry. At that moment they traded innovation for the chance at a quick buck and doomed the company. All that and ticking off third party developers, was pretty much the one-two punch.

Plaz

 If you read the book "On the Edge", you will see that the Commodore PC line was never given the "Green light" or thought of by Commodore head office in the US. Even Commodore North America thought is was a bad Idea, but Jack let it go because of the sales in Germany.Jack never did want to enter the PC clone market, just because he would have to buy the chips from intel or another source - a total waist of money since he had a perfectly go Chip fab at his fingertips.
 It was totally made in in Germany, and was out the door before management (Jack) could kill it. The only reason it did survive, was because in Germany and most of Europe, Commodore sold everything it put its name on. That is why instead of killing things like the C116, it was only sold in Germany, because Germany was the "Dumping Ground" and people there just bought it up.

[quarkx]

I agree somewhat, but you have to look at the big picture. IF Jack had not left Commodore, the Amiga would have gone to Atari. At that time, Atari was bleed money for Time-Warner, so even if they managed to get the 150XE out the door (I think that was the offical name for MICKEY), Atari soon would have folded up after that. POSSIBLY, Jack would have swooped in and bought it up, if he could have gotten it for JACK's terms, but, then the damage would have been done, and possibly, the Amiga technology would have died, or have been used in other ways. Now, CBM on the other hand (If Jack had stayed) would have bought Zlog, and have pushed the C900 out the door for a UNIX machine. It's really hard to say if the C900 would have carried Commodore into the '90's, but the big problem was Jack's lack of the future. He wanted Immediate results, and if it was selling good, then it will keep on selling. As a result, Commodore and MOS had no 16 bit processor (because it wasn't a priority of Jack's) and of course no 32 bit processor in the pipe.

Another huge mistake (once Jack left) was to kill the Commodore LCD computer, and sell off Commodore's LCD manufacturing plant (The ONLY LCD plant in America)