POLL: What is the most viable Amiga platform for *you*?

[commodorejohn]

The box may say Commodore 64 and the badge on the machine may say Commodore 64 but not even a three legged blind man and his guide hamster would have thought it was a genuine C64...

Doesn't change the fact that they were trying to market it as one. However, people do still seem to think that the fact that other companies tried to market unrelated hardware as "Commodore 64" or "Amiga" makes it okay for C-USA to do so. It doesn't. It doesn't matter how many people did so in the past. And the only reason I wasn't deriding the Web.It at the time was because I wasn't online and wasn't a member of the Commodore community then. (Well, that and the fact that, with a name like "Web.It," it mocks itself. God, what were people smoking in the '90s?) Had I been on a Commodore newsgroup at the time, I would have expressed precisely the same sentiments towards it as I do towards C-USA.

[commodorejohn]

First lets try to get a common understanding:
With "in the mid-late 90's" you mean the years 1995-1999?
If so, then you see me rather surprised, as Commodore International declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994.

It wasn't Commodore - it was a company called Web Computers International. I don't recall if they actually obtained a license to use the name or just didn't feel they needed to ask.

This isn't the past this is here and now and what  CUSA plan on selling is about a genuine and real as the Loch Ness  Monster or the fact that I'm a brain surgeon...

Are you suggesting the Loch Ness Monster isn't real? Jeez, man, have  some national pride! I'm not even from the UK and I show that poor beast  more respect!

[commodorejohn]

?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[commodorejohn]

I've heard that the 65816 is roughly comparable in horsepower to the 68000, but it's not nearly as nice an architecture, and nothing you'd want to build a multitasking OS around. It might have been good for Commodore to go with a MOS CPU for the Amiga, but it should have been a completely new design.

[commodorejohn]

Nope. WDC was planning a 32-bit upgrade, but they haven't updated the news on it in years...

[commodorejohn]

The 65816 is a nightmare.  I think it is the worst CPU to code for, ever.

I wouldn't go that far - as an update to the 6502 architecture it's actually pretty decent, and it's not too bad for a single-tasking system like a game console. You just wouldn't want to build a multi-tasking computer around it. Ever.

The apple IIgs is pretty impressive machine, and though it is clocked at 2.whatever mhz the snes does pretty well too.

In terms of functional horsepower, yes. It's just not even remotely as nice to code for as the 68k, because it's an 8-bit architecture kludged up to 16-bit (see also: Intel 8086,) instead of being a 32-bit architecture on a 16-bit bus like the 68k.

[commodorejohn]

Not sure that's really a great idea, either - most of the 65816's problems stem from its being a 16-bit kludge on an 8-bit processor. If they were to do a custom CPU for the Amiga, it would've been better to create something from scratch.

[commodorejohn]

and besides the Phenom II x6 is a multicore 64bit cludge, on a 32bit pentium cludge, on a 32bit 386 cludge, on a 16bit 286 cludge, on a 8/16bit 8088 cludge and it does great.

Only because everything in the x86 line post-Pentium Pro is a much cleaner microarchitecture running an x86 in emulation, on top of which is the fact that Intel's on the bleeding edge of chip fabrication technology. It does well, but it would probably do better if it weren't tied to an architecture that's more legacy cruft by this point than it is actual modern CPU.

I'm not saying there wasn't a market for a 16-bit 6502 variant, but that niche is probably filled about as well as it could be by the 65816, and as for a theoretical Amiga CPU, I go by this: whenever you're not tied by backwards-compatibility issues (which you aren't when developing a new computer) it's better to pick or develop a clean, unencumbered design than to pick something loaded down with legacy-compatibility issues.