[Speculation] How to keep Commodore afloat

[Digiman]

Ranger was finished, the price of VRAM was the reason it could never be used before 1994ish on anything but a £2000 top of the line machine like the A4000/040. The article with the interview with Jay was posted on here with 3 page scans last year and he says it was finished.

Firstly do NOT stop promoting the A1000 in 1986 waiting for the identically performing A500 and A2000 until late 87! Keep the momentum up and shove it up Steve Jobs gay ass

Secondly do NOT force us into 7mhz for 7 years. Instead of blowing profits on an absolutely pathetic and useless ECS upgrade put the money towards a fast CPU and OCS with more chip ram. Super Denise was a complete waste of R&D.

Thirdly do NOT think that A1200+CD = SNES beater. AGA had OCS A1000 sound, 16 colour parallax dual playfield and rubbish sprites. Blitter was barely faster. CD32 killed Commodore off, the final nail in the coffin.

Instead of CD32 get the bloody A1400 prototype into production FAST. Scrap the 4000/030....waste of time for the mass market and too slow and expensive to compete with 486 machines by 1993/4 which were half the price. A1400 = 2mb chip + 2mb fast, 28mhz 020, AGA, AKIKO and in a stylish A3000 style case. WIN! A1800 = same plus CD-ROM. A1400 = same speed as A4000/030 but HALF THE PRICE

That is all, the rest involves a blow torch, a pair of pliers, some rusty nails and a huge sledge hammer in a locked room alone with Medhi Ali :roflmao:

NB Hombre = Saturn levels of performance but at 200-300% the cost of a £299 Sega Saturn. Waste of development time again. Just buy out a company and stick PPC+Bvision in A1x00 line and A4xxx line to compete with Pentium MMX in mid to late 90s. It's good enough to play Wipeout 2 and Quake so what the hell, no need for R&D money down the toilet.

Also don't piss off RJ Mical and Dave Needle and you would have ended up by 1989 with Sega style sprite scaling and 16bit PCM sound chipset (Lynx) AND later on you would have had 3DO chipset which wasn't bad. They designed both together after leaving Hi-Toro thanks to the nobjockey manager who sacked most of the A1000/OCS designers and made the crap [ie identical performance] A2000 3 years later.

[Digiman]

The A1200 was released at a time when the Playstation and Saturn were about to be released, and when CD-ROMS started becoming quite common on PC's.

The A1200 spec should have included:

50Mhz 68030 with MMU as standard
4MB Fast Ram as standard (8MB optional)
Buffered IDE as standard
VGA Out (Scandoubled/Flickerfixed) as standard
CD-ROM as standard
Better graphics custom chips with basic 3D support
Better sound custom chips
Microphone input

With this setup the A1200 would have been a little more expensive but it would have blown the competition away.

PSX launch = Sept. 9, 1995

In 1992/3

4mb RAM = £100-200
CD-ROM = £200ish

3D hardware acceleration = non existent before PSX/SATURN. Jaguar had none, 3DO also very late 1993 & $700

What C= should have done is put 1 SIMM slot or something for Sept 92 A1200 launch to allow 2/4mb Fast ram and leave trapdoor.

Cd32 = stillborn concept, £99 SNES = superior machine. A1400 with 28mhz 020/4mb/AKIKO @£399 IN 1993 was the machine we all wanted. CD1200 for £500 in 1993/94 would have wiped the floor with £1000-1500 486 4mb CD+soundcard PC. 56mhz 020 later??

Also Commodore should never have stopped their PC models, C= used to be a trusted name in corporate circles in the 80s.

So to recap

failures(R&D costs)

ECS DENISE/2MB AGNUS in 1MB A500/600.... complete waste of time
C16 & Plus/4 rubbish that was intended to replace VIC20 NOT C64
C128/C128D overpriced 8bit crap vs Atari 520STM @ £349 + £100 FDD
CD32 (400 bucks for inferior gamesto 16bit SEGA/Nintedo


Potential company saviours

A500 style machine in 85 to compliment A1000 in shops.
Jay Miner's Amiga games console
14mhz 68000 in 500plus without ECS
Commodore LCD completed prototype
A1000PN portable Amiga planned
A1400 and A1400CD completed prototype in classy 3 box design
AA+ chipset for 95 to replace AGA
Dual Paula on A1200/4000 .... technically simple and instant 8ch stereo sound

[Digiman]

The problem was that you couldn't convince someone to buy an Amiga for games because no games were written for a 25mhz 030 Amiga until early '96. A lot of the market is permanently lost to PC. Then in 96 the internet was the big seller.

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.