Atari vs Commodore which one was stupider.

[Hyperspeed]

:-D

Speaking of ghostly images, didn't Andy Warhol paint Debbie Harry on Deluxe Paint or something when the A1000 was released?

Was there any file or painting made public of this?

[Waccoon]

KThunder:  The jag was slammed coz it was actually 2 32bit processors not 1 64 bit processor making it difficult to program for

Jaguar was pretty easy to program, actually.  The thing is, most of the work had to be done on the custom chips.  The universally familiar 68000 wasn't that useful.

Jaguar was released way too late.  Atari let the design just sit on the shelf for two years before its release.  Also, 2MB of main memory wasn't that much with which to work.

I like my Jaguar, even though I only have two games worth playing.  ;-)

Hyperspeed:  The term 'chunky' really is a bit misleading isn't it... and since the PC always used this method why did the Amiga deviate from this?

Certain color-shifting effects are easier.  Like, reversing the colors when selecting an icon.  You only have to write to one bitplane, speeding things up a lot.

It's very unfriendly for 3D, though.  Also, images that are saved in planar mode (like IFF), don't compress anywhere near as well as chunky formats, like GIF.  Save some planar and chunky data and compress it.  Most of the time, you'll notice a huge difference, in favor of chunky.

I presume that many people who insist on new custom hardware aren't that aware of planer vs chunky modes.  The Amiga's way of doing graphics isn't useful, so you'd have to start from scratch, anyway.  The Amiga was efficient in its heyday, of course, but these days, those kinds of techniques are obsolete and would really hold the system back in terms of performance, not to mention make software much more difficult to program.  The only truly "custom" work needed for a new Amiga is a proper floppy controller.  An Amiga 880k floppy to USB bridge would be an awesome think to have.

Even the Amiga's screens can be better emulated on a GPU using virtual textures, and mixing screens of different resolutions doesn't mesh well with modern monitors.  There's no point to a new Amiga chipset.

Lando:  For one thing, scrolling - you could scroll the entire display just by writing to the Bitplane Pointer registers.

For the most part, that has to do with the scanlines.  Hardware sprites are based on the same principle.  Planar bitmaps have little to do with it, unless you enjoy all sorts of weird psychedelic colors when moving individual bitplanes around out of sync with each other.  Many systems can do playfields (parallax scrolling) just fine with chunky modes.

Psy:  Virtual Racing was released in 1992 and Commodore went under in 1994 you would think they would have had something on paper give the Amiga real 3D capabilities.

Saturn was a real mess.  Two CPUs, two VDPs...  they really built that machine in a hurry once they found out what Sony was doing.  Intel was also trying to push MMX on their CPUs just before 3D "accelerators" hit the scene.  It's really quite amazing how short-sighted people were when it came to true, custom GPU architecture.

As for Deathbed Vigil, I bought it a long time ago and still haven't watched it.  Don't ask me why.  :-?

[KThunder]

people are confused by the jag and saturn, because they had more than one cpu. the jag had a 32bit gpu with a 64 bit memory interface and bus and 32bit 68000 with a 16bit interface to ram. the jag also had an object processor and programmable blitter that were fully 64bit.
the 60000 wasnt really useless game ai, event handling, data flow etc were all possible with it using the gpu to calculate the 3d stuff, only problem being it used the bus a bit too much. since the gpu and dsp processors had local ram that problem was minimized alittle

the thing with the saturn is that with just one of its sh2 main cpus it was almost as fast as the playstation. the saturns dual cpu setup was a well designed system and with a decent programmer could be about 1.3 to 1.5 times faster with both cpus. that was with assebly though, both systems were easy to program with c wich was included in the developer kit, but did much better with assembly.

yes i know this stuff from personal experiance as i have programmed both. demos and stuff mostly. i goofed around with the n64 also but i didnt like the architecture or the playstation.

[drewz21]

Yes, he did and it's on the AmigaForever package I bought.  Really cool to watch.

I don't know if the image was ever made public/available.

[KThunder]

btw since it was already stated by soimeone incorrectly here is what they have:

saturn:
sh2 32bit risc master 28mhz
sh2 32bit risc slave 28mhz
68000 16/32 bit sound processor 14mhz
vdp1 video processor 2dstuff mostly 28mhz
vdp2 video processor 3d stuff mostly 28mhz
scu dsp dma controller (also had a math coprocessor)

jaguar
tom asic contained:
64bit object processor
64bit blitter (hardware gauroud shading etc)
32/64bit gpu risc cpu

jerry asic contained:
32/16bit dsp risc cpu 26mhz

68000 32/16bit 14mhz

for the record (from me) the jaguar was as much a 64bit system as the n64 was. tom was 64bit, memory was 64bit graphic setup data transfer etc all 64bit

[asian1]

Atari Inc is in financial trouble. NASDAQ plan to delist the company:

Reuters (March 9, 2006):

" Atari Inc. said on Thursday it has received notice from the Nasdaq that it has until August 30 to get its shares above $1 for a minimum of 10 consecutive business days, or lose its listing on the exchange. The financially troubled video game maker has been cutting costs and employees in an effort to get its business back on track amid a switch to new video game console technology that is weighing on sales. On Thursday, Atari shares closed at 77 cents on the Nasdaq."

When Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, I heard they left behind US$ 300 M unpaid debt.

[Psy]

Saturn was a real mess.  Two CPUs, two VDPs...  they really built that machine in a hurry once they found out what Sony was doing.  

Like KThunder pointed out the Saturn wasn't that much of a mess, infact Sega later turned the Saturn into a low cost arcade board.

Sega already had the technology to build a affordable 3D home computer (since people expect game consoles to have a lower price then computers) but even though Unix was already ported to the Intel i960-KB (that the Model 2 boards used) Sega had didn't have enough talent to devlop the drivers to get Unix to make use of the 3D capablities of the Model 2 board and of course customize Unix for home use (while still being optimized for the Model 2 boards) all ontop still devloping games which was where Sega made its money.

Atari and Commodore did have enough talent but not the same hardware Sega had.  Maybe if Bushnell never sold Atari, Atari would have had arcade hardware as powerful Sega's by then and have been able to put 3D technolgy into its computers by 1995.

[Hyperspeed]

I like the Saturn and Jaguar too. The Jag is worth finding just for Tempest 2000 and it's fantastic soundtrack/psychadelic visuals.

The Saturn conversion of Virtua Fighter 2 and Sega Rally were so arcade perfect the machine should have lived to a grander age. It did well, in terms of sales, in Japan.

As for Atari Vs Commodore, I think from the fact Amiga went PowerUP/G3 suggests Commodore gave the machine sufficient launch velocity (at least with it's wallet).

[KThunder]

i think commodores biggest mistake was not pushing the a3000ux  amiga could have been were every unix and linux system and server is right now. but commodore screwed up big time, and never followed up

[Morax]

I think the whole thing is just because lack of marketing and advertising. And about Amiga's beginning to become dated in the early 90's, compared to other hardware. Even if they DID make computers wich were a match for PC's of that time, or even the SNES, they wouldn't have come far by lack of marketing...

And I know, Commodore tried to make more sales out of ancient technology (C= 64 and A500), because people were still bying them, and developers still programmed for them, which is good in one way, but sometimes improvement isn't real bad at all. AGA was a good thing, so the A1200 finally could beat a Megadrive, graphics-wise, and could get close to a SNES. But it was 1 or 2 years too late, and the support for it from developers could have been so much better. How many true AGA-games were made, starting with the release of the A1200? And why the hell did it still have the same old sound-chip of the A1000?

It's all about marketing, look at the Sega Dreamcast: An excellent machine, with the potention of being a real multimedia-livingroom computer. Even superior than the Playstation 2 in some points, which came out a little later. But due to lack of support from the "big boys", who were focussed on the PS2 (because Sony did handle aggressive marketing-tactics, like saying the PS2 could handle 60 million polygons per second, even though it only has 4MB of video memory), it also eventually "lost"  

[darkcoder]

@Hyperspeed

 the main benefits of planar modes show up in screens with few colors. For a screen with 4 colors, in planar mode you gain a lot of memory and speed. Planar was used long before the Amiga, the very first Macintosh (monocrome) used it. When OCS was designed, it could display at most 32 colors, so planar was absolutely the best choice. For 256 or more colors, apart from the ability to scroll separately the individual plane (which is good for special scrolltext-like effects but not much else), I would say planar has no benefit, but many disadvantages (apart from the aforementioned ones in the 3D, also for 2D BOBS chunky is better).
I don't think PCs have always used chunky: before VGA, there was CGA and other gfx standard with very few colors: I don't think those were chunky. Also, I have heard that old VGA board  used to have a 16-color planar mode. Maybe it was part of the VGA standard and it's still there in the VGA boards... it would be interesting to know!!

my 2 cents

[darksun9210]

i think commodores biggest mistake was not pushing the a3000ux amiga could have been were every unix and linux system and server is right now. but commodore screwed up big time, and never followed up

yeah, i think there was another point where some big company was looking at Workbench2 and the 3000/UX, as it was the only true 32bit pre-emptive yadda yadda yadda operating system on the scene at the time, and offered big $$$ to commodore to license it and the hardware. commodore turned them down basicly by slamming the door in their face, so they had to carry on releasing their unix systems with HP/UX, and their workstation systems had to run something call windows NT3.51....

[DonnyEMU]

Yeah that is not true, they had an entire special dealer network of Amiga Unix dealers and special sales staff in this country.  It was about half the cost of a competing Sun system. The thing is back then people bought Unix boxes very different today (linux was just a glimmer in someone's eye. The HP offer you mention doesn't really characterize Commodore's relationship with HP..

The were other issues like how a 68030 or 68040 would compete head-on with a SparcStation for CPU power. A major university in my area was considering purchase of Amiga Unix boxes and it almost happened. However since Commodore sold everything at bargain basement prices they couldn't afford to LOWER the price and when the other workstation companies were presented with their customers going to a "commodore" option they lowered their price or "donated" machines to schools to keep the marketshare.  

So Commodore already swimming in red-ink had problems competing. The schools still went with Amigas but they wanted the ones with genlocks and multimedia production capability. Not the ones with Unix and the A2410 graphics cards which gave Amiga better resolution but removed the multimedia and video capabilities.. And kept their more high-end sparcs and used the "Commodore option" as leverage to get machines with more perceived CPU power..

Windows NT 3.51 was the windows NT multi-tasking kernal running ontop a single tasking windows 3.1 desktop. It was powerful thanks to the ex-digital folks that made the underlying technology but it wasn't till 96-97 that it started gaining steam. Way after Commodore's started demise..

So don't BLAME Commodore for this, they tried hard.. Also the amazing thing about most people chiming in with postings is they are talking about products that came 4-5 years if not 6 or 7 later than the Amiga (ECS, AGA)..

It's been years guys, but get your timelines right.. The Sega Genesis would have been at this same time line (if not a little after). Also everything was planar even most 8bit color vga cards till way after 1996. I know I used to work on windows software for them and at the time even into the first release of Windows 95 some didn't have a BitBlt function..

Oh and for the record Andy Warhol used Graphicraft not Deluxe Paint (it didn't exist at the time). Graphicraft became an Aegis product called images if I remember correctly.

[itix]

@darkcoder

EGA modes (16 colors) were often planar modes but there were also some chunky 16 col modes.

[darksun9210]

ok cool. i was just under the impression, that when DEC were looking for an operating system and they saw amigaOS release 2. then asked to license it for their system. they would have paid for it and developed it for the alpha chip in house. done a little looking and i don't think it releated to AmigaUX just release 2 for a A3000...

i didn't know about the dealer network either.
sorry if i get a little muddled, but i'm trying to remember from a long time ago with no reference documentation to read up on..

one of those, what might have been.

wish some of my schools got amigas. all we had were RM nimbuses 80/186 running "lemons" or "trains". bleh :-(

[srg86]

RM nimbuses 80/186 and BBC model Bs. AFAIK my primary school  still uses them