Atari ST versus Commodore Amiga in pictures

[Flashlab]

@all

Sigh, this is just a troll that missed 20 years. All "points" he tries to make have been answered. About comparing companies with platforms, units sold, the difference in design and even the fact about the chipset that was in the A1000 being similar to the one in the A500 two years later. He doesn't want to hear it.

Maybe this one is a candidate for a life time membership on the Retrogeek Computers forum.

[Hammer]

What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...

The X86 PC has a superior distribution model i.e. unified PC clones compared to fragmented 68K PC world.

Starting from 1991, PC world has ATI Mach series GPUs. In 1992, ATI Mach32 already beats CBM's AGA.

[monami]

i'm no troll my friend. thanks you.

"jay miner, one of the original designers for the custom chips found in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit of machines, tried to convince Atari management to invest big money into creating a new chipset and console/computer idea. When his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and set about designing this new chipset. The company which was later renamed Amiga started selling various video game controllers and games while it developed its "Lorraine" computer system."

[HenryCase]

@monami

I'm going to quote myself (how sad) so that my later comments make more sense:

HenryCase wrote:
Are you trying to say that the Atari ST's existence is the only reason the A500 was created?

In response...

monami wrote:
no i suspected that miner was in on the atari next gen computer and tried to cut their throat. and that using a reasonable ability of phycology "mines bigger than yours." he would win with a slighter improved computer that to be honest was his only want to get up the nose of atari corp or who ever.

You started so well with the "no" part, but the rest of your statement was certainly implying "yes". So to clarify again, you think the A500 was only created because Jay Miner wanted a computer that would compete with the Atari ST? It's a simple yes or no question.

(I'm leaving out the fact that the A500's existence was probably more due to Thomas Rattigan than Jay Miner, but the question is still valid if you replace 'Jay Miner' with 'Commodore').

[DigitalQ]

AeroMan wrote:

If you guys have read On The Edge, there is a part where it says the ST's design started inside Commodore. Amiga's creators were ex-Atari people.

Amiga's hardware is closer to the Atari 800 than to the C64. It uses a list to feed the video chip for graphics and sprites, as Miner did for the 800. It has DMA to obtain this data, and lots of similarities.

The ST is closer to the 64, in the way it has a number of fixed modes, and they work in a simpler way. It has a single video chip that shares RAM just like the VIC did. It is a simple machine. Shivji was part of the Commodore 8 bit team.

What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...
(crappy world ! :-? )

To be perfectly honest, I never thought of Amiga as being closely related to either Commodore or Atari.  To me, it made use of the best engineering concepts in computer design of the time to create a whole new computer platform.  

A lot of these arguments can be related to automobiles.  If someone worked for Ford then left to work for a small company to develop a new Hydrogen engine that set new standards in the automobile industry, which was later bought up by General Motors and used in cars built by General Motors, would we still call it a Ford?

Clearly, we have: A) Computer engineers, B) Computer platforms, and C) Computer companies.  We also have D) Investors, who may or may not be C) Computer companies.  It's A) Computer engineers that design B) Computer platforms, which are then marketed by C) computer companies.  Sometimes they need D) investors to get their ideas off the ground; but that money must be paid back.  Far too often, computer companies are credited with the creation of a computer platform.  They are not.  They simply market the products of the engineers who happen to be in their employ.  Thus, neither Commodore nor Atari are responsible for the creation of the Amiga.  

As for the state of modern PC's, I'd say they've incorporated a lot of the good qualities of the Amiga.  At least the world is using a Windows that's based on OS/2 now, which is closer to the Amiga.

[InTheSand]

Hammer wrote:

What really disapoints me is to see this world dominated by PCs. Crappy processor, crappy video, crappy sound, crappy OS, and It won the big fight over all the nice machines...

The X86 PC has a superior distribution model i.e. unified PC clones compared to fragmented 68K PC world.

Starting from 1991, PC world has ATI Mach series GPUs. In 1992, ATI Mach32 already beats CBM's AGA.

And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...

@AeroMan: As for crappy processor... yes, but it's now fast enough for that not to be an issue... And crappy OS? Err.. you must be using Windows!

 - Ali

[DigitalQ]

InTheSand wrote:
And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...

What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted.  What made them fail is when they tried to dictate to the market what people wanted.  Case in point: The Commodore PET created a desire.  The Commodore Vic 20, then the C64, delivered what the market demanded.  The Plus/4 and C16 were attempts by Commodore to control the market, and as such failed.  The Commodore 128 and 64c are examples of Commodore once again giving the market what they demanded, and the move barely saved them.

The Amiga 1000 was much like that Commodore PET; an original idea that created desire.  The A500 and A2000 gave the market what it demanded.  After that, Commodore tried to control the market and dictate it with products like the A500+, too many variations of the A2000, then the A600 and A3000.  However, this time, by the time they started delivering what people wanted (the 1200 and the 4000), it was too little, too late, too overpriced.  

[Hammer]

And... the rise of 3D first-person shooters pretty much killed off the remaining Amiga games market... If only the AGA chipset had included a chunky graphics mode as part of the original hardware (Akiko excluded)... Then again, that'd only have just delayed the inevitable...

Can CSG/MOS compete against Intel's 487 FP co-processor?

[HenryCase]

@DigitalQ

Forgive my ignorance, but in what ways is OS/2 more similar to the Amiga than DOS-based Windows?

[monami]

@henrycase. i know you all know i'm not close to 50% history of what you know. but all i can see is a guy with dollar signs in his eyes and a little more. the whole thing is a buisiness yes and i can see their are those that had a love of electronics. but how much of it is ego and self recognition? undercut backstab. i know it's a cut throat buisiness. so many didn't succeed. but i personally didn't like the amigas entrance to my world. as you say my history is different to what you consider to be true. to me it was like a sex pistols song "god save the queen." on jubilee day. even though i'm a fan i didn't like that approach. yes commodore were having to find a nitch. but even i can see that was a mistake to put up what were £1000 computers when they had home computers before. so then i saw it like oh lets get in at the low end. and undercut and cut out atari. any kind of revenge it didn't wash with me thats all. yes you give a donkey a carrot and it follows you. you promise the earth and people will beleive you. thats what i call hype. i'm sure if i had an amiga at the time i would have said... don't like the colour! but someone else would woot woot woot.

i think the a500 was meant to usurp the st. make of that what you will.

[monami]

"What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted."

i bought 3 vic 20's that all went wrong and were returned to radio rental before i decided on a zx spectrum.

[Hammer]

monami wrote:
"What made Commodore such a great success was the times they delivered to market a product that people wanted."

i bought 3 vic 20's that all went wrong and were returned to radio rental before i decided on a zx spectrum.

My family's old VIC-20 works fine.

[DigitalQ]

HenryCase wrote:
@DigitalQ

Forgive my ignorance, but in what ways is OS/2 more similar to the Amiga than DOS-based Windows?

The way in which OS/2 Multitasks is very similar to the Amiga; in that it worked very well without crashing the system.  Also, the High Performance File System (HPFS) of OS/2 was similar with respect that you could natively use long file names instead of the hack that Fat32 offered.  OS/2 used REXX, which was very similar to Amiga's AREXX.  Unlike DOS-based Windows, and much like AmigaDOS and Workbench 2.x and over, OS/2 was very stable and rarely crashed.  Like in Amiga WB 2.x and over, one could customize their desktop to no end in OS/2.  In all honesty, when I made the switch to PC from Amiga, I felt much more at home with OS/2 than I did with Windows.  

A well-known fact is that modern Windows is based on NT.  A little-known fact is that NT is based on OS/2.   :-D

[DigitalQ]

monami wrote:
 i know it's a cut throat buisiness. so many didn't succeed. but i personally didn't like the amigas entrance to my world. as you say my history is different to what you consider to be true. to me it was like a sex pistols song "god save the queen." on jubilee day. even though i'm a fan i didn't like that approach. yes commodore were having to find a nitch. but even i can see that was a mistake to put up what were £1000 computers when they had home computers before. so then i saw it like oh lets get in at the low end. and undercut and cut out atari. any kind of revenge it didn't wash with me thats all.

Honestly, what business was it of Atari's to even make home computers in the first place?  They had their Atari 2600 videogame console, and Commodore had the PET.  Then Atari decided to undercut and cut out Commodore with the Atari 400.  They could have stuck with videogame consoles like Nintendo did, but instead they decided to go on the attack against Commodore.  

See, you got your history all wrong again.  It's Atari that were the agressors; Commodore was merely trying to protect itself.   ;-)

[AeroMan]

Hammer wrote:

Can CSG/MOS compete against Intel's 487 FP co-processor?

68K's had FP coprocessors too. The problem was how to compete against clones. That made hardware cheap, and not dependant on one company's finances like Amiga and Atari were.
There were no reasons for Amiga not to go in the 3d accelerator field, and chunky modes were in AAA. It was a matter of time, but C= died first.
Intel processors are fast now, but they have the burden of a 30 years old 8086 to carry as compatibility. They are also faster because they are produced in big volume. I would love to see what would happen if a better architeture like ARM or PPC had dominated the PC industry. We would be way ahead of our time.

@DigitalQ:

Engineering is a form of art. We take our signatures in our projects. If you analyse the design of the VCS, 8 bit Ataris and the Amiga, you can clearly see Miner's style.

This becomes a dilluted in automobiles as they are designed by big teams, but they reuse the company's resources leaving the cars with the company's signature. (have a nice example, PM you later...) :-)

[persia]

Ok, So if you took all the products of all the dead computer companies, Amiga would be the best.  The video is lame.