Top 3 worst ideas in Amiga history?

[Tenacious]

There used to be a pretty cool networking solution that used an adapter on the floppy drive port. Not exactly a speed demon but IIRC it had very little CPU overhead as Paula did most of the work.

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?

[paul1981]

Every Amiga model should have had a built in RTC as standard, and a hard disk too.  It would have made it the definitive business/office computer.  Should have been marketed as such and bundled with appropriate software all as standard.
This would have also meant that more games would have been system friendly, with hard disk install options.
As for the old 1.3 colour scheme...I quite like it.  Doesn't look like a toy to me.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

1 - The Atari STF(M) 1024 had an external hdd connector, the Amiga should've had that as well, instead of occupying the entire expansion port.
2 - Like the Atari 800xl and most computer-in-keyboard MSX'es, the A500 should've had a second 'expansion port' on the top (and the A2000 in front), to be able to have cartridge games like the Megadrive. Then, games could be much more arcade-like, probably even Neo-Geo like.
3 - Models that came out during/after the A3000 (A600, CDTV, A1200) certainly should've had 31khz video output as a standard option
4 - Since the A3000, HD disk drives should've been standard.
5 - IIRC Commodore delayed for some reason AGA (backwards compatibility issues, rivalling the existing Amiga's too much, that sort of thing). AFAIK it could've been introduced with the A3000 (hence it was slow when it actually was intruduced - outdated)
6 - The CDTV should've physically been an A3000 with CD drive (and with a normal tray, no caddy), and it should've been equipped with a (HD) floppy drive as standard, and the lcd screen should show cd track information. Oh, and it should've been marketed well as a kickass computer
7 - I understand that computers 'back in the days' (in the late 80's), were not standardly equipped with hd drives, but surely, games SHOULD have been hd installable (OR should've been on cartridge).

[Karlos]

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?

Amiga-Link Disknet?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Really? 68K was reasonably competitive to x86 during the time Commodore was around. Apple didn't move to PowerPC until 94. There were high end workstations on RISC architectures at the time, but those were largely competing for a different market than Commodore was in. The cost of an architecture switch would have been high and Commodore had made too many mistakes already to survive long enough to gain any benefit IMHO.

My top 3:
1. Not investing in the necessary R&D to stay ahead. When the A1000 was released in 1985, it was superior to the IBM compatibles and Macs that were available at the time. The A2000 had an edge over the Mac II in some respects (namely hardware acceleration), but had a much slower CPU. Later on, AGA was both too late and too limited to compete as others have already pointed out.

2. Trying to compete directly with the game consoles. A blitter makes sense for a personal computer, but the tile-based hardware common in game consoles of the time generally produced better results at lower cost. Combine this with the pricing advantages that charging developers licensing fees brings and this clearly wasn't going to work out. Further, the attempts solidified the perception that the Amiga was merely a gaming machine.

3. Not doing more to pursue "professional" markets. Apple survived because of their dominance in the desktop publishing market. The Amiga did well in video production, but that alone wasn't enough (I imagine desktop publishing was a much larger market at the time, lots of companies had internal art departments for print. I can't imagine too many did video production internally).

The Amiga did PRIMARILY well in the game/homecomputer market ("we bought it to help with your homework")
And personally I think there's still potential in the game/homecomputer hybrid principle.

[mpiva]

The worst idea was definately AGA.  More resources should have been put into making AAA available when AGA came out.  The A3000+ should have been the A4000.  A4000 was filled with poor choices and feels like it was rushed out.  For one, the loss of the flicker-fixer were just idoitic.  When I upgraded from my A3000 to an A4000, I was so upset that my newer computer couldn't use the nice monitor I was using on my A3000 and I had to spend all this extra money on an expensive 1942 monitor.

The decision to put a HD floppy in the A4000 was good the fact the drive was 1.5 height left you with a completely useless 0.5 height drive bay.  But to make matters worse, since the A1200 didn't come with an HD drive, no commercial developers used HD floppys.  This left the HD drive in A4000s useless except for personal purposes and game were coming on 14+ DD floppies instead of a more reasonable 7.

Also the A1200 should have come with an 68030 as standard (or a 44 or 50Mhz 020).  25Mhz 020's were too slow in comparison to standard PC's and Macs of that time.

But really, I think the biggest problem was that ECS was just too good and AGA was not enough of an improvement.  Developers mostly just targetted ECS machines as that market was bigger and as a result there was not enough incentive for many people to upgrade to an AGA machine.  ECS thrived for much longer than it should have and AGA machines never sold as well as they needed too.

[Karlos]

Speaking of display stuff, considering you could support 6-bitplanes on ECS, I think EHB was a pretty stupid idea. Why not just have 64 distinct palette entries instead?

[Karlos]

The A1200 was broken in a few respects IMHO. I can pick numerous faults but there should have been at least the capability to add fast ram directly to the motherboard, without tying up the trapdoor slot.

[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.

[MskoDestny]

The Amiga did PRIMARILY well in the game/homecomputer market ("we bought it to help with your homework")

And that is fundamentally the problem. It didn't make much sense to buy an Amiga strictly as a games machine. Too expensive compared to consoles and once the Genesis/Megadrive and SNES got on the scene, it was graphically outclassed. Now if there's something else useful you want to do with the computer besides playing games, you can justify the extra cost. If you're looking to do useful work you're likely to want the same platform as you use at your job. This gave computers that had success in professional markets a leg up in the home market even if they weren't as good for playing games.

Further, consumers tend to be stingy and buy low margin products. Professional users tend to buy higher-end stuff and will tolerate higher margins.

And personally I think there's still potential in the game/homecomputer hybrid principle.

To an extent I agree with you. Lots of people play games on their computers, not just hardcore PC gamers. However, for most of those people, gaming is a secondary function. They don't buy the computer to play games, but once they have it they end up playing games on it.

[tone007]

The decision to put a HD floppy in the A4000 was good the fact the drive was 1.5 height left you with a completely useless 0.5 height drive bay.

All of the 4000s I've seen have had standard-sized HD drives and a normal bay free.

[Karlos]

All of the 4000s I've seen have had standard-sized HD drives and a normal bay free.

I think a much bigger problem is the depth of the 5.25 inch bay. I have seen a few A4K's with CD drives protruding out of the front.

[tone007]

I think a much bigger problem is the depth of the 5.25 inch bay. I have seen a few A4K's with CD drives protruding out of the front.

I can agree with that one. They didn't make drives to fit that spot until 10 years later.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

And that is fundamentally the problem. It didn't make much sense to buy an Amiga strictly as a games machine. Too expensive compared to consoles and once the Genesis/Megadrive and SNES got on the scene, it was graphically outclassed.

I've got both a Genesis and an Amiga, and I must say the games that get the most out of the Amiga hardware (like Elfmania, Fighting Spirit and Kid Chaos) deliver better gfx, BUT many Genesis games are better looking because they were well developed and were put on a cartridge (which saves A LOT of processing power and memory).
I really wonder what the Amiga all could do if it was successful in Japan, and it having a game cartridge option.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

1 - The Atari STF(M) 1024 had an external hdd connector, the Amiga should've had that as well, instead of occupying the entire expansion port.
2 - Like the Atari 800xl and most computer-in-keyboard MSX'es, the A500 should've had a second 'expansion port' on the top (and the A2000 in front), to be able to have cartridge games like the Megadrive. Then, games could be much more arcade-like, probably even Neo-Geo like.
3 - Models that came out during/after the A3000 (A600, CDTV, A1200) certainly should've had 31khz video output as a standard option
4 - Since the A3000, HD disk drives should've been standard.
5 - IIRC Commodore delayed for some reason AGA (backwards compatibility issues, rivalling the existing Amiga's too much, that sort of thing). AFAIK it could've been introduced with the A3000 (hence it was slow when it actually was intruduced - outdated)
6 - The CDTV should've physically been an A3000 with CD drive (and with a normal tray, no caddy), and it should've been equipped with a (HD) floppy drive as standard, and the lcd screen should show cd track information. Oh, and it should've been marketed well as a kickass computer
7 - I understand that computers 'back in the days' (in the late 80's), were not standardly equipped with hd drives, but surely, games SHOULD have been hd installable (OR should've been on cartridge).

Oh, and added to this, the kickstart should've been cartridge based, so it could easily be replaced.

[Karlos]

Oh, and added to this, the kickstart should've been cartridge based, so it could easily be replaced.

I can't agree with that notion. It would have greatly increased the cost of buying a new kickstart ROM, relied on some dodgy edge connector that may end up having flaky contacts and the like.

Besides, changing the kickstart chips aren't exactly difficult on most amigas, since they are socketed and generally fairly easy to access, even on wedge models.