Classic Amiga Design Pet Hates

[gertsy]

Thought I'd post a new thread to celebrate my 500th anniversary.
There are many little "things" about classic Amiga's that p*** people off.
In the spirit of positive feedback: It's the way products become better: CIP.  Not that that will help with classics.  But:

Why on the A500, A600 and A1200 is there a lip on the back that makes it impossible to see the connectors from above....Grrr...?

Any other pet hates ?

[ElPolloDiabl]

The use of 2.5inch drives in the A1200 back in the day they were expensive and a lot slower than 3.5inch drives.
The lame 15watt PSU in that came with the A1200.

I've got plenty of gripes about the hard to expand Classic Macs as well. So your only real option is to fork out for another computer.

[the_leander]

My biggest one was the lack of a standard IDE connector for the CD rom drive of the CD32, which meant that when it went, you were SOL. This was compounded by the fact that neither the SX32 nor the SX32 pro (the one with the 68030 onboard) had proper buffering on their IDE lines, so you couldn't add a CD drive that way and use a hard drive at the same time. None of the IDEfix cards added the buffering since they were designed for the 1200 which had proper buffering of it's IDE.

[Buzzfuzz]

Simple, there where lots of 030/040/060 accelerators for the 1200, why didn't they fit a good 68030RC50 and 68882RC50 on it and for the last revision the 68060RC50 ?
They also could have done that with the A500.

[runequester]

make the damn floppy drive stop clicking!

[the_leander]

Simple, there where lots of 030/040/060 accelerators for the 1200, why didn't they fit a good 68030RC50 and 68882RC50 on it and for the last revision the 68060RC50 ?

In a word? Cost.

At the time of the 1200's release, the 030 in any variant was exorbitant. When the 030 accelerators first came out, they weren't a whole lot less than the price of a new A1200. As for the 060... Oh good lord. Do you remember the costs of accelerators fitted with those things even in 1998?! ROTFL.

They also could have done that with the A500.

Because the 030 hadn't even been released until after the A500 was in full production. And again, cost, at the time the 030 would have been so fresh it would have been warm still by the time it was delivered. The A500 was designed to fit within a budget, adding even an 020 as an option at the time of launch would have been hideously expensive. Remember the costs of the A3000 when it was launched? I do.

[scuzzb494]

Thought I'd post a new thread to celebrate my 500th anniversary.
There are many little "things" about classic Amiga's that p*** people off.
In the spirit of positive feedback: It's the way products become better: CIP.  Not that that will help with classics.  But:

Why on the A500, A600 and A1200 is there a lip on the back that makes it impossible to see the connectors from above....Grrr...?

Any other pet hates ?

Nothing... Seriously. Nothing. And I mean that.

All I seem to have done my whole computing life is try to find anything that is as wonderful as the Amiga. It is obviously dated but hey that's not the girlfriends fault.

Thinks ' A thing of beauty is a joy forever '

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

[scuzzb494]

make the damn floppy drive stop clicking!

You do realise there is a program on Aminet to let you do just that... Often appeared on cover disks. Personally I like the clicking given that the Amiga is so quiet. Like a heartbeat.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

[scuzzb494]

In a word? Cost.

At the time of the 1200's release, the 030 in any variant was exorbitant. When the 030 accelerators first came out, they weren't a whole lot less than the price of a new A1200. As for the 060... Oh good lord. Do you remember the costs of accelerators fitted with those things even in 1998?! ROTFL.



Because the 030 hadn't even been released until after the A500 was in full production. And again, cost, at the time the 030 would have been so fresh it would have been warm still by the time it was delivered. The A500 was designed to fit within a budget, adding even an 020 as an option at the time of launch would have been hideously expensive. Remember the costs of the A3000 when it was launched? I do.

No different to a PC of the day. And the PC, trust me was crap. I priced out like for like before I bought my Amiga 1200 in 1993 and the PC was more expensive. And having experienced a PC of the day trust me you didn`t want to go there.

Computing in those days was very expensive. What ever you ran. The Amiga was way ahead of its competitors in multitasking, animations etc and thats why. The Amiga though was the only model that let you start modest and build to your own pace. Unlike the tinboxes and Macs of the day.

As for 1998 ....

By 1998 the market of supply and demand was such that because of the falling user base the makers of the 060 had to lift the price to stay alive. Personally I would still pay those prices now if I could get a new Cyberstorm.... ar hum.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

[Pyromania]

Battery leaking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lauri.lotvonen]

It would have been nice if the controller ports were installed on the side or front, it was very frustrating to change the controller/mouse all the time playing games =).
But not like in the A600, they wont fit anything but "regular" connectors.

[Karlos]

In a word? Cost.

At the time of the 1200's release, the 030 in any variant was exorbitant. When the 030 accelerators first came out, they weren't a whole lot less than the price of a new A1200. As for the 060... Oh good lord. Do you remember the costs of accelerators fitted with those things even in 1998?! ROTFL.

*cough* Falcon 030 *cough*

Ok, it had a 16-bit data bus, but that was more for compatibility with the rest of the atari innards, not due to cost. The falcon was comparably priced to the A1200.

My pet hate with the A1200 was that it didn't come with any fast ram, nor the provision to add any beyond the trapdoor. A single SIMM slot and requisite glue logic on the motherboard would not have broken the bank and would have made the machine far more capable out of the box.

[Jiffy]

The fact that, in contrast to any laptop or notebook, the largest part of a fitted pcmcia-card on the A1200 is outside of the computer.

[Akiko]

I guess mine is that the CPU slot in the 4000 was only designed to address a maximum of 128MB Ram, even though the 1200 could handle more.

Didn't those Commodore engineers realise just how memory intensive apps may have become nearly 20 years on!

[playgeneration]

2MB chip ram limit on 1200 and 4000, having an oboard simm socket with 2mb in as standard with the option to upgrade to 4MB or perhaps more would have been great. Perhaps then I could actually play games that expect to use all the chip ram like T-zero.
 
Black and white composite output on the 2000, seriously, why?
 
No scandoubler/flicker fixer in the 4000, a backwards step from the 3000
 
stupid yellowing plastic cases