Classic Amiga Design Pet Hates

[gertsy]

The 1200 trapdoor.

The amount of physical effort it's taken me to shove my Apollo 1240 in that is beyond belief. Even then, the trapdoor is so shallow that the 68040 fan doesn't fit in the keyboard slant - causing the whole card to poke of the trapdoor - and I've had to mount the Amiga on legs so that the card doesn't touch the desk.

Hmmm, Not a CBM problem I would hazard..
Other accelerators fit snug, but I supose the 040 & 060 chips take up much more space than CBM would have imagined.

[KThunder]

With amiga owner track record with upgrades, commodore should have realised most people would go with the 1200 and given it a better sized trapdoor. they gave the slot some pretty impressive capabilities but not enough space in the trapdoor to fit a device to use them all.

Imagine a card with 060, two simm slots, clock, pentium pc emu or ppc, fast buffered ide or scsi, sound chip, and rtg video. the slot could handle it (with a psu upgrade) but there is noway you would fit anything like that in there.

at the time i wondered why noone built an almost flat case filled with goodies that the 1200 could sit on top of, that would connect with a cable throught the trapdoor.

[Daedalus]

I happen to like the floppy drive click too and the automatic detection on insertion... I still have to use a lot of floppy disks in work, and it does my head in having to refresh the drive window every time because I forget the PC doesn't notice I've swapped the disk. I don't think Commodore can be faulted really for not including more stuff in the 1200 (030 and fast RAM for a start) because cost was such a huge thing. The A1200 was already a relatively expensive computer and an extra hundred pounds would've been enough to drive it totally out of the casual gaming market where the Megadrive and SNES were ruling.

[curtis]

GOOFY DB-23 connectors!

Why in the world would someone use such an odd connector blows my mind.  With Commodore being so cost conscious, you'd think they'd go with something much more standard!

And then they went and used the stupid thing TWICE!!!  Video AND floppy connectors.

Gotta really love engineers sometimes.  Keeps you from wanting to throttle their little pencil necks.

At least that's my opinion.

[KThunder]

cost was a huge thing but commodore had the 1200 selling for way under what anything else was and the 4000 selling for way above anything else.

If they had gone more for middle ground they could have added features to the 1200 and sold more 4000s

[Amiga_Nut]

A500 - Modulator of low quality and external device. No on/off switch on A500 only on PSU.

A500 Plus - Stupid useless screen modes when what we all wanted was 128 colours in 320x256/512 which existed in 1987 thanks to Jay's work. Modulator. PSU

A600 - PSU on/off switch.

A1200 - Only chip ram on motherboard so 50% speed loss for all stock A1200s sold, and PSU on/off switch. Lack of upgraded Paula in AGA OR a dual Paula design (they put dual SID in C65 to address the fact Bob Yannes left and they were stuck with SID warts and all). Lack of chunky byte per pixel screen mode making 256 colour screens a real chore.

General stuff - No official C= CDROM drives for A1200. No Internet strategy at Commodore within Workbench 3 in 1994.

I would say horrible plasticy keyboards but as they're budget machines that's understandable, and as the A2000 and A1000 have excellent keyboards clearly it's a cost issue.

[Amiga_Nut]

cost was a huge thing but commodore had the 1200 selling for way under what anything else was and the 4000 selling for way above anything else.

If they had gone more for middle ground they could have added features to the 1200 and sold more 4000s

At 399 the original A1200 wasn't 'too cheap' at all. It had a 14mhz bare minimum 32bit CPU crippled to 50% speed as purchased due to all machines sold being 2mb chip ram, no CD-ROM package bundle from Commodore, no 16bit sound or increased number of sound channels. A1200 was NOT overpriced at all. Simm slot for internal simple fast ram addition, dual Paula and a proper chunky pixel mode was not too much to ask for 399 really. HD floppy drive also would have been nice, the price difference for the DD/HD units must have been peanuts anyway. Oh and it should have been A1200 in 92 and A4000 later in 93...NOT the other way round if they wanted an AGA machine to fend off bankruptcy.

But I agree, there should have been an A1300 or something with internal CD, 28mhz 020, and 2mb+1mb Chip + Fast ram as a standard machine. This would have helped a lot as games programmers then had a target machine intended for home buyers to aspire towards.

Also such a machine should have come with a fully functional internet browser and all the necessary networky black magic to make it work (and a non crippled serial port too allowing at least 33.6kb modems to work unencumbered).

[ChaosLord]

The 1200 trapdoor.

The amount of physical effort it's taken me to shove my Apollo 1240 in that is beyond belief. Even then, the trapdoor is so shallow that the 68040 fan doesn't fit in the keyboard slant - causing the whole card to poke of the trapdoor - and I've had to mount the Amiga on legs so that the card doesn't touch the desk.

Error: User bought the wrong accellerator.

The 68030 and 68060 cards don't have fans and don't need fans and fit nicely.

[B00tDisk]

I happen to like the floppy drive click too and the automatic detection on insertion... I still have to use a lot of floppy disks in work, and it does my head in having to refresh the drive window every time because I forget the PC doesn't notice I've swapped the disk. I don't think Commodore can be faulted really for not including more stuff in the 1200 (030 and fast RAM for a start) because cost was such a huge thing. The A1200 was already a relatively expensive computer and an extra hundred pounds would've been enough to drive it totally out of the casual gaming market where the Megadrive and SNES were ruling.

I hated the floppy click.

And as to the cost thing?  Yeah, C= should've trodden into the Cadillac price range with the 1200 because Apple was already there, as were comparable PCs.  But by the time of the 1200, C= management was raping and pillaging the company.  They had to put up a good enough front (that they were interested in selling computers that were an advance over their old ones) to keep the investors' money coming in as they were sucking it dry.  Not going with 030 and Fast RAM meant more money for them.  Don't ascribe any kind of altruism to C= cost cutting.

[KThunder]

commodore diversified their product in the 80's by taking one basic system and building variants of it. The 1000, 500, and 2000 are very similar hardware wise. the 3000 and 600 were different of course but the focus then was on the 3000 powerhouse.

in the 90's they made two completely different systems. they should have made a slightly beefier 1200 with an 030 and 2megs chip 2megs fast for a little more money. And the 4000 should have been a 1200 with a bus controller and slots, in a big box case, for a bit more.

they would have sold a few less 1200s and probably quite a few more 4000s and then with the 4000t they could have added scsi more slots and other goodies.

[Hattig]

But I agree, there should have been an A1300 or something with internal CD, 28mhz 020, and 2mb+1mb Chip + Fast ram as a standard machine. This would have helped a lot as games programmers then had a target machine intended for home buyers to aspire towards.

Yeah, I agree that Commodore could have done a dual launch of the A1200, and an A1400 at a higher price (£200 more?) with 4MB (2+2), 28MHz 68020/30, and HD floppy.

Data CD drives were very young still, and expensive - don't forget these. I don't think the lack of a CD drive at launch or thereabouts was a major problem for the A1200. HD floppies would have saved some pain for larger AGA games though.

[Karlos]

Error: User bought the wrong accellerator.

The 68030 and 68060 cards don't have fans and don't need fans and fit nicely.

Pah, where's your sense of adventure? There was absolutely no mistaking when my A1200 was turned on. That damned 'orrible whiney fan on my Apollo 1240 turbo was so loud...

[mingle]

A few niggles, let's say...

1: All of those cooling-slots on the top of the A500/600/1200 (same goes for the C64!) seem to be designed to attract and hold dust and be almost impossible to clean (without a scrubbing brush and water!)

2: The constant clicking/active floppy drives!

3: No proper VGA/SVGA non-interlaced, 24 bit modes in AGA

4: Location of the mouse ports - all over the place on the big-box Amigas...

5: The impossibly tight-fit of the A1200 expansion slot - maybe the expansion card makers are also to blame a bit? Why not make the cards (or slot) easier to fit stuff into?

6: The A4000 case - as ugly as a bag of spanners

7: Did I mention the ugly A4000 case?

:-)

Mike.

[KThunder]

@mingle
"7: Did I mention the ugly A4000 case?"

i think with the 3000 they were trying to make a case as cool as the 1000's and with the 4000 they were trying to make one as ugly as the 2000

i think all the wedge cases looked really cool but were very impractical, once you got all the wires connected.

[marcfrick2112]

mingle:

The 4000 case isn't That bad.... I've seen worse....

But yeah, the cooling slots.... a pain, to be sure.... I keep an old small bristle brush around just because it's sized just right to clean those slots....

[hayashi]

Error: User bought the wrong accellerator.

The 68030 and 68060 cards don't have fans and don't need fans and fit nicely.

Guru Meditation: I realise this but cannot afford an 060.