What is the most difficult thing on the Amiga?

[stefcep2]

They could have just got a 14 inch VGA monitor, selected productivity mode and most people would have been happy...unless they wanted to play a game.

[spirantho]

Or even used the monitor that Commodore recommended for the Amiga 4000, like the Commodore 1960. No flicker then!

It's no wonder the Amiga got the reputation it did of being a non-serious computer, if the people demoing them were doing crazy things like using TVs for serious work (and then blaming the Amiga for the TV's interlacing!!)!

[Crom00]

Stick the PC monitor on the Amiga and - surprise, surprise - the flicker disappears.

Scratches head.... HUH? really how do you figure that... Actually what happens is you need to SET the screenmode to VGA compatibility mode, turn off the machine, connect the PC monitor...and reboot.

So now you're stuck in WB or screens that can open in VGA compatible screens if you want to use that PC montiror.

 Wanna play a game? too bad...(oh that's right I have to have a TV around... WTF?) work with any mode higher then 600X200 prepare for mind numbing flicker, your logic of blaming the display is strange becuase... the AMIGA is feeding the display with a low freq flickering display.

Hence the need for buitin Flicker fixer. Hence the laugh out load reactions from anyone who had used a $800 386sx clone in 1992 and see's the Amigas flckering display.

[Crom00]

Or even used the monitor that Commodore recommended for the Amiga 4000, like the Commodore 1960. No flicker then!
QUOTE]

What? So if I run NTSC mode in hires you still get flicker....actually the system I saw demo'd had an 1960 running dpaint IV aga in hires mode. Two high school kids were going through NTSC modes (casual users don't know or care about NTSC vs "productivity")

Actually everything was fine they just were totally put off by the flicker... they actually said "it cool ya know feels like its faster dan da PC but man... wassup wif dat flicka (NYC accent)"

That's when I thought... Commodore.. bunch of F'n amatuers...

Try and sell an IPAD with a flickering display and see what happens, this creates the most annoying user experience in computers or entertainment devices... I can't think of a worse way to destroy the user experience (other than slow 286 and win 3.1) You may as well ship the computer with a smelly fat guy who farts and flings boogers at you while trying to use the machine...at least you can have the fat guy run errands in exchange for candy.

[Crom00]

Also commodores excuse of reducing costs by removing the flicker fixer chip is strange... So let's lock folks into expensive to make multiscan monitors that cost us tons of cash to produce and support logistcally.

Lets do this  instead of selling AGA machines with FFD that can use abundant off the shelf VGA monitors and thus increasing user base due to ease of use and compatiblity with modern standards.

Explain the flicker to a principal or office manager who would have to spend 12 hours a day with the mind numbing display...

[stefcep2]

The interlace flicker was a strength and weakness.

Its strength was that it gave perfect timing for video work, made cheap video mixing possible with a genlock, gave unmatched- for the time- smoothness for video animations, and let you plonk the machine in front of a TV at a time when a VGA monitor was not cheap.  I think all that was reasonable for the A1200 which was targeted at the home user.

The problem was that the professional AGA machine- the A4000-was crippled, in so many ways in additionto the the interlacing, which was a huge hindrance to the Amiga gaining acceptance as a serious machine.  It should have come with a better CPU card and a flicker-fixer.

[kolla]

A4000 was from Commodore mostly meant as a games developer system for A1200 game developers, so called serious users had graphics cards even back then.

[stefcep2]

A4000 was from Commodore mostly meant as a games developer system for A1200 game developers, so called serious users had graphics cards even back then.

Whether it was Commodore's intent to have the A4000 as a games development machine I'm not sure.  But the design oversights did do was take out a lot of users who put their joysticks down and wanted to do DTP, 24-bit graphics, office work, but couldn't spend the price of a new kitchen on an A4000.

[mingle]

As others have said the interlaced hires screen-modes were one of the biggest pain and made using these modes a nightmare.

Also sheer speed was missing - when the A1200 came out it was already overtaken by cheaper PCs...

[runequester]

Every PC available in 92 or 93 was 3 or 4 times as much money as a stock 1200, at least in Denmark where I grew up.

This was for a crap model with crap sound, a small hard drive and windows 3.1 :laughing:


Maybe PC's were amazingly cheaper elsewhere, though from my friends here in the US who were PC users at the time, this seems not to have been the case.

[kolla]

In 1994 I bought my A1200 with Desktop Dynamite, a couple of joysticks and various extras for less than NOK 5000,-
At the same time my parents bought a 25MHz 486SX with 4MB RAM and 170MB disk for more than NOK 20.000,-

[ElPolloDiabl]

As others have said the interlaced hires screen-modes were one of the biggest pain and made using these modes a nightmare.

Also sheer speed was missing - when the A1200 came out it was already overtaken by cheaper PCs...

2nd hand 286s sure. A PC was more expensive, but that include 24 bit gfx, 16 bit snd and hard drive.

[ferix]

Every PC available in 92 or 93 was 3 or 4 times as much money as a stock 1200, at least in Denmark where I grew up.

Same here, at Spain.

This was for a crap model with crap sound, a small hard drive and windows 3.1 :laughing:

A 386SX@16Mhz, with 1Mb of ram and 40Mb HD in my case. No sound, only a beeper. At least, It had a 256K VGA graphic card, 256 colours at 320x200 and 16 colours at 640x480.

[amyren]

The flicker might have been a drawback for many, but the ability that you could connect the Amiga directly to a TV set or a VCR was also one of the strong features of the Amiga.
Back then monitors was much more expensive than today, and many could not afford to buy both a computer and a monitor.
For games the display wasnt an issue, most games did not use interlaced modes anyway.
And for video usage the Amiga was a perfect starting machine for making titles and slideshows and record them directly to the VCR.
But if needed for serious apps, you could connect a VGA monitor and get better displays.
As some mentioned, the flickering was the TV's fault at the time, that was the technology that was available. Forget 1080p and such, I'm thinking about native PAL/NTSC screenmodes that was available then.

But for those who wants to connect a TV to an Amiga today, I guess that most modern TVs are 100hz or 200hz. Shouldnt that take care of the flickering, even for interlaced Amiga screenmodes?

..Back to the topic, one of the things that made me strugle was setting up AmiTCP to get dialup interneting to work. This was before the excellent MiamiDX apeared.

[Templario]

Printing with OS4 and Sam, that currently there isn't option to connect my HP LaserJet 1020 with it.

[kolla]

2nd hand 286s sure. A PC was more expensive, but that include 24 bit gfx, 16 bit snd and hard drive.

24bit gfx cards were very high end (expencive!) at the time, 256 and 16 colours was the norm and affordable 15/16bit was about to emerge. All this was running on the slowmess ISA bus, allthough some machines also had various other bus solutions, PCI had just barely been standardized. And the OS was Windows 3.0, 3.1, or 3.11 in networked office settings, and by networked I do not mean TCP/IP, but NetBIOS. If you wanted TCP/IP you had various hacks like winsock, wintrumpet, pathworks from DEC and similar crap.