Crumb,
I'm honestly not trying to give you a hard time but allow me to comment:
That's an urban legend... DRACO ran AmigaOS3.1 quite fast without the need of custom chips.
I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. AmigaOS requires a number of custom chips to function properly.
BTW, 2.x to 3.x software transition was quite smooth. You had professional high quality software like ImageFX, AdPro, Photogenics, Lightwave, Cinema4D, Real3D, Imagine, Caligari Truespace, Bars'n'pipes, Pagestream... you could even paint with TrueBrilliance, and there were professional and affordable video solutions not available for any of the listed systems. Final Copy, Final Writer and Wordworth were excellent packages too.
You are mixing a number of arguments here in this section of text. While I would agree that the transition from 1.3 to 2.x was decent it was by no means smooth. If I cared more I could offer you a number of articles on OS 2.x that Amiga World ran at the time but suffice to say it was a painful move for all involved.
Commodore tried to motivate publishers by running ads for OS 2.x with the catch phrase "...and the list keeps growing..." or something to that effect. OS 2.x was a major shift in the AmigaOS technology and it was growing pains. The shift was good for Commodore and the Amiga at the time.
As you stated, there were many fine applications that upgraded and worked well with 2.x and beyond. In the end, some 1.3 applications did not work and their owners decided not to move beyond 1.3.
I think many developers saw the Amiga platform stagnate compared to PC and Mac and decided not to fund the upgrade of their applications.
As for 'affordable video solutions', yes, there were many of those available for the Amiga well before other platforms.
In 1994 we were happily multitasking and most computer users didn't know what that meant and even claimed it was useless. And our applications were quite professional and most of them more affordable than similar programs in other systems.
I'm not sure you are remembering 1994 correctly or your use of the word 'multitasking' is incorrect here. These are a few the operating systems/computers that allowed multitasking in 1994:
Windows 3.x
MacOS (First there was Switcher and then MultiFinder)
DOS (many application switchers)
CPM
Atari (Atari TT and Falcon with MultiTOS)
VAX
Unix
With the exception of VAX and Unix, a major program crash would take out the entire computer. However, people were happily multitasking on their computers. They were running more than one program at a time, cutting and pasting between them, and cursing when one program crashed and took down the entire system.
I'm not saying that every crash could bring down the system but Atari, Apple, and Commodore did not offer memory protection so its very easy for one program to bring down the whole machine.
If you want to completely trash AmigaOS 1.0 to 3.x, just write to memory location $4. That's it. Memory location 4 is the only absolute location in the system. You destroy that pointer and the AmigaOS is dead.
AmigaOS is a pre-emptive OS where just about everyone else on the list is co-op (excluding Unix and VAX) but we're just splitting hairs.
really? Win95 crashed much more easily than AmigaOS. And it crawled in hardware way faster too. And needed 8MB to be useable. By the late 80's most of people used monotask-OSes like MacOS or MSDOS+Windows. But most of them didn't have a clue about what multitasking meant and as you can suppose memory protection was an even more strange word for them.
I think MS did a pathethic job with Win95. They should have marketed a NT workstation version as Win95 instead of creating that "thing". OS2 was simply superior and even allowed running Win3.1 apps too. It was not until WinXP that peecee users got a stable Windows system. Until WinXP you could hang Win95/98/ME as easy as AmigaOS3.x. Win95 with 4MB was unusable. Swapping floppy disks in my A500 was a less painful experience and usually more productive.
Let's talk about what you've said here:
First, I am no way a fan of Microsoft but I also try to be fair person. When you take all things considered, Microsoft did an admirable job with Windows 95 (excluding ME). You may scuff and mock my post but at least hear me out.
The programmers at Apple and Commodore had it insanely easier compared to the programmers at Microsoft. Apple and Commodore controlled both the OS and the core hardware. If you have any idea how hard it is to write a kernel, imagine how hard it would be not knowing what type of core system it will be installed on.
The programmers for Windows had to write an OS that sat on top of DOS, had to work with thousands of different hardware configurations, remain backwards compatible, and unify a driver set (DirectX) for the very first time.
Seriously, that is an amazing set of goals to aim for. I'm not saying that you have to like Microsoft or that Windows 95 was the greatest OS ever. I'm saying that for all that it had to do, they did a decent job for their first time out.
To be honest, I used to bash Microsoft and Windows 9x just as much as anybody else. Then I had to write a kernel for hardware in college and boy does that help you to see the world a bit differently.
I would absolutely agree that the AmigaOS was much more stable than Windows 9x. However, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN! Writing a kernel for a handful of platforms should be a piece of cake compared to the zillion configurations of the PC world.
I guess in the end I feel that if you are going to compare Operating Systems you have to take into account the hardware it has to run on. Apple and Commodore never had to address the issues that Windows developers had to address.
AGA in 1994 was not as bad as you may think, it allowed you to watch ham8 pr0n and animations smoothly. They should have improved more the CDXL format to take advantage of 030/040. Amiga was very cost effective solution.
Amiga also sported Autoconfig(tm) and it has worked very well until today.
A3000/4000 16MB limit was not really important until many years later. With 2MB of chipram you could do many things at once while other systems had to spent money in both gfx and normal ram. Even soundcard ram in some cases.
Amigas used to sound much better connected to a 1084s monitor than the old and crappy yogourt-like speakers used by 90% pc users in the 90s.
In 1994 AmigaOS was simply superior
It may not seem like it but I am a huge fan of the Amiga and of Commodore. I owned most of the best machines by Commodore and wonder 'what if' like most of you. AutoConfig was brilliant but by 1994 Paula was outdated...
In 1994 AGA was too little too late. Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were huge and for the first time PC games made the Amiga look dated.
