Am I the only one who doesn't love AGA chipset?

[giZmo350]

@gizmo - my only horror was that despite the upgrade we would still get no real parallax games like in arcades or consoles costing 1/3 of a stock A1200 and still not enough sound channels for most games to have music and sound effects. Superficially the rest was fine really at the time. ALL PC games were 256 colour by 1991 (look through by year on Home of the Underdogs website) so for PC users 256 colours was normal and so they got SF2 and Mortal Kombat in better quality than us even on 386 machines.

Add to that the games for consoles were programmed properly and used source graphics/sound files but Amiga games didn't you knew it was kind of doomed as a games machine like in the A500 days.

Not that it stopped me going out and buying one of the very first C= A1200s in the shops for £400 in 1992 with no freebies...just a mouse and PSU and Workbench disks I spent 50/50 on creative/gamesplaying tasks anyway.

Well, on the counterpoint, you couldn't be more correct. I wonder sometimes what game was THE BEST example of AGA. Just last night I discovered the game Flight of the Amazon Queen and loaded up both the DOS version in DOSBOX and the Amiga version UAE. The DOS version is a more complete game with speech. Very cool looking game. I'll probably play both versions through though. Consoles have really defined gaming for quit a while. I think 3D TV is really going to bring a whole new era of gaming. I gotta say that time is very convoluting to the memory. I have spent the last 20 years really concentrating on raising the kids and family life, constant school, and WORKING my A$$ off trying to secure a financial future (sheesh... still am - I gota tell ya, even though being born in 1956 has been a great time to be alive, financially I have gotten screwed in life by the markets time after time - but that point of view is left for an entirely different forum). I tend to forget when what certain technology came out in the computer world these days. I was into everything computer back in the day - except for Amiga - which I always wanted to play with. I remember looking for anything Amiga when eBay first came out (there was some great deals on Amiga back 15 years ago on eBay that I missed out on!) In the past 20 years, for me, it's been all about getting those MS certs, Enterprise IT, and networking - kinda lost track of everything fun. Enough about me!

Just messing around these days with Amiga is a lot of fun...  never get time to spend on it though. I've had my Indivision AGA for a few months and still havn't done anything with it other than jam it in the 1200 and fire up an AGA game or two. So much to learn! I sometimes feel jealous of people that grew up with Amiga instead of the PC. Sorry, kind off track here!

I'm following where Netami is going though - might be a while till we actually get to buy it though. One nice thing about getting a little older is that I don't have to worry about getting my money back on every little dime I spend on computer toys. Sorry so long!

[Digiman]

Any application in which pixels are individually calculated would benefit, including the vast majority of multiformat video playback software.

What from 880kb floppy disks? 25FPS playback of 256 colour IFF anims is still possible from RAM I bet if all you are doing is blitting screens of 320x256 about the memory or changing the screen memory pointer. And with a 3.5" IDE drive probably still fine surely.

As games like Doom, Screamer Rally or Actua soccer are from the Pentium era of PCs then AGA stuck on the only mass market machine being a crippled* 14mhz 286 equivalent or the overpriced 4000/030 (outperformed by the 28mhz 020 Blizzard 1220 equiped A1200s) we were screwed anyway regardless of if you have chunky pixels or not. Doom plays fine full screen on a 486/33 with ISA graphics AKA 8 or 11mhz 16bit bus.

Amiga needed sales, sales = good games, good games of the time of A1200 launch were 256 colour true multi-layered parallax 2D games with plenty of sound channels from Sega and Nintendo. We only had the 256 colour graphics bit, so 66.666% fail then clearly. And we also had 90% pathetic programming making up our games and sometimes only 16 colours thanks to greedy software houses doing the dirty and porting to the Atari ST first and compromising the design.

*(no fast ram = 50% CPU speed potential)

[Linde]

If I were to decide changes for the AGA chipset, I would have added a chunky 8-bit graphics mode like VGA mode 13h and tile/layer based modes like for video game consoles. I would also have wished for more sprites or a faster blitter, and an additional soundchip like OPL or any OPx for music and general MIDI compatability. In 1992 this would have given it an edge over PCs I think.

Of course, I don't know much about time/price constraints at the time, and I know little about the Amiga hardware design to be able to tell if such changes would be possible while retaining backwards compatibility.

[Thorham]

Voted no, because there are some things I don't like. Overall I think AGA is fine.

Like:

1) HAM8 and 256 colors.
2) Can display all color modes in all resolutions.
3) Has a relatively high max resolution: 1440x566 15 Khz, interlaced.
4) Can output 31 Khz video signals.
5) 64 pixel wide sprites.
6) Sprites can be any resolution.
7) Sprites can use all of the 256 available palette colors (using banks).
32 bit chipmem.
9) Still has planar graphics modes.

Dislike:

1) 31 Khz modes are somewhat quirky, and best results are obtained with programs such as MonSpecsMUI (or MonEd and MonitorKiller).
2) No super hires in 31 Khz modes.
3) Chipmem is faster because of 32 bit access, but it's still not fast enough.
4) Chipmem should have been at least four megabytes if possible without breaking backward compatibility.
5) Still limited to eight sprites per scan line.
6) Blitter should have been improved.
7) Only planar modes are available, should have had chunky modes added.

[actung_bab]

gezz your not still bvanging on about aga chipset gezz talk about silly remember the days way back get over it

[whabang]

Let's put things into perspective here.

I remember a family member paid good money for a 286 with 1 Mb RAM, VGA, and no sound card back in '93. There were 486 systems available, but those cost a fortune. The A1200 was certainly more capable than that sorry old Olivetti; it had twice the RAM, a real sound system, PCMCIA instead of the  PC's ISA, and a 32-bit CPU running at a higher clock speed.

From a consumer point of view, the A1200 wasn't really a bad choice.

Personally, I stuck with the '600 as my main computer until 1998, and never bought an AGA machine until I bought one as a retro system a few years back. ^^

[Franko]

Don't understand why anyones got to compare the Amiga or AGA to anything else, seems kinda pointless moaning about AGA and comparing it to VGA and the like. The Amiga range is what it is nothing more nothing less...

Having owned just about every model at one point in time I can only say they were all good in their own way and I ended up sticking with A1200s cos I liked them the best mainly thanks to AGA. I've never actually looked at a PC or MAC with whatever kind of display it uses and thought "I wish the Amiga could do that"...

Why can't folk just accept the miggie for what it was and still is, something that's just a wee bit different from the rest of the crowd and simply make the best of what we were given by the late great Jay Miner & Hi-Toro...

(ok... who's nicked me medal...again... )

[giZmo350]

Let's put things into perspective here.

I remember a family member paid good money for a 286 with 1 Mb RAM, VGA, and no sound card back in '93. There were 486 systems available, but those cost a fortune. The A1200 was certainly more capable than that sorry old Olivetti; it had twice the RAM, a real sound system, PCMCIA instead of the  PC's ISA, and a 32-bit CPU running at a higher clock speed.

From a consumer point of view, the A1200 wasn't really a bad choice.

Personally, I stuck with the '600 as my main computer until 1998, and never bought an AGA machine until I bought one as a retro system a few years back. ^^

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1987 - Everex 286 (no HDD) about $1000.00 - Seagate 20MB HDD - $250.00 + VGA Card - $250.00 (sold it for $900).

1991 - Treasure Chest 486SX system with 60MB HDD (out of Texas) - About $750 (still have it - I updated the MB and Processor 486/100MHz sometime later for about $150.00

2001 - Bought one other P4 PC (Sony - 2GB PC2700 ram - what a POS) - About $800 - sold it for $300.00

[whabang]

Don't understand why anyones got to compare the Amiga or AGA to anything else, seems kinda pointless moaning about AGA and comparing it to VGA and the like. The Amiga range is what it is nothing more nothing less...

Having owned just about every model at one point in time I can only say they were all good in their own way and I ended up sticking with A1200s cos I liked them the best mainly thanks to AGA. I've never actually looked at a PC or MAC with whatever kind of display it uses and thought "I wish the Amiga could do that"...

Why can't folk just accept the miggie for what it was and still is, something that's just a wee bit different from the rest of the crowd and simply make the best of what we were given by the late great Jay Miner & Hi-Toro...

(ok... who's nicked me medal...again... )

We do it because we're a bunch of sad and bitter tards who can't let go and accept that the World kept spinning the last 15 years.

[runequester]

We do it because we're a bunch of sad and bitter tards who can't let go and accept that the World kept spinning the last 15 years.

Absolutely. Maybe Ace of Base will put out a new album soon too

[Franko]

We do it because we're a bunch of sad and bitter tards who can't let go and accept that the World kept spinning the last 15 years.

Thought as much...

Count me in with that group then cos it sure as hell passes the time a bit quicker, gawd 15 years eh... don't time fly when you've got somthing to moan about... :lol:

Now pass the big wooden spoon along to the next in line...

[Digiman]

I purchased my 4mb 486 25mhz SVGA machine plus 1024x768 monitor for £1000 in Sept-Oct 1992 with my first grant check. There was no sound card true but playing F1GP on it was as fast as you can play it on an A4000/040 costing £2000 at the time right?

But that's just down to CPU mostly, never played F1GP on a 16mhz 286 OR an A1200 with Fast ram for a fair comparison to be honest so no idea how much chunky pixels make a difference. Also marketing suicide making the OTT 4000 with a crap 030 CPU card in it your next machine up from A1200.

As to the person asking why this thread again? I'm not really after changes/wish list/time machine. I am just curious how many people were happy with ALL aspects of the AGA upgrade over your previous Amiga (mine being an A2000 and an A1000 but A500 and A600 too).

So far it would seem, CPU speed issues aside, the actual areas people do have a problem with are.....

Identical sound to OCS
Identical blitter chip to OCS on a new 32bit bus
Identical planar arrangement of screen memory for all modes
Identical dual playfield mode (with 1 extra bit per field but same architecture)

I never really considered chunky pixel mode to be an issue for A1200 in 1992 because you were never going to get Doom games until Doom in 94 anyway, and had Commodore not tanked by April 94 then certainly Doom would still be impossible had they not released the A1400 (4x faster than A1200 as sold with 2mb chip ram) and stuck with the A1200 as we know it today.  

This is why ESCOM went bankrupt. £400 for A1200 2mb 14mhz 020 running at effectively 7mhz speeds without Fast ram in 1995/96 was something only die hard fans would buy who missed out.

Like I said in 1992 there were no texture mapped games like Doom or Actua Soccer, only 2D stuff or solid 3D polygons like F1GP. And this is pretty much down to your CPU (always a thorn in Amiga's price/performance over PC) and hence nothing chunky pixel mode would have made a huge difference to.

[commodorejohn]

Chunky mode isn't just convenient for texture-mapped games, though. It's more convenient in pretty much anything when you're working with high bit-depth. Consider this: in planar mode, while operations like masking are quicker, drawing a blitter object requires (bits per pixel) number of identical blitter operations, one for each plane. Chunky mode doesn't reduce the the amount of data you have to move, but since each pixel is contained wholly in one chunk (one byte, in the typical case,) it can be done in one operation (well, minus the masking,) which drastically cuts down the overhead required for planar operations.

The only reason chunky mode was balky on the VGA was because there wasn't nearly as much hardware-assist as the Amiga had, and what there was was barely even documented until Michael Abrash (god among men) wrote about it - so for quite some time, nobody used it. Had an Amiga chipset been released that applied the same elegant DMA-oriented design philosophy to an 8bpp chunky mode, it would have blown the VGA completely out of the water.

[Franko]

Why does Doom always come into the equation !!!

One of the crapiest games ever IMHO, but if your really want to see what can be done with an Amiga without RTG & this type of game then you really need look no further than Alien Breed 3D...

[Digiman]

Don't understand why anyones got to compare the Amiga or AGA to anything else, seems kinda pointless moaning about AGA and comparing it to VGA and the like. The Amiga range is what it is nothing more nothing less...

Having owned just about every model at one point in time I can only say they were all good in their own way and I ended up sticking with A1200s cos I liked them the best mainly thanks to AGA. I've never actually looked at a PC or MAC with whatever kind of display it uses and thought "I wish the Amiga could do that"...

Why can't folk just accept the miggie for what it was and still is, something that's just a wee bit different from the rest of the crowd and simply make the best of what we were given by the late great Jay Miner & Hi-Toro...

(ok... who's nicked me medal...again... )

You are missing the point, Commodore ultimately tanked for two reasons...

AGA couldn't do some stuff a 1989 Megadrive, let alone a SNES, could do hence Amiga could no longer be king format for gamers. AGA was a plaster on the gaping wound that would ultimately lead to death of Commodore.

The other aspect is Commodore never gave you a fast processor. In the days of A1000 this was fine because Byte magazine rated the OCS chipset as similar to having a 50mhz 68000 computer so you didn't need much to beat a 286. But when AGA is a minor upgrade to OCS, and then people start wanting 3D games anyway never mind SNES quality sound/graphics on 2D Amiga game this lack of CPU speed AND average performing chipset hurt Amiga sales a lot.

My A1000 is the machine I will never sell, I have no problem selling anything else I own, and if I went bankrupt I would be sleeping on the streets with a boxed A1000 :roflmao:

But the point is as much of a fan as I am, I wonder if anyone else at the time it was for sale saw the 4000/030 as too expensive and AGA as just short of being enough of an upgrade. Is it just me who didn't get fleeced by all the bullshit claims and expectations in respected magazines? Even I knew that A1200 AGA flight sims would never look as good as those on 486 PCs despite the bullshit being peddled about AGA!

Badly programmed games I can do nothing about, that's something those company directors should hold their head in shame compared to the expertly programmed Japanese games on consoles using 100% of the machine's power.

[Franko]

@ Digiman

The thing is your talking about the Amiga in terms of being nothing more than a games machine. I know a lot of folk see the Amiga this way but to me it was far from being a games console and comparing it against PCs of the time make no sense to me.

The Amiga for those who could be bothered to put their minds to it at the time was the only low cost viable solution for folk who wanted to create low cost videos and GFX and some even used it professionally for it's audio. I mean how many Amiga's did the Disney Studio's kit themselves out with or the Creators of Babylon 5 for example, if PCs at that point in time were really so good then why did the aforementioned examples choose Amiga... so if your gonna compare the Amiga to other PCs don't forget to include the good points too...