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

[Digiman]

PC users didn't seem to mind.  Amiga user OTOH....

PC User goes from 386 to Pentium PC and Lotus III or SF2 improves automatically with higher sample rate for sound/smoother scrolling/faster 3D/smoother gameplay.  Cost of upgrade is worth it for serious and gaming software.

Amiga User buys Blizzard 040 card for same £500. Lotus III is still ropey as hell compared to Lotus II game engine and SF2 is still the 5th worst conversion of the arcade in the world.

And this is if the games even work with an 040 (a big issue for OCS/ECS games actually). I wouldn't buy an 030 EVER because the 030 is a waste of time and does bugger all an 020 can't do as far as games coding is concerned and MIPS integer type CPU grunt. I had no interest in ray tracing on Amiga ever so FPU was waste of time and MMU isn't used by KS/WB, and if I did it would be on Lightwave PC on a super fast pentium x PC etc which was cheaper than PPC based A4000s anyway.

Maybe now you understand why people didn't want to blow money on hardware costing more than their A1200 purchased new which would be worth a fraction of its cost as soon as they broke the seal on the packaging. (unless you waited 20 years later and sell it on ebay today in 2010 for a small profit )

[Digiman]

Do you love everything about it without exception is kind of silly. What I dont like about it is how late it was. Should have been the chipset in the 3000/600 and my understanding reading the histories it should have been. That would have put Amiga on track for AAA in the 4000/1200. Instead Amiga sat on now anchient chipsets while the rest of the industry continued to advance.

Dave Haynie himself said AAA was too expensive for too little performance. And he was right. Why make something unique in the thousands that people like Diamond were doing better and manufacturing in the millions for cheaper like the Diamond Viper VRAM Stealth 64bit graphics cards for PCs? AAA would break hardware compatibility and needed emulation to provide OCS/ECS/AGA compatibility hence the cost.

I think you mean Amiga AA+ chipset, which only existed on paper but would give fixes for all the problems/omissions of AGA like chunky mode, faster pixel clock, even faster blitting and 16bit 4 channel sound. Also facility to read 1.76mb HD floppies.

Amiga had got to the stage that Sony got to in this console generation, they caved in and bought an off the shelf GPU from Nvidia from PC graphics card technology. Commodore would have had to do the same and just optimise it with better motherboard design compared to PCs of 1992. (Which is why the xbox 360 for $200 out guns a $1000 PC even now...clever motherboard design).

And I love EVERY ASPECT of OCS chipset in my A1000, can't fault any of it for a 1985 computer so the question is 100% valid. I loved every aspect of my C64 and also my Playstation1

[barney]

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...

I second that Franko!!!  Doom is by far the most overrated game ever.  I absolutely can't stand that stupid sorry sack of crap game.  I get sick of people constantly talking about it all the time.  In fact, I hate almost every first person shooter game ever created (except for Max Payne).

Sorry, this has nothing to do with this thread...I'll shut up now.

Barney

[jj]

Max payne is not an FPS its a TPS

[bloodline]

I second that Franko!!!  Doom is by far the most overrated game ever.  I absolutely can't stand that stupid sorry sack of crap game.  I get sick of people constantly talking about it all the time.  In fact, I hate almost every first person shooter game ever created (except for Max Payne).

Sorry, this has nothing to do with this thread...I'll shut up now.

Barney

Not really off topic... while you and I might not like Doom as a game, it did show where computer graphics needed to go next. I didn't and don't like Doom, but I can think of hundreds of games where the game has been improved by graphical advances set in motion by Doom.

I imagine we would have found people 30 years ago complaining that the 2D graphics (of which the Amiga was the pinnacle) were overrated and took away from the true gaming of the text adventure.

[stefcep2]

PC User goes from 386 to Pentium PC and Lotus III or SF2 improves automatically with higher sample rate for sound/smoother scrolling/faster 3D/smoother gameplay.  Cost of upgrade is worth it for serious and gaming software.

AFAIK upgrading a 386 to pentium was not a simple drop in replacement of the CPU.  Indeed all the 386 PC's I'd seen-mainly HP- had the CPU soldered to the MB.  So I have doubts as to the cost of this upgrade being a cheap one as you imply.  Pentium PC's were $3000 plus at the time.  A lot of money, but PC users did pay it.

Amiga User buys Blizzard 040 card for same £500. Lotus III is still ropey as hell compared to Lotus II game engine and SF2 is still the 5th worst conversion of the arcade in the world.

Lotus 3 ran fine on my Apollo 68040.  Blizzard 040's were RC units-recycled CPU's and I don't recall them being 500 pounds.  The 1260 boards were about 500 pounds .  You wouldn't buy a 68060 to run Lotus or Streetfighter to get a better frame rate.  You'd buy it to run a lot of serious apps.

 

And this is if the games even work with an 040 (a big issue for OCS/ECS games actually). I wouldn't buy an 030 EVER because the 030 is a waste of time and does bugger all an 020 can't do as far as games coding is concerned and MIPS integer type CPU grunt.

A 40/50 mhz 68030 is significantly quicker than a 68020, and AFAIR lets you use more RAM.  And the MMU did come in handy for emulation, and virtual memory (gigamem).

I had no interest in ray tracing on Amiga ever so FPU was waste of time and MMU isn't used by KS/WB, and if I did it would be on Lightwave PC on a super fast pentium x PC etc which was cheaper than PPC based A4000s anyway.

OK so a faster CPU wasn't for you. (BTW Lightwave for Amiga never got a PPC version, so comparing the price of a ppc board to run software that didn't exist doesn't make sense.)

Maybe now you understand why people didn't want to blow money on hardware costing more than their A1200 purchased new which would be worth a fraction of its cost as soon as they broke the seal on the packaging. (unless you waited 20 years later and sell it on ebay today in 2010 for a small profit )

Amiga hardware did not depreciate anywhere near as quickly as PC hardware. The hardware always had better re-sale than a PC.  I upgraded to a Cobra 40 mhz 68030 for $299, used it for a 2 years, sold it for $250, then bought an Apollo 68040 for about $400.  Later added a CDROM, multiscan monitor.  And with each upgrade there was an immediate boost in performance and amount software that I could run.

What I do know is that the Amiga market was made up some of the biggest tight-arses I've ever met.  Buying an A1200?  Nah too expensive, rather run the old 1 meg A500 and complain why I can't run Doom.  Hard drives?  Too expensive, but I'll complain about why all the disk swapping.  Monitor?  Nah just use the TV. Workbench 3.1?  Nah 1.3 is OK.  

THERE IS NO WAY THAT YOU WOULD GET THE SAME LONGEVITY FROM A PC FOR THE SAME MONEY.  The software ( Windows, games and apps) would force you to upgrade the hardware to the tune of thousands, or you'd need to bin your PC.  This concept never caught on in the same way with Amiga users, so all we got was games that were made to run in 512k off two floppy drives.

[fishy_fiz]

People seem to remember pc prices incorrectly. In 1995 I paid about $800 AUD for a Pentium mmx 200 + 32meg ram, 8 meg diamond viper video card, sb16, etc.  This was much, much faster than an '060 based amiga and cheaper as well. Having said this I still enjoyed the amiga more, but I thought Id mention it seeing as people are quoting ridiculously innaccurate prices. Now as for longevity, that's aso a crock. A person simply needs to run software suited to the specs. Would someone expect to play amiga quake on a stock a1200, or would they instead use software that works well on thier machine? A p200mmx is still more usable (in terms of performance) than any a1200... again, a person simply needs to chose appropriate software for the hardware (as with any computer, amiga included).
The whole "need to upgrade, bin, buy new, etc." to keep using a pc is complete BS. Sure, it dates quickly compared to amiga gear, but that's simply because PC gear *did* advance constantly. A pc didnt become less usable simply because there's constantly faster gear out there.

Now as for Doom,... I cant agree with people here. Doom rocked. Still one of the best fps games out there. Well designed levels, great enemies, great weapons. It was more than a well crafted bit of code, it was a well crafted game.

[fishy_fiz]

Incidently a $1000 PC absolutely destroys a $200 console. Even $ for $ the gap is quite small these days. A pc that considerably outdoes a ps3 in all areas can actually be bought for less money than a ps3.

[fishy_fiz]

Despite my last 2 posts I do very much enjoy the classic amigas. Theyre my favorite machines and probably always will be, but it bugs the heck out of me reading some of the garbage people write just because something isnt to thier tastes. It sounds like a lot of amiga people still cling onto things that were only partially true 15-20 years ago.

There's no need to justify your hobbies by making up garbage and contorting the truth about other options. Just enjoy it for what it is.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I second that. The prices were very close. Internal upgrades were a lot cheaper than an external hard drive or cd-drive though. 2.5inch hard drives were also very pricey and only 4200rpm in speed.
The main problem was that escom folded and community carried onwards like a headless chook. Some people wanted 68k to continue, but we needed to move to a new cpu. PowerPc was chosen, but there was no heavyweight driving the ship.
Mac went to the brink too, but they marketed themselves back with a simple computer that could 'surf the net'.
If the price of the hardware wasn't a factor then it must have been software (and marketing).

[gertsy]

"Do you love everything about AGA chipset 100% without exception."
I hereby call this poll asking request a silly thing....

No vote for me.

[commodorejohn]

The whole "need to upgrade, bin, buy new, etc." to keep using a pc is complete BS. Sure, it dates quickly compared to amiga gear, but that's simply because PC gear *did* advance constantly. A pc didnt become less usable simply because there's constantly faster gear out there.

Not in the sense that it suddenly stopped working or started getting slower, but unfortunately it did mean that companies started writing software for newer, more powerful hardware, with less (if any) care taken on making sure it functioned acceptably on the older stuff. Just look at Windows - the growth in system requirements just to run the thing is exponential from generation to generation. Application software is usually better, but not by a whole lot.

Now as for Doom,... I cant agree with people here. Doom rocked. Still one of the best fps games out there. Well designed levels, great enemies, great weapons. It was more than a well crafted bit of code, it was a well crafted game.

This. DOOM was a kickass game back then and still holds up all right today, and holding a grudge and going "well who needs you, anyway?" because it was a factor in the PC-superiority argument back in the day is just silly.

[slaapliedje]

I think you mean Amiga AA+ chipset, which only existed on paper but would give fixes for all the problems/omissions of AGA like chunky mode, faster pixel clock, even faster blitting and 16bit 4 channel sound. Also facility to read 1.76mb HD floppies.

I don't think reading the 1.76mb HD floppies had anything to do with that.  My A4000 will do that, and I'm pretty sure it's not the AA+ chipset...

Amiga had got to the stage that Sony got to in this console generation, they caved in and bought an off the shelf GPU from Nvidia from PC graphics card technology. Commodore would have had to do the same and just optimise it with better motherboard design compared to PCs of 1992. (Which is why the xbox 360 for $200 out guns a $1000 PC even now...clever motherboard design).

I'd have to say a lot of that has nothing to do with clever motherboard design, it has more to do with having no major operating system overhead.  Not to mention since a console is a standard piece of hardware, unlike a PC that has all sorts of variations, the developers can optimize the hell out of their code to make it run faster.

slaapliedje

[Homer]

AGA = :knuddel:

Much better than the A1000 it replaced chez moi :lol:

[Iggy]

Is this very silly discussion still going on? Good! I'm all up for sillyness.
Why are you guys still comparing later generation X86 hardware with Amigas?
And PC and consoles. Were do you think some of their best design ideas were cribbed from?

Frankly, the only reason I not voting my total devotion to AGA, is I would have liked to see the Amiga move to PCI and RTG and continue to kick both the Mac and the PC in the ass.
And yes, maybe if there had been another major buyer for PPC processors (other than Apple) development of that technology wouldn't have slowed down.

The really frightening thing is that even without a major plqayer we're still here and hardware and software is still being developed. Is it just a hobby? Well frankly that's what personal computing started out to be for me. Do you know how many people I had to convince in the early days that I had to cionvince that they didn't need a computer to balance their checkbook? Hey, we were all convinced that one day everyone would be using them, but what for? That took a long time AND the process of elimination (of bad idea/software) to get to where we are today - with real ptactical utility and valid justififable trasons for perchasing and using a computer.

A hobby? Well I use an NG system everyday and use my multicore X86-64 system, on average, about once every week or two.  I'm posting this on it right now and if you've seen my Ambient screenshot on the other threads you know the display is just as good as PC, Mac, or Linux can offer. So if I can use it for the same practical uses as any other modern PC, is it a hobby?

Maybe in part it still is, besause unlike the shepple I'm willing to still do a little hacking, learn a little about my system, and use something other than a mainstream system. Come to think of it, that what a lot of users of alternative systems (like the Amiga) were willing to do. If you have to devote more time to it and your still considered a hobbist is that even fair. Hey, I guess if I can't avoid it, I'll wear the badge with pride, I was one of the hobbists who help figure out what made computers practical (you punks).

Pat yourself on the back Amiga users. EVERYTHING out there computers, tablets, cell phones, etc does not have a display that looks like an early PC. It ALL resembles Amiga.

And get over this inferiority complex. Some of the brightest people I know are developing in our Market. Do you really think MorphOS would look that good with only a few hundred paying licensees if it wasn't being maintained by some brilliant minds? How in the world did something as slick as AOS4 get written by primarily two guys (do you know how many programmers Microsoft employs)? AROS? Well, kudos guys. I really doubted that you'd ever be able to pull that one off and it looks like you'll suceed. And the Natami., well I've had my differences with Gunnar, but he Thomas and the rest off the team are sharp and they are going to produce something impressive. Then thers Clone A, Replay, Minimig, hey this rant could go on a long time.

We are still here and development continue. If you want to call it a hobby I would not be insulted by that. Several of the richest people in our country started out as computer hobbyist. Do we have a future? As sure as Microsoft, Apple, and Intel can still make mistakes, of course we do.

Me? I', an anarchist at heart and hope an open system (maybe ARM and Linux) takes them all down. But why couldn't it be ARM and AOS?

[Digiman]

I imagine we would have found people 30 years ago complaining that the 2D graphics (of which the Amiga was the pinnacle) were overrated and took away from the true gaming of the text adventure.

Indeed we did, people were trying to tell us all of Infocom's text adventures were better than Magnetic Scrolls' adventures