POLL: What is the most viable Amiga platform for *you*?

[KThunder]

...no. I don't care if you pay for a pre-existing name, receive it from a mysterious Dickensian benefactor, or make a wish on a friggin' genie's lamp - you don't just get to introduce something totally unrelated and claim it's the same thing. Legal, maybe, but sane/correct/ethical? No.

The Commodore of old DID sell pc clones, so it really is the same thing.

[commodorejohn]

The Commodore of old DID sell pc clones, so it really is the same thing.

They didn't call them "C64" or "Amiga."

[klx300r]

The Commodore of old DID sell pc clones, so it really is the same thing.

yep..stated this many times myself...and it really didnt help them at all back then.  There was also Commdore gaming with their fancy molded commodore cases with pimped out PC's that was supposed to be the next genesis of Commodore so this CUSA thing is nothing new at all

[Hattig]

Other option for me - will get the FPGAArcade as soon as I can.

[redrumloa]

They didn't call them "C64" or "Amiga."

I don't remember people this up in arms about the Commodore 64 Web.It, fPET, mPET, eVIC, d'Amiga and so many others:lol:

[Khephren]

@Dammy

7million sounds about right, but we have to remember that the vast majority of users in europe bought one as a games machine.

My brother, for example, just got into mod trackers on the PC. When I told him they started out on the Amiga, he was very surprised, I don't think he ever touched his A500 keyboard.

While there where a lot less users in the USA, I think they were more serious.

As for the custom chipset being doomed to fail....well powerVR, 3DFX, Radeon, Nvidia etc, all started out as 'custom' chips for the PC before going mainstream. If it had been updated, and if it had continued selling millions, i'm sure developing a custom chipset would still have been worth it.

[amigadave]

well said Cammy and I can confirm that I know of many current amiga users that will only visit Amiga sites for current news but refuse to post here due to the constant trolling/flaming...sad but true

I agree, there are many users that visit forum sites for news and do not post messages due to the constant trolling and flaming, but I think that most of those have at least registered as a member of at least one forum site and posted at least one or more messages over the years.  The trolls and flaming has caused me to post much less often than I once did here.  

And yes Franko, I know that it is all guess work and no one has the answer of how many active Amiga users are left in the world, but common sense and using rational thought to make estimates is the best way to make any kind of an estimate, when no other evidence is available, wouldn't you agree?  Since there is no other evidence to suggest that there are thousands of unknown Amiga users above and beyond the few thousands that ARE active, or have at one time or another, signed up as members on any Amiga related forum site, it makes sense that an estimate be based on the only information we do have would be more accurate than any estimate based only on the number of original sales and a hunch about how many of those are still actively using their Amigas.  

Since most computer users use the Internet to gather news or post comments about things they are interested in, most Amiga users would do the same and the number of active Amiga users that have at one time or another, signed up as members of an Amiga related forum site, is much greater than the number of active Amiga users that have not signed up as members of any Amiga related forum site.  If that does not seem logical and reasonable to you, then I can't argue any further with you about how any estimate could be made.

If there are some other reasons, or evidence that anyone has to suggest that there are vast numbers of active Amiga users in excess of 10,000 worldwide, I would be glad to see such reasons or evidence, but to simply make claims that there are more users with no reasons or evidence makes no sense to me.

I am not trying to be negative, I wish there were 20,000 to 50,000 or more active Amiga users left and I also hope that we (what ever is left of the Amiga community) can slow or stop the decline of active Amiga users, or even start to increase the number of active users again some day.

[runequester]

@Dammy

7million sounds about right, but we have to remember that the vast majority of users in europe bought one as a games machine.

My brother, for example, just got into mod trackers on the PC. When I told him they started out on the Amiga, he was very surprised, I don't think he ever touched his A500 keyboard.

While there where a lot less users in the USA, I think they were more serious.

As for the custom chipset being doomed to fail....well powerVR, 3DFX, Radeon, Nvidia etc, all started out as 'custom' chips for the PC before going mainstream. If it had been updated, and if it had continued selling millions, i'm sure developing a custom chipset would still have been worth it.

"custom chipset" has become a buzzword people like to toss out as part of some sort of explanation why the amiga died, that doesn't rely on Commodore being idiots.
PC graphics chips were "custom" chipsets just the same as the amiga's were.

[WolfToTheMoon]

"custom chipset" has become a buzzword people like to toss out as part of some sort of explanation why the amiga died, that doesn't rely on Commodore being idiots.
PC graphics chips were "custom" chipsets just the same as the amiga's were.

It's perfectly true what dammy said... In 1992 and after there was no way in hell Commodore could have kept up with the PC world, mainly because of the entire board being a custom chipset. it was, sadly, even in 1992, a doomed concept(for a PC, gaming consoles to this day remain an entirely custom chipsets all along).
If they went the way of a 68000 based mobo + PC expansion cards, things would have probably turned out pretty differently(strictly performance-wise).

[runequester]

It's perfectly true what dammy said... In 1992 and after there was no way in hell Commodore could have kept up with the PC world, mainly because of the entire board being a custom chipset. it was, sadly, even in 1992, a doomed concept(for a PC, gaming consoles to this day remain an entirely custom chipsets all along).
If they went the way of a 68000 based mobo + PC expansion cards, things would have probably turned out pretty differently(strictly performance-wise).

Not disputing that, but AGA and OCS etc are no more "custom" than a voodoo card or a sound blaster. The only difference is that IBM's were cloned and amiga's were not (until today, through FPGAs).

[tone007]

"custom chipset"

[runequester]

Now that shit is custom

[amigadave]

"custom chipset" has become a buzzword people like to toss out as part of some sort of explanation why the amiga died, that doesn't rely on Commodore being idiots.
PC graphics chips were "custom" chipsets just the same as the amiga's were.

I agree that it was not the "custom chipsets" in the Amiga that doomed Commodore to bankruptcy.  It was the continued mis-management of Commodore and the lack of vision and money put into development which was needed to keep the Amiga ahead of the competition.  Plus the lack of marketing which should have educated the growing number of computer users about the advantages the Amiga had in the beginning over all other computers when the A1000 was released.  The Amiga should never have been relegated to being just a "Games" computer and should have had development and research money spent on it to keep it faster and better than the PC's and Mac's.  In short, Commodore should have competed with MS & Apple from day one when they had an advantage, but they instead wasted money trying to compete in the PC clone hardware market.

Although the AmigaOS was elegant and far ahead of all the competition in many ways for a long time, the degree of that lead over competitors was quickly diminished as the Amiga was stagnant or little improved between the release of the A1000 and the release of the A3000 and the improvements introduced with AGA and the A1200/A4000 was far too little, too late.  Even the introduction of the A3000 and AmigaOS2.0 was a disappointment to most Amiga users, who saw it as too little, too late as well.

[Franko]

@ amigadave

I know I get your point (and KThunders) about how folk estimate just how many active Amiga users may be still out there, but to me there is no point in guessing or wasting time trying to figure it out. It doesn't seem a worthwhile thing to do unless you need that info for your own use for example writting a new prog and wondering just how big a custom/user base you may have for it...

To me until last June when I finally went on the net, I didn't know if there were thousands left in the world or no one at all still using the Amiga and it wouldn't (and still doesn't) matter to me whatever the case may be...

If for some weird reason the internet was to suddenly end tomorrow, I could quite happily go back to being in the dark about all that's still going on in Amigaland. After the last Amiga magazines disappeared around 2000 - 2002 I didn't have a clue about what was going on with the Amiga and was blissfully unaware and not even bothered about it...

To me as long as I've got my Amigas, I'm perfectly happy, the internet and forums are just something to entertain me as I sit here doing useful and enjoyable things on my Amigas. My so called "Crusade" against CUSA is also part of that entertainment and at the end of the day means nothing to me other than a bit of fun here on the net and getting more folk chatting on the forums...

Other than when I'm helping out someone with an Amiga related problem then no-one should take any of my posts or mad rants seriously they are nothing more than passing the time and having a laugh to me and that's the way they should (I hope) be taken...

[runequester]

I agree that it was not the "custom chipsets" in the Amiga that doomed Commodore to bankruptcy.  It was the continued mis-management of Commodore and the lack of vision and money put into development which was needed to keep the Amiga ahead of the competition and lack of marketing which should have educated the growing number of computer users about the advantages the Amiga had in the beginning over all other computers when the A1000 was released.

Although the AmigaOS was elegant and far ahead of all the competition in many ways for a long time, the degree of that lead over competitors was quickly diminished as the Amiga was stagnant or little improved between the release of the A1000 and the release of the A3000 and the improvements introduced with AGA and the A1200/A4000 was far too little, too late.  Even the introduction of the A3000 and AmigaOS2.0 was a disappointment to most Amiga users, who saw it as too little, too late as well.

We had some looong threads about AGA recently, but I must say, I think AGA would have okay if something else was on its way to replace it fairly shortly, if amiga's had been a bit beefier. If the 1200 had shipped with an 030 and even 2 megs of fast RAM, it'd have been a pretty respectable machine in 92, when the competition was still windows 3.1 and trying to do two things at once.

People talk about Doom a lot as the evidence AGA wasn't good enough, but I've had people independently of each other say my 030 runs it faster than their PC's did back in the day.

If only a partial upgrade was coming, I'd feel stronger about a new sound chip, than about the graphics part, to be honest.

Again, this is assuming Commodore actually had money and something else was coming fairly shortly to replace it and provide a bigger step up.


Maybe its time for another "how to make Commodore survive" speculation thread?

[commodorejohn]

That's not custom, that's just a bunch of off-the-shelf parts, ya poser!