So were the Morph OS folks wrong all along?

[Belial6]

So, if Commodore had licensed them out to be graphics chips on other systems, the Amiga wouldn't have been as good?  It sounds like you value the Amiga more for what it didn't do than what it did.

[persia]

Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up.  Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....

[thedocbwarren]

Not joking.  The 1000 was cool as hell, and the 500 made it affordable.  ground-breaking.  3000 was cool, but sorry Mac IIfx came out before it (widly expensive though) and so did the Atari TT030.  Lots of cool stuff came out in 1990.  So I credit the Amiga as the BEST 16-bit machine out there.  

SO I don't understand your logic with the 060 faster at emulating a machine hardware similar to an slow processor.  I can 'emulate' a 68000 Mac faster on my 68000 Atari ST since the processor is the same and faster... so... odd comparison.

Look the Amiga started too expensive bust was superior to the market in 1995.  The Mac had a better GUI, sorry it does.  The Atari ST was cheaper.  Then 500 came out and kicked it's butt and changed everything.  The Mac obviously won out, and I think the Mac II is a better system than the Amiga over-all though.  I have a IIfx that is a similar idea with custom chips in the idea of a workstation and is just way better in a bunch of ways.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in love with my Amiga.  I love all the retros like the lovely birds they are.  I respect and love everything that makes them unique.  I also love the Speccy for similar reasons.

Oh and expanding the systems, hell of lot of fun.  I'm AMAZED!!!  AMAZED!!!  Again, AMAZED on how expanable these Amigas are!  I'm impressed on how much you can expand even today.  It's incredible! They are so well built and so thought out.  But then I'm a Jay Minor fan (Atari 800 rocks!)

Look, PCs sucked back then (and still do) so the 68K machines were a million times better.

Are you joking? the 1000 was groundbreaking, the 500 was not much different than the 1000( rom and a little more ram in some cases),the 600 was crap(sorry guys,but looking at when it came out, what its intentions were and lack of expandability etc).. the A3000 was groundbreaking. The 3000 was the first machine to be fully 32bit everything, Zorro3 etc.life was starting to get good with the 3000.68000 was ok initially but 030+ was way better. A3000/4000 were intended to be expanded, that's why they had a proper 32bit bus.gfx cards don't disable the custom chips or anything i would say its more a extension in some ways.Back in the day some of us used the amiga for everything daily,and a gfx card helped with alot of apps and such. Not everyone just plays games all the time.
Besides,expanding the hardware with addons was all part of the fun!

I'm not sure what apple you are talking about,but the 060 amiga could emulate a 040 apple faster than a real apple of the day could.

[thedocbwarren]

That may be, but the Amiga OS has nothing special over OSX or Linux in a technicle stancec.  Everything the Amiga did was just so far ahead in 1985 to 1990.  But other stuff caught up.  I only argue what IS the Amiga, is the breaking of boundaries.  Other than that a new one is a PC with an alternative OS.

I'm not flaming, I just want to place the original Amiga in the pedestal it deserves.  It was ground breaking, but now days things are just different.  I feel the same way about the Atari folks who run TOS 4ish on at PC-like clone with a 68060 or whatever.  To me (only me perhaps) it's just a shadow of the beast (to use a pun.)

OCS was awesome compared to 16-colours in a shifter.  It was more clever than the B&W Mac or anything else for that matter.

ECS, not so much so it seams, and AGA, unfortunately seems more catch-up.  A shame, I think Amiga could have won.

-Cheers!

I can't think of a single hardware feature of the original Amigas I would retain outside of the OS.
Everything used to build NG based systems today is so much more capable that arguing for custom chipsets is pointless.
Everything evolves. Well almost everything. The Amiga chipset barely changed as the models progressed. What started out as a remarkable symphony of a very capable processor and well matched chipset became a mess with processors many times more capable and a chipset that was only slightly better than the first model.

[thedocbwarren]

Very likely.  Too bad it didn't.  I think I'd prefer running one.  Seems very clever people were designing this amazing system.

Rest in Peace Jay.

Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up.  Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....

[thedocbwarren]

You know, the only thing I wish the Amiga did in the beginning that I do like about the Atari ST;  I like the idea you can use a timer to get your code synced up vs under-clocking the processor to make everything sync up.  But, later systems seemed to solve that real well with faster CPUS better than ATari people did.  A lot of asm stuff didn't run on later systems without dropping the clock to 8Mhz.

Frankly I love the 68000.  Assembler is just so much fun on them.

[commodorejohn]

So, if Commodore had licensed them out to be graphics chips on other systems, the Amiga wouldn't have been as good?  It sounds like you value the Amiga more for what it didn't do than what it did.

Not at all. The Amiga is the Amiga is the Amiga, and if another computer had borrowed components that wouldn't have diluted it one bit. But the chipset derives its value from being so beautifully integrated one component to the other as well as from raw capability, and if another machine had borrowed, say, just the blitter, it wouldn't have been as useful in isolation. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Frankly I love the 68000.  Assembler is just so much fun on them.

Hear, hear! I've never encountered a CPU that hits such a nice balance between friendliness and power.

[psxphill]

Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route,

At the point that Commodore went under the Amiga's days were numbed, hombre was not an Amiga and no other projects had survived. AAA was always going to be too expensive compared to the competition and it was going to be the last chipset with any backward compatibility.
 
It didn't make sense to waste money on AA+ either, the way the market was changing they wouldn't have made a profit.
 
By 1990 they'd missed the boat, it just took a while for the market to collapse.

[Amiga_Nut]

On the flipside, a powerPC mac can be a PC by running linux

Or Windows NT

If it doesn't have a Paula chip on the motherboard it is nothing more than an AmigaOS compatible as far as I am concerned, and if it doesn't even run an AmigaOS it is even less worthy of my attention.

I don't do anything other than run OCS/ECS/AGA period applications/games anyway and in these cases AOS 3.5-4.2 or MorphOS has no advantage for me than running WinUAE and my ADFs on my super cheap readily available ludicrously powerful X86-64 machines anyway.

[danwood]

Or Windows NT

If it doesn't have a Paula chip on the motherboard it is nothing more than an AmigaOS compatible as far as I am concerned,

I always see you define an Amiga by something with "Paula", it always seems odd that it's just this chip that makes an Amiga for you?!

The AAA chipset did not have Paula, and most Amigans agree it shouldn't have been in AA either, as it was old-hat by the 90s.  

It was just a sound-processor, why choose that chip as the ultimate definition of "it's an Amiga"?  If Commodore did release AAA amigas would you have said they're not Amigas then, due to lack of Paula?

What about the other chips, was A600 not Amiga 'cos of no Gary?  Was A1200/4000 not Amiga due to no Agnus?

I don't this Paula or the system's sound capabilities were the main attraction/impressive feature for most people.

[stefcep2]

So, riddle me this.  What is so 'custom' about the 'custom' chipsets.  It seems to me that they were more 'proprietary' than anything else.  It seems that the only reason that they were called 'custom' was because the were not general purpose cpus, but chips designed around their task.

If that is the reason for them being called 'custom', then every PC in my house has 'custom' chipsets made by nVidia, Intel, or AMD.

The "custom chips" worked as co processors.  The sound and graphics chips worked independently of the CPU.  It allowed the Amiga to do things  with 7 and 14 mhz CPU's that could not be done as well on CPU's that ran at much higher clock speeds on other platforms.  The chips were analogous to modern GPU's, but in 1985. Coupled with an OS that had a tiny footprint, but pre-emptive multi-tasking from day one, this resulted in a unique feel of being in control of the machine and doing what you wanted it to when you wanted it to.

Amiga is not just the chips or just the OS or just the software: its the way the whole package of chips, OS and software gelled together to create a unique and superior user experience.  

I have an XP machine, a Vista machine, a Win7 machine and an Ubuntu machine and none of them can recreate that feel.

[bloodline]

So, riddle me this.  What is so 'custom' about the 'custom' chipsets.  It seems to me that they were more 'proprietary' than anything else.  It seems that the only reason that they were called 'custom' was because the were not general purpose cpus, but chips designed around their task.

If that is the reason for them being called 'custom', then every PC in my house has 'custom' chipsets made by nVidia, Intel, or AMD.

Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.

The Amiga's chipset was custom designed for the Amiga, it's CPU was an off-the-shelf part made by Motorolla for general sale.

[psxphill]

Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.

Yeah, basically custom just means you can't buy a computer from someone else that has the same chip in it.
 
The Amiga's custom chips were a good design, but not all custom chips are.
 
Basically if commodore had moved to another platform then some people would move and others wouldn't. If commodore could have produced something ground breaking then it would have drawn people from other platforms as well.

[itix]

What 16bit Amiga?

Both Atari ST and Amiga were marketed as 16-bit systems in 80s.

[jorkany]

From current events, you'd think so.
But if that was the case there wouldn't be so much friction between AOS4 and MorphOS camps.

Okay, think about this for a minute.

OS4+MOS=friction
OS4+AROS=friction
OS4+Real Amiga (68K)=friction

Where is the friction between MOS and AROS and 68K? See where the divisive factor is?

[jorkany]

Both Atari ST and Amiga were marketed as 16-bit systems in 80s.

ST stood for "Sixteen Thirty-two". But also Atari marketed the Jaguar as a 64-bit system, so it was just their nature to stretch the truth a bit.