If Tramiel bought Amiga?

[lsmart]

The picture that I got from reading about Tramiel in the early years of Commodore doesn´t fit into what happened with Atari in the 90s. If 1984s Tramiel had AMIGA he wouldn´t have built the machine we love today. Tramiels Amiga would have had only 2 custom chips and no multitasking in the OS. It would have come out in January 1985 and shipped in March. Something like the Amiga 600 would have entered the market in 1988. Tramiels values would have been preserved by a new management. Tramiel retires. In 1990 Amiga would have had a DOS mode that could make use of all 4096 colors but most Software would have ignored that. In 1995 Amiga would have had its own x86 compatible CPU and Amiga would have ported Workbench to Windows NT. 1996 Amiga would have had realtime truecolor 3d animation at $2000. Sadly it wouldn´t be very popular due to poor marketing.

Oh and Atari would still be kicking Sonys ass and Playstation II wouldn´t have been built because of low market potential.

[Digiman]

i think if Jack was in control of Amiga it still would have fell behind the competition. Jack was all about "for the masses" which means he liked to get the computers out there as cheaply as possible. If you look at the C64 you can see a pattern. Sold a very large amount at a very low cost which meant Commodore made no profit. If Jack applied the same strategy to the Amiga it would never have made money so they wouldn't be able to do any R&D which was required at the time. Instead Jack would have preferred to use existing components off the shelf to save money. Which means no true innovation would occur. This strategy was OK for the era of the C64 but it would be a death sentence for the late 1980's  and early 1990's. Commodore will still have gone bankrupt regardless of whether Jack was in charge or not.

Dunno why you think that, PET/VIC/C64 were very good on features technically AND price. The C16 was meant to be sold for $70 which would be successful. Post Jack Commodore kept the C64 up to 1992 unchanged AND ade a complete hash with C128 and Plus4.

Trouble is when he was pushed out he lost a lot of liquid cash due to buying Atari AND Atari had no equivalent of MOS Technologies either so his hands were tied.

Jack knew a 7mhz 68000 with no worthwhile A/V improvements sold to people for 7 years = massive mistake and business suicide. Jack when working in Commodore ALWAYS made sure he had something technically ahead of competitors at the low end and high end of the market.

[nicholas]

They should have fired Mehdi Ali and prized JLG away from Apple.

Having thought about it, having JLG in charge CBM would probably still gone bankrupt but at least we would have had a kick arse OS and fancy new hardware to go with it.

[Digiman]

I dunno, like I always said the mistakes with A1000 sealed their fate and it was all much of nothing stuck with 32/4096 colours and useless hardware sprites until the too little too late A1200 and the tragic mistake of no SIMM slot to double CD32 processing speed via 1mb FAST RAM. (Nintendo did a similar thing with N64 VRAM user upgrade).

[freqmax]

the mistakes with A1000

What mistake?, I was under the impression that Amiga 1000 was really good. But Commodore didn't keep the steam up. And THEN the competition ate them. They could have launched the A500 earlier thoe!

But the A2000 maybe should have something more than space for Zorro-II to offer. Ev
er seen a new PC that didn't go 50% faster, cheaper, more flickery and gazzilion "integrated" stuff than the previous?

[psxphill]

On the second persons point, Commodore under Tramiel may have been 'for the masses' and targeted to sell lower cost to the consumer, but that did not translate to Commodore not making profit on the 64. They didnt make much profit per unit, but that translated to more units sold and more profit,

Commodore actually made a huge profit on the c64.
 
This was partly due to vertical integration and partly due to their production team doing whatever it took to ship every machine.
 
By 1989 commodore should have had something new. They milked it for far too long, something Jack wouldn't have.
 
It's not certain that Jack would have bought the Amiga if he'd stayed at Commodore though, the Z machine would have probably been released instead.

[freqmax]

This was partly due to vertical integration

Stupid question, but what do you mean by that in this case?

and partly due to their production team doing whatever it took to ship every machine.

Why wouldn't they ship?

By 1989 commodore should have had something new. They milked it for far too long, something Jack wouldn't have.

This seems like a deja vu of how Apple handled the Macintosh and milked it until they had to hire Jobs for lots of money which did a complete overhaul with Mac OS X, Intel, and vision.

It's not certain that Jack would have bought the Amiga if he'd stayed at Commodore though, the Z machine would have probably been released instead.

What's the specifications for the "Z machine" ?

[Kesa]

I think by vertical integration he is referring to the Amiga being locked into its own technology. All the single components of the machine are tied into each other and cannot be separated which means if you wanted to update the machine you had to redesign and rebuild the entire machine and not single parts only which is very expense. I guess the IBM PC would have been horizontal meaning that every part of the machine was a separate entity and could be upgraded more easily.

At least this is what i think is vertical/horizontal integration so don't quote me on this  

[freqmax]

Then laptops would be an example of vertical integration?, guess it saves costs per unit in volume. But cost when upgrade is needed.

[Kesa]

Then laptops would be an example of vertical integration?, guess it saves costs per unit in volume. But cost when upgrade is needed.

Not sure. I thought i knew what it was until i looked it up on wiki. Maybe he should explain what he meant as it could mean anything...

As i understand it laptops wouldn't be an example of vertical integration because the components they use are generic and come from various different sources whereas the Amiga was vertical as the hardware was custom so came from the same company.

[bbond007]

Not sure. I thought i knew what it was until i looked it up on wiki. Maybe he should explain what he meant as it could mean anything...

As i understand it laptops wouldn't be an example of vertical integration because the components they use are generic and come from various different sources whereas the Amiga was vertical as the hardware was custom so came from the same company.

vertical integration - think of it as cutting out the middle man.

When Apple made an Apple II computer they buy the 6502 from MOS (which is Commodore), so MOS gets percentage. Also they would purchase a crappy piezo buzzer from Radio Shack and used that for the sound, so Radio Shack gets a percentage.

When Commodore would make a 64 they "buy" the 6510 from MOS (which is Commodore) so they profit twice. Commodore also buys the SID chip from MOS for the sound, cha-ching, Commodore gets paid again...

As a direct effect Commodore is able to sell the 64 for less than the Apple II. As a side effect, Commodore was also able to offer a better product - remember the crappy Apple II buzzer?

Actually, I don't think the Apple II used a Radio Shack piezo buzzer, but it sounded like it did.

They did use a Ensonic chip in the IIgs which, coincidentally, is a company with ties to MOS and the SID.

Commodore acquired MOS by buying a bunch of their goods on credit (which is typical for a company), then being such a slow payer that it made MOS financially shaky. Rather than pay MOS what they owed them, they just outright bought MOS. That is how Jack Tramiel built his vertically integrated company. Pretty shrewd.

Reminds me of a guy who sold the worlds largest computer company an OS that he did not even yet own...

Would they of been better with Jack? Hell ya....

[bbond007]

HiToro was good at inventing technology. It was not so good at upgrading it though. Jay Miner would have struggled to update the already existing technology which is probably why he never worked for commodore fulltime. His talents lied with inventing and not upgrading. An example of this is the pacemaker he made in the early 1990's. Dave Haynie on the otherhand was good at upgrading existing technology but i am quick to point out he worked for commodore and would never have been given the chance to work for Amiga without commodores ownership.

Bottomline. Hitoro (or is that Jay Miner?) was great at inventing but not so good with upgrading. Taking this into account I'm not sure what Hitoro would have done different if they had full control of their own company with lots of capital.

Actually before Jay left, the Ranger chipset had better capabilities than AGA.

1024x1024 7bit color.

It also used dual ported VRAM so I doubt it would slow down the way AGA does in higher resolution modes.

[Tension]

I think by vertical integration he is referring to the Amiga being locked into its own technology. All the single components of the machine are tied into each other and cannot be separated which means if you wanted to update the machine you had to redesign and rebuild the entire machine and not single parts only which is very expense. I guess the IBM PC would have been horizontal meaning that every part of the machine was a separate entity and could be upgraded more easily.

At least this is what i think is vertical/horizontal integration so don't quote me on this  

wrong

[Kesa]

wrong

OK then, explain it to me.

[freqmax]

Actually before Jay left, the Ranger chipset had better capabilities than AGA.

1024x1024 7bit color.

It also used dual ported VRAM so I doubt it would slow down the way AGA does in higher resolution modes.

Still they didn't implement something similar.. doh. Makes me wonder what the money was spent on..
68040 + Ranger-like and some neat soundchip would been really nice.

vertical integration - think of it as cutting out the middle man.

Make and use your own products?

As a direct effect Commodore is able to sell the 64 for less than the Apple II. As a side effect, Commodore was also able to offer a better product - remember the crappy Apple II buzzer?

Actually, I don't think the Apple II used a Radio Shack piezo buzzer, but it sounded like it did.

They did use a Ensonic chip in the IIgs which, coincidentally, is a company with ties to MOS and the SID.

Regarding the Apple IIGS, it seems to gotten most things that the C64 lacked for an outrageous price

"The inclusion of a professional-grade sound chip in the Apple IIgs was hailed by both developers and users, and hopes were high that it would be added to the Macintosh; however, it drew a lawsuit from Apple Records. As part of an earlier trademark dispute with the record company, Apple Computer had agreed not to release music-related products. Apple Records considered the inclusion of the Ensoniq chip in the IIgs as a violation of that agreement. Though the IIgs was allowed to keep the Ensoniq, Apple has not included dedicated hardware sound synthesizers in any of its Macintosh models since (though of course, third-party products exist)"

Doh!!
A record company forbidding a computer + synth chip because it's music. The only connection is music. But there's a difference between records, and chips. Guess that may be why Apple sound capability at sucked.

Something that makes me wonder is if the 65C816 2,8 MHz clock could been replaced with a 16 MHz clock. Or if other chips limited a such trick.

Something slight OT, I read is that the Motorola management officially ordered Chuck Peddle to stop his 25 US$ processor project. Guess what he did..


Guess it all boils down to: Management screws up great engineering.
And that still apply.

[Kesa]

Speaking of the ranger what kind of incompatibilities could we have expected?