Crappy comparison of Amiga 1200 vs Atari Falcon

[agami]

I've been fostering a hypothesis for a little while now that Commodore and Atari are actually one large bipolar schizophrenic company, Commotari

And when Amiga came along it made matters even worse; Both "Jekyll" and "Hyde" were in love with her.

[matthey]

as usual, within amiga subject, i cant really find a scratch in your reasoning..

C= produced the Amiga 4000CR (Cost Reduced) motherboard without a CPU to save a few dollars so why not the Amiga 1200? Maybe the majority of 1200 owners were using the CPU on the 1200 where few 4000 owners were? Maybe C= had an oversupply of 68EC020 processors they bought cheap and wanted to get rid of? My logic is good for not having much inside information .

I've been fostering a hypothesis for a little while now that Commodore and Atari are actually one large bipolar schizophrenic company, Commotari

And when Amiga came along it made matters even worse; Both "Jekyll" and "Hyde" were in love with her.

Considering how many Amiga guys were originally Atari guys, it makes me wonder what would have happened if Atari had been able to create a better work environment and keep their talented employees. Amiga would have been an Atari product and would have benefited from a better dealer sales network and no competition from the Atari ST/Falcon. There probably would have been better games support but maybe less "computer" support and expansion (depending on how much freedom Jay Minor would have been given). The Atari ST/Falcon did get good computer support and expansion but how much of it was to compete with the Amiga? The other what if is if the original Amiga developers had been allowed to develop the Amiga as they wanted. C= failed to keep the original Amiga employee talent as well.

[agami]

...depending on how much freedom Jay Minor would have been given.

Tale as old as time:

Hey you there, where did you learn to carve like that?
Here and there my Pharaoh.
You should totally come work on my pyramid. Onemhotep, bring this artisan with us.

Later...

Artisan! You're chiselling the story wrong! I want you to tell it like I did the whole thing by myself.
Artisan! You're using too much blue! Lapis doesn't grow on reeds you know.

Later...

Onemhotep! Have you seen the artisan lately?

[warpdesign]

Not having HD diskdrive would'nt have been a problem if the A1200 came with a harddrive as standard, with all versions.

Chipset should have been improved too, with Chunky & VGA with integrated scandoubler.

[ElPolloDiabl]

As the A4000 was high end. You could have made the A1200 in a larger case it would be cheaper to upgrade.
2.5inch drives were expensive back then.

[Varthall]

The A1200 should have had a high density disk drive (if not a small hard drive)

The A1200 was sold both without and with a hard drive preinstalled, the latter was called A1200HD (with a 20MB drive) and A1200HD/40 (with a 40MB one): http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=15

Varthall

[OldB0y]

It matters little that the Falcon was slightly quicker, had better sound capabilities and a DSP.

When the A1200 cost £399 and the Falcon cost a whopping £999 when they launched in the UK.  Even if you add in a Blizzard 1230/50 + some fast RAM, and a small HDD, the A1200 would still have come out cheaper by a few quid.

So IMO, in terms of cost versus performance the A1200 is the better machine.

[matthey]

Tale as old as time:

Hey you there, where did you learn to carve like that?
Here and there my Pharaoh.
You should totally come work on my pyramid. Onemhotep, bring this artisan with us.

Later...

Artisan! You're chiselling the story wrong! I want you to tell it like I did the whole thing by myself.
Artisan! You're using too much blue! Lapis doesn't grow on reeds you know.

Later...

Onemhotep! Have you seen the artisan lately?

Jay Minor was given freedom when creating the Amiga "game machine" and had the foresight to make it an expandable "computer". He would likely not have had as much freedom if he was working for Atari or C= where the Pharoh would likely have ruined his creativity. Creativity is only possible with freedom.

It matters little that the Falcon was slightly quicker, had better sound capabilities and a DSP.

When the A1200 cost £399 and the Falcon cost a whopping £999 when they launched in the UK.  Even if you add in a Blizzard 1230/50 + some fast RAM, and a small HDD, the A1200 would still have come out cheaper by a few quid.

So IMO, in terms of cost versus performance the A1200 is the better machine.

Good point. It's really cost/performance that matters.

[paul1981]

It matters little that the Falcon was slightly quicker, had better sound capabilities and a DSP.

When the A1200 cost £399 and the Falcon cost a whopping £999 when they launched in the UK.  Even if you add in a Blizzard 1230/50 + some fast RAM, and a small HDD, the A1200 would still have come out cheaper by a few quid.

So IMO, in terms of cost versus performance the A1200 is the better machine.

£999? Wow, I had no idea! That's a lot of dough! Would have been a Microbotics 68030 accelerator though as the Blizzard wasn't out in 1992/3. Correct me if I'm wrong though. MX1230 or something was it?

[psxphill]

C= produced the Amiga 4000CR (Cost Reduced) motherboard without a CPU to save a few dollars so why not the Amiga 1200?]

It was the other way round. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000#A4000-CR_version

The first Amiga 4000s were shipped without the cpu present on the motherboard but with a card in the cpu slot. They then started shipping them with the cpu on the motherboard and without the card, to save money on the cpu card.

It's much cheaper to put the cpu on the motherboard than ship it on a card, So if they had done that with the A1200 you would have to pay more for the same speed cpu.

£999? Wow, I had no idea! That's a lot of dough!

I'm pretty sure it was closer to £599.

[zipper]

£599 probably - the US prices were:
"The Falcon030 is available in four variations -- 1 meg of RAM and no hard
drive, 4 meg of RAM and no hard drive, 4 meg of RAM and an 80 meg hard
drive, and 14 meg of RAM and an 80 meg hard drive.  Retail prices range
from $799 to $1899.  Actual street price is generally $100-200 less."

[matthey]

It was the other way round. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000#A4000-CR_version

The first Amiga 4000s were shipped without the cpu present on the motherboard but with a card in the cpu slot. They then started shipping them with the cpu on the motherboard and without the card, to save money on the cpu card.

Interesting, so the 4000CR with CPU would be cheaper for buyers wanting a 68EC030 but I would have thought the percentage wanting a higher end CPU would be growing and decreasing the advantage of adding an unused CPU on the motherboard. Many more people probably used the low end CPU in the 1200 than in the 4000 which probably explains why it is present. C= must have purchased these low clocked EC processors for dirt cheap. Too bad they didn't put a 68020/68030 socket with replaceable oscillator on both the 1200 and 4000 motherboard but that would have cost a few cents more.

[psxphill]

Interesting, so the 4000CR with CPU would be cheaper for buyers wanting a 68EC030 but I would have thought the percentage wanting a higher end CPU would be growing and decreasing the advantage of adding an unused CPU on the motherboard.

If they wanted a higher end CPU they would buy the A4000/40.

You could argue there would be people who wanted to buy an A4000 without a cpu at all and add a third party one, but that would likely cause issues with people buying one and finding out it wasn't actually a stand alone computer. You'd also likely add more cost by having multiple SKU's. If you are buying an 060 board you can afford the low cost of the EC030 on the board.

It would likely have been cheaper for commodore to only ship the EC030 versions and sell anything faster as dealer upgrades.

Atari banned retailers selling Falcons via mail, unless the customer asked for written permission from Atari that they then passed on to the dealer. That would have severely hampered the uptake, which would have reduced the amount of software being created. It was hard enough for commodore to get developers to make AGA specific games.

[paul1981]

I'm at Scotch Corner motorway services at the moment. All I wanted was a sandwich and a bag of crisps... So I got to the counter and the lady said 'It's cheaper if you buy a drink with it because there's a Meal Deal.'
So I had to buy a drink too despite not wanting one. Just doesn't make sense to me (besides ripping people off).

[pyrre]

An extremely fair and balanced article. The Flacon was horribly crippled by its memory bus, but other than that it has the chunky gfx mode, the 16bit audio, a DSP and a 68030 which were all features missing from the Amiga 1200.

The A1200 was good in spite of its design, not because of it.

Yes, an interesting article. indeed.

If Atari had made the falcon with a full 32bit data bus. the story would be totally different...

[pyrre]

Not sure why he keeps making reference to pc and mac sound cards too, saying that by the 90's the Amiga's sound was lagging behind. Maybe he doesn't know that 16-bit sound cards have always been around for the A1500/2000/3000/4000 machines. Even the wedge-cased Amiga's got 16-bit sound cards...these connected via serial/parallel, pcmcia, or clockport.

With the standard 68EC020 cpu onboard the A1200, the bus is 24 not 32-bit. Adding a cpu upgrade with fastram gives 32-bit. Unless he was referring to AGA? If he was then the falcon bus width should have been listed as 16 not 32.

Check this (very long) thread out if you fancy some Atari vs Amiga discussion/arguments/flame-wars. They talk about the Falcon vs. A1200 too later on in the thread IIRC:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/29957-atari-st-vs-amiga/page-1?hl=fastrobplusamiga1000

Enjoy

Question:

Looking at the surface of the A1200 motherboard. you see prints next to the 020 cpu. looking like the oulines of a 6881/2 fpu. if one found a full blown MC 020 and a fpu... I wonder if it would be possible to replace the cpu and add an fpu directly to the motherboard. and would it be possible to replace the crystal with, lets say 16mhz....

I have wondered about his for many years....