I was just reading the History of the Amiga CD32. It's really quite remarkable. I think it serves as a perfect example of how modern "political" capitalism utterly fails us.

Commodore had this great product in the CD32, It could have easily have been the next "NES" or "Sega" of the day, but a Judge put an injunction on shipments to the US b/c of a debt Commodore owed. And b/c Commodore could not pay that debt, they went out of business and the CD32 was discontinued. Brilliant logic there. If the debt was ever to get paid Commodore had to ship product. Moreover, Commodore couldn't keep up with demand in Europe as it was. So then one has to ask, where were the investment firms to shore up Commodore's ship? It's just doesn't make much sense... a great product, excessive demand, an untapped market, and the result is bankruptcy? This is not how things should work.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and looking back, just imagine where we might be toady if Amiga would have put out a "CD16" game console back in 1987!

@trans

CD/16 was called CDTV and was a complete commercial failure.

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Check my Amiga gameplays (ITA)!

@trans

Quote:

they went out of business and the CD32 was discontinued

CD32 could be "Atari Jaguar" of Commodore, but that's it. SNES was well established console, released four years earlier, CD32 had few remakes of games released before for standard Amiga, with tracks from CD. It had weak graphic chip that couldn't do 3D, it was a final spasm of Old Era. Original Playstation was just around the corner and even IF CD32 would be let into US, Sony would shred Commodore's console to pieces.

Face it, Amiga was done for when A600/A1200 where hitting the market. Castrated CPU, weak graphics, expensive extensions and models without HDD.

Quote:

if Amiga would have put out a "CD16"

You mean CTDV? Sure, it was five years later, but you can't really say it was "a success". For what's worth Amiga was game console.

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@opi

Quote:

Face it, Amiga was done for when A600/A1200 where hitting the market. Castrated CPU, weak graphics, expensive extensions and models without HDD.

Thank you - and I thought I were lonley thinking this way...

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@trans

Quote:

trans wrote: ... but a Judge put an injunction on shipments to the US

It was sold in other countries with little success only.


@cha05e90

Quote:

cha05e90 wrote: @opi Quote: Face it, Amiga was done for when A600/A1200 where hitting the market. Castrated CPU, weak graphics, expensive extensions and models without HDD. Thank you - and I thought I were lonley thinking this way...

No, you are not allone. AGA done the right way(chunky gfx) and two years sooner would have helped Amiga a lot.

Last edited by Arko on 28-Jan-2011 at 11:40 AM.
Last edited by Arko on 28-Jan-2011 at 11:38 AM.

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AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

@opi

"Weak Graphics"? Err. dude you obviously were around then.

@ErikBauer

Quote:

CD/16 was called CDTV and was a complete commercial failure.

Nah. The CDTV was much later then the A1000 and overpriced for what it really was. They tried to bill it as if it were a high-end stereo component or something. Very bad marketing. I think that realized that and that's why they did the CD32, but of course it was too late at that point.

@trans

Quote:

"Weak Graphics"?

Lower resolutions than common SVGA cards
AGA: 640x480 8bit, no chunky
SVGA: up to 1024x768 8bit (limited by the avaiable GFX memory, only 800x600 4bit with 256 kB)

640x480 in 256 colours (or HAM8) on AGA is a slower than same resolution on SVGA.

AGA was still nice GFX for low-end models (A1200) - comparable with 256 kB SVGA cards of that time (1992).

@opi

So which Amiga did you like Opi?

Rude!

EDIT and before you bite my head off, it's a perfectly valid question, if you didn't like the A1200/A600/CD32 (and you certainly don't like any of the next-gen 'Amiga' systems) then that leaves the Classic Big Boxes and perhaps the A500/A1000.

I personally think the A1200 was the greatest Amiga that was released from an expandability point of view; I believed it could have done with at least an 030 and maybe a DSP.

Last edited by Rudei on 28-Jan-2011 at 12:31 PM.

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@Rudei

With chunky GFX and faster 8bit VGA resolutions A1200 could have been ideal computer.

@Rudei

Quote:

So which Amiga did you like Opi?

A1200 and A600! No, really. I also like my soccer team. They sucks, but I like them.

Quote:

certainly don't like any of the next-gen 'Amiga' systems

I liked Pegasos and half-liked Efika. Couldn't judge Sam as I couldn't get it to run. I think I'll try Sam640 in few days.

Quote:

I personally think the A1200 was the greatest Amiga that was released from an expandability point of view

And that speaks volumes about how bad Amiga was. Look at expanded A12k, it's Frankenstein of computing.

EDIT: My dream Amiga was A3000. I still want to buy one but I snap out of it seconds before clicking "Buy Now".

Last edited by opi on 28-Jan-2011 at 12:44 PM.

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Umm.. so how much would the A1200 have cost in 1992 if it had shiped with 2 Meg of Fast RAM, and the Chipset running at double clock speed so that the AGA Maximum Overscan of 1440*588*Ham8 would have more bandwidth left for CPU access?

How much more compatible, extendible would Amiga have been, instead of going just for the Pixel Clock, 7 Mhz, it had been built with Colour Clock, 2* 4.43 Mhz and multiples? You would still be looing at the 7/8 rate for screen image pixels, but you would then have the gurenteed 1/8 clocks for CPU access.

Due to verticle flyback of 21 lines and overscan .. PAL 640*480*50 field Interleave Equals, within percentages, of 800*600*30 frames SVGA.

I designed a real time video digitiser in teh 90s that used a 17.76 Mhz sample rate to flash convert analog data to digital for further processing, all the screen modes at that time have less than 10% variation between them, Thats why AGA has a VGA option.

Its just that TVs were £250, and Monitors were £750. So why would you pay for a machine that could only use a display at Three times the price of your 26 inch TV.. And you Cant watch Coronation Street on it either?

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@opi
Quote:

Face it, Amiga was done for when A600/A1200 where hitting the market. Castrated CPU, weak graphics, expensive extensions and models without HDD

agree completely.
1992 - and it was all over, i mean - look at the games out there in 1992, compare them to what was a "top notch" in Amiga land. what about AAA? Haynie words: "It would have been
(...) pretty cool in 1992, ok in 1994 (the earliest it could have been released on the schedule we had, with a healthy Commodore)". A600/A1200/A4000 = the three beloved nails in the coffin of Commodore.

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@nimrod7

Quote:

and it was all over, i mean - look at the games out there in 1992

It was not so bad for Amiga in 1992. Sure, many games had 256 colours on PC, but most games still had better sound/music on Amiga.

Amiga versions of some games were even noticeably better than PC versions (eg. Abandoned Places).

@pavlor

Quote:

Amiga versions of some games were even noticeably better than PC

That's when we peaked. Since then it was constant downfall.

Last edited by opi on 28-Jan-2011 at 01:28 PM.

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@trans

I was in college when the A1200 came out. I had been using an A500 for years and was eagerly awaiting the release of AGA. The week the A1200 was available I bought one. Got it home. Hooked it up and said to myself WTF. I could not believe how under powered it was out of the box.

The A1200 to this day is still my favorite Amiga but it was the nail in the coffin for Commodore. Too little too late. It should have been released 2 or 3 years earlier.

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@opi

Quote:

That's when we peaked. Since then it was constant downfall.

Yes. There were some brighter moments, but basicaly you are right.

@RodTerl

Quote:

Umm.. so how … A1200 have cost in 1992 if .. 2 Meg of Fast RAM … Chipset running at double clock … AGA Maximum Overscan of 1440*588*Ham8 …

HAM8 ? Nearly worthless, only usable for low speed picture viewers, it would not have supported the A1200 game capabilities.

If you think about AGA GFX should have been, think about PAL/NTSC resolution with 8bit chunky GFX for fast games and maybe some fast ram (2mb) that frees the CPU from the Chip RAM brake.

High resolution, flicker free would have been necessary for the desktop models.


@BobW

Quote:

… when the A1200 came out. I had been using an A500 for years and was eagerly awaiting the release of AGA. The week the A1200 was available I bought one … I could not believe how under powered it was out of the box.

I had a well equipped A2000 there where no reasons for buying an A1200, I would have had to spend a lot of money to get it on the same performance state my A2000 had.

And at the other side the A1200 failed to attract new users to the Amiga.

Quote:

It should have been released 2 or 3 years earlier.

Ack, AGA with chunky 8 bit mode, and 2 MB Fastram with 28MHz 68020 CPU 2 years later.

There was an A500 follower, cost reduced with HD support called A600 but it was not compatible enough because of the missing number block.

Last edited by Arko on 28-Jan-2011 at 01:50 PM.
Last edited by Arko on 28-Jan-2011 at 01:49 PM.

_________________
AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

@pavlor

Quote:

Lower resolutions than common SVGA cards AGA: 640x480 8bit, no chunky SVGA: up to 1024x768 8bit (limited by the avaiable GFX memory, only 800x600 4bit with 256 kB)

"it wasn't until 1989 that Super VGA was defined by VESA. In that first version, it called for a resolution of 800 × 600 4-bit pixels. Each pixel could therefore be any of 16 different colours."

SVGA wasn't really affordable until the mid 90s. But I agree the A1200 wasn't the best course for Commodore. They could have done better. But at that point it was clear they had lost all foresight.

@BobW

I agree that out of the box it was a bit of a lame horse, however that is only as the only options you had when you went to buy one was a plain 1200 with or w/out a hdd. there should have been more options from the retailers, like extra ram, with or w/out an fpu.
I think the only high street store pushing these options in the UK was silica (where I got mine, with a 200mb hdd and 4mb of fast ram). That machine blew me away, I'd only had or used a 500 with 1mb chip ram before that, the difference between them was night and day...