@bhabbott

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bhabbott wrote: @agami My devotion is to the Amiga, and therefore anyone who supports it. Commodore did, others didn't. Commodore wasn't perfect, but they believed in the machine when nobody else did.

For a while.

Soon enough there were factions within Commodore that worked to sideline the Amiga or shut it down completely.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@Hammer

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Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: So, I assume that Porter was top in charge (e.g. he was responsible for the Amiga projects, and Hedley was one of his engineers). Be specific on "Amiga projects".

At the time there was only the Amiga 3000, and shortly after there was the CDTV, which were the only Amiga projects, and where Porter sees to be the responsible technical manager.
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Note that the corrective AA3000 project was supposed to be released in Q4 1991,

Who was the (technical) responsible for that? Was it Porter again?
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but Bill Sydnes and Jeff Frank cancelled AA1000plus and froze AA3000 after Bill Sydnes' June 1991 takeover.

Yes, and you've already reported that. As I've already reported that it was after SIX YEARS where the Amiga engineers have produced basically nothing...
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From Commodore - The Final Years, Henri Rubin, the instigator of the new project, wanted to go after the Macintosh by adding noninterlaced monochrome video for the Amiga. “Management's directive was to produce a high-resolution, monochrome business computer,� says developer Bryce Nesbitt. “This is what we were supposed to work on.� Henri Rubin's management directive was to produce a high-resolution, monochrome business computer.

And not only that, since he was steering the meetings for the Next Big Amiga Thing as well.

As you've reported several times, Commodore was working to many projects in parallel...
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Without CSG's C65-driven competitive corporate politics, Porter could NOT mandate his 8-bit planes with 16 million colors (effectively AGA).

I've already proved you that Porter was living on the pinky flying unicorns universe, proposing that thing.

Which, BTW, had similar requirements of Miner's Ranger chip, both in terms of needed bandwidth and very very high working frequencies of the display controller.
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Without a well-defined hierarchical structure, equally ranked headstrong engineers will not automatically cooperate.

The hierarchy was defined, but the technical people were incompetent and not even able to agree on the SPECs of a project...
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From Commodore - The Final Years, Hedley Davis' push for improved PC graphics handling, rejected by upper management. Hedley Davis, the system software developer on the CDTV-CR, was also having bad experiences with his manager. “I had resorted to playing tricks on management, which is something that I don't like,� he says. “In the CDTV-CR there's a bitplane-to-pixel converter. I was told, ‘No, you can't do that,’ by this guy who wanted to be the boss.� Davis wanted it so badly, he decided to trick his boss. “He wanted a list of all the features that we're putting in the CDTV-CR design so that this is what we agreed to do,� says Davis. “I write a list of these nine features that we were putting in the CDTV-CR and I hand it to him and he takes it. I know he's not going to fucking read it or pay attention to it or really think about it. He's just bossing me around and just being the boss.� One of those features was the forbidden bitplane-to-pixel converter, disguised slightly. “The CDTV-CR comes out and lo and behold there is this bitplane-to-pixel converter,� recalls Davis. “He's like, ‘I can't believe you did that, it wasn't on the list. We had an agreement and you're going to be fired.’� Davis insisted the item was on the list. “He's like, ‘It wasn't on the list.’ I said get the list out. It was at like number eight and I worded it so I never used the nouns ‘bitplane to pixel converter’ but rather came up with some obtuse wording about allowing better graphics processing by minimizing processor overhead for conversion between bitplane or whatever. It was in there but I tricked him by putting it in such a way because I knew he wouldn't read it.� Understandably, Davis’ relationship with his boss soured to the point that Davis refused to go to his boss’ office when called. “He wanted my head and he couldn't get it,� says Davis. “I got called by someone a couple of management levels up, asking, ‘Why are you doing this and why don't you even go into the guy's office?’ He's calling me into his office because he wants to have the home turf so he can try to win the argument based upon home turf, and I'm just not doing it.� Soon, Davis began to feel uncomfortable working at Commodore. “The threat level was just insane,� he says. “We're playing these stupid games. We aren't really doing the right stuff.�

This furtherly proves how engineers were doing whatever they wanted, even against what managers had said them to do.

In fact, Hedley haven't proved why this ‘bitplane to pixel converter’ was so important for the... CDTV. Which was Commodore's multimedia machine.

He has wasted time and resources for the company just to play with his idea...
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The project manager for the A2001 (A3000) project doesn't mean Hedley Davis has governance over Amiga graphics chipset design.

No, he was part of the Gang of Three which were not able to just define the SPECs (AKA Paper Work).
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From Commodore - The Final Years, Amiga's graphics upgrade debates didn't stop due to Rubin's leadership being incompetent. The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time, Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? … Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next video chips.� The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit architecture. No one could agree. Bob Welland's anti-Amiga graphics argument effectively blocked Hedley Davis' and George Robbins' next Amiga graphics evolution arguments i.e. Bob Welland's filibuster.

Thanks for confirming it again...
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Rubin didn't crush Bob Welland's filibuster and go for 32-bit Amiga graphics evolution.

Crush? They (the engineers. ALL of them) should have agreed on the SPECs and give them to Rubin. And they completely failed even on this paper work which took MORE THAN YEAR.
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Full 32-bit Amiga graphics evolution would be AGA with 32-bit Alice instead of 16-bit Alice.

First and much easier would have been the 14Mhz evolution. And they failed even on recognizing this obvious solution...
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Rubin refuses to risk his position after the monochrome hi-res debacle,

Guess why it was a debacle. Hint: who was not even able to design a chipset capable of CONTINUING to display 4096 colours (instead of going down to a miserable palette of 64 colours).
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hence the inaction.

Source for this?
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As a C900 supporter, Bob Welland argues for Unix workstation graphics without Amiga graphics backwards compatibility. After the filibuster, Bob Welland left Commodore and joined Apple in early 1988.

Which was good, since he never understood what an Amiga was, how it worked, and how to properly evolve it.
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Bob Welland argues for a RISC CPU with MMU, Unix OS, and Unix workstation graphics. With Apple, Bob Welland got his MMU with RISC ARM 610.

Which is another clear proof of that: he was living on a parallel universe, and not on the Amiga universe...
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Unlike Bill Sydnes/Jeff Frank's administration, Herni Rubin's administration allowed corrective AGA R&D in 1989 after C65's 256-color chipset reveal.

Of course: he had to react, since his engineers completely failed even on a simple PAPER WORK...
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ECS A3000's failure didn't affect A500's sales boom for 1990 and 1991, but corrective AA3000 and AA1000plus must be released to execute a 256 color "Jackintosh" move against Apple's best-selling 1992 Mac LC II model and set up the early logistics for AA500's very large volume production.

Without good engineers? In fact, they had to wait for the ones coming from the LSI group...

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: @bhabbott Soon enough there were factions within Commodore that worked to sideline the Amiga or shut it down completely.

If there were they didn't succeed.

Not sure who you are talking about though. It wasn't Gould, who was enthusiastic about the Amiga and had no love for PCs. It wasn't Mehdi Ali either, who kept the creditors at bay and lit a fire under the engineers to get the A1200 and A4000 out.

Or perhaps it was Bill Sydnes, the PC guy who was roped into sorting out the mess of too many projects that Commodore couldn't afford to produce. But no, it wouldn't be him either, because he pushed to release mid-range Amiga models that certain engineers derided. That may have been a bad decision, but it certainly wasn't 'sidelining' the Amiga, let alone 'shutting it down completely'.

So who could we legitimately accuse of such action? My picks would be:-

1. Jack Tramiel, who destroyed the dealer network, upset Motorola and Microsoft, diverted resources into making incompatible machines such as the TED series, then stormed out of Commodore (taking the best engineers with him) and spent the next 10 years trying to destroy the Amiga.

2. The engineers who didn't like the Amiga and wanted a Unix workstation instead.

3. The engineers who worked on side projects like the C65 instead of concentrating on making the Amiga better.

4. Engineers like Dave Haynie, who had little enthusiasm for new consumer models which Commodore needed to grow the user base, played around putting exotic chips in the A3000 that would make it even more expensive and unobtainable, and had a surly attitude towards management.

5. Jay Miner, who thought what the Amiga really needed was an ultrahigh resolution monochrome screen using expensive VRAM, and worked on that instead of making a cheaper A1000. His team also gets on the list for insisting that the A500 wouldn't work while offering nothing themselves, and for refusing to move to West Chester where they could work more closely with the engineers there.

6. David Pleasance, the salesman who never used an Amiga (or any computer) who pushed for a cheaper model with no enhancements because he thought it would attract C64 fans. Big fail there David. Gould had already promised us the enhanced machines we were hanging out for, and you sidelined that by asking Commodore to make the A300 instead. Luckily the Germans had more of a clue, so we at least got some enhancements in the A600 - which helped speed up development of the A1200.

Last edited by bhabbott on 02-Sep-2025 at 06:55 AM.

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @agami Quote: agami wrote: @bhabbott Soon enough there were factions within Commodore that worked to sideline the Amiga or shut it down completely. If there were they didn't succeed. Not sure who you are talking about though. It wasn't Gould, who was enthusiastic about the Amiga and had no love for PCs. It wasn't Mehdi Ali either, who kept the creditors at bay and lit a fire under the engineers to get the A1200 and A4000 out. Or perhaps it was Bill Sydnes, the PC guy who was roped into sorting out the mess of too many projects that Commodore couldn't afford to produce. But no, it wouldn't be him either, because he pushed to release mid-range Amiga models that certain engineers derided. That may have been a bad decision, but it certainly wasn't 'sidelining' the Amiga, let alone 'shutting it down completely'. So who could we legitimately accuse of such action? My picks would be:- 1. Jack Tramiel, who destroyed the dealer network, upset Motorola and Microsoft, diverted resources into making incompatible machines such as the TED series, then stormed out of Commodore (taking the best engineers with him) and spent the next 10 years trying to destroy the Amiga. 2. The engineers who didn't like the Amiga and wanted a Unix workstation instead. 3. The engineers who worked on side projects like the C65 instead of concentrating on making the Amiga better. 4. Engineers like Dave Haynie, who had little enthusiasm for new consumer models which Commodore needed to grow the user base, played around putting exotic chips in the A3000 that would make it even more expensive and unobtainable, and had a surly attitude towards management. 5. Jay Miner, who thought what the Amiga really needed was an ultrahigh resolution monochrome screen using expensive VRAM, and worked on that instead of making a cheaper A1000. His team also gets on the list for insisting that the A500 wouldn't work while offering nothing themselves, and for refusing to move to West Chester where they could work more closely with the engineers there. 6. David Pleasance, the salesman who never used an Amiga (or any computer) who pushed for a cheaper model with no enhancements because he thought it would attract C64 fans. Big fail there David. Gould had already promised us the enhanced machines we were hanging out for, and you sidelined that by asking Commodore to make the A300 instead. Luckily the Germans had more of a clue, so we at least got some enhancements in the A600 - which helped speed up development of the A1200.

Incredibly, I mostly agree.

@bhabbott

I think the hidden truth particularly with the failed A600, is somewhere in the contradicting issues, that engineers failed for wanting expensive add on/expensive tech and the manager wanting a low spec cheap system, so they put out a computer that was not cheap enough to go really main stream for the home market, like sub £250. But had some cool feature that gave the system more expandability and more life span, but that wasn’t the goal of the project.

So I think to blame David Pleasance for the A600, is stupid, if anything, I really blame the Germans and other managers for missing the point of the project, and I think David, lower cost Amiga was a spot on choice, people seem to forget for a lot of people in the early 90s. £400 was a lot of money for a computer. Most people could not afford a Pc or Mac. I think one of reasons the C64 & speccy got so popular was how cheap it got.

I think a really scale back Amiga, in 1992 with just say 512kb ram, no pcmcia slot, ocs or ecs chip, which ever where cheaper to manufacture, and you could buy the system with maybe no games / software / mouse for the magic price point of £199.99 I think the system would of done really well. Of course have the bundles with these things for £250/£300.

After all the system was not meant to be a successor to the A500 or A500 plus it was to be an even lower cost version. We had the A1200 coming to do that.

_________________
AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: 2. The engineers who didn't like the Amiga and wanted a Unix workstation instead. 3. The engineers who worked on side projects like the C65 instead of concentrating on making the Amiga better.

2:
There was a whole group of developers hired to develop a new Unix system (SW + HW) around the Z8000 (Commodore 900) it was meant as a professional system where C= was once dominant before they concentrated on home computers.

It became somehow obsolete when the Amiga was introduced, I don't know if they where still there when C= was rolling out the A500/A2000. The later Amiga Unix was based on a complete different system. You see they where doing the same work over and over again, losing results and work they already paid without a idea what to do with it.

3:
According to Haynie these engineers where not feeling enthusiastic about developing an already obsolete 8-Bit platform. They got the task to do it and made what they where paid for, all the work that went into it, was wasted, just imagine they would have made an additional GFX chip for the Amiga instead, that would have been great.



Quote:

bhabbott wrote: 4. Engineers like Dave Haynie, who had little enthusiasm for new consumer models...

4.
I always looked up to the big systems, because expanding the consumer model would cost more than changing to a ZII Amiga instead.

I can't blame Haynie for playing with the big irons as long as smaller systems like the A500 where developed successfully by others. I don't think it the delay of AGA where his fault, AGA was ready for the A3000+ long before it was rolled out for the A1200.

The A3000 had Amber, an onboard Flicker Fixer that made it more suitable for office usage, problem with the A3000 was its high price.

--------

But C= was a company that pioneered the home- and personal-computer together with Apple and Tandy. There where a lot more other companies who left the market long before the Amiga appeared and Apple is the last ones of this pioneers that still bundles hard- and software together.

Importance of hardware has diminished because you can buy it standardized systems from different companies, even the type of operation system has lost its importance because most of the systems are used for the WWW or running Apps on a mobile phone.

So if your system can run an up to date WWW-browser your are in this game, if not you are out.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 02-Sep-2025 at 12:16 PM.

@amigang

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amigang wrote: was to be an even lower cost version.

Which it wasn't, hence it being a pointless waste of resources.

It wasn't even lower cost in pure production cost (ignoring R&D) which meant it really was on par with the C65.

Sure C= could have sold even more A500/600 at an every cheaper price like they did with the C64, but at marginal margins and a clearly upcoming EOL for 68000+ECS that could not have been a roadmap.

For C= to survive they would have either needed something like the C900 (not buying Amiga) or a better/earlier/better_marketed A2000/3000/4000.

Thats what brings the margins for future R&D which could have eventually be handed down to the A500/1200 systems.
That what would have brought the market for "pro" SW which would have been available one way or the other for the smaller Amiga making them more attractive for people on a budget wanting to use "free" SW.

That is what drove the PC, SW companies developing for 386/486 owing costumers and hobbiest running the same SW on 8088/286 systems.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: Sure C= could have sold even more A500/600 at an every cheaper price like they did with the C64, but at marginal margins and a clearly upcoming EOL for 68000+ECS that could not have been a roadmap. For C= to survive they would have either needed something like the C900 (not buying Amiga) or a better/earlier/better_marketed A2000/3000/4000.

The A600 only made sense if it was cheaper for C= and the customers.

At the end it was only a A500 with minor extensions but big incompatibility.
Maybe an updated A500 with some SMD parts, onboard keyboard and disk controller would have been better, not easy if your recall how an 68k in another chip format would make some accelerators incompatible.

For the C900 / or the big box Amigas, you should have to know how to sell professional computers, Unix needs support and dealers with knowledge something they don't even had for their Amigas.

And products like the C65 + C900 wouldn't have saved C= like the Amiga did it.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 02-Sep-2025 at 05:11 PM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: For the C900 / or the big box Amigas, you should have to know how to sell professional computers,

Something C= did quite well in PET times, and somehow lost in the early 80s.

A500_MK2 didn't need anything, it did not need compatibility with 3rd party HW add ons, it di not need SMD or throuhole components.

All it needed was to run existing games and basic app while being cheaper to produce.

A500 successor needs even less of the above it just needs hand me down upgrades that had been introduced to the pro line years before (and had there recouped R&D).

C= sold a "pro line" that was just the consumer HW with added slots, no chance to get any R&D done and financed in a timely manner.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

Quote:

Which it wasn't, hence it being a pointless waste of resources. It wasn't even lower cost in pure production cost (ignoring R&D) which meant it really was on par with the C65.

Which is exactly my point, they screwed around with what the aim of the project was, a further cut down, basic Amiga, why did the A600 come with a PCMICA slot? Why did it come with all the ports, every little bit cost money, hell even maybe it should of had a rubber keyboard like the Speccy.

If you wanted a full Amiga, the choice was already there, either an A500 or within a few years the A1200.

The goal of the project was to be a really cut down low cost entry to Amiga eco-system.

I know many of you might not of liked the idea of really low cost Amiga and liked what the A300 become, but like you say the way it was handled and release, it was a waste.

I think it would of sold really well at the original target price. Yes margins would be tight for Commodore, which is why I always felt Commodore should of gone more into the software business more and made some games or apps for the system as well to really show it off and get money from that side of the business.

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cdimauro Quote:

At the time there was only the Amiga 3000, and shortly after there was the CDTV, which were the only Amiga projects, and where Porter sees to be the responsible technical manager.

As I recall, CDTV development was more of a skunk works style development that started outside normal Commodore development channels where Jeff Porter was not involved. Both the CDTV and Amiga 3000 really needed a better chipset at launch which Porter called for and could have helped cost reduce both which was sorely needed. There were definite politics going on inside Commodore from further up than Porter. His position was changed which he and Haynie saw as punitive removal when the PC guys came in. Porter should have been moved up into Medhi Ali's place and had his hands untied.

cdimauro Quote:

I've already proved you that Porter was living on the pinky flying unicorns universe, proposing that thing. Which, BTW, had similar requirements of Miner's Ranger chip, both in terms of needed bandwidth and very very high working frequencies of the display controller.

Porter proposed a 16 million color palette instead of a 4096 color palette. It was an 8-bit CLUT mode that he wanted including at higher resolutions which arrived with AGA long after he and Miner proposed it. In other words, they were asking for new chipsets with higher bandwidth but not 24-bit or 32-bit modes which were very high end at the time. HAM8 was a good bandwidth saver which allowed near 24-bit quality though. It would have been a good poor man's 24-bit if it had arrived earlier (1990-1992) despite limitations. AA+ should have then been out earlier in 1993-1994 and Commodore would have likely survived if they produced A1200s and CD32s instead of outdated overpriced hardware. The chipset upgrades allow for CPU upgrades which have synergies with the chipset upgrades.

cdimauro Quote:

This furtherly proves how engineers were doing whatever they wanted, even against what managers had said them to do. In fact, Hedley haven't proved why this ‘bitplane to pixel converter’ was so important for the... CDTV. Which was Commodore's multimedia machine. He has wasted time and resources for the company just to play with his idea...

Some managers were telling the engineers to effectively sabotage the Amiga. The advantages of chunky graphics were well known by this time and there was software taking advantage of chunky modes including for games. Hedley Davis shows an understanding here in his explanation that chunky requires less CPU/chipset bandwidth. Jay Miner and a consultant warned Commodore that they needed to quickly pivot to chunky.

Commodore_Strategic_Plan_1985-1987
https://archive.org/details/commodorestrategicplan19851987

Upper management ignored them with the "no new chips" philosophy, whether or not it was an actual demand. You can certainly make the argument that engineers after Jay Miner lacked vision but it does not make them bad engineers. Commodore had major management and systemic problems. Engineering design can take a long time and is difficult enough when short on man power even without being sabotaged from the outside by clueless management.

bhabbott Quote:

If there were they didn't succeed. Not sure who you are talking about though. It wasn't Gould, who was enthusiastic about the Amiga and had no love for PCs. It wasn't Mehdi Ali either, who kept the creditors at bay and lit a fire under the engineers to get the A1200 and A4000 out. Or perhaps it was Bill Sydnes, the PC guy who was roped into sorting out the mess of too many projects that Commodore couldn't afford to produce. But no, it wouldn't be him either, because he pushed to release mid-range Amiga models that certain engineers derided. That may have been a bad decision, but it certainly wasn't 'sidelining' the Amiga, let alone 'shutting it down completely'.

Medhi Ali and the PC guys did succeed in sabotaging the Amiga. They practically stopped Amiga development for about 6 months which likely interrupted the Amiga pipeline for a year. Their plan was likely to cut Amiga development and wind down the Amiga while switching to the PC. PC engineer hiring increased but not Amiga engineer hiring. The commodity PC market crash forced them to pivot back to the Amiga as it became their highest margin Commodore market but the damage was done. A 6-12 month delay in a product line the business depends on is more than enough to end the business. Take a look at the history of 3dfx for example. Medhi Ali was awful. He brought in the PC guys, failed to cancel the A300 when it became the A600, canceled the A500, Osborned Amiga computers twice, failed to order enough AGA chips for the A1200 and ordered the production of A600s instead. The guy was a walking Amiga wrecking ball.

bhabbott Quote:

So who could we legitimately accuse of such action? My picks would be:- 1. Jack Tramiel, who destroyed the dealer network, upset Motorola and Microsoft, diverted resources into making incompatible machines such as the TED series, then stormed out of Commodore (taking the best engineers with him) and spent the next 10 years trying to destroy the Amiga.

Jack was bad enough that his reputation still sidelined Commodore after he left. Dealer networks in the US were a major problem in the early days of the Amiga and Atari ST cheap competition further hurt the Amiga.

bhabbott Quote:

2. The engineers who didn't like the Amiga and wanted a Unix workstation instead.

Amiga hardware could have been successfully used for Unix systems if the chipset was upgraded to higher resolution non-interlaced modes, preferably with chunky too. Commodore was too little too late again.

bhabbott Quote:

3. The engineers who worked on side projects like the C65 instead of concentrating on making the Amiga better.

Another disorganized management problem and lack of vision.

bhabbott Quote:

4. Engineers like Dave Haynie, who had little enthusiasm for new consumer models which Commodore needed to grow the user base, played around putting exotic chips in the A3000 that would make it even more expensive and unobtainable, and had a surly attitude towards management.

He wanted AA for the Amiga 3000 which was the right direction and mostly kept his nose to the grind stone. He supported AAA, AT&T DSP and RISC CPU upgrades which were the wrong direction but he is consistent at least. His heart was in the right place wanting to improve the Amiga without the chipset and CPU upgrades it should have been getting.

bhabbott Quote:

5. Jay Miner, who thought what the Amiga really needed was an ultrahigh resolution monochrome screen using expensive VRAM, and worked on that instead of making a cheaper A1000. His team also gets on the list for insisting that the A500 wouldn't work while offering nothing themselves, and for refusing to move to West Chester where they could work more closely with the engineers there.

Do you really believe the vision of Jay Miner who produced a 4096 color chipset was to add a "monochrome" high resolution mode? The Ranger chipset was originally going to be 128 colors max still with a 4096 color palette, higher resolution and use VRAM as Jay Miner explained. Commodore wanted the Amiga to become a monochrome business computer like the PC and Jay was tasked with helping develop it without VRAM. This was later upgraded to ECS as business computers were moving to color by the time the monochrome chipset was near completion. Typical Commodore wasting time chasing standards instead of creating them.

bhabbott Quote:

6. David Pleasance, the salesman who never used an Amiga (or any computer) who pushed for a cheaper model with no enhancements because he thought it would attract C64 fans. Big fail there David. Gould had already promised us the enhanced machines we were hanging out for, and you sidelined that by asking Commodore to make the A300 instead. Luckily the Germans had more of a clue, so we at least got some enhancements in the A600 - which helped speed up development of the A1200.

The A600 is not David's fault for asking for an A300. More cost reduction was the right direction. It could have been done but requires more chipset enhancements and integration. The Amiga chipset likely could have been all CMOS and down to 2 major custom chips circa 1990. More of the minor chips could have been integrated in and a cheap IDE interface would not have cost much. This would have reduced the size of the board allowing room for a 3.5" HD and CMOS would have lowered temps for the HD. An A500+ would have been worthwhile if it supported an internal HD. There is internal Commodore documentation that further integration of the 68k CPU with AA+ CMOS chipset as a SoC would have reduced the cost of A1200 and CD32 systems by $100 USD, meaning the A1200 would not have been priced much higher than the A600 and the CD32 likely would have had a similar price to the A600. Price is very important but so is value. I believe most people would choose a $400 68EC030@28MHz AA+ CD32 or $500 68EC030@28MHz AA+ A1200 over a $400 68000@7MHz ECS A300. An A300 may have been more successful in some markets like Eastern Europe coming out from behind the Iron Curtain at the time but Commodore would be competing with used Amigas as the market for 68000+ECS Amigas was saturating. Commodore had the C64 one model forever mentality for the Amiga but computers could now be upgraded and Commodore did not get the memo.

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @OneTimer1 Quote: OneTimer1 wrote: For the C900 / or the big box Amigas, you should have to know how to sell professional computers, Something C= did quite well in PET times, and somehow lost in the early 80s.

I remember ther PET times, when small businesses wrote their own programs in BASIC or bought those, but later in Amiga times the PC world had become more advanced, small businesses needed PCs with hard disks.

Quote:

C= sold a "pro line" that was just the consumer HW with added slots, no chance to get any R&D done and financed in a timely manner.

Yes, the A2000 was just an A500 with a lot of empty slots and a better power supply.
But it was the better machine if you wanted a HD & FliFi ( and later an 030 accelerator and GFX Card)

@matthey

Quote:

HAM8 was a good bandwidth saver which ...

Oh shut off, HAM was only usable for still images they could impress the audience if they saw an Amiga demoed somewhere but it was hardly used by games or professional programs.

It was a niche on a niche system nearly as exotic as babbling about the video toaster that was never used outside NTSC markets.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 02-Sep-2025 at 10:44 PM.