@vox

Quote:

vox wrote: CBM failed for more reasons then Amiga.

Indeed, the Amiga was good for Commodore, and Commodore was good for the Amiga.

Quote:

Bad side is legal mumbo jumbo, good side we have OS 3.2, OS4,. MorphOS and AROS that are way beyond OS 3.1 and more HW felexibile.

Yes, the continuing development of Amiga OS is good. Also the source code for 3.1 was leaked, which I have have found to be quite useful. Maybe someday it will be open sourced so we don't have to pretend we never saw it.

Quote:

Amiga chipset was great for 1984 to 1990, but after that having more open concept is a must. And OS 3,.x, MOS, AROS and OS 4.x have nice versatile drivers to utillize some nice hw. Too bad its not one OS and one driver feature model - some long desired AOS5.

The Amiga did get more 'open' graphics hardware starting in 1990 with the X-Pert Visiona. Commodore was looking at putting full RTG support in the OS before they expired in 1994. By 1995 there were 16 RTG cards being produced, several of them using high preformance PC VGA chips. Some designs used an unmodified ISA bus PC video card with Zorro-II bus adapter.

However for most of us this wasn't important because every Amiga came with full OS support for its inbuilt chipset. It was only a problem for users of older machines who wanted to run the small but growing number of AGA titles. But of course RTG wouldn't work with hardware-banging games, and it wasn't worth putting into a standard A500 when it only had a 7 MHz 68000 and 1 MB RAM. So for the vast majority who wanted AGA the solution was obvious - just buy an A1200.

agami Quote:

This gets me to double-down on my view that the CD32 should've come out first, and the A1200, if at all, should've come out later. Forget about "World's First 32-bit Gaming Console", go with "World's First Expandable and Upgradable Console".

Introducing the CD32 first would have had several advantages like fewer parts, simpler logistics, cheaper base system entry point, earlier Amiga CD-ROM standard and cheaper embedded system with AGA for kiosks, set top boxes, etc. It may have allowed the later Amiga 1200 to come with better CD-ROM upgrade ability and chunky support (at least Akiko style support while AA+ was much preferable but likely too far out without delaying the introduction). The CD32 may have been considered to have a higher chance of failure with a very low budget launch for a console and lower profit margins than the Amiga 1200 limiting how much the price could be dropped to become competitive if necessary, a hard lesson learned from the too high of cost CDTV (CD royalties made up for some lack of margin but CBM needed cash sooner than later). If the CDTV II/CR had been developed for AGA in the first place, a CDTV/CD32 may have been produced first. The CDTV II/CR was "completed" in 1992 according to the link below so the CD32 was likely a rushed and very much simplified AGA rethink.

http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/prototypes/cdtvcr.html

AGA being delayed delayed the products based on it as well as further chipsets like AA+ and the 68k Amiga SoC which could have dramatically improved the value.

agami Quote:

Looking at all the negatives, one has to wonder where exactly would the Hi-Toro/Amiga team be welcomed and treated as visionaries?

Anytime you sell out, control goes to the buyer. It's possible some of the large businesses would have listened to and respected Jay Miner's vision and created an Amiga division around it but CEOs that already had his vision and believed in it may already be working on it organically. It was going to be expensive to bring the Amiga market and some businesses may have been focused on other markets which they were experienced with, offered better margins or had more certainty (less risk).

Ideally, Amiga Corporation would have stayed independent. They needed to find some good business partners that had mutual goals. For example, Acorn Computers may not have been able to produce the ARM1 CPU in 1985 and ARM2 CPU in 1986 without VLSI Technologies. VLSI Technologies helped with fabrication and marketing of ARM CPUs while gaining the use of custom ARM CPUs which became popular in the embedded market. When I was on the Apollo Team, I found InnovASIC (now Analog Devices) which specialized in IP for embedded use including ASICs. Dave Alsup was behind the CPU32 (68k) Fido, was receptive to the Apollo-Core and could have helped create an ASIC with them gaining customizations for embedded use and some marketing rights for embedded use much like VLSI Technologies gained from ARM. I had my foot in the door which excited Gunnar but then he ignored me and went back to playing with his toy. Help creating an ASIC does not guarantee its success which needs volume production. I was also talking to another embedded business which was a high volume IoT user where the CEO was experienced with and liked the 68k. I couldn't do anything with Gunnar being so oblivious about business so another lost opportunity for the Amiga. Back to business partners, a partner may have helped with production or marketing too. Dave Morse likely had some knowledge and connections for the toy market which is why he was brought in but it had a reduced advantage after the 1983 video game crash. Even trying to shear up the finances may have been harder coming from the toy industry. There was good reason to make a more affordable Amiga to expand the base more quickly which is why Dave suggested the Amiga 1000 design without expansion slots as Jay wanted and made some sense considering the video game crash. A console was a bad idea after the video game crash and they weren't good at cost reducing into an Amiga 500 like CBM so maybe a big expandable IBM like box was preferable. It was a tough time to introduce the Amiga.

US Economy
year | inflation | Fed fund rate | GDP growth | business cycle | events
1980 12.50% 18.00% -0.3% January_peak recession_began
1981 8.90% 12.00% 2.5% July_trough Reagan_tax_cut+IBM_PC/5150_introduced
1982 3.80% 8.50% -1.8% contraction recession_ended+C64_introduced
1983 3.80% 9.25% 4.6% expansion military_spending+video_game_crash+NES_released
1984 3.90% 8.25% 7.2% expansion Mac_introduced
1985 3.80% 7.75% 4.2% expansion Amiga_introduced+Atari_ST_introduced
1986 1.10% 6.00% 3.5% expansion Tax_cut
1987 4.40% 6.75% 3.5% expansion Black_Monday_crash
1988 4.40% 9.75% 4.2% expansion Fed_raised_rates+Sega_Genesis_introduced
1989 4.60% 8.25% 3.7% expansion S&L_crisis

https://www.investopedia.com/inflation-rate-by-year-7253832

Now I will consider the economy and finances in relation to the Amiga. The economy had come out of a bad recession coming into the 1980s and inflation remained high. Investors were likely still wary and the high US Fed fund rate meant high borrowing costs, probably almost twice what they are today with higher than normal inflation. The 1983 video game crash was bad for the computer market in general and worse for anything related to gaming. The economy had strong growth from 1983 through the rest of the 1980s despite the high inflation and borrowing costs. Amiga Corporation failed to raise enough money on their own which likely was challenging and what they did borrow likely had burdensome interest. They found some angel investors/high net worth individuals and had bank loans but they needed venture capital/private equity funds/firms like there are today. I don't know if they were wary of the business environment and economy, whether there just wasn't as much of it back then or whether Amiga Corporation didn't have the right connections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

You may know more than me in this area. Didn't you do some exploratory market research including looking into financing?

agami Quote:

I sometimes wonder if I had a time machine and could go back to 1983, what would my advice be to Jay Miner et al? I admire the mid '80s vision of "A gaming console that can be expanded into a home computer", but maybe that's why no one other than C= and Atari were interested. Would I tell them that in order to get there they would first have to compromise on that vision to get serious players interested, and then leverage that success to realise that vision many years later. Maybe focus on digital video and audio production pipelines from the outset.

Going back in time to 1983, you could tell him to use RGB and chunky. There are technical things he could be told but they would be unlikely to save the Amiga. You could probably give him some financing and marketing advice but it likely wouldn't allow Amiga Corporation to stay independent. VLSI Technologies could be suggested as a business partner and the 68k Amiga design is very good for embedded use which Amiga Corporation may have overlooked as did CBM (could have resulted in an ARM Acorn Amiga but I still think the 68k was a better choice). You could tell them to not let CBM buy them but CBM wasn't all bad and likely would have been better than the Atari deal, which aligns with bhabbott's post. Better may be going back to 1985 and telling CBM what to do and what not to do but there in lies the problem, Irving wouldn't have listened. They were given very good marketing advice early on and failed to follow it which you never commented on.

https://ia903100.us.archive.org/10/items/commodorestrategicplan19851987/Commodore_Strategic_Plan_1985-1987.pdf

Some arrogant management/leaders believe they have vision to see when they don't. Others saw what CBM was doing wrong and couldn't stop the Titanic aimed right at the iceberg. Trevor is just as arrogant and blind with zero chance of the Amiga avoiding another iceberg and it may already be too late to turn the ship. What can you tell him to stop him from sinking the Amiga ship again?

Last edited by matthey on 03-Nov-2024 at 11:22 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 03-Nov-2024 at 03:02 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 02-Nov-2024 at 11:30 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

A console was a bad idea after the video game crash

That's American video games crash. The Japanese have beaten the West in this area.

Producing poor-quality games led to American video games crash.

There's a question of craftmanship for many Western games.

Ubisoft's financial struggle wouldn't be the last.

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@matthey

Quote:

Japan had large conglomerate businesses and many became vertically integrated to produce both the chips and devices. This advantage won Sony the console market with the low cost PS1 despite being initially reluctant to enter the console market and having minimal experience with computers. High volume and production cost advantages (a wide moat) are required to compete in a commoditized market and even then cyclical markets may result in no margin or even negative margins at times. Dave Haynie joked about a negative profit margin for CBM PCs in the early 1990s which is entirely possible as this would not be the only time for the saturated PC market.

The majority PS1's engineering effort was done by LSI (via CoreWare CW33300-based MIPS R3000 core) and Toshiba (for PS1's GPU).

PS1 hardware is nothing without a good SDK and exclusive texture-mapped 3D games.

Namco 22 (1992) arcade machine's Ridge Racer (1993) helped guide PS1's performance target. Evans & Sutherland (from workstation graphics) has assisted Namco 22's development.

Sony's Ken Kutaragi provided good focused leadership for the PS1 and PS2 platform.

For PS3, Ken Kutaragi was distracted by IBM's CELL workstation plans. PC gaming GpGPUs racing ahead in absolute performance for game graphics.

For PS4 and PS5 generations, LSI's and Toshiba's contract engineering roles were replaced by AMD. AMD won the PS6 contract ahead of Intel.

---------------------

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/96214/dude-microsoft-just-ed-us-over-the-next-gen-xbox-contract-says-intel-source-in-new-leak/index.html
'Dude, Microsoft just f***ed us' over the next-gen Xbox contract, says Intel source in new leak

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@bhabbott

Quote:

Remember that this was happening before Commodore entered the scene. But Commodore resisted the temptation to make the A1000 PC compatible, relying instead on software emulation. They also gave it a 3.5" disk drive rather than the 5.25" drive Amiga corp were planning on. Why would they do that? One reason is that they already had a PC clone, the Commodore PC-10. So it was better to make the Amiga a unique product that didn't compete against it. Later, in 1986, they developed the Sidecar, which was a complete PC in a box that plugged into the A1000. It was effectively a PC-10 motherboard with a daughterboard giving the Amiga shared access to video and I/O space, allowing it to use the Amiga's video display and I/O devices. Keeping it uncoupled like this meant the Amiga could maintain its uniqueness.

For the Macintosh platform's business markets, Steve Job's approach wasn't about the #metoo status quo i.e. Steve Job made sure the Mac platform had the next-generation GUI business applications, not just straight MS-DOS text UI ports.

For GUI Excel and WinWord, Microsoft attached its future with Mac's GUI ideology and displaced PC text UI Lotus 123, Word Star, and Word Perfect establishment.

MS Excel's GUI requirement kept Windows 2.x development alive.

The argument for making the Amiga to be MS-DOS compatible is the PC establishment trap and Apple largely ignored them.

Apple's success in not listening to the PC establishment.

The strong 1st party exclusive games on Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's platforms are effectively telling the PC establishment to go jump the lake.

Google's Android (influenced by Apple's iOS GUI) didn't follow the PC establishment and has defeated Microsoft's early OEM lead with Windows Mobile/Pocket PC.

Commodore didn't focus on its strengths.

Quote:

Doom needed a minimum of a 25MHz 486 to get a reasonable frame rate. Commodore would have to put an 040 into the A1200 to compete, and then they would lose the all-important price advantage.

Minus MMU feature, 68EC040-25 has the price vs performance advantage against 486SX-20 and 486SX-25.

68EC040-25 has a wholesale price similar to AMD's 386DX-40.

The Amiga would need two new interface chips for 68EC040.

Doom doesn't need MMU and FPU.

CD32's use case targeted Wing Commander, not Namco System 22's Ridge Racer use case (for PS1).

1990's Wing Commander made a lasting impression on Commodore's engineers and CD32 was geared for it. It was a few years late and Commodore didn't add extra compute performance on top of the 1990's Wing Commander use case.

Commodore has played with a custom MIPS-X @ 40 Mhz CPU and Commodore's internal use case argument for it was VCDs.

The company's internal use case targets matter for the product's final design.


From https://medium.com/discourse/tsmc-the-taiwanese-titan-be0774531bb
"In the 1970s and 1980s, the Taiwanese government gave the semiconductor industry strategic priority for development."

STMicro was state-owned via Thomson Semiconductors of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy. Companies like ATI have used STMicro's formally state-owned fabs. STMicro was founded in 1987 from the merger of two state-owned semiconductor corporations: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands and headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland.

It's difficult to compete against state-supported industries and in the 1980s-1990s US tolerated this inconsistency. There are reasons for recent US politics's reciprocal trade condition arguments.


PS; I do support the Australian government's recent intervention in the semiconductor industry i.e. Taiwan did it and the PRC followed. My libertarian position was nuked due to other countries' supported industries.

Last edited by Hammer on 04-Nov-2024 at 01:53 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 04-Nov-2024 at 01:43 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 04-Nov-2024 at 01:39 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 04-Nov-2024 at 01:32 AM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: The argument for making the Amiga to be MS-DOS compatible is the PC establishment trap and Apple largely ignored them.

Not a 'trap', just reality. Apple was lucky that Microsoft ported Word from Xenix to the Mac in 1985, and also created Xcel for it in the same year. This gave the Mac a bit of affinity with the PC despite its physical incompatibility.

But of course it was only a matter of time before Microsoft developed an equivalent PC-based GUI OS to run these programs, and then it would be over for the Mac. By 1995 Mac sales were declining and Apple was in trouble, exacerbated by their failure to produce an answer to Windows 95 despite spending over a billion dollars on development (anyone who complains about Commodore not spending enough on R&D only has to look at Apple to see that throwing money at the problem wasn't enough).

Quote:

Apple's success in not listening to the PC establishment.

Apple wasn't successful with the Mac at first, and after Windows 3 came out they started to struggle. In truth Apple was only doing well in the niche markets it had carved out earlier with the Apple II. When they tried to compete in the consumer market it didn't go well.

Quote:

The strong 1st party exclusive games on Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's platforms are effectively telling the PC establishment to go jump the lake.

A totally different market that the PC industry wasn't interested in. In effect it was telling console makers to 'go jump in the lake'.

Quote:

Google's Android (influenced by Apple's iOS GUI) didn't follow the PC establishment and has defeated Microsoft's early OEM lead with Windows Mobile/Pocket PC.

Again, a totally different market. How is Google's computer OS doing these days? Windows has 74% of the desktop market, Chrome has 2.1% - less than Linux at 4.2%.

Quote:

Commodore didn't focus on its strengths.

Only partly true. Commodore's mistake was in not appreciating how precarious their situation was. They couldn't afford to diversify, but the market they thrived in was dying out. And it wasn't just them. Atari did no better. None of the other 'household name' home computer companies made it through the 90's either.

Quote:

Minus MMU feature, 68EC040-25 has the price vs performance advantage against 486SX-20 and 486SX-25.

But the 486SX was only relevant for a few years. By the mid 90's faster 486DX's were taking over, and Pentium was getting ready to pounce. By this time the trend was obvious - more and more powerful CPUs would continue to up the game faster than computer manufacturers could keep up. In-house design was becoming a losing battle when Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers were pumping out several new variants each year.

Quote:

Doom doesn't need MMU and FPU.

But Amiga fans willing to pay the extra for an 040 system did want that stuff. FPUs were desired on the Amiga ever since Eric Graham produced the Juggler demo in January 1986. Developers liked having an MMU to aid in debugging, and it was useful for emulation (another popular activity on the Amiga), applying system patches etc. On the 040 it also helped to speed up c2p.

Even if an LC040 was a little cheaper, so what? The CPU was just one component. The entire system had to be a lot cheaper to make up for its lack of IBM compatibility. A few hundred dollars less wouldn't be enough. The A1200 sold because it was much cheaper than any PC, so cheap that you could afford to have both!

Part of the reason the A1200 could be made cheaper was that the Amiga could do more with less - smaller or no hard drive, less RAM, slower CPU etc. The OS was lightweight and efficient, and because it was ROM-based it used up very little RAM. The custom chips took load off the CPU and permitted more efficient memory use. 2D action games that PCs struggled to run smoothly were a piece of cake on the Amiga.

But PCs were getting more powerful all the time and users were expecting to upgrade regularly. Games were taking advantage of that. Doom needed a fast 486 to do it justice, and at least 4MB of RAM. Doom II was even more demanding, and then Quake upped the game again. There was no way Amiga models could keep up with that pace, and most fans couldn't either. If Doom and the games that followed it were what you wanted an Amiga for, why not just hop on the PC bandwagon like everyone else?

Quote:

1990's Wing Commander made a lasting impression on Commodore's engineers and CD32 was geared for it. It was a few years late and Commodore didn't add extra compute performance on top of the 1990's Wing Commander use case.

Wing Commander should be much faster on the CD32 than on the A500. The fact that it isn't suggests a poorly optimized port. But that's all we could expect. Developers were putting themselves out porting games to the Amiga at all, considering the smaller realizable market.


Quote:

Commodore has played with a custom MIPS-X @ 40 Mhz CPU

Commodore played with a lot of stuff. But little of it got to production status, and that's a good thing. One of Commodore's problems was engineers working on stuff without considering the market for it. If they had a few billion to spare that would have been fine, but they didn't. Projects that weren't likely to be profitable had to be axed.

Quote:

The company's internal use case targets matter for the product's final design.

But too often the internal use case targets didn't align with final design requirements. Things like DSP on the A3000+, or the C65 having 256 colors with 8 bitplanes instead of tiles.

Quote:

It's difficult to compete against state-supported industries and in the 1980s-1990s US tolerated this inconsistency. There are reasons for recent US politics's reciprocal trade condition arguments.

Industries everywhere benefit from government support. US chip manufacturers benefited from the government backing up friendly regimes in places like El Salvador. US military involvement in the Middle East kept cheap oil flowing. Entire states in the US are largely funded from military hardware manufacture and logistics. The US Interstate Highway System provides faster transport to aid 'just in time' production etc. The US government also funds research into new technologies of strategic interest (space fans are always going on about the 'spinoffs' from NASA and related industries). Finally, the US has a welfare system that allows businesses to pay low wages that otherwise wouldn't be enough to live on. And of course businesses in most countries can write off stuff consumed in R&D.

Quote:

PS; I do support the Australian government's recent intervention in the semiconductor industry i.e. Taiwan did it and the PRC followed. My libertarian position was nuked due to other countries' supported industries.

Libertarians never own up to the fact that a truly libertarian state would be a nightmare. They just want the freedom to be selfish and not do anything for the common good, while not acknowledging what it's giving them. There's nothing wrong with governments supporting industries that are doing good stuff.

OTOH, slapping on tariffs just because goods from another country are cheaper may be counterproductive. If they can do it cheaper, why not take advantage of it? And why should we care if their people don't mind paying more taxes so their government can support certain industries? The answer is for your own government to help local industries make better quality products more efficiently. Not necessarily the same products, but things you can export to other countries that aren't so good at making them.

Last edited by bhabbott on 04-Nov-2024 at 11:30 PM.
Last edited by bhabbott on 04-Nov-2024 at 11:22 PM.

@bhabbott

Quote:

@bhabbott, Not a 'trap', just reality. Apple was lucky that Microsoft ported Word from Xenix to the Mac in 1985, and also created Xcel for it in the same year. This gave the Mac a bit of affinity with the PC despite its physical incompatibility.

Mac's MS Word version's 1985 release acquired a friendlier graphical user interface (GUI).

The very first version of Word was actually called “Multi-Tool Word� and was released in 1983 for the Microsoft Xenix operating system.

1983's Multi-Tool Word has text-based UI.https://lunduke.substack.com/p/microsoft-word-for-unix-yes-its-real

Mac's MS Word in 1985 is the superior version over text-based UI MS-DOS and Unix versions.

NO “graphical� version of Word for UNIX was ever released.

The Mac version of Microsoft Word was different from the DOS and UNIX versions because it was WYSIWYG and had a graphical user interface (GUI).

Lessons from the Mac GUI MS Word version influenced Windows's WinWord.

Besides early Word Perfect for Windows being a buggy mess and late, WinWord is strong in document automation markets which defeated Word Perfect for Windows.

PS; My day job's legal software with MS Word document automation has 25% of the Australian legal profession market.

Quote:

@bhabbott, But of course it was only a matter of time before Microsoft developed an equivalent PC-based GUI OS to run these programs, and then it would be over for the Mac. By 1995 Mac sales were declining and Apple was in trouble, exacerbated by their failure to produce an answer to Windows 95 despite spending over a billion dollars on development (anyone who complains about Commodore not spending enough on R&D only has to look at Apple to see that throwing money at the problem wasn't enough).

FALSE narrative.

https://lowendmac.com/2006/beleaguered-apple-bottoms-out-1996-to-1998/

By 1995, Apple was an incredibly healthy business with impress figures to boast. They shipped 1.3 million Macintoshes and generated $3.1 billion revenue from the quarter ended in December 1995. Unit sales of Macintosh software increased by 26.9% for the first ten months of 1995. Apple had impressive market share figures amongst US K-12 institutions and the creative professionals market, including graphic and Web designers.

---
In 1995, Apple began the Macintosh clones program where, in an attempt to gain market share, Apple licensed the Mac OS to third party hardware vendors such as Radius, Power Computing, Motorola, DayStar, and Umax.

Sluggo fighting back for MacThe Power Computing clones were the fastest personal computers in 1996, and that affected Apple’s Power Macintosh sales due to their aggressive pricing.

In a December 1995 issue of TheMac in the UK, a Power Computing 120 MHz Mac OS-compatible tower cost £1,899 ($3,344). At the same time, the 120 MHz Power Macintosh 9500 cost £3,725 ($6,560). Although Power Computing claimed to be “fighting back for the Mac�, they were in fact killing Apple. Apple’s Mac sales started to drop.

The clone programme ultimately lost money for Apple and the participating third party vendors. Michael Spindler was ousted as CEO and replaced by Gil Amelio in 1996 to give Apple the guidance it desperately needed.


The 1996 year wasn't good for Apple.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Nov-2024 at 05:13 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Nov-2024 at 03:05 AM.

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@bhabbott

Quote:

@bhabbott, A totally different market that the PC industry wasn't interested in. In effect it was telling console makers to 'go jump in the lake'.

Wrong. From 1993 to Q4 1995, the gaming PC market delivered competitive texture-mapped 3D gaming experience over cheaper mainstream strong 2D game consoles like SNES.

Gaming PC's competitive texture-mapped 3D gaming experience wasn't frozen like Amiga's gaming scene.

Gaming PC's competitive texture-mapped 3D gaming experience dented 3DO's weak game exclusives.

3DO's less optimal Doom performance results didn't help 3DO's case in the hardware power PR.

The gaming PC market was building the Pentium class gaming PC install base before PS1's western release in Q4 1995.


Quote:

@bhabbott, Again, a totally different market. How is Google's computer OS doing these days? Windows has 74% of the desktop market, Chrome has 2.1% - less than Linux at 4.2%.

Fact: Microsoft's early OEM led with Windows Mobile directly competed against Google's Android.

My point, Google's Android didn't pretend to be yet another PC. The same lessons for Raspberry Pi SBC (single board computer) when didn't bother aiming for PC's ATX/mini-ITX standards.

For desktop use cases, current Android phones can support a keyboard, mouse, and external monitor.

The main reason for gaming PCs is the superior graphics power delivered when compared to Qualcomm-powered Android phones.

There's a direct crossover competition between Android handheld gaming against gaming PC's handheld form factors.

Intel LunaLake and AMD Strix Point iGPU have no problems beating Qualcomm Elite X's "recycled phone" iGPU.

Both Google and Microsoft have their respective revenue "safe space" with crossover competition overlaps.

With rising handheld gaming PCs, Microsoft was given another attempt at the handheld market.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/13/23681492/microsoft-windows-handheld-mode-gaming-xbox-steam-deck
Microsoft's Windows 11 handheld mode is in development.



Quote:

@bhabbott, But the 486SX was only relevant for a few years. By the mid 90's faster 486DX's were taking over, and Pentium was getting ready to pounce. By this time the trend was obvious - more and more powerful CPUs would continue to up the game faster than computer manufacturers could keep up.

Doom and its clones didn't use FPU.

1996-era games like Tomb Raider for MS-DOS have used FPU, but this game needs to be Pentium or very clocked 486DX4/Am5x86 clock speed class CPUs. X86 FPUs have support for integer processing.

PS1's Tomb Raider has fixed point (integer) 3D. PS1 is a fixed point 3D processing device.

PS1's MIPS R3000A @ 33 Mhz and MIPS-based GTE @ 58 Mhz would need superscalar scalar pipelined class Pentium or high-clocked Am5x86 (PR75, evolved 486DX4 class).

Against PS1, a single 68EC040-25 powered CD32/A1200 wouldn't cut it since MIPS R3000A is a poor man's 68LC040.

Quote:

@bhabbott, In-house design was becoming a losing battle when Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers were pumping out several new variants each year.

FYI, mass-produced Amigas are made in South-East (SE) Asia.

Commodore did NOT apply SE-Asian mass-produced Amiga methods for its desktop box Amigas until late Commodore Canada/Amitecha's A2200-1.

Commodore Canada/Amitecha's A2200-1 has SE-Asian mass-produced CD32 with an extra board to restore A1200/A4000's expansion functionality. https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=19
Commodore Canada/Amitecha's A2200-1 direction is too late for Commodore.

Commodore Canada/Amitecha's A2200-2 offered a superior 68030 @ 40Mhz for similar money as Commodore Germany's A4000 with 68030 @ 25 Mhz.

68030 @ 40Mhz would be similar to PCs powered by AMD's 386DX-40 or Intel's 486SX-20 powered PCs.

Quote:

@bhabbott, Wing Commander should be much faster on the CD32 than on the A500. The fact that it isn't suggests a poorly optimized port. But that's all we could expect. Developers were putting themselves out porting games to the Amiga at all, considering the smaller realizable market.

Reminders,
1. Jeff Porter's CD32 specs had 8 MB RAM specs. That would be 2MB Chip RAM and 6 MB Fast RAM. The cost difference is minor. Maximum profits are needed due to debts incurred by 1992's 1 million A600 debacle.

2. CD32's Wing Commander (8 bitplanes) version matches the PC VGA 256 color version. A500's Wing Commander is the 16 color (4 bitplanes) version.

I played A500's Wing Commander version on my A3000/030 @ 25 Mhz and PC VGA version.

Dread's renders at C2P 4 bitplanes which is lighter weight than C2P 8 bitplanes.

I recently played WHDLoad patched CD32's Wing Commander (8 bitplanes) version on A1200 with 8 MB Fast RAM.

Quote:

@bhabbott, But Amiga fans willing to pay the extra for an 040 system did want that stuff. FPUs were desired on the Amiga ever since Eric Graham produced the Juggler demo in January 1986. Developers liked having an MMU to aid in debugging, and it was useful for emulation (another popular activity on the Amiga), applying system patches etc. On the 040 it also helped to speed up c2p. Even if an LC040 was a little cheaper, so what? The CPU was just one component. The entire system had to be a lot cheaper to make up for its lack of IBM compatibility. A few hundred dollars less wouldn't be enough. The A1200 sold because it was much cheaper than any PC, so cheap that you could afford to have both!

Commodore's Amiga lineup wasn't price vs value competitive against PC clone's 386DX-40 or 486SX-25/486SX-33.

Mass production of Amigas with 68EC040 would allow for 68040 CPU socket infrastructure mass production which can led to easier 68060 switch. The economies of scale matter.

Between the A1200 and A4000/030 price range, buy a Commodore PC with a 386DX40 or 486DX25 CPU instead!

Commodore had "Doom gaming machine" in 1993 and it's a Commodore PC, it's not the Amiga.

3DO has 2 million units sold which is more Amiga AGA's install base.

The focus should be on what gaming experience is being delivered and the hardware supporting the gaming experience delivery.


Quote:

@bhabbott, Part of the reason the A1200 could be made cheaper was that the Amiga could do more with less - smaller or no hard drive, less RAM, slower CPU etc. The OS was lightweight and efficient, and because it was ROM-based it used up very little RAM. The custom chips took load off the CPU and permitted more efficient memory use. 2D action games that PCs struggled to run smoothly were a piece of cake on the Amiga.

Jeff Porter's CD32 specs had 8 MB RAM specs. The cost difference between 2 MB vs 8 MB RAM is minor. Maximum profits are needed due to debts incurred by 1992's 1 million A600 debacle.

With stronger currencies, $1000 USD-priced PCs were popular in the US, CAN, and AUS markets. 1993 PC magazines made a big noise with 486SX with about $1000 USD price tag.

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@bhabbott, But PCs were getting more powerful all the time and users were expecting to upgrade regularly. Games were taking advantage of that. Doom needed a fast 486 to do it justice, and at least 4MB of RAM. Doom II was even more demanding, and then Quake upped the game again. There was no way Amiga models could keep up with that pace, and most fans couldn't either. If Doom and the games that followed it were what you wanted an Amiga for, why not just hop on the PC bandwagon like everyone else?

Low detail setting near full-screen Doom is playable with AM386DX-40 with ET4000AX (or similar fast VGA clones).

The Amiga's stock 2MB RAM A1200 and CD32 missed the common 3MB RAM target group i.e. 3DO, Saturn, and PS1.

PCs with 4MB RAM cover the common 3MB RAM target group.

Jeff Porter's CD32 specs had 8 MB RAM specs. The cost difference between 2 MB vs 8 MB RAM is minor. Commodore management selected the barebone CD32 configuration.

For PS1 approximation with Ridge Racer performance target, Namco System 22 has 68020 @ 24.57 Mhz, two Texas Instruments TMS32025 DSP @ 49.152 MHz, and Evans & Sutherland 'TR3' chip (texture mapper).

PS1's MIPS R3000A @ 33 Mhz and GTE @ 58 Mhz cover Namco System 22's CPU and two DSPs workloads.

My argument with cheap DSPs for the Amiga is for getting close to Namco System 22 at a poor man's price.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Nov-2024 at 05:11 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Nov-2024 at 05:01 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Nov-2024 at 04:50 AM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@agami

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matthey wrote: It's similar to captain Irving Gould who ignored good advise and charted his own course through icebergs. He was warned early too. Did you read the Commodore Strategic Plan 1985-1987 marketing advise I posted in another thread? https://archive.org/download/commodorestrategicplan19851987/Commodore_Strategic_Plan_1985-1987.pdf There were visionaries who saw the icebergs and tried to plot a course around them but then there are perpetually oblivious leaders who ignore them.

This is actually quite a good plan.

The thing I found interesting is the positioning of Ranger as not necessarily a replacement for OCS [Amiga], but to help competitively serve two different markets.
Following this plan we may have instead had a Ranger-based A2000, and a cost-reduced OCS-based A500. And then perhaps a cadence where new chipsets are first available in high-end Amiga's, which are subsequently cost reduced and released in consumer-level Amigas.

I particularly like how it calls out the value of a peripherals strategy, and the Vertical Markets strategy. Though I do think the listed VMs was biting off more than CIL could chew, and while I was in high-school in 1985, my freshly graduated view of this plan in 1991 would've been to narrow it down to areas where there were no major competitors:
- Video special effects including animation
- Music and creative arts
- CAD at all levels including commercial design
- Telecommunications

Leaving out Education and DTP as Apple was big in these markets.

I liked the analysis of the other industry players, and I found it a little funny that out of the 5 Apple software category strengths, education is listed twice. Which I'm sure was an error as the plan is otherwise devoid of levity, but it does now leave me wondering which was the actual 5th category.

Also the analysis of the T-chip was quite poignant, because it strengthens the proposition that with Ranger CIL could have a solution for the "good enough" segment of the T-chip market, at a fraction of the cost. And I wish the author of this plan drove that point home more strongly.

The focus on developing Ranger, a 1st party software library, and peripherals is otherwise justified and should've been aggressively pursued.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

agami Quote:

This is actually quite a good plan.

Yes. Surprising coming from inside a business that lacked vision, understanding and marketing of the Amiga.

agami Quote:

The thing I found interesting is the positioning of Ranger as not necessarily a replacement for OCS Amiga, but to help competitively serve two different markets. Following this plan we may have instead had a Ranger-based A2000, and a cost-reduced OCS-based A500. And then perhaps a cadence where new chipsets are first available in high-end Amiga's, which are subsequently cost reduced and released in consumer-level Amigas.

I was considering and writing about a low end and high end Amiga chipset before I read this marketing document which strengthened my belief. It is a natural idea where VRAM split the market between the affordable low end and an expensive high end. CIL execs had tunnel vision of the 68k Amiga becoming the low end C64 replacement which they did a good job of cost reducing into the Amiga 500 except for chipset improvements. The marketing document unfortunately leaves open the idea that high resolution monochrome would be minimally adequate for the high end leading to the monochrome Denise waste of resources that was outdated by the time it arrived to compete with VGA, color Macs and chunky graphics, a weakness of the Amiga chipset strongly warned about in the document. CIL execs may have liked the modularity of the 3 Amiga custom chips which led to them later improving the minimum number of chips instead of the chipset as a whole which could improve performance, features, power and cost and maintain a survivable margin during tough times in the early to mid 1990s.

agami Quote:

I particularly like how it calls out the value of a peripherals strategy, and the Vertical Markets strategy. Though I do think the listed VMs was biting off more than CIL could chew, and while I was in high-school in 1985, my freshly graduated view of this plan in 1991 would've been to narrow it down to areas where there were no major competitors: - Video special effects including animation - Music and creative arts - CAD at all levels including commercial design - Telecommunications Leaving out Education and DTP as Apple was big in these markets.

The Amiga could have competed in the DTP market if they had received non-interlaced and chunky chipset enhancements. They had an advantage over the Mac at first with higher resolution color for WYSIWYG and blitter acceleration which along with the Amiga lower price gave the Amiga better value. PageStream and ProPage were good enough products to compete early but Mac high resolution, chunky and VRAM upgrades came out to compete with the CIL monochrome Denise upgrade. The Amiga missed the opportunity to maintain its position as the high end graphics leader despite Jay Miner and the author of this document trying to guide them past the iceberg that sunk the Amiga.

agami Quote:

I liked the analysis of the other industry players, and I found it a little funny that out of the 5 Apple software category strengths, education is listed twice. Which I'm sure was an error as the plan is otherwise devoid of levity, but it does now leave me wondering which was the actual 5th category.

It is hard to say but listing education twice for Apple seems appropriate, at least for the US. The Amiga was at a disadvantage in the education market without better marketing and affordable networking. CIL was slow to improve the networking situation in the late 1980s which was needed for business and Unix/workstation markets as well.

agami Quote:

Also the analysis of the T-chip was quite poignant, because it strengthens the proposition that with Ranger CIL could have a solution for the "good enough" segment of the T-chip market, at a fraction of the cost. And I wish the author of this plan drove that point home more strongly. The focus on developing Ranger, a 1st party software library, and peripherals is otherwise justified and should've been aggressively pursued.

I thought the talented author of the document was strong enough in his message of Amiga concerns. The problem was lack of vision on the receiving end. Closing Los Gatos development, axing and burying the Ranger chipset so deep that Dave Haynie wasn't sure it existed and chasing the aging high resolution monochrome graphics standard with the monochrome Denise was already writing on the wall.

Last edited by matthey on 10-Nov-2024 at 03:46 PM.