@bhabbott

Quote:

For business computing perhaps, but that market was already sewn up in 1981.

Microsoft has to beat DOS text GUI establishment's Lotus 123, Word Perfect, and Word Star.

For DOS text GUI word processing, Word Perfect has beaten IBM Display Write.

IBM PC provided a stable high-resolution text UI MDA platform with a 16-bit ALU-equipped CPU and optional 8087 FPU socket. 8087 FPU can native process INT32, INT64, FP32, FP64 and FP80 datatypes. Lotus 123 and Word Perfect established themselves as the DOS killer apps.

Not including IBM PC BIOS, IBM PC's off-the-self parts allowed for PC clones to run DOS killer apps.

For the Mac, Steve Jobs's approach is stable high-resolution GUI with "next-gen" GUI killer apps. Microsoft learned from Mac GUI and 68000 experience and delivered a similar solution to beat IBM and DOS killer apps.

Unlike IBM's 16bit OS/2 1.x direction, Microsoft's 32bit 386 direction is the lesson from Mac's 68000 experience.

Windows 3.0 1990 release was Microsoft's independence day from IBM.

IBM, Motorola, and Apple formed the AIM alliance in 1991 for PowerPC. The PC in RISC-based PowerPC is IBM's last attempt to redefine the PC by directly competing against Intel's x86.

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

1. Jack Tramiel's C= 8bit MOS 65xx platforms died along with Visicalc's fortunes. Marketing Jack Tramiel treated 65xx CPU like a soda drink product.

2. Jack Tramiel's C= executed a hard product segmentation between Super PET and C64 that mirrored the later volume production Atari ST vs limited production run Mega ST (with blitter).

C64 doesn't have the PC's MDA high-resolution text mode. C128 attempted to fix Jack Tramiel's hard product segmentation mistake.

C128's high-resolution modes weren't cost-reduced via integration in the following C64C.

C= failed to leverage C64's volume production for the business market. In 1985, C64's volume production rivaled the IBM PC.

C128's Z80 and CP/M were a dying platform when DRi focused on GEM desktop GUI and GEMDOS e.g. Atari ST's TOS.

16bit Z8000 wasn't backward compatible with 8bit Z80.


3. Intel's 8086/8088 product range also offered 8087 FPU which MOS/CSG didn't offer FPU for the 65xx CPU family.

IBM PC 5150 has an FPU socket and Lotus 123 2.0 supported X87 FPU.
For 68K, Motorola didn't offer FPU until 1984's 68881 release.

Intel's 8086/8088 offered 16bit ALU which MOS/CSG didn't offer 16bit ALU for the 65xx CPU family.

Super Pet offered a token 16bit 6809 CPU with 16bit ALU with very little software. Jack Tramiel's C= designed 16bit machines with token 16bit 6809 CPU and 16bit Z8000.

Jack Tramiel's C= 65xx didn't evolve with 16bit ALU until 1985 era 3rd party Western Design Center's 65816. The major bottleneck for 65816 is production volume with the promised clock speed ramp.

65816's 16-bit ALU design was too late in 1985 when Apple's Mac, Commodore's Amiga, Atari Intel/Compaq and Acorn's ARM focused on 32-bit road maps.

After 8bit ALU MOS 65xx CPUs, Acorn skips the #metoo 16bit CPU design with a 32bit ARM CPU design while Western Design Center's 65816 aimed at 16bit ALU CPU design.

An Apple executive for the Apple IIGS project and Bill Mensch ended up in a screaming match on production volume with the promised clock speed ramp issue.

Apple supported 68020/68881 with Mac II's 1987 release along with a 16-color minimum color productivity mode display.

C= attached A2620 release with late 68551 MMU's release. Many 68K Unix system integrators have vendor lock-in custom MMUs. C= wasted two custom MMU R&Ds.

C= attached ECS Denise release with a timed exclusive A3000's 1990 release despite it being demo'ed in A2000's Q4 1988. The same C64 vs Super Pet product segmentation mentality from Commodore management. ECS Ready A500 Rev 6A was released in 1989.
A500 Rev 6A was the majority Amiga standard during Amiga's golden years of 1990 and 1991.

I upgraded my 2nd A500 Rev 6A with ECS Denise and it works fine with a DELL LCD with dual 15 kHz and 31 kHz VGA support. I wouldn't go back to OCS Denise.

Unlike C=, NVIDIA exploited gaming PC volume production with large economies of scale to attack SGI.


4. Steve Jobs' courting 3rd business software vendors for Mac 68K didn't benefit other 68K platforms. It was good "next-gen" GUI business software with GUI high resolution that drove the Mac platform's sales which influenced Microsoft's GUI efforts for the PC.


5. 386AT (Compaq Desktop 386 and clones) with Xenix 386 fulfills the US government's POSIX standards. Most 386AT clones can run Xenix 386.


Quote:

The Amiga had word processors and spreadsheet programs that did the job fine - if that's what you wanted to do. So why pay more to do what an Amiga could do for less? Because you were running a business. So of course you used a PC because everybody else did, and because cost didn't matter, and you wouldn't be playing games etc.

Do you want to engage in Mac 1987's MS Word GUI + Aldus PageMaker 1.2 + Adobe Postscript + MS Excel GUI vs Amiga 1987's ProWrite + MaxiPlan Plus in the debate?

You're not going to win on GUI craftsmanship and mass-produced stable high-resolution GUI hardware for business debate.

Did you assume I didn't have access to Amiga's back-office applications?

Microsoft's 1987 Windows 2.x GUI plans followed the Mac 1987 pattern.

Amiga ECS should have been released in 1988 and exploited by millions of A500 Rev 6A production runs.

Commodore started the GUI style guide initiative around the Workbench 2.0 era.


Quote:

Wing Commander was a big hit on the PC because PC gamers were shallow and had low expectations.

That's hypocritical bullshit with your "PC gamers were shallow and had low expectations".

Gaming PC moved to Wing Commander II's 1991 release.

Quote:

I tried playing it again a few days ago and was not impressed.

You're just an individual in some tiny renegade Australian state called New Zealand.

New Zealand is Australia's Taiwan renegade province.

Quote:

BTW guess which platforms didn't get it until 1992 or later? The SNES, Amiga, FM Towns and SEGA CD (in 1994).

Nintendo started to build its fast VGA class SNES install base in 1990 and it was released in the European market in 1992 year.

SNES didn't have A1200's 44,000 production limitation for Xmas Q4 1992.


Quote:

Such an amazing game it was that nobody could be bothered porting it to these popular platforms until years later. Here's what one magazine said about the SNES version (giving it a score of 60%):-

Wing Commander 1 aged after 1990's release when gaming PC had Wing Commander 2 1991 release, then followed by Wing Commander Academy's 1993 release.

SNES's SuperFX1-powered Star Fox was released in 1993.

Wing Commander was ported to the Super NES and Amiga (OCS/ECS limitation) in 1992, to the Amiga CD32 in 1993, and to the Sega CD system (64 color limitation) in 1994.

In 1994, Gaming PC and Mac PowerPC had Wing Commander 3 released followed by the 3DO version in 1995 and the PlayStation version in 1996.

For Wing Commander 1, CD32's specifications were frozen at the 1991 MPC Level 1 minimum.

Like C128, Henri Rubin's #metoo R&D = behind the competition.

Jeff Porter's CD32 hardware C2P targeted Wing Commander. "Wing Commander" impression is a Jeff Porter's thing.

FM Towns Marty (1993)'s custom graphics hardware is geared for a 2D gaming experience and it was obsolete by gaming PC's texture-mapped 3D focus.

Am386SX-16 based FM Towns Marty (1993)'s custom graphics hardware that delivered a strong 2D gaming experience at USD710 was beaten by budget-priced SNES's strong 2D gaming experience. FM Towns Marty's sales were about 45,000 which is better than Atari Falcon's 10,000 to 15,000 unit sales.

For mostly 2D gaming with desktop computer features, the A1200 has a USD499 to USD550 price range.

Quote:

Defender of the Crown was a work of art, Wing Commander was a POS in comparison.

By 1990, Defender of the Crown was a static dated slide show. A1000's production scale is low compared to the "getting on with next-gen GUI business" Mac.

Wing Commander reflected 1991 MPC Level 1 minimum.

Quote:

PC gamers wouldn't know that though, because DotC was ported to the PC in 1987 in puke EGA and disgusting CGA, so they never got to see the gorgeous graphics of the original. Gameplay was stink too - it didn't even use a mouse!

Defender of the Crown's 1986 release was before VGA's 1987 release.

PC had VGA's 256 color adventure games that made Amiga OCS adventure games a cross between EGA and VGA e.g. Secret of Monkey Island 1.

Amiga OCS's Universe has a Copper trick to approximate VGA's 256-color mode but is limited by OCS's 4096 color palette shades. The programming tricks effort is higher on Amiga OCS.

1990 and 1991 were Amiga's golden years when Amiga was in its growth phase against the face of PC's 1990 major releases i.e. Windows 3.0, MS Office, and Wing Commander.

Amiga 1992's sales were stalled by the A600 debacle when somebody at Commodore management forgot to order enough Lisa chips from HP for A1200's Xmas Q4 1992 sales.

Amiga's 1992 should been A1200's 1 million scale volume production scale instead of A300/A600.

The original plan was
1. A300 to replace C64 with 1 million production scale, A600 failed to be cheaper than A500 e.g. count PLL chips in A600 to support PCMCIA (byte swap, bridge chips). A600's case is over-engineered like a laptop! Blame Jeff Frank and Bill Sydnes. Mehdi Ali fired Bill Sydnes in 1992. Lew has taken over Sydnes in Jan 1993.

A600's higher cost ate into A500's profit margins.

2. AA500 to replace A500 with 1 million production scale. A1200 failed to replace A500's production scale. Blame Jeff Frank, Bill Sydnes, and Mehdi Ali (for allowing HK to PH factory move).

With just 44,000 A1200 units, not enough A1200 production led many A500 owners to purchase a gaming PC or SNES for Xmas 1992.

Commodore management blew two high-volume plans out of the window.

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_________________
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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

Just 44,000 A1200s for Christmas 1992 seems like a self inflicted mortal wound!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @Hammer Just 44,000 A1200s for Christmas 1992 seems like a self inflicted mortal wound!

Indeed and one of the major reasons for Bill Sydnes being fired.

Both Bill Sydnes and Jeff Frank resisted AA's progress which led to Mehdi Ali's Feb 1992 direct command for an A500-type computer with AA.

During Feb 1992, AA was in incomplete beta testing due to a "more than 6 months" R&D freeze caused by Bill Sydnes and Jeff Frank. Jeff Frank took over Jeff Porter's position in June 1991. AA-based A3000Plus reached surface mount revision before the freeze.

Bill Sydnes = IBM's failed PCJr (due to compromised IBM PC's killer app support) and illegal Franklin Apple II clone. Bill Sydnes' engineering history is garbage.

Jeff Frank = Commodore PC group who cost reduce Commodore West Germany's PC designs. Jeff Frank's engineering history is inferior to 3DO's original Amiga engineers.
Jeff Frank's cost-reduction efforts for Commodore PCs were inferior to Taiwanese cost-reduction PC designs. In June 1991, Bill Sydnes' Jeff Frank took over Jeff Porter's position.

The main point with Budgie / Bridgette is to reduce A3000's 3rd party four PLL bridge chips and Jeff Frank placed at least four PLL chips for PCMCIA's byte-swapping.

For A300/A600's bridge chip functions between PCMCIA's Fast RAM and Amibus (Chip RAM), another two PLL chips are used. A3000's 32-bit design has four PLL chips for bridging.

ISA-based PCMCIA wasn't useful without Amiga drivers. I prefer the side Zorro II slot for A1200's RTG side card.

A1200 should be able to mount a 3.5-inch HDD instead of an uncompetitive price laptop 2.5-inch HDD. 3rd party retail vendors are mounting 3.5-inch HDD in A1200, LOL.

Unlike Jeff Porter's CD32, Jeff Frank's cost-reduction approach has no care for games being ported to the Amiga.

Jeff Frank argued for low-end ECS Amigas and PC clones for mid-to-high product stack.
I extremely dislike Jeff Frank!

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_________________
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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: With ... not enough A1200 production led many A500 owners to purchase a gaming PC or SNES for Xmas 1992.

Because a gaming PC and a SNES in late 1992 are in the same price bracket.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

For Australia's June 1992 PC 386DX-33 and 386DX-40 price example

https://i.ibb.co/mTtzsP8/386-DX-PC-prices-June-1992.png

Last edited by Hammer on 16-Jan-2025 at 01:20 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Jan-2025 at 05:34 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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

Could you please post it as a smaller image?

_________________
Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

Quote:

Hammer wrote: Super Pet offered a token 16bit 6809 CPU with 16bit ALU ...

This machine got some attention and was unofficially called the "Micro Mainframe"

Apple first planed to use this CPU for the Macintosh, this 8-Bit CPU was a bit like the 6502 but had multiply commands and real 16 registers (maybe with an 8 bit ALU only) a 4MHz 6809 was faster than a 8MHz 68000. Motorola convinced Apple to use the 68000 instead, that was a good decision, the 68k was on the beginning of its life cycle and a good transition to real 32Bit systems, where the 6809 was the end of the 8 Bit development at Motorola (I don't mention the 68HC11 here)

Apple built its Apple IIGS using the 65C816, it was Apple][e compatible really fast and had a GUI, it became the last 8bit Apple together with the Apple IIc Plus that had a 4MHz 6502 and GFX with higher resolution than the Macintosh.

There was even a Apple card for the Macintosh, AFAIK with a fast 6502 for compatibility.

@Hammer

No HDD, No Sound card. 1.5MB RAM (combined). Can this really be considered a Gaming PC?
Also, hyper-local slap-together brand vs. global brand.
Even Digitor from Dick Smith is a bit of an oranges to apples, but at least they had an Australia-wide presence.

And how much was a SNES in late 1992, $299 AUD?

These products are aimed at different demographics.
If a person who had an A500 purchased a SNES for Xmas '92, they likely would not have purchased an A1200(HD) as the price/demographics brackets are quite different.

If the same A500 owner purchased a 386SX gaming PC for Xmas '92, they would also likely not get an A1200HD despite its lower price. Because there is a better than even chance that a the scales were tipped by the contributing factor of PC industry compatibility.

Last edited by agami on 15-Jan-2025 at 03:39 AM.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@OneTimer1

Quote:

This machine got some attention and was unofficially called the "Micro Mainframe"

SuperPET wasn't modular like the IBM PC standard and it was not compatible with the large economic of scale C64.

SuperPET's install base is just 219,000 units.

6809 CPU is a dead-end CPU family since 68000 is not backward compatible with 6809. Any established desktop micro-computer platform with a 6809 type CPU and related software library investment died with the release of 68000. It's back to ground zero for many desktop system integrators after 68000's release.

Intel X86's backward compatibility is a powerful marketing weapon against Motorola, Commodore Semiconductor Group (CSG/MOS), and Zilog.

"Never Interrupt Your Competition When They Are Making a Mistake".

Quote:

Apple first planed to use this CPU for the Macintosh, this 8-Bit CPU was a bit like the 6502 but had multiply commands and real 16 registers (maybe with an 8 bit ALU only) a 4MHz 6809 was faster than a 8MHz 68000. Motorola convinced Apple to use the 68000 instead, that was a good decision, the 68k was on the beginning of its life cycle and a good transition to real 32Bit systems, where the 6809 was the end of the 8 Bit development at Motorola (I don't mention the 68HC11 here)

FYI, 6809 has 16-bit ALU math capability with 8 bit external bus. 6809's load, store, add, and subtract instructions are 16 bits.

Quote:

Apple built its Apple IIGS using the 65C816, it was Apple][e compatible really fast and had a GUI, it became the last 8bit Apple together with the Apple IIc Plus that had a 4MHz 6502 and GFX with higher resolution than the Macintosh.

65C02 @ 4Mhz still has 8-bit ALU with no "business" IEEE-754 FPU option.

Motorola released the full 32bit 68020 and IEEE-754 68881 FPU in 1984 and color Macintosh II's system development started in 1985.

Apple IIGS was released in September 1986. Apple IIGS has 16-color displays with 16 palette swap banks. 640x200 resolution with 4 colors without tricks.

Meanwhile, Amiga OCS has a 32-color and 64-color EHB display mode and Copper can change the 5-bit palette on the fly trick. Without over-scan, Amiga OCS Denise can generate stable 640x256p with 16 colors without tricks. The main limitation is Workbench 1.x software.

If Workbench 2.x with GUI style guide was released in 1987 for Amiga OCS, it would make the Amiga business market competitive. Commodore wasted R&D on somebody else's Unix OS development instead of focusing on AmigaOS.

Workbench 1.x is a software issue that held back Amiga OCS hardware.


Macintosh II was released in 1987 with a stable high-color resolution productivity mode of 16 or 256 colors without Apple IIGS's palette swap tricks.

The color palette tricks wouldn't be useful for desktop GUI and WIMP.

Apple IIc's Double-High-Resolution: 560 × 192 = 107,520 pixels.

vs

Macintosh 512K's 512 × 342 = 175,104 pixels.

Macintosh 512K still has a higher stable resolution when compared to Apple IIc.

Macintosh's 512 × 342 aspect ratio is useful for business applications when compared to Apple IIc's Double-High-Resolution: 560 × 192.


https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=103
1984 Macintosh moving large amounts of pixels for stable 512 × 342 display mode.


September 1984 released Macintosh 512K's 512K RAM road map was an important factor for MS Excel GUI and Aldus PageMaker.

Apple IIc's segmented 128KB RAM mode is inferior to 68000's flat memory address model and Mac 512K's 512KB RAM.

Intel 386 was timely released in 1985 with a 32-bit flat memory address model road map AND PMMU for the PC e.g. Xenix 386 and Windows 2.0x 386 1987 releases.

Intel, Compaq, SCO, and Microsoft form a tight 386AT PC working group to enable rapid system integration. Bill Gates backstabs IBM's OS/2 1.x 286 direction.

Apple IIc's sales flopped harder than the IBM PCJr.

For the business market, Lotus 123 2.0 for the PC was released around 1985 with x87 FPU support and it's game over for frozen MOS/CSG 65xx platforms.

Last edited by Hammer on 15-Jan-2025 at 02:06 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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: @Hammer No HDD, No Sound card. 1.5MB RAM (combined). Can this really be considered a Gaming PC? Also, hyper-local slap-together brand vs. global brand. Even Digitor from Dick Smith is a bit of an oranges to apples, but at least they had an Australia-wide presence.

For Xmas Q4 1992 from Your Computer Dec 1992,
https://1drv.ms/i/c/4900843ddf9c1d84/EejQiwd6rzRMg7WAhRuqa5EBREpYCs4fPzhM4VxeiAss8w?e=syf5mP

For AUD1450, 386DX-40 with 128 KB cache, 85 MB HDD, 2MB RAM, 1.44 FDD, 512 KB SVGA, 14" SVGA monitor, KB, mouse, IO (IDE, 2 serials, 1 lpt, 1 game port).

For AUD1678, 386DX-40 with 128 KB cache, 85 MB HDD, 2MB RAM, 1.44 FDD, 1MB SVGA, SVGA monitor, KB, mouse, IO (IDE, 2 serials, 1 lpt, 1 game port).

2MB RAM targets 1991 MPC level 1's 2MB system RAM requirement.

Page 90 of 132,
Sound Blaster 2.0, AUD160 price range.

512KB Trident SVGA, AUD65 price range.
1 MB Trident SVGA, AUD105 price range.

512KB Paradise SVGA, AUD140 price range.
1 MB TSENG SVGA, AUD150 price range.

1MB TSENG MegaEVA 1024, AUD260 price range.
1MB TSENG MegaEVA 24bit DAC, AUD300 price range.


-----------------------
1. The PC hardware's brand difference is minor when the source is likely from the "Far East". What's important is the "Intel Inside".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_9mqRehM-c
"Intel Inside" advert in 1992.

PS; 386DX-40 refers to AMD's 386DX-40.

PC's brand name is important for corporate aftersales support.

Australia has relatively strong consumer protection laws i.e. "fit for the purpose" clause.

C= business reputation is the "toy computer company", C= closer to Nintendo
when compared to DELL, HP, Compaq, NEC and 'etc'.

My high school replaced their visual art's A2000s with color Macs. B/W Macs and color Macs are shared with DTP-related subjects while Computer science subjects have PCs.

Due to missing entry-level SVGA capability, the A3000 flopped harder than the A2000.

The NSW Edu department didn't purchase A3000s. A3000 wasn't compatible with the existing A2000's Video Toaster. LOL. "Only Amiga makes it possible" to kill Amiga's professional market niche.

The "Amiga 3000" model number increase is a con job since it's similar to the Amiga 2500/030. C= wasted A3000's 32-bit Chip RAM with the "read my lips, no new chips" directive and made full ECS a timed exclusive for A3000. The original purpose for ECS is a drop-in upgrade for existing A500/A2000, not a timed exclusive for A3000! Commodore marketing at its finest.

AA-equipped A3000Plus was originally intended to be released in 1991 along with the pizza box AA-equipped A1000Plus.


2. C= A1200 in the Australia's Xmas Q4 1992 market is missing in action due to A1200's tiny 44,000 worldwide production rate. UK market had 30,000 A1200 units.

The size of the Australian market is about the size of the entire Nordic countries combined and it wouldn't any difference when compared to the larger US and Japan markets.

There's no conspiracy when the Australian PC market sent Commodore Australia Pty Ltd into bankruptcy before Commodore International.

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_________________
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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

The point towards which I was driving, and the one your figures support, is that the absence of more A1200s is not a key dynamic for A500 Amigans buying either a SNES or Gaming PC during the '92 Xmas shopping season.

- People with a budget of $500 AUD or less were never going to buy an A1200 or A1200HD, and
- People who were seeking the added benefit of PC industry compatibility were already leaning toward a 386/486 PC. It didn't matter that an A1200HD was $200 - $500 cheaper. These people obviously didn't care about their existing A500 games, or multitasking multimedia.

The A1200 (sans HD) was not cheap enough, and the value proposition for the A1200HD was relevant to a very narrow segment of the market. Even if they could manufacture more of them, any increased sales during the '92 Xmas shopping season would likely have been minimal.
Not enough for C= to escape the pull of debt gravity.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

Quote:

The point towards which I was driving, and the one your figures support, is that the absence of more A1200s is not a key dynamic for A500 Amigans buying either a SNES or Gaming PC during the '92 Xmas shopping season. - People with a budget of $500 AUD or less were never going to buy an A1200 or A1200HD, and - People who were seeking the added benefit of PC industry compatibility were already leaning toward a 386/486 PC. It didn't matter that an A1200HD was $200 - $500 cheaper. These people obviously didn't care about their existing A500 games, or multitasking multimedia.

1. The majority of A500's use case is games e.g. the Batman pack's success.

Like many others, my family's selection of the 1989 A500 over the PC clone is due to the A500's stronger 2D gaming performance. 1989 Starter Kit A500 was purchased.

My cousin had 286-16 with an SVGA PC and he recommended the A500 and my Dad's work mates had A2000s as their gaming desktop computers.

"Education" is secondary to my family's A500 selection.

My Dad's work has issued the IBM PS/2 Model 55SX (386SX-16, Windows 3.0) as the work PC i.e. I had access to this IBM PS/2 Model 55SX. Lotus software was changed to MS Office.



2. Refer to low-end business desktop computer and game console combo customers.

- 386SX-16 with 387 FPU would do Windows 3.1 and MS Excel while SNES for a strong 2D gaming experience. Any cheapo 32-bit PC with crap Trident SVGA would do the job for a business PC.

486 PC purchases for faster Windows 3.1/MS Excel use case. MS Word with business process automation with accounting software was on the rise during the 1990s.

https://youtu.be/5o9yOBBWPgM?t=1021
PC 286-16 with fast VGA clone and SB retro gaming machine delivering A500 level 2D gaming e.g. Body Blows, Gods, Golden Axe, Pinball Fantasies, and Prehistorik 2.
A500 has a lower price entry point factor.


IBM PS/2 Model 55SX's IBM VGA is slow, and it needs a faster VGA clone card. IBM PS/2 Model 55SX's IBM VGA wasn't performance competitive relative to 1989/1990/1991 SVGA clones. Addon cards for the IBM MCA slot are not price-competitive.

IBM was pushed out of the PC market.


- A gaming PC (with 386DX-40 or above) and a fast SVGA clone card can deliver a 3D texture-mapped gaming experience. 1993 MPC Level 2 gaming PC delivers a 3D texture-mapped gaming experience beyond SNES.

1992 PC's Wolfenstein 3D and Wing Commander II weren't available on the 1992 SNES.

FM Towns Marty's (386SX-16 with strong 2D custom chips)'s strong 2D gaming experience at a higher price (USD710) was killed by a budget SNES's strong 2D gaming experience.

The real issue is about delivering a level of gaming experience at what price.

Quote:

The A1200 (sans HD) was not cheap enough, and the value proposition for the A1200HD was relevant to a very narrow segment of the market. Even if they could manufacture more of them, any increased sales during the '92 Xmas shopping season would likely have been minimal. Not enough for C= to escape the pull of debt gravity.

The issue for 1992's A600 sales flop was due to fast VGA class competitors e.g. SNES and gaming PC.

Australia's SNES release year is the same as Europe's 1992 release year.

For the US market, SNES was released in 1991 and contributed to drawing customers away from C64 and A500.

A500 Rev6A ECS business productivity mode was missing in 1989, 1990, and 1991 (few ECS enabled A500Plus Rev8 for Xmas Q4 1991). During Amiga's golden years, Commodore didn't leverage A500's economies of scale to build Amiga's business install base.

The main purpose for ECS Denise's drop-in upgrade for 16bit Amigas and A500's Rev6A ECS-ready PCB design was thrown out of the window with ECS time exclusive for A3000's 1990 release. A3000 ECS wasn't competitive when compared to the similarly priced SVGA-equipped 386DX PC. Australian PC magazine's A3000 review attacked A3000's dated ECS and a 256-color promise for the 1991 A3000 was made for the critics. Commodore bundles 256 color A2410 card tokens with A3000UX.

CSG's 256-color chipset C65 was an attempt to counter the Sega's 1988 Mega Drive/Genesis and 1990 SNES due to Henri Rubin's weak direction.

A500's 1989 sales ramp in North America was gimped by Sega's 1989 Genesis release.

For Europe, strong game packs A500 sales were able to compete against Sega's 1990 Mega Drive European release. European A500 sales were strong in 1990 and 1991.

The cause for CSG's C65 development is due to Henri Rubin's weak leadership for the Amiga group's missing VGA level R&D from the 1987 to 1988 time period. AAA paper specs were completed in Feb 1989.

For European and Australian Xmas Q4 1992, the A600 was murdered by SNES and gaming PC and the A1200 doesn't have unit production numbers to make the difference.

Commodore Australia Pty Ltd (with USD4 million debt) went bust before Commodore International. Westpac refused to roll over Commodore Australia's USD2 million debt.

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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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

when you post such huge images, it breaks the site and the posts in the page get screwed, those before and after until a new page refreshes it. I get to scroll left and right, up and down, left and right so I can read the posts made. Perhaps in some browsers it is worse than others, but it breaks legibility afterwards, your post and all others.

It shouldn't be really be that hard to edit the image, change the image to a smaller picture and a link to a bigger one.

edit:
This is how the text got formatted afterwards:

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Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@pixie

@Hammer is not a real person.

It is a bot which reads AW.net posts, then based on some trigger logic responds to them with a loosely connected list of computer technology data points and occasional images, scraped from the internet and quoted from "Commodore: The Final Years" and similar books.

On more than a few occasions, the bot's attempt at refutation only ended up supporting my points.

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All the way, with 68k

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: @pixie @Hammer is not a real person. It is a bot which reads AW.net posts, then based on some trigger logic responds to them with a loosely connected list of computer technology data points and occasional images, scraped from the internet and quoted from "Commodore: The Final Years" and similar books. On more than a few occasions, the bot's attempt at refutation only ended up supporting my points.

After your comment, I posted two 386DX-40-based PCs with HDD and 2MB system RAM in a similar $1500 to $1600 price range for Xmas Q4 1992.

486SX-25 PC clone is also in the price range since 386DX-40 nearly rivals 486SX-20 on compute benchmarks. These are 68LC040-25 class machines.

68030 @ 50Mhz is the closest counterpart to 386DX-40, and 68030 @ 50Mhz accelerator for A1200 doesn't have economies of scale and missing in action during Xmas Q4 1992.

You complain about no-name PCs with an" Intel Inside" when Commodore is just a "toy computer company".

PS; Video games are big business with big $$$$$.

Some PC vendor's profit margins are stupidly high.

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_________________
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 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB