@agami

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The fact it was a product from the Amiga line was the only thing that appealed to me. The overall product didn't seem to give me anything I didn't already have with my A1200, so no sale. Sure I didn't have a CD-ROM at the time, but any of the games I cared to play I already had or could get on floppy. Though if I saw that $300 price tag at Brashes, I'd probably snag one.

One of the last things Brashes sold before they folded. What ever happened there. CDs and musical instruments were still in vogue at the time.

But, the CD32 games were like AGA enhanced compared to an A500. The real ones were better than AGA with 16-bit music. And it coud auto boot a CD unlike the average A1200. Except for soft simulation an A1200 couldn't boot CD unless it had firmware that could boot CD.

Also, it had the FMV module, at extra cost. Not aware of any other Amiga having hardware accelerated video decoding. Certainly not an A1200.

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I told him I wouldn't mind having one for my own paltry collection. He said if he's able to find one he'll let me know. Several months later he calls me to tell me he found a decent condition CD32, in a CD32 box no less, with a couple dozen games, and an SX-1 for, if memory serves, about $500. There was a small crack where the CD door hinge met the main enclosure which was fixable with super glue. I snatched that rare combo right up.

Sounds ok with an SX-1. Can turn it into a full Amiga. Of you need a CDTV style black mouse and keyboard for it to look the part.

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already had some A1200s in my collection, all of which had at least an 030 and my main setup with an 040. I played around with the CD32 + SX-1 for a short while and then stored it away. Nice piece of Amiga history, but not much utility given the other available options. I was thinking of putting a TF330 in it and load it up with a whole bunch of games as a gift for my brother, but then I thought it'd be more practical to gift him an A500 mini.

If only it had a working CD drive.

@bhabbott

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ECS was just a few hacks added on to OCS. The VGA modes were meant to be used for hires mononchrome applications such as CAD, desktop publishing and MIDI music, like the Mac and ST. In monochrome it was fast, but Workbench looked ugly in two colors. The Amiga already did 16 colors in hires without needing a special monitor, and people with A2000s just added a flicker fixer if they wanted to use a VGA monitor. The A3000 came with a flicker built in, which made ECS VGA modes even more redundant.

In reality it should been the Ranger chipset and 7 bitplanes. Still odd and one short of the AGA max but better than we got. Before OS2 the Workbench was stuck at four colours and orange scheme. So only third party software could use 16 colours on a custom screen. The need of a scan doubler was proof that it was becoming too complicated and added to the expensive. An A500 didn't have those options for a VGA monitor.

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EHB was introduced with the OCS chipset, but wasn't very interesting either because the copper could already produce more colors without sucking bandwidth. Also some early Amiga 1000s didn't have it, so compatibility was an issue.

Ok so it was there in OCS but some A1000s lacked it. The copper could. But it's somewhat impractical for OS friendly software and games. Even though the OS supports custom copper lists.But having it there is easier.

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Chunky wasn't considered important until texture mapped 3D games started appearing, but they also needed a fast CPU. Ultima Underworld (released in 1992) needed a 486 to get reasonable speed, and it rendered to a window of about 1/4 of the lores screen area.

A few game makers though it would be easier to work with and faster regardless. But, I was thinking more of Workbench and desktop applications. Those would benefit.

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Putting 256 color chunky graphics into ECS would have been pointless for 68000 Amigas because the 7MHz CPU wasn't fast enough to do software texture mapping. Putting in a faster CPU would have made it a similar price to a PC, except without IBM compatibility - still pointless because the Amiga was only attractive while it was cheaper. The A4000 had the colors and the horsepower, but was the same price as a name-brand 486. When asked about porting Doom to the Amiga 4000, John Carmack famously said:-

I don't neccessairly mean 256 colors, 4 and 16 is a good starting point. There surely would have been enough bandwidth. But by the end of the 80's it would have needed 256. And, other computers had 256 colours in 1987. Such as the Acorn and Apple IIGS.

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He was wrong about the A4000, but right about 'the majority of the amiga base'.

I don't get that comment. When Doom was free sourced and ported to the Amiga people went mad over Doom. Even though it was pixelated and sluggish. So not sure what he means. He seems to imply it would have a negative effect. But history proves the exact opposite. Amiga community went mad over Doom, no matter how bad it was, and still are.

Also, if he's converting to bitplanes in game, he's doing it the wrong way. Yes, it's common, and said to take the least amount of time. But a real Amiga game already has the gfx in bitplanes and uses the copper and blitter to assist as well as other features like sprites. This makes Doom totally unsuitable for the Amiga. It's inferior! Take a real Amiga 3d game and convert that to VGA! Now you're talking! Not many native Amiga 3d games around. Aside from fill mapped polygons.

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The Sega Megadrive could only do 61 colors max (most games had less), but that didn't stop it from selling over 30 million units by 1997. VGA was a big deal for PC's, but not so much for the Amiga which always had plenty of colors. What the Amiga didn't have was a userbase large enough to justify producing games that used the hardware effectively, made even worse by rampant piracy. Iconic Amiga games were soon ported to the PC even before VGA became popular (eg. Defender of the Crown). Most games in the US were produced for the PC first, then lazily ported to other platforms. This meant that VGA graphics were simply color-reduced to 32 colors with (in most cases) no attempt to use the Amiga's advanced features.

I read the Sega was similar to Amiga. But the Sega would have had tile maps and all that. Unless it also had bitplanes I see no comparison. The Amiga didn't work that way. By comparison the Amiga was more simple and didn't include any character matrix modes like on the C64 as any kind of playfield.

But yes that's when the Amiga lost it. It was easier to work direct in 256 colours. No game makers cared for any exotic HAM or copper Amiga tricks for 256 or more colours then port to VGA. Which had 18 bit colour. Not until AGA could the Amiga match 18-bit colour.

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Not sure what you mean by 'nor be a pleasant experience using Workbench' as I found my A1000 to be quite pleasant when using Workbench - certainly more pleasant than a PC in DOS or Windows.

I found it too be a bit dog slow in use on my A500. Move a window and it took a while. Where was the fancy blitter? Had it been chunky or packed as I prefer it could have moved faster. Of course the blitter would have been more complex if it supported it as well.

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Commodore's engineers were working on 'AAA', but the specs were a bit too optimistic for their skills. When it became obvious that it wouldn't be finished in time they quickly pivoted to AGA. By this time tools were available that made developing new chipsets easier, but Commodore's chip foundry wasn't up to the task so they went to HP for Lisa. Perhaps if they had been a bit less ambitious they could have produced AGA two years earlier, in time for the A3000.

I think AAA would have been better. AGA somewhat complicated things as later they they were going to drop AGA features and just be compatible with ECS. Sometmes it may have been better if AGA wasn't borne. AAA had what the Amiga needed. In 1990 it would have rocked. Even in 1992 it would have whipped. And not left the Amiga in the state it was. The best it could do relying on foreign graphic chipsets with no relation to the native graphics.

Last edited by Hypex on 13-Apr-2022 at 07:11 PM.

Hypex Quote:

In reality it should been the Ranger chipset and 7 bitplanes. Still odd and one short of the AGA max but better than we got. Before OS2 the Workbench was stuck at four colours and orange scheme. So only third party software could use 16 colours on a custom screen. The need of a scan doubler was proof that it was becoming too complicated and added to the expensive. An A500 didn't have those options for a VGA monitor.

Maybe Ranger would have been close enough to 256 color VGA if it used EHB with 8 bitplanes. This would have required 128 color registers instead of 256 which is a significant savings. The last 128 color registers are rarely used and minimizing transistors was important to keep the cost down. EHB mode is easy enough to use but game conversions to EHB may take longer.

What is this "orange scheme" of Workbench? Did you mean blue scheme?

Hypex Quote:

I don't neccessairly mean 256 colors, 4 and 16 is a good starting point. There surely would have been enough bandwidth. But by the end of the 80's it would have needed 256. And, other computers had 256 colours in 1987. Such as the Acorn and Apple IIGS.

The Sharp X68000, which was introduced in 1987, had 16 bit color (65536 colors) at up to 512x512 resolution. It had a 68000@10MHz and powerful custom chips like the Amiga (sometimes referred to as the Japanese Amiga). Unlike the Amiga, it received the VRAM for doubling the memory bandwidth that Jay Miner wanted for the Ranger chipset but CBM denied. It was higher end than the Amiga costing somewhere around $2500-$3000 USD. Only about 150,000 units were sold and it was discontinued in 1993.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000

Hypex Quote:

I found it too be a bit dog slow in use on my A500. Move a window and it took a while. Where was the fancy blitter? Had it been chunky or packed as I prefer it could have moved faster. Of course the blitter would have been more complex if it supported it as well.

All the Amiga 1000 needed was some fast memory to make it a little snappier. Jay Miner wanted more memory too but it was expensive back then. Sadly, CBM continued to sell Amigas without fast memory for many years even after memory prices became affordable.

Hypex Quote:

I think AAA would have been better. AGA somewhat complicated things as later they they were going to drop AGA features and just be compatible with ECS. Sometimes it may have been better if AGA wasn't borne. AAA had what the Amiga needed. In 1990 it would have rocked. Even in 1992 it would have whipped. And not left the Amiga in the state it was. The best it could do relying on foreign graphic chipsets with no relation to the native graphics.

Of course AAA would have been technically better but it would have made the Amiga much more expensive and reduced backward compatibility. It was fat with features that were quickly outdated and unlikely to be used while Amiga compatibility was reduced more than necessary. A significantly more expensive Amiga would have likely ended quicker like the technically awesome X68000. Incremental chipset and integration improvements were the way to go but they were often delayed due to CBM upper management incompetence. SAGA is a more modern and enhanced Amiga chipset which resembles AA+ more than AAA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_AA+_Chipset

@matthey

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All the Amiga 1000 needed was some fast memory to make it a little snappier.

Another engineering mishap that I was mentioning above.
Shortly after the release everyone realized that the A1000 needed the additional 256KB front RAM module to be any useful.

At the same time the C128 was released with 128KB of RAM but with a REU module that took it to the magic number of 640KB.

However the A1000 was, is, and will be the best designed computer of the Amiga line. It is certainly much better looking than some of the box available today.

Last edited by Nonefornow on 14-Apr-2022 at 12:11 AM.

Nonefornow Quote:

Another engineering mishap that I was mentioning above. Shortly after the release everyone realized that the A1000 needed the additional 256KB front RAM module to be any useful. At the same time the C128 was released with 128KB of RAM but with a REU module that took it to the magic number of 640KB.

The Amiga Lorraine model specs called for 128kiB of memory and even the Amiga Velvet model for developers released in early 1985 before the Amiga 1000 only had 128kiB of memory not counting the WCS/WOM for kickstart. It's hard to believe a preemptive multitasking computer with a GUI and bitmap graphics could do more than boot. A 640x200 screen with 4 colors uses 32kiB of memory (typical Workbench screen). The 1984 BoingBall demo was created for the Lorraine. A BoingBall demo on Aminet is 21872 bytes and the samples are 24706 bytes so about 45 kiB not counting the memory needed by the screen. I'm not sure what the resolution and depth is for the BoingBall demo but it is shown in a video with the Workbench screen having Notepad and CLI windows open.

Amiga graphics demo on The Computer Chronicles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEmX8WG9dPQ

Maybe they had the memory expansion by that time but it was still "INTUITION Version 1.0" in the video above. The video of the original 1984 CES launch BoingBall demo is lower quality and has too many cuts to show much.

Amiga History - Launch Of Amiga (1984 CES)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3x00Pbs2K8

Nonefornow Quote:

However the A1000 was, is, and will be the best designed computer of the Amiga line. It is certainly much better looking than some of the box available today.

The Amiga 1000 is cute with a slim feminine look. In my opinion, the Amiga 3000 surpassed it in the looks category though.

@matthey

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Maybe Ranger would have been close enough to 256 color VGA if it used EHB with 8 bitplanes. This would have required 128 color registers instead of 256 which is a significant savings. The last 128 color registers are rarely used and minimizing transistors was important to keep the cost down. EHB mode is easy enough to use but game conversions to EHB may take longer.

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What is this "orange scheme" of Workbench? Did you mean blue scheme?

Yes, I just remembered the orange part.

That's a good idea. Even an extended EHB mode in ECS taking it from 6 bits to 8 max would have helped. Unlike AGA it looks like Ranger actually increased the colour registers. Where as on AGA they left it at 32 registers but added bank switching showing the 16 bit design AGA was built off.

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The Sharp X68000, which was introduced in 1987, had 16 bit color (65536 colors) at up to 512x512 resolution. It had a 68000@10MHz and powerful custom chips like the Amiga (sometimes referred to as the Japanese Amiga). Unlike the Amiga, it received the VRAM for doubling the memory bandwidth that Jay Miner wanted for the Ranger chipset but CBM denied. It was higher end than the Amiga costing somewhere around $2500-$3000 USD. Only about 150,000 units were sold and it was discontinued in 1993.

I also thought of that but kept it to 8 bpp. The X68000 shows you can manage 16 bit packed with a 680000. So speed wasn't an issue for that one. The Japanese Amiga. LOL. Reminds me of the Japanese Mercedes. Lexus.

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Of course AAA would have been technically better but it would have made the Amiga much more expensive and reduced backward compatibility. It was fat with features that were quickly outdated and unlikely to be used while Amiga compatibility was reduced more than necessary. A significantly more expensive Amiga would have likely ended quicker like the technically awesome X68000. Incremental chipset and integration improvements were the way to go but they were often delayed due to CBM upper management incompetence. SAGA is a more modern and enhanced Amiga chipset which resembles AA+ more than AAA.

They could have kept it for the high end models unti it was affordable enough to reach the low end. I mean, the A1200 caused confusion, because people thought the A600 was the next big thing. Then found out the A1200 was the real deal and the A600 was a cut down A1200 with the old ECS chipset. I think just an A1200 with AA and an A4000 with AAA would have been a better proposition.

I disagree about dropping chunky because it didn't have a full 68020. Who cares? The Falcon had a crippled 68030 and that had a 16 bit mode! Most people would upgrade eventually making it a moot point. An A1200 with a chunky 8 bit Workbench would have been faster than the 64 colour planar Workbench I put up with!

AA+ does sound like a good upgrade with needed features. I'm not sure what memory map they were planning. But the way SAGA seperates the RTG registers like framebuffer from AGA looks a little less Amiga to me when using the bitplane pointer would be the Amiga way to do it.

@matthey

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Amiga History - Launch Of Amiga (1984 CES) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3x00Pbs2K8

This is the introduction of Amiga at Lincoln Center in N.Y. no at CES. I have seen this before.

What really caught my eye in this was the amount of peripherals next to the A1000. An average users in those days would have not be able to afford so much gear.

The "Transformer" software was not available to the general public at the release of the A1000. It became available much later. Even more later was the "sidecar".

At that time the emphasis placed on the ability to run IBM software really did not sit well with many consumers that were wondering about spending so much $ to emulate PC, which would have been cheaper to buy in the first place.

The last part of the video is the critical one. It shows how, at inception, the Amiga was superior to all the other computers in the Video / Graphics area.