@OneTimer1

Yeah, well the A4000T was shown at the World of Amiga Show in New York in early 1993, was released in a batch of around 200 in April 1994 and then put on general release with Escom/Quickpak circa 1996-1998. EDO RAM was conceived in 1994 for release with the Intel 430FX chipset in 1995. The A4000T mobo was a 1993 design shipped to Amiga users in 1996!

It wasn't a bad motherboard design (it was as good as we ever got with SCSI and IDE built in and built in CD-Rom audio support etc). The fact was it was slow to market because of the C= bankruptcy and hence EDO RAM was an afterthought added by 3rd parties late on! The Zorro III and video slots made the A4000T last longer in the market it was late to! A great machine but a last hurrah! As always though 3rd parties were the ones who pushed the Amiga whether C= was dead or alive! It really made no difference. Dave Haynie running with a 5 man 'Amiga team' attached to Sony or another company with money could have aped what Commodore did as a multi-million $ company into the late 90s! C= was out of ideas and maybe didn't even realise it had to include things like support for EDO RAM or RTG etc! They were only selling widgets after all!

Last edited by BigD on 19-Nov-2024 at 10:39 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 19-Nov-2024 at 10:35 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 19-Nov-2024 at 10:34 AM.

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

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @OneTimer1 Yeah, well the A4000T was shown at the World of Amiga Show in New York in early 1993, ... It wasn't a bad motherboard design...

It might have been acceptable in 1993.

The A3000/A4000 Amiga is (IMR) a design for an 68030 compatible CPU with 25MHz, for the A3640 they used a schematics from Motorola's documents that was meant as a quick fix to connect a 68040 to a 68030 bus, and they even copied the error from this schematics, leading to interesting behavior when using ZIII cards with a A3640 (IMR inverted clock), because they tried to fix it on the Motherboard instead of the A3640

The A3000 has (IMR) the best CPU to ChipRAM speed of all Amigas making the CPU access faster than the Custom-Chips but that interface was complicated so they didn't use it on the A4000.

The only good thing on all A4000 are AGA and some bug fixes, I don't know if they did any good things on the A4000T,m the board was huge and expensive and ZIII has been proofed a step into the wrong direction.

@bhabbott

Quote:

Not just 'professional' reasons. A base model A2000 with single floppy drive wasn't that much more than an A500 if you were thinking of expanding it. Several of my friends had one, and they were were only using it for hobby stuff (playing games, chatting online etc.). In 1989 a B2000 with RGB color monitor sold for £875 in the UK, while an A500 with the same specs sold for £598. So you paid an extra £277 to get a much more expandable machine.

That's a tiny minority without a "killer app" until the Video Toaster and A2000/B2000 didn't have proper built-in productivity display modes until the delayed ECS variant despite being demo'ed in Q4 1988.

A2024 monitor's production runs are numbered in a very tiny 5000 units range.

For comparsion, there is about 2 million Windows 2.x install base and 7.67 million VGA annual sales in 1989 with killer apps such as GUI Excel, WInWord, Aldus PageMaker and Adobe Postscript.

https://ia904606.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/32/items/amiga-world-1989-12/Amiga_World_Vol_05_12_1989_Dec_jp2.zip&file=Amiga_World_Vol_05_12_1989_Dec_jp2/Amiga_World_Vol_05_12_1989_Dec_0124.jp2&id=amiga-world-1989-12&scale=2&rotate=0

For December 1989 from Amiga World mag:
Amiga 2000 with 1 MB RAM has $1496 USD.
Amiga 2000 with 1 MB RAM and 3rd party 40 HDD has $1949 USD.
Amiga 2000HD with 40 MB HDD and 1 MB RAM has $2099 USD.

Amiga 2000 with 1 MB RAM and C= 1048 monitor has $1739 USD.
Amiga 2000 with 1 MB RAM and 3rd party RGB monitor has $1659 USD.

Amiga 500 with C= 1048 monitor has $829 USD.
Amiga 500 with RGB monitor (non-Commodore) has $749 USD.

None of these offers has a stable 640x480p resolution mode. A no-brainer to why Apple Mac has attracted mainstream press marketing and publishing business customers.

2 million Windows 2.x install base easily beats a few 100,000 A2000/B2000 install base.

In 1989, my family purchased A500+1084S for about $1300 AUD via mainstream Norman Ross stores. 512 KB RAM expansion was purchased in 1990. My family budget for a computer is about $1500 AUD range which is about £799 UKP or $1000 USD range.

For Commodore's Amiga mass production run, a no-brainer to why Amiga didn't attract mainstream "back office" and DTP (press marketing, publishing) business customers.

Despite Rev 6 A500 and A2000 being full ECS PCB capable, Commodore management decided to delay the full ECS for A3000's 1990 release.

Should the market wait for Commodore's productivity mode?

With Microsoft's Windows 3.0/Excel/WinWord wreaking 1990 ball, Commodore joined the losers like the DOS UI establishment like Word Perfect, Word Star and Lotus 123.


Quote:

@bhabbott, During the Amiga's commercial lifetime texture-mapped 3D was simply a matter of more mips, which was good for other 'use cases' too. Only problem is most Amiga owners were barely able to scrape up enough to buy an A500 with modulator, and didn't expect games to cost more than the price of a blank disk. This meant there wasn't a big enough market to justify targeting higher spec machines. By the time texture-mapped 3D became desirable enough to incentivize fans into upgrading (ie. Doom in 1994) the Amiga was already dead.

That's a flawed argument when there's a significant number of A500 owners have switched to gaming PCs from around Q4 1992 to 1994 since A1200 supplies were very constrained and A600 sales has bombed. Commodore had a very bad H2 1992 sales.

Like many others, my Xmas Q4 1992 computer was an i386DX33+ET4000 based PC.

In strong currency countries, when gaming PCs reached $1500 to $1800 AUD budget range in 1992 (for i386DX33 or Am386-40) and 1993 (486SX25 to 486SX33), it's game over for A500.

During Q4 1992, A1200 is largely "missing in action" due to supply issues i.e. 44,000 units.

During 1993, the Amiga wasn't price vs performance competitive beyond A1200's price range i.e. economies of scale issue. A1200's install base is very small for 3rd party add-on vendors.


Doom wasn't the only "killer app" 1993 game on the PC e.g.
1990's Wing Commander,
1991's Wing Commander 2,
1992's Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss,
1993's Wing Commander Academy, Star Wars: X-Wing, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, IndyCar Racing and 'etc'.

Ultima Underworld's texture-mapped 3D engine was demoed in 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

1990's Wing Commander made a lasting impression on Jeff Porter. Jeff Porter's original CD32 specs has 8 MB RAM (6 MB Fast RAM + 2MB Chip RAM) spec was designed to run VGA's Wing Commander with twice the CPU performance from A1200's.

Jeff Frank's argument is customers purchase Commodore's 32-bit PC clone. LOL.

Quote:

@bhabbott, There were many PCs before then that had few or no free slots too, particularly around the time of the A500+ and A1200 when slimline PCs were popular.

For context, the total low-end PC graphic chipset shipment history and forecast
1987 = 9.2. million, VGA 16.4% market share i.e. 1.5088 million VGA.
1988 = 11.1 million, VGA 34.2% i.e. 3.79 million VGA.
1989 = 13.7 million, VGA 54.6% i.e. 7.67 million VGA.
1990 = 14.3 million, VGA 66.4% i.e. 9.50 million VGA.
1991 = 15.8 million, VGA 76.6% i.e. 12.10 million VGA.
1992 = 16.4 million, VGA 84.2% i.e. 13.81 million VGA.
1993 = 18.3 million, VGA 92.4% i.e. 16.9 million VGA.

From Dataquest November 1989, VGA crossed more than 50 percent market share in 1989 i.e. 56%.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/components/dataquest/0005190_PC_Graphics_Chip_Sets--Product_Analysis_1989.pdf

Doom sales attachment rates are bad, but the PC market is huge.

For most cases, Amiga platform behaves closer to a game console platform.

Quote:

@bhabbott, Not necessary. Motherboard I/O is plenty fast enough for 3d games. The problem is rendering speed, and lack of colors if you really care about that.

Gaming color display capability is a major factor since both SNES and PC's fast VGA clones exceeded Amiga OCS/ECS.

Quote:

@bhabbott, The answer is the same as for consoles of that era - a 3D graphics chip on a card with its own video output (come to think of it that's what PCs did too, with the Voodoo card). But once again the market just wasn't big enough to justify it. By the time 3d games were a big deal fans were switching to PCs anyway - and Commodore was already gone.

You have forgotten the flood of fast 32-bit CPU software rendered texture-mapped 3D game releases during 1994 and 1995.

PC's 1994 to 1995 software rendered texture-mapped 3D game releases,
1. The Elder Scrolls: Arena,
2. Heretic,
3. DOOM II,
4. Star Wars: TIE Fighter,
5. Rise of the Triad,
6. Star Wars Dark Forces,
7. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,
8. Magic Carpet,
9. Descent,
10. many others.

32-bit PC with 4MB RAM and VGA can run these mentioned games.

32-bit PC with 4MB RAM is common with the 3MB RAM game console target group i.e. 3DO, Saturn and PS1.

Atari Jaguar's and CD32's stock 2MB RAM config is below the common 3MB RAM game console target group.

Jeff Potter's original CD32 config has 8 MB RAM.

Major Commodore subsidiaries like Commodore UK survived Commodore International's bankruptcy.

Quote:

@bhabbott, But would fans have stayed with the Amiga if it was more expandable? No because they were also buying PCs to get Microsoft Word etc.

You have contradicted yourself with "Only problem is most Amiga owners were barely able to scrape up enough to buy an A500 with modulator".

GUI MS Word runs on 32-bit Amigas via MacOS software bridge i.e. AMAXs and Shapeshifter (1995).

https://youtu.be/8v4BaWwoyA0
Running MacOS on A500 via AMax.

MacOS on A500 and 1084S monitor's interlace display mode is not good. It goes back to A500's ECS Denise release delay debacle.


Quote:

The time of diversity and innovation was over. Consumers settled on the platform with 90% market share for good reason - who wants choice when it just leads to incompatibility?

That's contradictory when Phase 5 released 68060/PPC and CGX RTG for smaller install base A1200, 16-bit A2000 (16-bit OCS/ECS), A3000 (16-bit ECS) and A4000.

Last edited by Hammer on 20-Nov-2024 at 04:39 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 20-Nov-2024 at 02:14 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 20-Nov-2024 at 01:53 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 20-Nov-2024 at 01:32 AM.

_________________
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Ryzen 9 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: PC's 1994 to 1995 software rendered texture-mapped 3D game releases, 1. The Elder Scrolls: Arena, 2. Heretic, 3. DOOM II, 4. Star Wars: TIE Fighter, 5. Rise of the Triad, 6. Star Wars Dark Forces, 7. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, 8. Magic Carpet, 9. Descent, 10. many others. 32-bit PC with 4MB RAM and VGA can run these mentioned games.

With a 16-bit OS, a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card, and Multi I/O card for mouse and analogue joystick.

Yes, 1994 was the pivotal year. At least here in Australia.
It was in 1994 that the prices of no-brand beige mini-tower clone 486 PCs reached a price where a critical mass of people started to ignore the productivity returns on their investment.
The Age Green Guide was flush with small and large PC component integrators bundling priced-to-clear MS-DOS/Win 3.11 PCs.

The September 1995 release of the 32-bit Windows 95 + DirectX and the growing popularity of the internet moved the needle further, but I would say that the final pillar in establishing the PC as THE gaming computer was the rapid popularity of the 3Dfx Voodoo 1 in 1997.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

The PC's Mortal Kombat near arcade perfect port helped as well! The Amiga's MK1 & Mk2 ports were close to greatness but Probe Software just targeted OCS and 1-button (2-button supported in the options menu)!

What a waste though! I think had the A600 not been released, there should have been a big push to get people to upgrade to AGA with more buttons on joypads/joysticks in 1992 and therefore a doubling down marketing-wise on the A1200 (and an 030/25 SKU ASAP) by C=! Then an AGA version of both games could have been as good as the PC! I can only surmise that no one at C= HQ valued the A1200 or AGA and were expecting the PC to swoop in and steal their breakfast! That's why they paused Amiga R&D and started building PCs themselves! Fools!

Last edited by BigD on 20-Nov-2024 at 01:51 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 20-Nov-2024 at 01:49 PM.

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

@agami

Quote:

With a 16-bit OS, a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card, and Multi I/O card for mouse and analogue joystick. Yes, 1994 was the pivotal year. At least here in Australia. It was in 1994 that the prices of no-brand beige mini-tower clone 486 PCs reached a price where a critical mass of people started to ignore

Games like Doom used DOS 32-bit protection mode runtime.


DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) is a specification introduced in 1989 which allows a DOS program to run in protected mode, giving access to many features of the new PC processors of the time not available in real mode. It was initially developed by Microsoft for Windows 3.0, although Microsoft later turned control of the specification over to an industry committee with open membership. Almost all modern DOS extenders are based on DPMI and allow DOS programs to address all memory available in the PC and to run in protected mode

_________________
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

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @agami The PC's Mortal Kombat near arcade perfect port helped as well! The Amiga's MK1 & Mk2 ports were close to greatness but Probe Software just targeted OCS and 1-button (2-button supported in the options menu)! What a waste though! I think had the A600 not been released, there should have been a big push to get people to upgrade to AGA with more buttons on joypads/joysticks in 1992 and therefore a doubling down marketing-wise on the A1200 (and an 030/25 SKU ASAP) by C=! Then an AGA version of both games could have been as good as the PC! I can only surmise that no one at C= HQ valued the A1200 or AGA and were expecting the PC to swoop in and steal their breakfast! That's why they paused Amiga R&D and started building PCs themselves! Fools!

For 1992, Commodore wasted 1 million production run on A600 and caused mortal financial wound.

Ali ordered A1200 design on Feb 1992 and it was completed around May 1992.

During 1991, Jeff Franks argued for low-end ECS Amigas with mid-to-high PCs product stack.

Blame Jeff Franks from the Commodore PC division. Bill Sydnes backed Jeff Franks' argument.

Commodore - the Final Years book reveals the main instigator for the wreaking Commodore-Amiga group. The focus is on Jeff Franks.

Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 03:40 AM.

_________________
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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: During 1991, Jeff Franks argued for low-end ECS Amigas with mid-to-high PCs product stack.

Fun fact:
You will find a lot of people here complaining about C= killing the A500 when it still sold well.
The A600 was just a LowCost A500 (for the management) so everything should have been fine but it wasn't.

----

And before people start complaining, The A600 was a bad product because it lacked A500 compatibility and didn't really cut the price for an entry level Amiga.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 21-Nov-2024 at 08:55 AM.

@OneTimer1

Didn't _all_ ECS system lack A500 compatibility?

(for a certain erroneous definition of "compatibility")

Last edited by kolla on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:47 AM.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: For 1992, Commodore wasted 1 million production run on A600 and caused mortal financial wound.

Two things wrong with that supposition:-
1. Commodore sold all of those A600s.
2. The A1200 was based on the A600.

The A600 wasn't a bad design. The problem was that fans were expecting a more advanced Amiga, not a repackaging of the A500. Had the A1200 been designed at the same time as the A600 or in place of it, it would have been fine. But the AGA chipset didn't exist. That's why they had to make another ECS machine.

The problem was the AGA chipset. It should have been finished at least 6 months earlier, but the engineers were still pushing for AAA and not putting enough into AGA. They also wanted to put more features into AGA instead of just releasing the first iteration - not understanding the urgency to get it out ASAP.

Quote:

Ali ordered A1200 design on Feb 1992 and it was completed around May 1992.

Yes, but don't forget that the A1200 was based on the A600, so much of the groundwork for it had already been done.

Quote:

During 1991, Jeff Franks argued for low-end ECS Amigas with mid-to-high PCs product stack.

They say hindsight is always 20/20. Not so easy to see the future.

During 1991 the A500 was selling well. In fiscal year 1991 (to June) they sold 38% more Amigas than in the 1990. In 1992 they sold 17% more than in 1991. In 1991 there was no apparent reason to believe the A500 wouldn't continue to be a good seller - unless you looked at what PCs were doing. But 1991 was a bad year for PCs. Someone who wasn't aware of the change in sentiment could be forgiven for thinking that ECS Amigas would continue to be good sellers, while low-end PCs wouldn't.

Quote:

Blame Jeff Franks from the Commodore PC division. Bill Sydnes backed Jeff Franks' argument.

Here's the truth (from financial report in 1994):-

"In fiscal 1991 [PC] unit sales declined 3% but revenues increased 14% due to a shift to high-end products. Due to low profitability the Company decided to discontinue the sale of MS-DOS PCs and licensed the brand name for PC sales in Europe to another supplier."

"The Amiga product line accounted for... 63% [of net sales] in fiscal 1992 and 56% in fiscal 1991. MS-DOS PC compatible products accounted for... 24% in fiscal 1992 and 28% in fiscal 1991."

Compared to the PC, the Amiga was primarily a low-end machine (sales of the A2000 and loss-making A3000 were low enough to be ignored). As the figures show, the 'low-end' Amiga was beating the 'low-end' PC in sales and revenue. Therefore it made perfect sense to drop low-end PCs and concentrate on the Amiga.

The only problem with this analysis is it ignores what was happening on the ground. Like it or not, the Amiga was mostly a games machine. But the latest games were coming out on the PC because it had 90% market share and its gaming specs were getting better. To counter this the Amiga needed a new chipset - AGA - with matching 32-bit CPU. That would have kept it ahead of the 'low-end' 386SX machines that consumers were buying in 1991. But the engineers were fixated on making a high-end chipset, as well as trying to enter the Unix market with the A3000.

To be fair though, Commodore didn't completely ignore the need for a better 'low-end' Amiga. Problem is they weren't thinking of the actual low end, ie. the A500. Instead they played around with ideas for a slimline desktop machine with ECS or AA, 020/030 CPU, 3.5" hard drive and 2 slots. The idea was that it would sell for under US$1000. Only they couldn't make it for that. Furthermore they didn't have the AA chipset when they needed it (mid 1991). This is totally on the engineers who didn't want to 'dumb down' their PC killing AAA design.

So Gould announces in an interview that a new generation of Amigas is coming, but the engineers don't have anything. We would have been happy with a slimline desktop with no slots (except CPU/RAM expansion) EC020 or 030 CPU and partial AGA chipset in late 1991. Then it could have been moved into the A500 replacement (A600/A1200) in early 1992 to capture the low end. But instead we got... nothing. The result was a big exodus to PCs (which would happen anyway, but not so much).

The real waste was the A3000 and CDTV. Both were in some ways too ambitious while not being enough in others. What the Amiga really needed was an answer to VGA. 256 colors in low-res, and flicker free 640x480 without sucking up all the ChipRAM bandwidth was what it needed - and perhaps chunky mode to make those PC ports easier. 8 bitplanes would permit more dual-playfield colors and a better HAM mode, and the extra bandwidth could enable bigger sprites. A faster CPU was needed to match or better the '32-bit' 386SX CPUs in low-end PCs. So long as it was cheap (not like the over-engineered A3000).

All of this was on the engineers. They were responsible for not producing what was needed - a better low-end Amiga. Jeff Frank was right about that. ECS was only because they didn't have AGA so it wasn't an option.

Last edited by bhabbott on 21-Nov-2024 at 10:34 AM.

@kolla

True, there's an argument that ECS had no place in wedge form factor low-end Amigas! The benefits were limited to productivity programs! The A600 should never have been a thing and the A1200 introduction should have begun the process of phasing out OCS/ECS and implementing a new multi button joypad/joystick controller standard! OCS/ECS should have been gone by 1993/94!

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

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @kolla True, there's an argument that ECS had no place in wedge form factor low-end Amigas!

So no A500+ either then, and no more than 512kB of chipram.

Quote:

The benefits were limited to productivity programs!

Yes, and who needs that - games just magically roll out on their own from somewhere...

Quote:

The A600 should never have been a thing

I'm glad it is a thing.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@OneTimer1

Fun Fact via Commodore - The Final Years,

A600 was designed to kill GVP. Mehdi Ali hates GVP.

Quote:

From Commodore - The Final Years, Attacking GVP Commodore had attempted to deny technical support to Great Valley Products (GVP) the prior year at Mehdi Ali’s request. Within a month, Ali was forced to reverse his decision, but GVP had continued growing since then and surpassed Commodore in 1992. “I wasn't anymore at Commodore and GVP is, let's say, doing all the profitable part of the Amiga. We were at about thirty five million dollars per year eventually, which wasn't that big compared to the size that Commodore was,� says Gerard Bucas. “But believe it or not, that is still more than Commodore’s peripheral sales.� One of GVP’s most profitable and popular peripherals relied on the Amiga 500 and 2000’s CPU expansion capabilities. “It's all made possible because the A500 and the A2000 had the CPU expansion slot,� explains Bucas. “That implies that you can literally disable the CPU on the motherboard and plug in another board. Now it's as if you have a much faster motherboard, which was totally an incredible architecture in the PC world.� In 1992, GVP released a CPU accelerator called the A530 Turbo. Amazingly, it boosted the A500’s 7 MHz speed up to 40 MHz using a Motorola 68EC030 processor. “In A500 we had a box that you plug in the side slot because it also had the CPU expansion board,� says Bucas. “Bottom line, that's why GVP could do all those CPU accelerator products which were super successful. We made tonnes and tonnes of money on those.� Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes continued looking for ways to hurt GVP’s dominance of the Amiga peripherals aftermarket. “Basically a number of people at Commodore felt that GVP was growing too large,� recalls Bucas. “So finally Commodore management decided that, ‘Listen, on the so called A300 (which eventually was A600), we're going to make no expandability. We're going to screw GVP.’ That was the mantra inside. ‘We want to make sure they can make no money on this.’�

Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 08:43 PM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
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@BigD

ECS/AGA's Productivity Mode requires higher-cost multi-sync monitors. It has a similar mistake to Atari ST's high-resolution mode.

PC VGA has a double scan feature for its low-resolution modes e.g. mode 13H, allowing a simpler 31 kHz VGA monitor design. IBM and VGA monitor clones have superior experience in mass-producing monitors in multiple millions.

PC VGA has a register for setting how many lines for each scan line. PC VGA can output 15.xxx kHz.


I prefer AA500+ with an internal 32-bit local CPU and single external working Zorro II edge connectors. A single-working Zorro II enables common economies of scale for the Zorro II/III cards market. Only wedge Amigas has a million production-run economies of scale.

Mehdi Ali attacks on GVP is petty. The focus should be on making the Amiga desktop ecosystem with a strong 3rd party bandwagon.

Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:24 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 08:58 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 08:56 PM.

_________________
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Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
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@bhabbott

Quote:

Here's the truth (from financial report in 1994):- "In fiscal 1991 [PC] unit sales declined 3% but revenues increased 14% due to a shift to high-end products. Due to low profitability the Company decided to discontinue the sale of MS-DOS PCs and licensed the brand name for PC sales in Europe to another supplier."

What you don't get is Commodore branded PCs slots between A1200 and A4000/030's $1500 USD.


https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php
1993 PC era PCs in the UK market

Commodore DT486dx-25 has £760

£700 is roughly $1500 AUD or $1000 USD.

Using mass-produced CD32 PCB design as the base, Commodore-Canada/Amitech partnership tried to improve the situation with A2200-2 with 40 Mhz 68030 vs Commodore-Germany's A4000/030's $1500 USD range. Commodore-Canada/Amitech initiative was too late. 65,000 CD32 was allocated for Commodore-Canada/Amitech's A2200-1 and A2200-2 models and these CD32 PCBs were locked up in the Philippines warehouse.

Like many others in my budget range, Commodore pushed Commodore-branded PCs.

For the UK market, A4000/030 @ 25Mhz wasn't performance vs cost competitive.


Am386-40 is roughly equivalent to i486SX-20.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Nov-2024 at 03:46 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:31 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:27 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:09 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Nov-2024 at 09:06 PM.

_________________
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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

Agreed, great and compatibile resolutions since ECS have been wasted since no VGA connectors was offered

_________________
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@bhabbott

While A1200 looks like full sized A1200 thats good and clean design.
Beside SMD, PCMCIA and IDE there is very little similarities to say A1200
was based on A300.

A600 was based on A500 plus just cheaper, thus original name A300
A500 Plus was based on A2000 ECS, just cheaper, and replaced A500 with no marks at one point causing havok since WB 2.0 and KS 2.0 introduced some incompatibilities.

A4000 030 was so costly there was no actual mid Amiga computer, A3000 and A4000-030 and even A2000ECS were overpriced that you could in 93,94 get way better PC.

@koilla

While 1MB chip (2MB adressable) of A300 and A500 plus and A2000 ECS was something in practice, it could be easily skipped for A1200 with 2MB Chip and at least 512K FAST.

Last edited by vox on 21-Nov-2024 at 11:07 PM.
Last edited by vox on 21-Nov-2024 at 11:05 PM.
Last edited by vox on 21-Nov-2024 at 11:04 PM.

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Quote:

Hammer wrote: @OneTimer1 Fun Fact via Commodore - The Final Years, A600 was designed to kill GVP. Mehdi Ali hates GVP. Quote: Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes continued looking for ways to hurt GVP’s dominance of the Amiga peripherals aftermarket. “Basically a number of people at Commodore felt that GVP was growing too large,� recalls Bucas. “So finally Commodore management decided

I don't believe this, the best way to kill GVP would have been an early A1200 or A4000 instead of an A600.
The A600 don't stop people buying Accelerators for their bare A500, a faster A1200 might have done this.

@OneTimer1

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I don't believe this, the best way to kill GVP would have been an early A1200 or A4000 instead of an A600. The A600 don't stop people buying Accelerators for their bare A500, a faster A1200 might have done this.

GVP welcomed the A1200's internal local CPU edge connector, but the A1200's market size is small.

From Commodore - The Final Years
Quote:

On June 11, Ali ordered everyone in the CATS department to cease communications with GVP. The memo sent to employees read, “Effective Immediately, no-one in Developer Support is to communicate with any employees of Great Valley Products (GVP). This policy has been set by Mehdi Ali, our President. … Please be advised that violations of this policy will result in termination.� Ali also discouraged his employees from socializing with GVP employees after hours. (large skip) A1200 Origins ... The AA600 would also have the same ports as the A600, including a standard RS-232 serial port and a Centronics parallel port. Unlike the Amiga 500, neither the A600 nor the AA600 would include a Zorro II bus. This once more excluded the AA600 from the Amiga 500 ecosystem of peripherals, leaving a big hole for A500 users. The AA600 would include a 32-bit CPU/RAM expansion slot, a feature that made Gerard Bucas of GVP happy. “Expendability was back,� he says.

In terms of standard 256 color gaming in Q4 1992 and without credible RTG, the A500 is a dead end. It's nearly useless to invest in fat CPU accelerators with just OCS/ECS dead end.

A600 is a sales flop, and a small 020/030 CPU accelerator wouldn't solve the standard 256-color problem.

A500 scaled to 040-28 or 040-33 CPU accelerator during 1992.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Nov-2024 at 04:34 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Nov-2024 at 04:31 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Nov-2024 at 04:09 AM.

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@vox

From Commodore - The Final Years

Quote:

A1200 Origins Mehdi Ali had received criticism from Commodore engineers over the years, but that’s not to say that everything he did was wrong. He was perhaps more astute than his charge Bill Sydnes when it came to product selection. Ali knew how vital the low-end Amiga computers were to the survival of Commodore. By 1992, the major video game developers were programming primarily VGA games and not bothering to develop ports of those games for the sub-VGA Amiga. This was because the developers could not easily reuse the same artwork in the Amiga version and would have to recreate each piece of art for the Amiga. By using the AA chipset in a low-end Amiga it would be much easier to port those VGA games. In February 1992, Ali told Sydnes he wanted a “full court press� to produce an A500 class machine using the upcoming AA chipset by September 1992. All this even before the AA chipset was done beta testing and months before the A600 launch in May. On February 26, Bill Sydnes asked his subordinate Jeff Frank how he could meet the aggressive September schedule. To expedite the project development time, Frank proposed building the new system starting with the A600 design, with modifications to the custom gate array chips to accommodate the AA chipset.

When a direct order is given, it was done.

Mehdi Ali could have issued a direct order for the AA500 design in February 1991.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Nov-2024 at 04:29 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