@Hypex

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Hypex wrote: @bhabbott Quote: HD floppy was planned for Paula but didn't make the cut. No big loss IMO. Should have been there already. But it needed two changes. First was to change from Shugart bus, to PC floppy bus, which is trivial since PC floppies had taken over and would be cheaper to source. The second was Paula and the CIAs could work at double speed. Both were needed really so Commodore could simply drop a standard floppy in without needing to hack it. Quote: Not sure about 8 channels. That would require significant changes that could be tricky to get right. They couldn't just add another 4 DACs because they wouldn't fit on the chip, so they would have to go for some kind of multiplexing or combining signals in the digital domain. I am not aware of anything being attempted in this department. Again, not a big deal. 4 channel MODs were the standard, and a faster CPU could mix in another couple of channels with low overhead. The extra ChipRAM in AGA meant that larger samples could often be used to get around the 4 channel limitation. That raises a good point about the DACs. The expectation is not only double channels but double width at 16 bits as well and dynamic balancing would be nice. However, there is the digital side of Paula and then the analogue side. Lots of people like the "Paula crunch" sound which was a side effect of PCM implementation. Each channel needs an independent period and volume. A possible extension would be to double channels, similar to the audio attach feature of one channel modifying another, where each channel has a twin which shares same period and volume but different samples. This would allow more static drum tracks that don't need melody but restrict instruments needing melody. Another possibility is to reduce hardware to a stereo DAC or just one DAC per speaker, then increase channels by doing all mixing in digital, and finally sending it to DAC. Quote: My preference would be for an OPL3 synth chip so PC music could be easily ported. They were planning a DSP so I suppose a synth chip isn't far off. But the original PCM design was obviously for simplification. Where as almost everyone else was putting in complex synths and samples were a side effect or side feature if supported, the Amiga design simplified all this by just offering straight PCM. It was obviously a best type of compromise, as it lacked all the complex synth features and multiple channels, but offered real sounds to get the job done. With only limited AM and FM options rarely used. And at the end of the day a real sound offered the most with least complexity it looks.

All of this was already addressed on my last series of articles.

For the remaining discussions I've already shared the links to the proper packed/chunky series & Akiko articles.

And yes: the Blitter was and would have been still important. It was THE most important element in all Amiga architecture. It "only" needed a proper evolution... with proper vision (which Commodore's engineers lacked).

@cdimauro

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Amiga interleaved bitmaps are homogenous from a line perspective, but they are still far from being efficient, compared to the packed VGA formats.

Just a bit more pixel linear than VGA mode X.

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As I've said, my idea isn't complicated: it's the most simple (and effective and efficient) way to introduce packed graphics on a system which is completely planar.

Most of the complexity would be on the software side where blocks of pixels wouldn't be a straight linear across. Similar to how VGA X isn't linear either. But unlike VGA, Amiga planar lacks tricks to write parallel pixels in planes, so it cannot be made use of as a feature unless some planar parallelism is implemented along with it.

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There are only three simple things to be changed.

In essence, your "chunky changer" makes use of BLTxDAT, which is also how I thought to go about it. Given BLTxDAT is originally 16-bit it could serve to provide a 16 bit chunky mode, such as on AGA with more bandwidth, with possible expansion to 24 or 32 bit.

The [cough cough] Falcon [AGA beater] had a 16 bit chunky mode.

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I don't know who was that guy, but being honest I don't even care, because he has written a big load of b@alls.

Lol. It was a rather difficult time for the Amiga. Perhaps some attempt to save face.

But, we did see interesting developments, like The Alien producing Alien F1. Which in conjunction with 68020 bitfields used bitplanar optimised texture mapping. Finally produced as VirtualGP.

VirtualGP and Virtual Karting were the standouts. It was as if they said, "Hey. Texture mapping is already difficult on planar and those poor man Doom clones are slow. Lets produce a 3d texture mapped racing game that needs to run fast!"

The speed of Karting was impressive on standard A1200 and flew with RAM. But it had that copper chunky look with dithering. I think VirtualGP won that round CLI petrol. Classic.

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In fact, I've mathematically proved on my articles that packed graphics is almost always better (takes less space. Takes less bandwidth. It's easier to handle) compared to the planar graphics.

Even without the maths, once you reach full capacity of 8-bits, it's obvious that from that point on packed is the practical way to go

What I don't under stand is formats like IFF DEEP were designed with chunky in mind, or DEEP RGB pixel bytes, but Commodore had planned to extend the planes even further to 16 deep planes.

Above 8 bits it doesn't make sense. There's only space for 8, where were they going to get the space? And that's not the worst of it.

Last edited by Hypex on 29-Nov-2024 at 10:18 AM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Amiga interleaved bitmaps are homogenous from a line perspective, but they are still far from being efficient, compared to the packed VGA formats. Just a bit more pixel linear than VGA mode X.

I would say much, much better: I don't like VGA's chained mode. It's too much twisted, if you want to work at the single (random) pixel level.
Quote:

Quote: As I've said, my idea isn't complicated: it's the most simple (and effective and efficient) way to introduce packed graphics on a system which is completely planar. Most of the complexity would be on the software side where blocks of pixels wouldn't be a straight linear across. Similar to how VGA X isn't linear either.

No. With my idea the software accesses the framebuffer as usual AKA exactly how it happens with PCs, Macs, etc., because its format is the usual one (rows with a sequential list of bytes = pixels).
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But unlike VGA, Amiga planar lacks tricks to write parallel pixels in planes, so it cannot be made use of as a feature unless some planar parallelism is implemented along with it.

Right, but that's because the VGA split the memory access in banks = bitplanes which stay each on a proper set of independent memory chips.

Something like that could have been achieved with the Amiga as well, by enlarging the data bus connected to the chipset. It would have been even much better than the EGA/VGA.
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Quote: There are only three simple things to be changed. In essence, your "chunky changer" makes use of BLTxDAT, which is also how I thought to go about it. Given BLTxDAT is originally 16-bit it could serve to provide a 16 bit chunky mode, such as on AGA with more bandwidth, with possible expansion to 24 or 32 bit.

That's natural, because I see them only like a sequence of bytes that you can organize & display how you like.

My idea is scalable both with the data buse size and pixels' bit depth.
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The [cough cough] Falcon [AGA beater] had a 16 bit chunky mode.

Yes, but it was slot: a 68030 with a castrated 16 bit bus to save on the motherboard costs.
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Quote: I don't know who was that guy, but being honest I don't even care, because he has written a big load of b@alls. Lol. It was a rather difficult time for the Amiga. Perhaps some attempt to save face.

Absolutely. And at the time there was much more and worse Amiga Talibans.
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But, we did see interesting developments, like The Alien producing Alien F1. Which in conjunction with 68020 bitfields used bitplanar optimised texture mapping. Finally produced as VirtualGP. VirtualGP and Virtual Karting were the standouts. It was as if they said, "Hey. Texture mapping is already difficult on planar and those poor man Doom clones are slow. Lets produce a 3d texture mapped racing game that needs to run fast!" The speed of Karting was impressive on standard A1200 and flew with RAM. But it had that copper chunky look with dithering. I think VirtualGP won that round CLI petrol. Classic.

It's one of the finest piece of software that was developed for the Amiga. Kudos.
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Quote: In fact, I've mathematically proved on my articles that packed graphics is almost always better (takes less space. Takes less bandwidth. It's easier to handle) compared to the planar graphics. Even without the maths, once you reach full capacity of 8-bits, it's obvious that from that point on packed is the practical way to go

Indeed, but packed graphics was the best solution even when the pixels' depth was much less.
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What I don't under stand is formats like IFF DEEP were designed with chunky in mind, or DEEP RGB pixel bytes, but Commodore had planned to extend the planes even further to 16 deep planes. Above 8 bits it doesn't make sense. There's only space for 8, where were they going to get the space? And that's not the worst of it.

It wasn't Commodore: it was Commodore's "smart" engineers.

"Great" vision, that they had...

@Hypex

Commodore's problem is administration.

AAA can scale from a single chipset (32-bit) with FP DRAM to a dual chipset (64-bit) with fast VRAM.

AAA was running late since Commodore HR was distracted with non-Amiga graphics chipset R&D.

From Commodore - The Final Years,
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Then, after Welland left, the next generation chipset plans sat in limbo until around June 1988, when Hedley Davis began discussing them again with other engineers. “Occasionally we’d have meetings and we’d hash out all the details between the systems people and software people and chip designers,� says Dave Haynie. On June 6, Hedley Davis revealed his plan to Henri Rubin. Davis wanted a complete redesign of the Amiga chipset with full backward compatibility and compatibility with the Motorola chip family. He wanted a team of four or five engineers to design the specification for the chipset. His plan first called for a full conversion of the existing chipset to CMOS, and then to extend the chipset to the higher end architecture. Davis also wanted one of the original Amiga engineers involved. Rubin suggested RJ Mical, whom he had developed a friendly working relationship with, however Davis felt Mical would be inappropriate and instead favored either Jim Mackraz or Dale Luck. In June 1988, James Redfield began the detailed AAA architecture development, with a new engineer named Bob Schmid joining his efforts in August. They formed a plan to improve the video (Denise), sound (Paula), and blitter (Agnus) chips for the Amiga, which they called the AAA chipset.

A few Commodore engineers established motivation to start AAA R&D in June 1988 which is already behind when compared to SVGA clones' R&D pace e.g. Tseng Labs.

When compared to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (ex-AMD), Henri Rubin hasn't designed a microprocessor.

When compared to Sony Playstation's Ken Kutaragi (audio DSP for SNES), Henri Rubin hasn't designed a DSP.

When compared to NVIDIA CTO Curtis Priem (ex-SUN GX 3D accelerator, ex-IBM PGA), Henri Rubin hasn't designed 3D workstation accelerator or IBM PGA (1984, 256 colors with 4096 palette).

Original Amiga engineers in 3DO are the closest to NVIDIA CTO Curtis Priem.

Commodore's C56 remaining 8bit CPU 65xx designer wasn't in a leadership role and wasn't committed to the Amiga.

Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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AAA Specs Before the engineers could begin work on the AAA chipset, the team had to clearly define the specification. Not only did the chips have to match VGA standards, they had to have the ability to exceed them.

IBM already spec'ed VRAM-enabled 2D accelerated 8514 design in 1987 which served as the basis for many SVGA clones (e.g. ATi Mach8, ET4000W32 and 'etc') and IBM's own XGA (1990).

Windows 2.x already had RTG features in 1987 with VGA and 8514 contributed to the design.

IBM established a lightweight firmware-level API standard for 2D acceleration with 8514 in 1987. SVGA clones drive IBM display standard cost reduction.


Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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It was hoped the chipset could be used in projects for 4-5 years after it was eventually released in 1990. Therefore, the specs had to be ambitious. The original Amiga team continued consulting as the specs developed. “Dale [Luck] was consulting on the software,� says Dave Haynie. “Jay [Miner] and a couple of other guys were doing chip consulting.� Commodore’s James Redfield designed the spec document, with help from a recent hire named Bob Schmid who performed technical studies on the project. By February 1989, Redfield had his spec completed for the four different chips that would comprise the AAA chipset.

AAA specs were completed in February 1989.

Meanwhile, the ET4000 SVGA controller began shipping in the fourth quarter of 1989. ET3000AX was shipped in Dec 1987.


Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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(Skip) In 1988, Linda was initially specced for 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and a whopping 1024 x 800 resolution (later reduced to 1024 by 768). These resolutions would keep up with the new SVGA standard. So far the plan sounded good. Like the original Amiga chipset, AAA was ostensibly designed to scale so it could be built into a variety of devices ranging from video game consoles, arcade machines, lowend computers, and high-end workstations. However, OCS used only one type of RAM: DRAM. This new chipset would need to work with Video RAM, plus less-expensive 32/64 bit DRAM . (SKIP) Compared to a company like Apple, which had the advantage of many more engineers, yet did far fewer of its own chip designs, the four chips were a big commitment for Commodore at the time. “We had between 25 and 30 engineers at the West Chester facility, and at least that many at the wafer fab in Norristown,� says Bill Gardei.

During 1996 and the critical $5 million cash investment from Sega, NVIDIA had 50 personnel focus on RIVA 128 R&D after Sega dumps NVIDIA's NV2 R&D.



Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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AAA Progress James Redfield would now lead the development of the four AAA chips. If all went according to his schedule, the team would have working silicon by early 1990. Initially there were six other chip designers working on the chipset: Bob Schmid, Jeff Dean, Paul Anderson, Terry Hudson, Glenn Keller, and Victor Andrade. In the past, Commodore had required two engineers per chip; one designing and one simulating and testing the designs. With only seven engineers total, another key chip designer was soon added to the team in early 1989 for the most complicated chip of them all. And as it happened, he was perhaps the most knowledgeable engineer among them. Dr. Ed Hepler was, at the time, an instructor in chip design. “He taught at Villanova (University) back then,� says Dave Haynie. “He doesn’t like to fly, so he was pretty happy to be with a local company.� Hepler taught two graduate courses at the university: Advanced Computer Architecture and Introduction to VLSI Design. However, he longed to put his skills to work in actual silicon and began contacting Commodore. (skip) “There was a guy there named Jim Redfield who was the lead of the AAA project at the time, and he gave me the responsibility to do the architecture and figure out how to build the Andrea chip,� says Hepler. “Andrea was the address generator but with quite a few other features to it. So it was sort of the controller for AAA.� Redfield wanted working silicon ready in 12 to 18 months from the time he hired Hepler, which would put the finish date somewhere in the first half of 1990. The original Amiga chips were 5 micron NMOS, while the new Amiga chips would be 1.25 micron CMOS. With Commodore already having problems producing working 2 micron CMOS chips for the C65 computer, it would be a daunting task with such a small team. The chips would have to remain backward compatible with the previous Amiga chipset in order to continue supporting the existing library of Amiga titles. The most important person on the team for this aspect was Glenn Keller, due to his experience on the Original Chip Set. “I worked on three chips,� says Keller. “I redid some of the blitter stuff, I redid some of the video stuff.� (Skip) As the engineers would discover in the months ahead, the ambitious schedule was not rooted in reality.

C65 chipset design and fabrication distraction.


Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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Although Victor Andrade was supposed to have been working on AAA all year, he had instead been working on the 4510 chipset until the middle of October 1989, at which time he began on AAA. By then it was clear they could not meet the early 1990 schedule for working silicon. With only two engineers per chip (and not dedicated ones at that) it would be impossible to meet the schedule. “There is usually one designer, one circuit designer, and one layout person per chip and that's sort of how things went,� says Hepler. “If you look at the way companies build chips these days, there are far more people working on a chip than back then.� Commodore could have made a comparatively minor R&D investment by hiring three new chip engineers, which would cost the company in the neighborhood of $200,000 per year to deliver the chips on time. For some reason, that never happened.

C65's 4510 chipset design distraction instead of working on AAA.

Not enough engineers working on AAA. Failure with Commodore HR management.

Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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Worse yet, Commodore’s secret weapon, CSG (previously known as MOS Technology), was slowly falling behind the times. In July 1989, Ted Lenthe proposed to Henri Rubin an investment in CSG which would allow production of 1 micron chips for AAA, rather than the 2 micron CSG was currently capable of producing. He also wanted to move from 5� to 6� silicon wafers, which produced a superior economy of scale. The investment in CSG would cost an estimated $15 million. Rubin tabled the proposal for now but agreed to review it later when they were closer to actually producing AAA chips.

C65 chipset design and fabrication distraction.

Delayed 1-micron CSG fabrication investments for AAA would also impact AA.

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Pandora By late 1989, the 32-bit AAA project was getting bogged down. According to Dave Haynie, several factors allowed the project to slip. “The first reason was that the chip group didn’t get enough resources so they couldn’t advance the chip technology fast enough,� he says. “It really was a matter of not reinvesting enough money in the technology. We had plenty of hard work, which is why we kept up as well as we did.� The second reason was that Commodore was taking on too many projects. James Redfield complained that his staff, especially Victor Andrade, was spending too much time cleaning up problems in the 4510 and ECS Agnus chips. Andrea development was essentially suspended until those other two chipsets were in production. While they waited for AAA, the engineers realized it would be an especially long time before the low-end Amigas would get a new chipset. On September 13, 1989, George Robbins wrote a memo proposing a new chipset somewhere between ECS and AAA capabilities. (Skip) The Amiga engineers were clearly taken aback by the impressive specs of Bill Gardei’s C65 chipset.

C65's 4510 and dead-end ECS design distractions instead of working on AAA.

AA was plan b and to catch up with C65's 256 colors.

Continuing Commodore - The Final Years,
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A minor revision of Agnus would appear in the Pandora chipset to extend the amount of memory it could address. The engineers pulled in Bob Raible, an engineer form the LSI group, to define a chipset spec for an improved version of the display chip that would be a little sister to AAA’s Linda, called Lisa.

Alice has a minor modification from Agnus.


32bit config AAA with FP DRAM for low-end Amiga 500-like machine.

Last edited by Hammer on 01-Dec-2024 at 12:20 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 30-Nov-2024 at 12:47 AM.

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@cdimauro

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cdimauro wrote: @Hypex Quote: Hypex wrote: @bhabbott [quote]HD floppy was planned for Paula but didn't make the cut. No big loss IMO. Should have been there already.

Since when?

Some say we should always incorporate the latest technology even if it confuses customers and alienates the existing user base. I mean, who cares about them, they're just holding us back from selling more computers! Others. like me, were happy with the existing standard and saw no pressing need to change it. Perhaps you disagree. In that case...

Toshiba invented the 2.88MB format in 1987 and Mitsumi was making drives in 1989. IBM then incorporated it in their PS/2 line and laptops. So we should have had that too, right? Never mind that 2.88MB floppies cost 5 times more than DD, or that few other machines used them (Sun and Next were two that did).

There's only one 'good' reason to pine for 1.44 MB - because PCs had them - ie. PC envy. But many PCs in the early 90's were still only provided with a 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy drive, since that was the (AT) standard at the time. So we should have had that instead, right?

Within a few short years the floppy drive became redundant anyway, as CD-ROM took over. At least Amiga users were spared the pain of having 5 different floppy formats.

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But it needed two changes. First was to change from Shugart bus, to PC floppy bus

Which 'PC floppy bus' would that be, the 34 pin one defined in the Shugart standard, or the 40 pin one IBM used their PS/2's, or the 28 pin one used in most laptops and 3" drives (also used in some Amiga external drives)?

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PC floppies had taken over and would be cheaper to source.

When you are buying millions you can afford to have a variant produced for you - which is what Commodore did with the A1011 external floppy drive (it has the motor latch and drive ID circuit built into the drive). It wasn't until a few years later that PC floppy drive manufacturers pared their designs down to the bare minimum to reduce costs, by removing configuration switches and hardwiring them for PC-AT operation. However most of those drives can easily be modified - often just with a single jumper wire or by bridging pads - for the Amiga and other devices that use standard DD drives.

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The second was Paula and the CIAs could work at double speed. Both were needed really so Commodore could simply drop a standard floppy in without needing to hack it.

The CIA chips don't need to work at double speed to handle HD drives. only Paula does.

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That raises a good point about the DACs. The expectation is not only double channels but double width at 16 bits as well

And so the bloat begins. Why did we need 16-bit audio in 1992, to rip songs from CD and play them off your hard drive? To produce professional studio quality audio with your dirt cheap A1200? Good luck with that. You'll need 5 orders of magnitude lower noise and distortion to achieve the expected sound quality, along with a 44 kHz sample rate and filters to match.

No, most of us were not expecting 16-bit - just more channels so we could have both sound effects and music at the same time. But the main reason for not getting that was actually lack of memory and CPU cycles, which the AGA machines addressed. Some did pine for 16 bits though, and the typical reason was once again PC envy.

The Sound Blaster 16 was released in July 1992, a few months before the A1200. It featured 16-bit stereo sample playback at up to 44 kHz, and an OPL3 synth chip having 18 voices with selectable output channels (hard left, center, hard right). The dynamic range of the CT-1750 card has been measured at 74.5 dB, which is effectively 13 bits. However games continued to use 8-bit samples because most existing sound cards were 8-bit and that was good enough.

Of course this didn't stop Amiga users from getting PC envy. "Oh no, PCs now have 16-bit sound while we're stuck with only 8 bits!" - they wailed. "This is why the music in PC games is so much better!" But they were wrong. Music was produced with the OPL chip, not samples. If the Amiga had an OPL3 chip added to its 4 channels of independent sampled sounds it would beat the pants off a Sound Blaster.

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and dynamic balancing would be nice.

Lots of things would be 'nice'. But look at other home computers where some later models had 'nice' things added and you see a familiar trend - they weren't used much. There's little incentive to support a 'nice' feature when only a tiny proportion of users have it.

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A possible extension would be to double channels, similar to the audio attach feature of one channel modifying another, where each channel has a twin which shares same period and volume but different samples. This would allow more static drum tracks that don't need melody but restrict instruments needing melody. Another possibility is to reduce hardware to a stereo DAC or just one DAC per speaker, then increase channels by doing all mixing in digital, and finally sending it to DAC.

Digital is probably the only practical way to do it. Unfortunately that means it probably wouldn't have quite the same sound, but that's progress. A similar thing happened the C64 when they switched the SID to CMOS, and to AY music when Yamaha introduced the YM2149. The differences are usually subtle though, and for the most part can be ignored.

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They were planning a DSP so I suppose a synth chip isn't far off.

Later PC sound cards had DSP in them to produce all the synth sounds as well as PCM sound. IOW they were 'software programmable' synthesizers, whereas early chips had dedicated circuitry. That has potential cost advantages for the hardware, but increases the software load. Developing a library of DSP functions to emulate OP3 wouldn't be trivial. Using an actual OP3 chip would dramatically cut down on development time and be more attractive for porting PC games (which, like it or not, was the future of Amiga games).

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And yes: the Blitter was and would have been still important. It was THE most important element in all Amiga architecture. It "only" needed a proper evolution... with proper vision (which Commodore's engineers lacked).

Again, the more important thing IMO was to continue the 'standard'. Amiga developers had spent years getting familiar with the Blitter and other features of the Amiga chipset. They wouldn't be happy having to learn it all over again, so AGA being a mild extension of OCS made it a lot easier for them. For the next iteration Commodore could introduce faster blitting, chunky graphics etc.

But having 4 times the bandwidth alone was a big improvement (60% faster blitting in 16 color hires, fast enough to move 256 color graphics at the same speed as 32 colors on OCS). With 16 color dual playfields and 64 bit wide sprites many of the earlier limitations were addressed. Developers who didn't go crazy trying to max it all out would find their job a lot easier. The only problem was once again the envious Amiga fans who complained about games not using the 'whole' 256 colors, or running apps in 640x480 with 256 colors at 31kHz and wondering why windows didn't move instantaneously (spoiler alert, they didn't on typical PCs of the day either!)

The biggest problem with the Amiga was that the original design was too good. If we only had a garish 16 colors with no blitter or sprites etc,. and PC speaker or basic synth sound, AGA would have seemed much more impressive. But just getting 'more of the same' wasn't so exciting. The answer to this is not to demand exponentially higher specs, but actually make use of the extra you have. AGA might only be an incremental advance, but it provides the freedom to make games that struggle on an A500 without much effort.

Recently somebody showed how with clever programming you could make Street fighter II look better on the A1200 than the PC version. But I checked out a PC screenshot of the same scene and it only had 88 colors. That means AGA could easily match it. No need to push the hardware to the limits when you can get it good enough with much less effort. Just concentrate on making the game enjoyable to play and get it out without trying to push everything to the limit. If you can get eg. twice as many colors as OCS, faster character animation (25 fps is fine for a fighting game) more sound and a few background effects, it's all good!

Last edited by bhabbott on 30-Nov-2024 at 01:50 AM.

@bhabbott

Why you replied / quoted me, when in reality you are writing to Hypex? Anyway, I'll give my feedback as well.

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: @Hypex Should have been there already. Since when? Some say we should always incorporate the latest technology even if it confuses customers and alienates the existing user base.

No, it confuses only Amiga envies which aren't smart enough to understand that better technologies offer more value to end users, and also more choices.

"Confusion" comes only as a childish excuse trying to justify Amiga's lack on technology improvements compared to competition (not only PCs, BTW).

That could be called the "Bruce Abbott's syndrome of smaller technology penis".
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I mean, who cares about them, they're just holding us back from selling more computers! Others. like me, were happy with the existing standard and saw no pressing need to change it. Perhaps you disagree. In that case...

Of course, because it's only YOU and YOUR syndrome.

Other people delighted to have and get more technology progresses.

And do you know why? Because the Amiga already provided a big technology step, compared to what was available at the time, and we liked to continue to have a better hardware with future Amiga models. So, always leading and not trailing.

It's only Amiga-envies like you that don't accept that the Amiga platform was left to its doom by incompetent management AND engineers, letting the competition go ahead and surpass our platform. So, you want to "protect" your beloved platform and always find lame excuses trying to minimize competition progresses and spreading your love for what become obsolete because "it was good enough"... FOR YOU, of course.

With your distorted and ideological propaganda you want to turn the situation the other way around and blame who think differently, by calling them "PC envies".

What a dumb "argument".
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Toshiba invented the 2.88MB format in 1987 and Mitsumi was making drives in 1989. IBM then incorporated it in their PS/2 line and laptops. So we should have had that too, right? Never mind that 2.88MB floppies cost 5 times more than DD, or that few other machines used them (Sun and Next were two that did). There's only one 'good' reason to pine for 1.44 MB - because PCs had them - ie. PC envy.

I reveal you a secret: Macs and other competitors quickly adopted them. Only Amiga was left as it was...
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But many PCs in the early 90's were still only provided with a 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy drive, since that was the (AT) standard at the time. So we should have had that instead, right?

A completely idiotic non-sense which don't even deserve an answer.
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Within a few short years the floppy drive became redundant anyway, as CD-ROM took over.

Sure. Here's Bruce Abbott's crystal ball syndrome...
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At least Amiga users were spared the pain of having 5 different floppy formats.

And here's back Bruce Abbott's Amiga-envy syndrome...

What's not clear to you that Amiga users completely missed any opportunity to CHOSE whatever they want to buy? There was only ONE single product and they were FORCED TO STICK WITH IT!

What's not clear to you that giving technologies progresses to the Amiga users would have allowed them to freely decide what to do based on THEIR (read: NOT YOUR!) needs?

What's the "problem" of having floppy drives able to read DD, HD and EH formatted disk? What's the problem of letting the users decide to buy EH, HD, or DD floppies based on THEIR OWN NEEDS (and pockets)?

What's the problem with that? The answer is simple: the problem is only YOU and your Amiga envy!

I, instead and like many other Amiga users, wanted to have a BETTER Amiga. Amiga offered much more when it was introduced and we wanted to continue having much more compared to the competition.

So, following the Amiga tradition: the one you've rejected, thinking to use a computer like a console with crystallized hardware...
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Quote: That raises a good point about the DACs. The expectation is not only double channels but double width at 16 bits as well And so the bloat begins.

And so Bruce Abbott's Amiga-envy starts again...
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Why did we need 16-bit audio in 1992, to rip songs from CD and play them off your hard drive? To produce professional studio quality audio with your dirt cheap A1200? Good luck with that.

Who cares? Give the users BETTER OPPORTUNITIES! Then it's up to them to decide what THEY want/need to use.

Don't put your Amiga-envy problems on other users: they are NOT Bruce Abbott. Fortunately...
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You'll need 5 orders of magnitude lower noise and distortion to achieve the expected sound quality, along with a 44 kHz sample rate and filters to match.

And? Is it your problem? Let leave the users to decide what's better for THEM and NOT for YOU!
Quote:

No, most of us were not expecting 16-bit - just more channels so we could have both sound effects and music at the same time.

Right. And guess what: we had NOTHING. Thanks to the "great" Commodore engineers...
Quote:

But the main reason for not getting that was actually lack of memory and CPU cycles, which the AGA machines addressed.

That's completely false. Here clearly you've no idea, at all, of how the Amiga chipset worked.

I've already explained and PROVED on my last series of articles that even the very old OCS had required Chip mem / chipset cycles to get up to 14 (yes, read again: FOURTEEN) channels.
Quote:

Some did pine for 16 bits though, and the typical reason was once again PC envy.

See above: not only PCs had it, dear Amiga-envy.
Quote:

The Sound Blaster 16 was released in July 1992, a few months before the A1200. It featured 16-bit stereo sample playback at up to 44 kHz, and an OPL3 synth chip having 18 voices with selectable output channels (hard left, center, hard right). The dynamic range of the CT-1750 card has been measured at 74.5 dB, which is effectively 13 bits. However games continued to use 8-bit samples because most existing sound cards were 8-bit and that was good enough. Of course this didn't stop Amiga users from getting PC envy. "Oh no, PCs now have 16-bit sound while we're stuck with only 8 bits!" - they wailed. "This is why the music in PC games is so much better!" But they were wrong. Music was produced with the OPL chip, not samples.

And here again your usual Amiga-envy.

Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_UltraSound

and this: http://www.gravisultrasound.com/files/documentation/GLIST.TXT

Amiga-envy!
Quote:

Quote: And yes: the Blitter was and would have been still important. It was THE most important element in all Amiga architecture. It "only" needed a proper evolution... with proper vision (which Commodore's engineers lacked). Again, the more important thing IMO was to continue the 'standard'. Amiga developers had spent years getting familiar with the Blitter and other features of the Amiga chipset. They wouldn't be happy having to learn it all over again,

I reveal you another secret: you don't to completely change the Amiga hardware for advancing it.

Enhancement would have made possible, retaining full compatibility AND very very very similar programmability. As I've fully explained and PROVED on my last series of articles.
Quote:

so AGA being a mild extension of OCS made it a lot easier for them.

AGA was piece of crap created by the "genius" at Commodore.

It was good only because it was affordable for my pockets. I loved my Amiga 1200 and I've enjoyed the AGA as well, but again: because it was cheap to buy.
Quote:

For the next iteration Commodore could introduce faster blitting, chunky graphics etc.

They should have started much before AGA. Concrete enhancements could have been possible already starting with the Amiga 500/2000. Again, read my series.
Quote:

But having 4 times the bandwidth alone was a big improvement (60% faster blitting in 16 color hires, fast enough to move 256 color graphics at the same speed as 32 colors on OCS).

The bandwidth was used ONLY FOR THE DISPLAY! And for NOTHING else!
Quote:

With 16 color dual playfields

Oh, yes: on 1992 was a "great improvement"...
Quote:

and 64 bit wide sprites

LOL. That's the most stupid thing that AGA carried and guess what: you liked it!

This clearly shows that you've never developed a game for the Amiga, otherwise you already know by yourself how much stupid and useless was the idea to have so much large sprites (instead of using the 4 x fetch width to increase the number of colours).
Quote:

many of the earlier limitations were addressed.

Like? You've already made my day with your sense-less and funny ideas, but I'd like to have more fun: please, continue!
Quote:

Developers who didn't go crazy trying to max it all out would find their job a lot easier. The only problem was once again the envious Amiga fans who complained about games not using the 'whole' 256 colors,

Guess what: almost all OTHER COMPETITORS had the chance to use 256 colours since 1986 at least. And very beautiful games were developed using them.

Only Amiga was out of the games due to... rolling drum... the geniuses engineers that worked at Commodore.
Quote:

or running apps in 640x480 with 256 colors at 31kHz and wondering why windows didn't move instantaneously (spoiler alert, they didn't on typical PCs of the day either!)

I reveal you another secret: PC graphic cards quickly got hardware Blitter which greatly helped them.

Guess what: Windows had hardware-accelerated GDI since early.

Last but not really least, PC uses had at least the possibility to CHOSE, buy and use whatever they wanted.
Quote:

The biggest problem with the Amiga was that the original design was too good.

Read: when it was introduced. Then the competition quickly filled the gap.
Quote:

If we only had a garish 16 colors with no blitter or sprites etc,. and PC speaker or basic synth sound,

I reveal you another secret: technology have advanced and... rolling drum... allowed to get MORE features.

Do you know that PC had already 16 colours with the EGA on 1984? And also bitplanes, hardware logic to manipulate the bitplanes, hardware scrolling, hardware horizontal split (two screens), vertical blank interrupt, and much more.

It's obvious that another platform like the Amiga should have provided more, right?

As it should have been obvious as well that new things should appear with the time.

Do you know that the PC had only MDA and CGA at the beginning (1981)? Then EGA and PGA (640x480 in 256 colours). Then MCGA (320x200 colours). And so on.
Same thing for the audio: starting with the speaker (1981), then PCs had the Roland MT-32. Soundblaster. Soundblaster Pro. Gravis Ultrasound. etc. etc.

Do you understand now that the progress have NEVER stopped? It's only the Amiga progress which stopped, dear Amiga-envy.
Quote:

AGA would have seemed much more impressive.

Sure. Competition should have stopped like the Amiga, to show how much good was AGA...

Here's Amiga-envy reaching unbelievable heights...
Quote:

But just getting 'more of the same' wasn't so exciting.

See above: only for Amiga-envies.
Quote:

The answer to this is not to demand exponentially higher specs, but actually make use of the extra you have. AGA might only be an incremental advance, but it provides the freedom to make games that struggle on an A500 without much effort.

As we say in Italy, you discovered the hot water...
Quote:

Recently somebody showed how with clever programming you could make Street fighter II look better on the A1200 than the PC version.

OK, now you show that you're also blind...
Quote:

But I checked out a PC screenshot of the same scene and it only had 88 colors. That means AGA could easily match it.

Sure, sure. Let me see how with the 16 + 15 dual-playfield mode which is the maximum that an A1200 can use for this specific game, to keep a good frame rate.
Quote:

No need to push the hardware to the limits when you can get it good enough with much less effort.

Read: we have what we have, we can't do more, so we're forced to enjoy it. Even if can't compete with other platforms...
Quote:

Just concentrate on making the game enjoyable to play and get it out without trying to push everything to the limit.

Same as above. Amiga-envy.
Quote:

If you can get eg. twice as many colors as OCS, faster character animation (25 fps is fine for a fighting game) more sound and a few background effects, it's all good!

Sure. Whereas other platforms can enjoy better thanks to better conversion.

Bruce, you're living on your parallel Amiga-envy world...

@bhabbott

All my Amigas have retrofitted HD internal floppy drives if big box or external versions if low end.

However, no software was distributed on them and hence some games had less music/levels and basically less features compared to the PC, just because having extra DD floppies in the box costed money!

These issues are similar to the AGA CPU Min.Target Spec needing to be 030/25 with 4/8MB Fast Ram! Similarly, software should have come on HD floppies in the AGA era and CD-Rom should have been adopted after the release of the CD32/CD1200!

Also, a white CD32 like controller should have been included with the A1200 to kickstart the new standard support for multi-button controllers and get rid of 'up for jump' which stuck around for the CD32 because it wasn't phased out for AGA generally across the board!

Last edited by BigD on 30-Nov-2024 at 03:19 PM.

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

@bhabbott

Quote:

Within a few short years the floppy drive became redundant anyway, as CD-ROM took over. At least Amiga users were spared the pain of having 5 different floppy formats.

IBM PS/2 has 3.5-inch FDD. My PC clone in Xmas Q4 1992 followed PS/2's 3.5 inch FDD.

Your argument is flawed when the PC market is large.

According to 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

Low-End PC Graphics Market Share by Standard Type
Estimated Worldwide History and Forecast


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. Mostly IBM PS/2 VGA at this point.
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.


In 1987, VGA sales in the minority, but they still larger than Amiga's annual sales.

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@bhabbott

Quote:

Some say we should always incorporate the latest technology even if it confuses customers and alienates the existing user base. I mean, who cares about them, they're just holding us back from selling more computers! Others. like me, were happy with the existing standard and saw no pressing need to change it. Perhaps you disagree. In that case...

PC's partitioned graphics architecture allowed for asynchronous upgrades from the CPU upgrade. PC desktop owners can join progressive VGA and SVGA upgrades at their own pace.

As a platform, Amiga is treated like a game console.

For modern laptop PCs, the main point of USB4's external PCIe is partly to restore the laptop PC's GPU upgrade capability.

Quote:

@bhabbott, The CIA chips don't need to work at double speed to handle HD drives. only Paula does.

AAA's Mary chip has the full-speed high-density FDD support.

https://www.devili.iki.fi/mirrors/haynie/research/nyx/docs/AAA.pdf
Mary's 11.4 Mbit/s is about 20 times faster than Paula's 0.5 Mbit/s

Mary vs Paula (non-ECS mode)
Sample rate: 64khz vs 29 kHz
Channels: 8 vs 4
Volume bits: 12 vs 6
Sample size: 16 vs 8

Commodore didn't fully focus on AAA R&D.

_________________
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@cdimauro

I'll bite.

Quote:

Right. And guess what: we had NOTHING. Thanks to the "great" Commodore engineers...

WRONG. Blame management's distractions.

Distractions are:
1. Commodore PC clone, Profitability until 1989 and it's downhill from this point. Blame Jeff Frank. Excessive 386 stock when Intel released 486 in 1989.

Jeff Frank's group was applying cost reduction engineering on Commodore Germany's PC clone designs. Commodore Germany sucked on cost reduction. Far East PC clone design teams beat the Germans.

Commodore-Amiga team's B2000 (known as A2000-CR) applied cost reduction on Commodore Germany's A2000 (1986).


2. Coherent Unix clone with AT&T's IP add-ons, what a waste of time. Big Iron 68K Unix workstation vendors have ECC memory support.

For workstation markets, Intel releases ECC memory support with Pentium Pro's chipsets.


3. C65, LSI group pushed C65 at the expense of AAA. Company politics. With C65, the LSI group's management wanted recognition from the executive board for beating the Amiga group in 256 color display.


4. Rubin's Commodore being GVP competitor addon peripheral company.

Fucking read "Commodore -The Final Years" book.

Last edited by Hammer on 01-Dec-2024 at 01:12 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 01-Dec-2024 at 01:09 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 01-Dec-2024 at 01:03 AM.

_________________
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@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro I'll bite. Quote: Right. And guess what: we had NOTHING. Thanks to the "great" Commodore engineers... WRONG. Blame management's distractions.

WRONG. Blame engineers uncapable to understand and evolve the platform as it should have been and without wasting time and resources on ridiculous projects like adding an alien DSP which simply certificates their inability.
Quote:

Distractions are: 1. Commodore PC clone, Profitability until 1989 and it's downhill from this point. Blame Jeff Frank. Excessive 386 stock when Intel released 486 in 1989. Jeff Frank's group was applying cost reduction engineering on Commodore Germany's PC clone designs. Commodore Germany sucked on cost reduction. Far East PC clone design teams beat the Germans. Commodore-Amiga team's B2000 (known as A2000-CR) applied cost reduction on Commodore Germany's A2000 (1986). 2. Coherent Unix clone with AT&T's IP add-ons, what a waste of time. Big Iron 68K Unix workstation vendors have ECC memory support. For workstation markets, Intel releases ECC memory support with Pentium Pro's chipsets. 3. C65, LSI group pushed C65 at the expense of AAA. Company politics. With C65, the LSI group's management wanted recognition from the executive board for beating the Amiga group in 256 color display. 4. Rubin's Commodore being GVP competitor addon peripheral company.

Hammer's PADDING...
Quote:

Fucking read "Commodore -The Final Years" book.

F@cking read my last series of articles: they are in English for YOUR benefit!

@cdimauro

Quote:

@cdimauro WRONG. Blame engineers uncapable to understand and evolve the platform as it should have been and without wasting time

WRONG, CSG is bleeding MOS CPU engineers. Blame management.

AGA was "Plan B" with the B team when management didn't direct full human resource focus on AAA.

Quote:

@cdimauro and resources on ridiculous projects like adding an alien DSP which simply certificates their inability.

For 32-bit math capability, the Commodore-Amiga group is dependent on the AAA group's PA-RISC CPU development. AAA group was moved to Hombre development.

For Plan B's AGA, Dave Haynie's quick fix was AT&T DSP3210 which is designed for IEEE-754 FP32 3D geometry (read AT&T's marketing material). AT&T's audio DSP is the DSP16 product lines.

AGA has the B team.

Quote:

Hammer's PADDING...

You can't handle fucking truth.

Quote:

F@cking read my last series of articles: they are in English for YOUR benefit!

They are useless without factoring in Commodore's management!

_________________
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@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: @cdimauro WRONG. Blame engineers uncapable to understand and evolve the platform as it should have been and without wasting time WRONG, CSG is bleeding MOS CPU engineers. Blame management.

That's a completely different thing.

The "solutions" (!) that Commodore engineers have found to evolve the platform were simply ridiculous and prove their lack of understand of the platform.
Quote:

AGA was "Plan B" with the B team when management didn't direct full human resource focus on AAA.

And look at what they (the engineers) have produced: an HORRIBLE patch over ECS.

As Eggbrecht stated, they were HACKERS and UNPROFESSIONAL.

Which is exactly how they worked and we can see on their "brilliant" (!) solutions.

Again, it was Eggbrecht. NOT me, eh! And you should know who he it was.
Quote:

Quote: @cdimauro and resources on ridiculous projects like adding an alien DSP which simply certificates their inability. For 32-bit math capability,

It wasn't needed AND the DSP was chosen for different purposes.

Source: the documentation that they have produced when they have worked with the DSP. And that you clearly have never read, because you prefer to trust what they said in interviews and in the book, to defend their work.

If those documents are too much technical for you, you can read my first article of the last series that you've written, where I've reported the relevant parts.
Quote:

the Commodore-Amiga group is dependent on the AAA group's PA-RISC CPU development. AAA group was moved to Hombre development.

OK, now you started mixing-up things and go ahead in the future.

As usual, with you. Contextualizing facts on a discussion is an impossible thing for a BOT...
Quote:

For Plan B's AGA, Dave Haynie's quick fix was AT&T DSP3210

Quick fix?!?

They spent several MONTHS (more than a year!!!) working on this crap, which wasn't yet finished!

Again, when do you think it's time to read the documentation on that stuff?!?
Quote:

which is designed for IEEE-754 FP32 3D geometry (read AT&T's marketing material).

Same here. Using this crap for 3D was NOT enough. In all DSP documentation from AT&T it's reported that for 3D they used an ARRAY of DSPs. ARRAY = MANY DSPs for this purpose.

You continue to talk about things that you've no clue. At all!

BTW, 3D was never mentioned as usage on Commodore's documentation. Maybe for very good reasons...
Quote:

AT&T's audio DSP is the DSP16 product lines.

Sure. And 16-bit audio was so difficult for your beloved engineers that... they needed to work on a more complicate solution using an alien and totally incompatible solution which required AD HOC, NEW support from developers.

Great!
Quote:

AGA has the B team.

Yes. It was plan B, like the engineers which remained after the original team left. Maybe they were plan C, looking at what they produced...
Quote:

Quote: Hammer's PADDING... You can't handle fucking truth.

Quote:

Quote: F@cking read my last series of articles: they are in English for YOUR benefit! They are useless without factoring in Commodore's management!

Useless for ignorants which don't understand or don't want to understand, because they are blind fanatics taking as gold what their heroes have said.

Reality is quite different. But you live on your parallel universe...

@cdimauro

"geniuses engineers"

with such sarcastic meant comments you are also a little unfair. Engineers are dependent on management. Unfortunately Commodore never looked at amiga as a central technoloigy for the future but just another platform covering 16bit home computers.

For a long time they produced PCs that were not competitive at price, absorbed developer resources and propably even burnt money.

Somewhere I saw a woman telling from the Commodore days and as I understand it Commodore used PCa in the administration, not amigas. I do not think that Apple used Windows PCs and not their own innovative Macintosh.

then there was the C64, the cash cow of the company and really earning money for a long time. Because of that the failed C65 project that absorbed developer resources and wasted money.

And of course the amiga range where they never really knew what to do with

with every new management also the development plans changed and management changed quiet often at commodore. So I would more blame the management than the engineers there.

Regading AA chipset, it was certainly not the big jump but if delivered earlier in new products it might have bought time to develop AAA.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 01-Dec-2024 at 11:22 AM.
Last edited by OlafS25 on 01-Dec-2024 at 11:21 AM.
Last edited by OlafS25 on 01-Dec-2024 at 11:19 AM.

Quote:

cdimauro ranted: It "only" needed a proper evolution... with proper vision (which Commodore's engineers lacked). It wasn't Commodore: it was Commodore's "smart" engineers. Amiga platform was left to its doom by incompetent management AND engineers, ... And guess what: we had NOTHING. Thanks to the "great" Commodore engineers... Only Amiga was out of the games due to... rolling drum... the geniuses engineers that worked at Commodore. Blame engineers uncapable to understand and evolve the platform as it should have been The "solutions" (!) that Commodore engineers have found to evolve the platform were simply ridiculous And look at what they (the engineers) have produced: an HORRIBLE patch over ECS. And 16-bit audio was so difficult for your beloved engineers that... It was plan B, like the engineers which remained after the original team left.

It was told to you many times how the engineers wanted to improve the Amiga and how they where put down by a constantly changing management that lacked visions for the Amiga.

but despite all the facts presented to you, you keep repeating your false accusations.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 01-Dec-2024 at 01:57 PM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

That's a completely different thing.

Corporate memory is based on people working in the company. A brain drain is not good for any cutting-edge tech company.

Quote:

The "solutions" (!) that Commodore engineers have found to evolve the platform were simply ridiculous and prove their lack of understand of the platform.

CSG's LSI group has biases i.e. C64 was from the LSI group and C65 was from the LSI group. CBM's executive team was absent on clear direction.

Commodore-Amiga Inc is Amiga Inc i.e. the Amiga group. Amiga group created its VLSI group.

From the book, I have shown the name who created AGA's technical specification document.


Quote:

And look at what they (the engineers) have produced: an HORRIBLE patch over ECS. As Eggbrecht stated, they were HACKERS and UNPROFESSIONAL. Which is exactly how they worked and we can see on their "brilliant" (!) solutions.

Again, that's an incomplete narrative. Commodore - The Final Years book has attached names to each mess.

With the backing of Bill Sydnes, Jeff Frank's (from June 1991 and beyond) administration was worse than the former administration. The debacle of 1 million A600 orders was caused by Jeff Frank, Mehdi Ali, and Bill Sydnes, which led to Commodore's bankruptcy.

Mehdi Ali attempted to correct the mistakes made by Jeff Frank and Bill Sydnes with a must-produce A1200 directive in Feb 1992. AGA wasn't beta tested as of Feb 1992 due to frozen status by Bill Sydnes' and Jeff Frank's administration. "More than six months" was wasted by Bill Sydnes/Jeff Frank's administration.


After June 1991,
Jeff Frank is the project manager for A600, and AA600/A1200 and administrator of the Amiga group.

Jeff Porter is the project manager for CD32 and administrator of the multimedia group. Commodore management overrides Jeff Porter's 8MB RAM CD32 spec. Irving Gould is biased toward FMV, hence selecting a 40 Mhz MIPS-X-based SoC with a VCD use case target.

It's in the fucking "Commodore - The Final Years" book. I removed eBook's DRM for ignorants like you.


Facts: PS1's CPU/GTE and GPU are designed externally by LSI and Toshiba.

From the SuperFX project, Argonaut Technologies Limited (ATL) and Argonaut Software Limited (ASL) had a contract with LSI for a potential PS2 design. LSI Logic became a minor investor in Argonaut.




Look in the mirror, hypocrite.

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


I told them that this is as good as it's going to get unless they let us design some hardware to make the SNES better at 3D. Amazingly, even though I had never done any hardware before, they said YES, and gave me a million bucks to make it happen.

—Argonaut founder and Super FX codesigner, Jez San.

Three British major game developers (i.e. Psygnosis, Edios/Core Design, Argonaut) backed Sony Playstation and SNES platforms ahead of the Amiga.


Commodore management is out of touch with the 3D gaming scene.

Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 06:55 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 06:55 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 06:08 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 06:05 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 05:45 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Dec-2024 at 02:37 AM.

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How many units did the C65 sell that made it worth killing the Amiga chipset evolution for I wonder?

_________________

@Mobileconnect

It wouldn't matter since C65's pure 2D hardware is obsolete from low-cost hardware-accelerated 3D texture-mapped 3DO, PS1, and Saturn.

Jeff Porter was promoting C65 to 3rd party US game developers while the Wing Commander demo being shown during CES 1990 was LOL. Wing Commander's 1990 demo made a lasting impression on Jeff Porter. CSG is in LALA land pushing C65.

Nintendo spent $1 million for SNES's RISC-based SuperFX game math chip from Argonaut.

Argonaut has designed 16-bit RISC-based SuperFX beating the clowns from Commodore.

Argonaut established the Argonaut RISC Core (ARC) business.

UK has two major RISC families, which are ARC and ARM. Both ARC and ARM were born from Commodore's MOS/CSG 65xx frozen R&D debacle.

LSI Logic was a minor investor in Argonaut's CPU business.

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_(processor)

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

In November 2023, Synopsys released the RISC-V compatible ARC-V processor IP as an extension of its ARC product line.

RISC-V has displaced RISC-based MIPS ISA.

In Dec 2022, MIPS Inc. announced that it was adopting the RISC-V architecture for its new eVocore P8700 microprocessor core family.

RISC-V (University of California, Berkeley) and MIPS (Stanford University) instruction sets was started in US academia.

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@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @cdimauro "geniuses engineers" with such sarcastic meant comments you are also a little unfair. Engineers are dependent on management. Unfortunately Commodore never looked at amiga as a central technoloigy for the future but just another platform covering 16bit home computers. For a long time they produced PCs that were not competitive at price, absorbed developer resources and propably even burnt money. Somewhere I saw a woman telling from the Commodore days and as I understand it Commodore used PCa in the administration, not amigas. I do not think that Apple used Windows PCs and not their own innovative Macintosh. then there was the C64, the cash cow of the company and really earning money for a long time. Because of that the failed C65 project that absorbed developer resources and wasted money. And of course the amiga range where they never really knew what to do with with every new management also the development plans changed and management changed quiet often at commodore. So I would more blame the management than the engineers there. Regading AA chipset, it was certainly not the big jump but if delivered earlier in new products it might have bought time to develop AAA.

Olaf, I've already written a series of articles which reports several details about.

I take just one of them to show why engineers had their big responsibilities as well.

Who was the idiot which decided to extend the chipset from 8 to 16 bitplanes?!? Who? A manager or an engineer?

Planar graphics was already a bad choice when the Amiga was first conceived, but that's ok: it was the first project and at the time there was this urban legend that planar was more efficient than packed graphics. Checked.

However, time passed and it became easily evident that planar was NOT the way to go: system with MORE colours were popping-up (1986: MCGA. 1987: Mac II, VGA, Archimedes. And so on), and people which have worked with the Amiga already knew how much a big burden (and less efficient!!!) was having to deal with a big number of bitplanes.

Guess what, some genious(es) at Commodore decided to have 16 bitplanes for the AAA. I repeat again: SIXTEEN bitplanes. Do you understand? I don't think so, because you're not a developer (specifically, not an Amiga game/demo developer).

And for making what? AAA already had 8 and 16-bit packed graphics. The only explanation is that maybe they were needed for extending the Dual Playfield mode from 4 + 4 = 16 + 15 colours to 8 + 8 = 256 + 256 colours.

But AAA already had the so called "byteplanes" (aka 8-bit packed graphics) for the 24-bit graphics modes (3 x byteplanes. Another big invention of such geniuses!): why on Earth don't just use two byteplanes, one per each playfied, and you've your super cool new Dual Playfield mode which is WAY MUCH MORE EFFICIENT AND EASIER TO HANDLE/PROGRAM?!?

WHY?!?

As I've said, this is just an example. A macroscopic example of the complete ineptitude of the people which were working at the technical part (because I do NOT believe that it was a manager which decided it).

Understood now? Much more, with plenty of details included part of the technical documentation and interviews, you can find on my last series, as I've already stated.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: Quote: cdimauro ranted: It "only" needed a proper evolution... with proper vision (which Commodore's engineers lacked). It wasn't Commodore: it was Commodore's "smart" engineers. Amiga platform was left to its doom by incompetent management AND engineers, ... And guess what: we had NOTHING. Thanks to the "great" Commodore engineers... Only Amiga was out of the games due to... rolling drum... the geniuses engineers that worked at Commodore. Blame engineers uncapable to understand and evolve the platform as it should have been The "solutions" (!) that Commodore engineers have found to evolve the platform were simply ridiculous And look at what they (the engineers) have produced: an HORRIBLE patch over ECS. And 16-bit audio was so difficult for your beloved engineers that... It was plan B, like the engineers which remained after the original team left. It was told to you many times how the engineers wanted to improve the Amiga and how they where put down by a constantly changing management that lacked visions for the Amiga.

It was told by whom? And, whoever it was, who cares?

What's important is about FACTs, right? That's what I've talked about. See also above my reply to Olaf, for a clear FACT which proves my statements.
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but despite all the facts presented to you, you keep repeating your false accusations.

First of all, you reported no facts. Whereas, on the exact contrary, I'm the one reporting mistakes and wrong decisions from the technical team.

Second, accusing people of "false accusations" WITHOUT PROVING it is simply ridiculous.

I've already reported plenty of material on my last series of articles which is proving my statements. Material which is coming from Commodore's TECHNICAL documentation, as well as interviews from TECHNICAL people of the company and some TECHNICAL MANAGERS.

Feel free to rebut them. IF you can, since my source is... rolling drum... directly coming from Commodore.

Popcorn time...