#6 Quote:

It is a good thing you enjoy research, because AmigaDocuments has just made a major update to their website. New documents added. Big update on recent history. Here Valuations added, etc. You'll have to poke around to find all that is new. There is other news coming very soon. Stay tuned.

The "Arcadia alliance" is a surprise. The valuations make the low millions USD for the recent purchase of the Commodore trademarks sound reasonable. I wonder if the Amiga IP is more valuable now where the Commodore IP may have been more valuable, say 10 years ago. The Commodore IP value dies with the generations that knew it much like the Amiga IP value will, unless new competitive hardware that appeals to the younger generations is produced. The younger generations will remember and have nostalgia for the RPi and know nothing about Commodore and the Amiga on the current path.

https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/recent-history#h.ibjgmjujg4sq Quote:

All assets, with the exclusion of the former Tulip marks ("C=" and "Commodore"), appear to be in control of the rumored "Arcadia alliance". Here's a rough valuation estimate, assuming Arcadia controls the non-Tulip trademarks, the main copyrights, and the relevant domains: Arcadia Asset Estimated 2025 Value Copyrights (Amiga + 8-bit Commodore assets) $7M–$10M (due to licensing, emulation, and retro gaming potential) Trademarks (Amiga, etc.) $1M–$2M (limited but renewable) Domain names (amiga.com, commodore.com) $1M–$6M combined Goodwill / Brand recognition $1M+ (dependent on business strategy and community engagement) Total Estimated Value ~$10M–$19M USD Former Tulip Asset Estimated 2025 Value Trademarks ("Commodore" and "C=") $1M–$2M (limited monetization potential without IP bundle; less if marks are not maintained or contested)

This Arcadia alliance, besides Amiga Corporation IP, is only listed as owning the commodore.com website. The whois for commodore.com shows the following.

https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?itc=dlp_domain_whois&domain=commodore.com Quote:

Registrant Contact Name Registration Private Organization Domains By Proxy, LLC

The commodore.com domain name currently has no content. If the domain name was registered in bad faith, possibly including cybersquatting, and is similar to a trademark, the trademark owner may be able to obtain it from the owner.

Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) Google AI Quote:

The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a set of rules established by ICANN for resolving disputes over domain name registrations. It provides a streamlined process for trademark owners to challenge domain names that they believe infringe on their rights, often involving cybersquatting or typosquatting. Key aspects of the UDRP: Purpose: The UDRP aims to quickly and efficiently resolve disputes related to the abusive registration and use of domain names, particularly those that are identical or confusingly similar to trademarks. Applicability: The UDRP applies to a wide range of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .net, and .org, as well as certain country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) that have adopted the policy, according to ICANN. Requirements for Complaint: A trademark owner (complainant) filing a UDRP complaint must demonstrate three things: 1. The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which the complainant has rights, says a New York trademark lawyer. 2. The domain name registrant (respondent) has no legitimate rights or interests in the domain name. 3. The domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. Dispute Resolution Process: The UDRP process involves submitting a complaint to an approved dispute resolution service provider (like WIPO). The respondent then has an opportunity to respond. A panel of experts reviews the case and makes a decision, which can include transferring the domain name to the complainant. Court Action: While the UDRP provides a framework for resolving disputes, it does not prevent either party from pursuing legal action in a court of law, according to ICANN.

The new Commodore business which owns the "Commodore" trademark may be able to take the commodore.com domain name in some cases. Amiga Corporation may be able to take domain names of competitors using the "Amiga" trademark like AmigaKit.com, AmigaStore.com, AmigaShop.com, AmigaOS.com, etc. Negotiating or arbitration would be preferable for setltement but some people in Amiga Neverland prefer lawsuits. Perhaps it would be wise to add some content to show the website is in Commodore related commercial use like links to some "Arcadia alliance" websites.

https://amiga.com/
https://www.amigaforever.com
https://www.c64forever.com

The amiga.com website could have links and e-mail contact info at least too. It may be worthwhile to ask an attorney for legal advice about it.

The combined IP of the Amiga alliance and the new Commodore business would be impressive and daunting to Commodore/Amiga IP challengers. There is the problem that the new Commodore business is shady in some ways which usually only gets worse. Maybe they will realize they need to become more professional than the original Commodore business in order to correct history and possibly join the Arcadia alliance, perhaps as the Commodore alliance.

Last edited by matthey on 02-Jul-2025 at 09:31 PM.

@matthey

There are updates to other sections. Quick tip:

The is a small icon (circular) lower left of each section. Clicking on it reveals the date of last change to that section (chapter).

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@matthey

Quote:

More propaganda using old Commodore slogans. The Commodore 64x with a 20% Commodore logo tax or even a 6.4% logo tax is unlikely to appeal to price sensitive younger generations. This product clearly targets the 50+ age group baby boomers and X gen who have plenty of money and get emotional over Commodore branding and eye candy.

It's unlikely the new Commodore will remake CSG/MOS, but it could go fabless custom ASIC + system integration via Jeri Ellsworth.

A large chunk of the old Commodore(CBM)'s operations is the system engineer group's system integration work from in-house CSG/MOS and 3rd party ICs.


Quote:

The "Commodore 64x Ultimate" became "Commodore 64 Ultimate" in another bait and switch substitution. The "Ultimate" specs are barely low end gaming PC specs even though the "Commodore 64 was once the gaming king". Even the kickstarter price is grossly overpriced which is why the Commodore brand is so important.

FYI, Steam Deck's mobile iGPU (8 CU RDNA 2) with UMA 16 GB RAM would be a low-end mainstream gaming PC.

C64X's old Coffee Lake (Intel 9th gen) + GTX 1650 4GB VRAM hardware is below Framework 13 with AMD Strix Point. A 4 GB VRAM equipped GTX 1650 would struggle with current-gen PC games from PS5 era. AMD Strix Point's IGP reserved video memory can exceed 8 GB e.g. 16 GB allocated, and it's not limited by PCIe 3.0 16 lane's 16 GB/s write performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LhS0_ra9c4
Radeon RX 9060 XT PCI Express 3.0, 4.0 & 5.0 Comparison and 8GB vs 16GB VRAM.

I have single fan GTX 1660 Super 6GB VRAM (inside a test PC with Ryzen 9 7900X in place of RTX 3070 Ti 8GB VRAM) vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 370 APU with 16GB reserved video memory, The First Descendant game (PS5 era, Unreal Engine 5) runs better on mobile Strix Point 890M IGP. GTX 1660 Super's overspill on PCIe 3.0 16 lanes (16 GB/s read from system RAM) is not good.

Framework 13 mainboards can be made standalone inside an external case e.g. https://www.coolermaster.com/en-global/products/framework/
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/21/modular-laptop-maker-provides-mainboard-documentation-for-non-laptop-projects/
Standard USB-C 65 or 100 watts external PSUs can be used.

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/amd-reportedly-plots-late-2025-launch-for-desktop-version-of-the-nifty-little-strix-point-apu-we-like-so-much-in-laptops-and-handhelds/
Strix Point APU for AM5 socket late 2025 release.

Newer mini-ITX has M2 slots on both sides of the board. Mini-ITX has an assumption of a 75-watt budget just for the PEG slot.

On C64X's slim DVD drive area, it's possible to use a small graphics card like RTX 3050 (being replaced by RTX 5050) with a PCIe ribbon cable with Mini-ITX.

With the Commodore 64's case, the current desktop PC slim components wouldn't be competitive against a semi-custom PS5 / PS5 Pro APU configuration. There are reasons for the large semi-custom APU direction with current-gen game consoles.

https://frame.work/products/desktop-diy-amd-aimax300/configuration/new
Using Mini-ITX form factor with Framework ITX case:
Ryzen AI Max 385 with full-size 8-core Zen 5, 32 CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU and 256-bit LPDDR5x-8000 + iGPU 32 MB cache has US$1099 asking price.

Ryzen AI Max 395 SoC with full-size 16-core Zen 5, 40 CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU and 256-bit LPDDR5x-8000 + iGPU 32 MB cache has US$15999 asking price.

https://frame.work/products/framework-desktop-mainboard-amd-ryzen-ai-max-300-series?v=FRAFMK0002
Framework mini-ITX mainboards only:
Ryzen AI Max 385 mainboard with 32 GB RAM + 32 CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU has US$799 asking price.
Ryzen AI Max 395 mainboard with 64 GB RAM + 40 CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU has US$1299 asking price.
No problems beating PS5's 32 CU RDNA 2ish iGPU.

Digital Foundry has found RX 9060 XT 16GB (RDNA 4 32 CU) to be similar to PS5 Pro's 60 CU RDNA 2(bits of RDNA 3) with RDNA 4 RT.

RDNA 4 and RDNA 3.5 have double texture sample rate per CU improvements vs RDNA 3.0 and RDNA 2.0. A no-brainer to why RX 9060 XT 32 CU solution rivals PS5 Pro's 60 CU GPU solution.

It's possible to use the Ryzen AI Max 385 mini-ITX Framework mainboard with the C64X case.

Intel plans to release its large APU. Thanks to a certain fruit company.

Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jul-2025 at 12:22 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jul-2025 at 12:17 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jul-2025 at 12:09 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jul-2025 at 12:03 AM.

_________________

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: There is no doubt that Commodore branding increases sales but I am not implying that it is worth a 20% royalty.

Oh good. Cause I got the impression that you were justifying the several million dollars/euros purchase of the Commodore branding as Peri and Co. would habitually be charging 20% royalties, making it a good investment.

In his video he implied that much more friendly licensing pricing would be the new order of the day, which in my mind conjurs up single digit percentages. The kinds of amounts that could be wholly of partially passed on to the consumer without drastically affecting the sales/profitability of the offering.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@thread

Recent addition:

Crowdfunding campaign coming soon, a brand new retro looking Commodore Monitor to go along side your Commodore 64x! Details to follow soon!

Also mention on MyRetroComputer home page of "A500 ranges."

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

agami Quote:

Oh good. Cause I got the impression that you were justifying the several million dollars/euros purchase of the Commodore branding as Peri and Co. would habitually be charging 20% royalties, making it a good investment. In his video he implied that much more friendly licensing pricing would be the new order of the day, which in my mind conjurs up single digit percentages. The kinds of amounts that could be wholly of partially passed on to the consumer without drastically affecting the sales/profitability of the offering.

Royalties modernized from Vic20% to Commodore6.4%? Will it eventually be lowered to Amiga 5.00%?

I noticed the following on the https://myretrocomputer.com/ website.

https://myretrocomputer.com/ Quote:

1,300+ Computers Sold 2,500+ OS Downloads

With just My Retro Computer Ltd sales, it could take a while to pay for the Commodore trademark purchase. It seems ambitious of them to want to buy the trademark if that is all they have sold. Maybe Peri will be making a Hollywood movie with all those Commodore employees after all.

#6 Quote:

Recent addition: Crowdfunding campaign coming soon, a brand new retro looking Commodore Monitor to go along side your Commodore 64x! Details to follow soon! Also mention on MyRetroComputer home page of "A500 ranges."

Not much info on the monitor but the big beautiful chicken lips are front and center.

@matthey

Quote:

With just My Retro Computer Ltd sales, it could take a while to pay for the Commodore trademark purchase. It seems ambitious of them to want to buy the trademark if that is all they have sold. Maybe Peri will be making a Hollywood movie with all those Commodore employees after all.

It wouldn't beat Vampire's more than 10,000 unit sales during the early COVID-19 lockdown.

C64X with mainstream X86-64 mini-ITX is not a "disposable toy" price when compared to TheC64mini's price.

Intel's old "9th gen" Coffee Lake-R with GTX 1650 4GB VRAM specs are behind the PS5's GPU and 16 GB 256-bit GDDR6-14000.

Based on the recent Steam survey, it's an RTX 4060-level 8GB GPU. The market is shifting towards RX 9060 XT 16GB and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB.

https://vgtimes.com/news/129361-gamers-are-turning-away-from-8gb-gpus-sales-of-16gb-models-are-surging.html
Gamers Are Turning Away from 8GB GPUs — Sales of 16GB Models Are Surging


Sales of graphics cards with just 8GB of VRAM are dropping quickly as demand for higher-capacity models continues to rise. According to figures from the German retailer Mindfactory, buyers are now overwhelmingly choosing 16GB versions. The difference is striking when looking at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti: for every 8GB card sold, over 16 units of the 16GB model were purchased.

A similar story is playing out with AMD. The Radeon RX 9060 XT with 16GB of VRAM is selling nearly 30 times more than its 8GB counterpart


For GPU add-ons, the A500 price range with a slight premium performance is still in play.

_________________

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: see. It shows where the best engineers were working. CSG's LSI team is responsible for the ViC-20/C64 product line, which largely sustained the Commodore group until the Amiga's revenue-generating takeover. From the book, CSG's LSI team lost a key engineer for SID, and it would take about a year to learn the SID design, hence CSG management decided to copy-and-paste a second SID to create a stereo SID for the C65 project. The brain drain is real. Commodore management kicked out the original Amiga graphics engineers while keeping Paula's engineer, who later designed the Mary chip.

And we know what happened: ALL Amigas had the original Paula, and there was NO evolution of this chip.

Yes, Mary was supposed to finally be an improvement, but it never saw the light.

I wonder what the Paula architect have made during all time, before working to Mary...
Quote:

Quote: I don't share the same opinion: he was the one organizing the meeting to start the next Amiga chipset. Herni Rubin's action is too late due to the upgrade path indecision, and AGA R&D was started in 1989 due to C65's corporate politics. In comparison, ET4000AX was released in 1989, and Tseng Labs was already deep in the R&D phase for ET4000/W32's 1992 release.

Absolutely no, since he advocated for the next big chipset meeting already on September 1987 (if I recall correctly). So, since the very beginning of the discussions.
Quote:

Quote: As you stated, Commodore was busy with A LOT of projects in parallel: the "hires chip / productivity mode" was just one of them. You missed the context e.g., focusing A2000's addon cards, network cards, x86 bridgeboards, AMIX (led to another C900 debacle), genlock devices, printers, yet another mouse, yet another A250 start (A300/A600 wasn't the 1st), CDTV, Amiga laptop, and many more. The book mentions engineers being spread too thin. Rubin wasn't focused on Amiga core graphics R&D. AGA R&D commitment was forced by C65's corporate politics i.e. can't have "low-end" C65 being better than OCS/ECS Amiga.

See above: he organized the first meeting for the next Amiga chipset. So, well before the AGA.
Quote:

Quote: You should read between the lines, extract the key information, and draw the lines between the dots. Here we know that Rubin was advocating the next chipset, and that his engineers weren't even able to decide on which direction to go. Needs competent leadership to make a committed decision. Similarly ranked engineers wouldn't be able to order other engineers i.e. it's a chaotic mess. It needs "Dear Leader" like Jen-Hsun Huang.

Good managers need good engineers, and they don't necessarily need to have a specialization on the technologies that they are responsible for.

I had three managers at Intel and another three at BMW, and the best were the ones which had a purely management graduation.

Andy Grove, which made Intel great, had a PhD in chemical. So, a technical background, but completely different from he was selling.

Unfortunately, Rubin missed the good engineers which were needed to properly advance the Amiga platform. Which is clearly evident even from what you've reported 'til now.
Quote:

Quote: Plus, they had no clue on how the Amiga chipset really worked, and that's why they are talking about the "can of worms". No, you should read between the lines. As a leader for the custom ASIC business, Herni Rubin doesn't match Jen-Hsun Huang's ASIC engineering competency from AMD microprocessors and LSI Coreware (MIPS family, which powered PlayStation 1). Neither Intel's nor AMD's founders (IC engineers from Fairchild Semiconductor) were incompetent like Herni Rubin. For Sony's PlayStation 1 leadership, Ken Kutaragi designed the SNES's DSP. You can not say the same for Commodore's leadership. Most of PS1's ASIC design was done by LSI and Toshiba, but a competent leader is required.

See above.
Quote:

Again, Herni Rubin's action is too late due to the upgrade path indecision.

Or course: how he could have placed proper actions with his key engineers which had completely different visions on how to evolve the platform? He needed the proper input, which didn't come...
Quote:

Herni Rubin was replaced by an incompetent Bill Sydnes (system integration like the IBM PC's copy-n-paste, not a custom ASIC-level engineer).

Again, when Sydnes arrived? FOUR YEARS AFTER!

What the "great" (!) Amiga engineers have made during this period? NOTHING! Just paper work and discussions which brought no new Amiga platform.

Please, tell me more about this great period before Sydnes, and show me what your heroes have made in the meanwhile.

Preparing the next wagon of popcorns...
Quote:

Quote: Whereas the LSI team not only was able to understand it, but in ONE YEAR was able to reproduce part of the Amiga technology and even extend it. What you missed is the time lost from learning Amiga technology. C65 started from 64 colors, which is 6 bitplanes, which later evolved into 256 colors with 8 bitplanes.

Which time they have lost? In ONE year they've already presented a first prototype of the C65 chipset, which shocked the INCOMPETENT Amiga engineers.
Quote:

C65 itself is plagued with bugs.

Of course. What do you expect, that the C65 engineers should have been able to learn the Amiga chipset ("a can of worms", according to the above INEPT engineers), implement the new C65 chipset, and all of that WITHOUT having bugs?

Could you please tell me how many revisions were needed from your hero to finally have a DECENT memory controller for the Amiga 3000?
Quote:

Have you factored in a single engineer resource bottlenecking three projects(i.e. ECS Agnus B, AAA Andrea, and C65)? Hint: Commodore HR didn't hire enough experienced IC engineers.

You continue to don't see the picture: the Amiga team had already several engineers, which... were NOT able to do anything useful. And that's the reason why the had to ask to the LSI team to join and help them.

See below.
Quote:

From Commodore - The Final Years, 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 There wasn't enough "Victor Andrade" fixing custom ASIC bugs.

So, another engineer stolen from the LSI team to help the INCAPABLE Amiga engineers...
Quote:

C65 reached production-ready status around December 1990.

So, in roughly 3 years since they've started.

A very good work, if we consider that they (the LSI team) had to:
- develop a new PROCESSOR;
- study the Amiga chipset ("a can of worms");
- implement the new C65 chipset;
- help the above incompetent Amiga engineers.
Quote:

AA3000+ reached bootable state in Feb 1991.

So, not production-ready.
Quote:

Quote: Last but not really least, they were needed and involved on defining the specs of the new Amiga chipset, and worked on Lisa. On display technology, the results speak for themselves between 3DO vs Amiga.

Of course! When you've completely INEPTS which aren't even able to understand the Amiga chipset ("a can of worms"), what do you expect? They had to ask to the LSI team to help on their homework.

They were so INCAPABLE that they resorted to the Akiko crap, instead of spending A FEW THOUSAND transistors to merely add an 8-bit packed/chunky mode to the display controller.

3DO was sci-fi for such underdogs, whereas a properly evolved Amiga would have been perfectly able to compete with such machine (and many others), as I've proved on my last series of articles on this topic (hint: I've took the 3DO has a benchmark).

Yet, you continue to don't see the overal picture, and defend your heroes...

@matthey

More reading material.

34 pages that really exploded the past few days.

Lemon64

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: And we know what happened: ALL Amigas had the original Paula, and there was NO evolution of this chip.

And a good thing that was too, since it means that all Amigas have the same sound chip so everybody can enjoy it, whether you have a 1985 A1000, 1987 A500, 1992 A1200 or 1993 CD32.

Quote:

3DO was sci-fi for such underdogs, whereas a properly evolved Amiga would have been perfectly able to compete with such machine (and many others), as I've proved on my last series of articles on this topic (hint: I've took the 3DO has a benchmark).

3D0 was designed by Dave Needle and RJ Mical, who helped develop the Amiga 1000. If their work was 'sci-fi' how come the A1000 wasn't? But 3DO was a commercial failure. Turns out just having 'sci-fi' hardware wasn't enough.

I reckon Commodore had some pretty good engineers. The problem wasn't technical competence, it was that they were working on the wrong stuff. We know this because when a fire was lit under them it didn't take long to produce the A1200. If only they hadn't mucked around with Unix etc. we could have had AGA Amigas a year earlier, when we really needed them.

But this didn't matter because ultimately the Amiga was toast anyway. The industry settled on IBM as the standard and everything else would eventually be squeezed out. This was evident even before the Amiga was launched in 1985.

It's funny how Amiga fans continue to bicker about how Commodore should have done this or that instead of appreciating what we got. Other retro computer fans don't act like this. Sinclair, Amstrad, Atari, Acorn, Apple etc., none of those companies are constantly accused of incompetence (though there's plenty of evidence for it if you want to do so). Even the C64 with its numerous hardware blunders doesn't get excoriated like the Amiga does. Fans simply accept what it is and enjoy it.

Why is this? The answer is simple - the Amiga was too good. Nobody is so passionate about other home computers because their limitations were so obvious that nobody had delusions of them taking over the World. And by 'the World' I mean the IBM PC world, the one that was defined in 1981 and ate everything in its path. The PC was pretty dire back then too, but it had the one thing the Amiga would never have, compatibility with the industry standard. It's why the PC took off like it did, and how it got where it is today.

The truth is, the vast majority of customers weren't that interested in having 'sci-fi' hardware - they just wanted what everybody else had. Which is fair enough. Life is complicated enough already without having to worry about whether you bought into the right computer architecture. The more mainstream computers became the more that was so. There wouldn't be any room in the market for more than one or two platforms, just as there isn't in other areas where media compatibility is of prime importance.

But if compatibility was so important for the dominant platform, it was even more so for the underdogs. The smaller the market the less developers are interested in it because sales are vital to success. That's why developers of famous Amiga titles almost immediately ported their wares to the PC despite its limitations. They whored themselves to the PC because they needed the money.

So we saw the same affect on the Amiga as other home computer platforms did - developers targeted the 'standard' base model and ignored enhancements in later machines, because that reached the largest market. Even the PC suffered from this, though to a lesser extent due to the much larger user base. The PC also benefited from the large number of business users who were more focused on performance and could afford to upgrade every few years.

What did this mean for the Amiga?

Imagine a world where Commodore's management and engineers were all the geniuses Amiga fans expected them to be. By 1989 the base model has greatly enhanced graphics power, expanded color palette, double the original floppy drive density, 1MB of RAM built in with a SIMM socket for up to 4MB, and enhanced sound with more channels, up to 50kHz playback speed and a mixer with stereo panning and equalizer. By 1992 it has a 16MHz 68030 CPU, optional FPU, up to 14MB of internal RAM, 16-bit true color chunky graphics, 16-bit audio with even more channels, 2 serial ports, a network port, SCSI-II and a DSP chip - all in the same case as the A500 but with a more modern color scheme.

And now imagine what software developers would do for these more advanced machines. Nothing. Because to reach the largest market they have to target the previous models. How do we know this? Because that's what happened to the Atari ST.

Not being constantly upgraded with more advanced features was a good thing for the Amiga. It prevented fracturing the user base and customers becoming jaded with the constant need to upgrade and then being disappointed by a lack of enhanced software. Holding back until it could all be done at once and not adding stuff that unnecessarily broke compatibility was a good thing too. That way there was a clear dividing line between generations, and the original architecture was exploited more fully so users didn't become so frustrated with lack of good software during the transition.

AGA a year earlier would have been better though. The engineering failure here wasn't due to technical incompetence, but a desire to rule the World with an Amiga so awesome that PCs would wither and die - which wasn't going to happen.

Last edited by bhabbott on 06-Jul-2025 at 03:36 PM.

@bhabbott

Quote:

It's funny how Amiga fans continue to bicker about how Commodore should have done this or that instead of appreciating what we got. Other retro computer fans don't act like this. Sinclair, Amstrad, Atari, Acorn, Apple etc., none of those companies are constantly accused of incompetence

nobody else screw so much
AGA 256 colors made as bitplanes instead of chunky was biggest mistake in computer industry history

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: And we know what happened: ALL Amigas had the original Paula, and there was NO evolution of this chip. And a good thing that was too, since it means that all Amigas have the same sound chip so everybody can enjoy it, whether you have a 1985 A1000, 1987 A500, 1992 A1200 or 1993 CD32.

Your blind defence of Commodore is, to say the least, revolting as well as totally nonsensical, since the owners of the new machines could have enjoyed the old and the new audio.

The Amiga was NOT a console, rather a FAMILY of (personal) computers! Which means, that it deserved an EVOLUTION of the hardware, according to the evolution of technology (and of all competitors).
Quote:

Quote: 3DO was sci-fi for such underdogs, whereas a properly evolved Amiga would have been perfectly able to compete with such machine (and many others), as I've proved on my last series of articles on this topic (hint: I've took the 3DO has a benchmark). 3D0 was designed by Dave Needle and RJ Mical, who helped develop the Amiga 1000. If their work was 'sci-fi' how come the A1000 wasn't?

Another one which isn't able to understand the context. Bah.

No, the reference was NOT the Amiga 1000, rather the CD32, which is the Amiga product released on the same year of the 3DO.
Quote:

But 3DO was a commercial failure. Turns out just having 'sci-fi' hardware wasn't enough.

Which is a completely different thing: at least it had the hardware to compete, where Commodore had... care to tell how it could have competed?
Quote:

I reckon Commodore had some pretty good engineers.

Sure: the original Amiga team, which were throw out, and the LSI team.
Quote:

The problem wasn't technical competence,

It is, and I've reported PLENTY of examples of their incompetence.
Quote:

it was that they were working on the wrong stuff. We know this because when a fire was lit under them it didn't take long to produce the A1200.

Only thanks to the engineers which were "borrowed" from the LSI team, otherwise it wouldn't have been possible.

The post-Amiga engineers have produced nothing relevant in several years, on their own after the original team went out.
Quote:

If only they hadn't mucked around with Unix etc. we could have had AGA Amigas a year earlier, when we really needed them.

Nope. They produced PAPER work when it was requested to define the specs of the Next Big (Amiga) Thing, and not even able to agree on which direction to take. And some minor things (again, with the help of the LSI team).
Quote:

But this didn't matter because ultimately the Amiga was toast anyway. The industry settled on IBM as the standard and everything else would eventually be squeezed out. This was evident even before the Amiga was launched in 1985.

Again the broken record of "since IBM introduced the PC, that was the destiny of the humankind".

History proved that you continue to repeat complete non-sense, as proved by the several other new products which were NOT PCs.
Quote:

It's funny how Amiga fans continue to bicker about how Commodore should have done this or that instead of appreciating what we got. Other retro computer fans don't act like this. Sinclair, Amstrad, Atari, Acorn, Apple etc., none of those companies are constantly accused of incompetence (though there's plenty of evidence for it if you want to do so). Even the C64 with its numerous hardware blunders doesn't get excoriated like the Amiga does. Fans simply accept what it is and enjoy it.

Those are blind fanboys, LIKE YOU, not simply fans.
Quote:

Why is this? The answer is simple - the Amiga was too good.

At the beginning. AFTER that, the world EVOLVED.
Quote:

Nobody is so passionate about other home computers because their limitations were so obvious that nobody had delusions of them taking over the World. And by 'the World' I mean the IBM PC world, the one that was defined in 1981 and ate everything in its path. The PC was pretty dire back then too, but it had the one thing the Amiga would never have, compatibility with the industry standard. It's why the PC took off like it did, and how it got where it is today.

Again, THE broken PC record...
Quote:

The truth is, the vast majority of customers weren't that interested in having 'sci-fi' hardware - they just wanted what everybody else had. Which is fair enough. Life is complicated enough already without having to worry about whether you bought into the right computer architecture. The more mainstream computers became the more that was so. There wouldn't be any room in the market for more than one or two platforms, just as there isn't in other areas where media compatibility is of prime importance.

Again, THE broken PC record, with the crystal ball...
Quote:

But if compatibility was so important for the dominant platform, it was even more so for the underdogs. The smaller the market the less developers are interested in it because sales are vital to success.

You "forgot" that NEW platforms had VERY LITTLE market, and despite that they gained support.

The Amiga history itself is proof of that.
Quote:

That's why developers of famous Amiga titles almost immediately ported their wares to the PC despite its limitations. They whored themselves to the PC because they needed the money.

"Sure". Show me all Amiga titles which were developed at the beginning that were "immediately ported" to the PC.
Quote:

So we saw the same affect on the Amiga as other home computer platforms did - developers targeted the 'standard' base model and ignored enhancements in later machines, because that reached the largest market.

The Amiga was NOT a home computer, rather a personal computer (not the lower case letters at the beginning of the two words).

Since you had no chance to read Commodore's documentation, you didn't know it. Otherwise, you should have read that it was a family of computers.
Quote:

Even the PC suffered from this, though to a lesser extent due to the much larger user base. The PC also benefited from the large number of business users who were more focused on performance and could afford to upgrade every few years.

Irrelevant: non-PCs received support as well.
Quote:

What did this mean for the Amiga? Imagine a world where Commodore's management and engineers were all the geniuses Amiga fans expected them to be. By 1989 the base model has greatly enhanced graphics power, expanded color palette, double the original floppy drive density, 1MB of RAM built in with a SIMM socket for up to 4MB, and enhanced sound with more channels, up to 50kHz playback speed and a mixer with stereo panning and equalizer. By 1992 it has a 16MHz 68030 CPU, optional FPU, up to 14MB of internal RAM, 16-bit true color chunky graphics, 16-bit audio with even more channels, 2 serial ports, a network port, SCSI-II and a DSP chip - all in the same case as the A500 but with a more modern color scheme. And now imagine what software developers would do for these more advanced machines. Nothing. Because to reach the largest market they have to target the previous models. How do we know this? Because that's what happened to the Atari ST.

First of all, you can evolve a platform like the Amiga, being 100% backward-compatible.

Second, and even more important, the Amiga had a quite modern OS (for the time) which would have taken care of the differences of all future machines.

Hint: check at the Amiga OS 2.04, 3.0, 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9.
Quote:

Not being constantly upgraded with more advanced features was a good thing for the Amiga.

Again, it was NOT a console! Or an old 8-bit home computer!

If you like those kind of "immutable" hardware, then the Amiga was NOT for you!
Quote:

It prevented fracturing the user base and customers becoming jaded with the constant need to upgrade and then being disappointed by a lack of enhanced software.

See above!
Quote:

Holding back until it could all be done at once and not adding stuff that unnecessarily broke compatibility was a good thing too.

As I've said several times, you don't need to break the compatibility with the new hardware. I've easily proved it on my series of articles.

Of course, if developers were not so idiots to avoid following Commodore's guidelines...
Quote:

That way there was a clear dividing line between generations, and the original architecture was exploited more fully so users didn't become so frustrated with lack of good software during the transition.

Again, it was NOT a console!
Quote:

AGA a year earlier would have been better though.

Two years earlier. AT LEAST.

And before AGA, a PROPER ECS with some enhancements.
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The engineering failure here wasn't due to technical incompetence,

It was, as it was proved several times. You don't see it, simply (!) because you're a blind fanatical.
Quote:

but a desire to rule the World with an Amiga so awesome that PCs would wither and die - which wasn't going to happen.

Again, history proved that ALTERNATIVE solutions to PCs have survived WITHOUT ruling the world.

As usual, you don't miss opportunities to show how much a blind Commodore Taliban you're.

BTW, repeating that planar graphics was better than packed/chunky is a lie which you continue to spread around, despite the 17 articles that I've written and that PROVE the exact opposite. Which is another example of your blind fanatism.

P.S. I'll not waste my time checking for errors.

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @matthey Quote: With just My Retro Computer Ltd sales, it could take a while to pay for the Commodore trademark purchase. It seems ambitious of them to want to buy the trademark if that is all they have sold. Maybe Peri will be making a Hollywood movie with all those Commodore employees after all. It wouldn't beat Vampire's more than 10,000 unit sales during the early COVID-19 lockdown.

Nice you mentioned the self proclaimed 10,000 Vampires that where where more than enough to pay for for an Apollo ASIC. *sarkasm*

According to the echo on YT the number of people who bought an C64X seems to be bigger than all versions of the vampires combined and to me it seems as if there are much more C64 than Amiga fans.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 06-Jul-2025 at 08:07 PM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Absolutely no, since he advocated for the next big chipset meeting already on September 1987 (if I recall correctly). So, since the very beginning of the discussions. .

That's definitely no, since there's no R&D graphics chipset commitment.


From Commodore - The Final Years

Engineering had made plans during the summer of 1987, but almost
no one was able to begin new projects, even late in the
year, because they were still occupied with finishing off old projects.

(skip)

The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the
machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September
with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time,
Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? …
Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next
video chips.�

The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a
hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to
begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise
the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins
wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit
architecture. No one could agree.

With this situation, it looked like the next generation chipset had
every possibility of being bogged down for months. Porter had
previously hoped to show a prototype of an Amiga 3000 at the
Hanover show in March 1988, but now it looked like that timeline
was overly optimistic.

Meanwhile, it seemed most engineers and all management had
given up on 8-bit computers and the Commodore 64 legacy. But in
the semiconductor design group, a young engineer named Bill
Gardei was figuring out how to advance the 6502 chip at the core of
the 8-bit computers, which CSG had not significantly improved since
1976.


That's February 1988, heading into March 1988.

Leadership's lack of R&D graphics chipset commitment caused the system engineering group's graphics chipset R&D to be leaderless.

For next-generation Amiga chipsets during 1987 and 1988:
1. Jeff Porter's 8 bitplane with 16 million colors argument has been ignored,
2. George Robbins' 32-bit bus Amiga graphics chipset evolution argument has been ignored,
3. Dale Luck's 16-bit (65,536 colors) display Amiga graphics evolution argument has been ignored.

Refer to the "read my lips, no new chips" directive for the 32-bit A3000's graphics chipset.

Meanwhile, the CSG's LSI group executes its unofficial C65 CPU improvements with C65's unofficial graphics chipset improvement.

It would take CSG LSI's C65 surprise reveal for Herni Rubin to allow AA's 1989 R&D start.

George Robbins' argument position would be revisited by Herni Rubin's era AA in 1989 and Lew Eggebrecht era AA+' starting in July 1992.


For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years

detailed AAA architecture design started in the summer of 1988 by Redfield.


That's around mid-1988, and it's already late.


For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years

Back in the middle of 1991, before Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes took
over engineering, the AmigaOS developers had a schedule to
complete AmigaOS 3.0 by Jan 17, 1992, for the A1000 Plus and
A3000 Plus. When those projects were put on hold, development for
the new OS also ground to a halt.



For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years

They also planned to release a series of updated Amiga computers
using the new Pandora chipset, now codenamed AA. The plan called
for using the chipset in an A3000 variant, which Porter called the
AA3000, for a summer 1991 release. He also wanted the AA chipset
in an AA500 by the summer of 1992.


If AmigaOS 3.0 had not been released with AA3000 and A1000Plus, it would have run the old AmigaOS 2.0x.

After A500's last 1991 sales boom, AA500's release was around mid-1992 for Xmas, Q4 1992.




Quote:

So, not production-ready.

From Commodore - The Final Years,

The lowered ambitions of AA had allowed a rapid development
cycle. “AA was hybrid 16/32-bit,� says Dave Haynie. As a result of
the 16-bit operations, some modes such as Super HAM were still
only fast enough to display static images rather than fast animation.

The AA chips continued to be revised and tested through early
1991 until they were good enough to use in the A1000 Plus and
A3000 Plus prototypes. Dave Haynie managed to boot up his A3000
Plus with AmigaOS and the AA chipset in February 1991.

In an interview given to Amiga Computing magazine, Irving Gould
revealed, “As a matter of fact, there is a new chip set for the Amiga
we’ve been working on now, I guess, for almost two years that
should be ready this fall.� The reason Gould was unsure of the
release date was because the engineers were considering some
improvements for the chipset.

By March 27, when the tested AA chips were ready, the list of stable
features was impressive. AA could display 256 colors from a palette
of 16 million colors. It could theoretically play 24-bit digital video
(although presently it could only display 8-bit video) due to a four
times increase in bandwidth (and using the digital-to-analog
converter chip in the A3000 Plus). It could use 64-bit sprites, which
could now be controlled in the border areas. It had the
aforementioned new 8-bit HAM mode, called Super HAM. And finally,
the scan doubling and deinterlacing hardware, formerly on Amber,
was now handled right on the chip.


AA chips were ready by March 1991. Hint: Amiga Community's AA3000Plus Remake.

A1200's cost-reduction ICs (AA Gayle, Budgie) wouldn't be ready in March 1991.

Fat Gary could be used in place of AA Gayle (PCMCIA support).

Bridgette + Ramsey + Super Buster could be used in place of Budgie (Zorro II address range for trap door edge connector and 16-bit PCMCIA slot).

Bridgette replaced multiple 74 logic chips in the A3000.

Last edited by Hammer on 09-Jul-2025 at 02:08 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2025 at 10:26 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2025 at 10:23 AM.

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@Thread

So, from the above, surely the take away is why celebrate the husk of delay and incompetence that C= became? We can celebrate Tramiel, the Amiga and the original Los Gatos engineers but who needs Chicken Lips on everything? Escom began separating C= and Amiga assets and here we are!

Heck, it says a lot that Mehdi Ali had to force the restart of AGA R&D! The ECS/A3000 era was a debacle!

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

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @Thread So, from the above, surely the take away is why celebrate the husk of delay and incompetence that C= became? We can celebrate Tramiel, the Amiga and the original Los Gatos engineers but who needs Chicken Lips on everything? Escom began separating C= and Amiga assets and here we are! Heck, it says a lot that Mehdi Ali had to force the restart of AGA R&D! The ECS/A3000 era was a debacle!

Herni Rubin's 16-bit ECS for "32-bit" A3000 and incompatible with A2000's Video Toaster effectively killed the A3000.

Mehdi Ali changed the Commodore HK's low-wage cost with the A500 mass production into higher cost ECS A300/A600's 1992 mass production in a high-wage UK, which doomed Commodore International. SCI UK chased after Commodore International's unpaid A600 production. Commodore UK paid its debt to SCI UK only for Commodore UK's Amigas.

For UK production from Sony UK, RPi skips final assembly for most RPi SBCs since they are just populated PCBs in cardboard boxes.

Commodore's Philippines factory wasn't ready in 1992 and the Philippines' logistics are inferior to Hong Kong's. For Commodore's wedge Amiga volumes, the Philippines' logistics will need a longer lead time.

Part of the problem wasn't about technology, but business logistics issues.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

The Amiga was NOT a console, rather a FAMILY of (personal) computers! Which means, that it deserved an EVOLUTION of the hardware, according to the evolution of technology (and of all competitors).

For core Amiga games, the Amiga inherits the tight game console-like multimedia integration i.e. not modular like the PC's.

For example, without a 32-bit Agnus upgrade known as Andrea, Mary wouldn't work. When AA Lisa is upgraded, AA Alice is needed due to ECS Agnus 2MB needs to be modified. When you upgrade Amiga's core graphics and audio capabilities, it needs to be treated like a game console's next-generation hardware transition phase. Amiga's next-generation hardware transition phase needs to be managed carefully.

A PC with ISA slots can be upgraded with many generations of graphics and sound cards (including DMA-capable). The graphics chipset is partitioned from the audio chipset. The user can upgrade individual components (CPU, mainboard, display, and audio) at will and at different times.

The Amiga is not a Mac i.e. hit the metal.

The Amiga is not a PC (as per IBM AT/Compaq 386AT defined PC standards) i.e. multimedia capabilities are not partitioned for end-user modularity.

32-bit protected mode PC DOS VGA game would be closest to Amiga's 32-bit 68K games in terms of bare metal access when compared to Mac's QuickDraw APIs. The Amiga is unique and should be carefully managed.

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@thread

this article today has links at bottom to other articles

You can find many others with a "bought commodore" search on google.

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @bhabbott nobody else screw so much AGA 256 colors made as bitplanes instead of chunky was biggest mistake in computer industry history

High resolution four bitplanes could be converted into VGA-style four byte planes. This requires Lisa to be modified.

Low-end SVGAs also used 1989 and early 1990s FPM DRAMs.

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@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: Nice you mentioned the self proclaimed 10,000 Vampires that where where more than enough to pay for for an Apollo ASIC. *sarkasm* According to the echo on YT the number of people who bought an C64X seems to be bigger than all versions of the vampires combined and to me it seems as if there are much more C64 than Amiga fans.

https://myretrocomputer.com/
Computers sold: 1300+
OS downloads: 2500+

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/myretrocomputer/the-commodore-64-its-back-and-better-than-ever/
538 backers for C64X.


For comparison, as a start-up PC vendor, Framework laptops have sold 6 figures i.e. at least 100,000 units (source: one of the Ubuntu 2024 summit videos).

Last edited by Hammer on 09-Jul-2025 at 02:22 AM.

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