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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 4:36:12
#1481 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote:
BigD Quote:

This called the Amy05/Panda board but it was never released. The A1222 Plus needs to recoup all the A-EON development costs and Matthew’s logistics costs

“Don’t do a Troika!!!”


Forget Troika. How about the Boxer?

And more importantly the Natami MX!

Thomas Hirsch is an artist! Give him a proper development team, modernized 68k with Amiga custom chips in an ASIC SoC, Amiga branded hardware, funding and unleash his creations! The AmigaOS was revitalized when the 68k Amiga was no longer ignored and now it is time to stop ignoring and start supporting 68k hardware!

For European solidarity, support 68K?

The Boxer with 68060 (up to 75 Mhz) and lower chip count concept seems okay, the BoXeR has a very long development cycle largely due to the constant upgrading and tweaking with constant promises of release dates. Eventually, the designer ran out of money and the project was canceled. Boxer designer has promised PowerPC upgrade.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jun-2021 at 04:42 AM.

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amigadave 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 4:53:18
#1482 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Jul-2005
Posts: 1731
From: Lake Shastina, Northern Calif.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote:
BigD Quote:

Thomas is on hiatus and Gunnar ran with the concept. There’s too much competition now for Thomas to do anything but work with the Apollo Team IMHO. He lost the write to lead the 68k endeavour sadly.


Gunnar is playing with Thomas's SAGA and Jens's N68k core. He encroached on the leadership of Thomas and caused friction. There were other people who had problems with Gunnar as well. Gunnar has technical knowledge but may be a liability to a team if he can't be kept in check. Thomas is a meek individual and may not have had the social skills to put him in his place. Jens wanted to open source the N68k core and I believe Gunnar persuaded him not to. Starting to get the picture? In any case, I would contact Thomas and Jens to get straight answers on the status and availability of SAGA and the N68k core.


I only watched the Natami from a safe distance, but I got the same impression about Gunnar ruining its chances for success, rather than helping it move toward completion. I have nothing personal against Gunnar, and I think the Vampire is a great product, but it does seem to me that Gunnar has stepped on a few people to get where he is now.

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ilbarbax 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 7:00:25
#1483 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 17-Jan-2010
Posts: 184
From: Italy

About A1222 finally I understood the genesis of the name. The last two digits stand for the release year, then we are perfectly in schedule!

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BigD 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 9:34:45
#1484 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Yssing

Quote:

Yssing wrote:
@matthey

Ah yes the Boxer. I was truly sad back when it failed.


I cried when the Phase5 A/Box came to nothing. Seriously, Phase5, DCE and QuikPak did more for AGA Amiga hardware development than C= or Amiga Technologies did!

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BSzili 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 13:29:50
#1485 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 16-Nov-2013
Posts: 447
From: Unknown

@ilbarbax

I think you are onto something, but you have to read the numbers in a reverse order to get the release year: 2221

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Yssing 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 14:06:40
#1486 ]
Super Member
Joined: 24-Apr-2003
Posts: 1084
From: Unknown

@BigD

That is true.

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matthey 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 20-Jun-2021 5:14:53
#1487 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

Hammer Quote:

The Boxer with 68060 (up to 75 Mhz) and lower chip count concept seems okay, the BoXeR has a very long development cycle largely due to the constant upgrading and tweaking with constant promises of release dates. Eventually, the designer ran out of money and the project was canceled. Boxer designer has promised PowerPC upgrade.


The final BoXer design with PCI was nice and practical but it did take a long time to get there. Too bad it was not produced as there would be more powerful, expandable and newer 68k hardware on the second hand market today. I think it had a good chance of being profitable. Too bad there were not as many crowdfunding options back then which could have raised funds for production. The BoXer was the first generation of FPGA motherboards with the Amiga AGA chipset enhanced and integrated into a FPGA in the final prototype. It was more advanced and came closer to production than the FPGA based Clone-A of Jens Schonfeld but that project lacked a "A fast CPU design" too.

http://www.totalamiga.org/files/TA25_JensIviewExtract.pdf

amigadave Quote:

I only watched the Natami from a safe distance, but I got the same impression about Gunnar ruining its chances for success, rather than helping it move toward completion. I have nothing personal against Gunnar, and I think the Vampire is a great product, but it does seem to me that Gunnar has stepped on a few people to get where he is now.


Gunnar was *not* the only reason for the demise of the Natami project even though he often gets blamed for it. The 68k CPU core options in FPGA or with old processors didn't provide good value (even with the further integration of the CPU and custom chips into a FPGA SoC). Thomas had hoped to make chip memory cacheable for performance but was unsuccessful and frustrated by this. There was management pressure on Thomas which he found out, after making the project public, he didn't want to deal with as he concentrated on the hardware. The 68k AmigaOS was not in development and unsupported. There were probably other reasons I did not know about.

The Natami MX "Bringup Thread" had at least 761,487 views before the counter was reset at one point and then had tens of thousands more views. The Natami would not have been particularly cheap and lacked a 68k CPU core with good performance/price yet it attracted attention and generated excitement that even CBM would not have ignored. The PPC AmigaOS 4 guys happily ignored Natami like they did the 68k AmigaOS and went on selling a few hundred PPC Amigas a year which is turning the Amiga into a bad joke. Maybe part of the reason Michele is suing Hyperion is to stop this charade which is destroying the Amiga reputation.

BigD Quote:

I cried when the Phase5 A/Box came to nothing. Seriously, Phase5, DCE and QuikPak did more for AGA Amiga hardware development than C= or Amiga Technologies did!


As well engineered as P5 hardware was, the A/Box concept looked too ambitious to me to be practical and cheap. I would have been surprised if the design was good for anything but high priced high performance hardware which I don't think would have helped the Amiga much without a successful lower end product that could be mass produced.

Last edited by matthey on 20-Jun-2021 at 02:51 PM.
Last edited by matthey on 20-Jun-2021 at 02:46 PM.

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BigD 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 21-Jun-2021 19:04:42
#1488 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@matthey

Quote:
As well engineered as P5 hardware was, the A/Box concept looked too ambitious to me to be practical and cheap. I would have been surprised if the design was good for anything but high priced high performance hardware which I don't think would have helped the Amiga much without a successful lower end product that could be mass produced.


The Amiga itself was "too ambitious" on paper (it was only supposed to be a games console until the games crash) and it still was in its first iteration as the A1000 but C= cost reduced it and C= UK was able to market the A500 as a low cost home computer. Germany was able to market the big box Amiga 2000 as premium home computer and ditto with the A3000/A4000/T.

By contrast C= USA sat on its hands, fired Amiga engineers and tried to replace the Amiga with a PC clone business while the sales managers commissioned sepia adverts and other cr@p to attempt to sink the Amiga at every turn. Irving Gould even fired Rattigan the guy who oversaw the A500's introduction and a brief return to profitability so don't talk to me about a 'practical' business plan as the Amiga NEVER had one!

People were desperate for new hardware by 1997 and had Phase5 got it to market it WOULD have sold IMHO.

Last edited by BigD on 21-Jun-2021 at 07:08 PM.

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SHADES 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 22-Jun-2021 0:47:39
#1489 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 13-Nov-2003
Posts: 865
From: Melbourne

@BigD


Really well said. I agree.
IF Phase5 got it to market it WOULD have sold.
People are STILL desperate for cheap, modern hardware now!.

A X5000 is $5000.00 AUS IF you could get it. It's INSANE. There will be no buy-in
The PiStorm is a fantastic breath of fresh air, but still relies on very old ageing hardware.

Once the legal mess is sorted, I really hope a nice, modern and affordable platform like Pi gets chosen and modern connectivity along with it. Old Chipsets can be FPGA and "plugged in" if required but the OS needs people and having huge buy-in costs is the ZERO way of attracting anyone in numbers.

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matthey 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 22-Jun-2021 1:31:49
#1490 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

BigD Quote:

The Amiga itself was "too ambitious" on paper (it was only supposed to be a games console until the games crash) and it still was in its first iteration as the A1000 but C= cost reduced it and C= UK was able to market the A500 as a low cost home computer. Germany was able to market the big box Amiga 2000 as premium home computer and ditto with the A3000/A4000/T.


The Amiga was probably too ambitious. It cost $55 million U.S. ($140 million today) to bring it to market which was only possible by a larger business (why the original Amiga Corporation had to sell out to CBM). The Amiga 1000 was introduced at $1,285 in 1985 and only sold about 77,000 units the first year. The introductory price was high and the Amiga 1000 only supported NTSC. The Amiga really didn't sell well until spending more money to make a new Agnus which supported PAL and cost reducing the Amiga which became the Amiga 500 in 1987. It was low priced Amigas which kept the Amiga from being a financial disaster. The low priced Amiga 1200 also did well. The Amiga was ambitious enough that it was difficult to have a low end low priced offering in 1985 and the resulting slow launch and financial hole it created was detrimental to the Amiga's long term success.

See Jeff Porter's talk at the Amiga32 for some good information about what was going on at CBM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d0N_llC-98

Jeff was the guy in charge of creating the Amiga 500. Despite being the engineer in charge of R&D, he is sharp on financials and marketing too.

BigD Quote:

By contrast C= USA sat on its hands, fired Amiga engineers and tried to replace the Amiga with a PC clone business while the sales managers commissioned sepia adverts and other cr@p to attempt to sink the Amiga at every turn. Irving Gould even fired Rattigan the guy who oversaw the A500's introduction and a brief return to profitability so don't talk to me about a 'practical' business plan as the Amiga NEVER had one!


CBM did spend on the Amiga but there were financial problems with the Amiga early partly due to the Amiga being too ambitious. Rattigan was helping turn the Amiga around with a low end product which Gould sabotaged with his control issues (not the first time). There were some practical business plans but they were inconsistent and delayed due to frequent management changes and early financial problems.

BigD Quote:

People were desperate for new hardware by 1997 and had Phase5 got it to market it WOULD have sold IMHO.


I believe the A/Box would have sold but my concern is that the R&D costs would have been high and then it wouldn't have been cheap enough to mass produce, much like the early Amiga. Tens of thousands of units is *not* enough to mass produce which was a major problem with the Amiga 1000 too. CBM's goal was to sell hundreds of thousands of units for a successful mass produced product. That goal was reached with lower priced Amiga hardware like the Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200. CBM survived the Amiga early days only because they were big enough. Jeff Porter talks about the cost reductions of the Amiga 500 which was supposed to sell for $500 (the Amiga 300 was renamed to Amiga 600 because it was a cost reduction failure yet still produced). They were able to reduce the cost of the Amiga 500 down to $200 (super profit margin!). Jeff goes on to talk about "magic price points" where dropping the price $100 doubles the volume. The Amiga needs high volume mass produced hardware. High end hardware like the A/Box, X5000 or Amiga 5000 isn't going to help the Amiga as much as low end hardware like an Amiga 20 and Amiga 40. How far can the Amiga be cost reduced today and still offer good value? Some people say the Amiga market isn't big enough today and that the Amiga assets are a liability but I saw .75 million views on the Natami forum for the MX bringup thread which could translate to hundreds of thousands of potential customers for hardware without marketing, without the Amiga name and without cost reductions. It wouldn't take anywhere near $140 million or even $55 million to make a low cost mass produced Amiga today. It probably wouldn't take much more than the amount of money spent on Amiga related lawsuits and lawyers since the demise of CBM.

Last edited by matthey on 23-Jun-2021 at 04:58 PM.

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jPV 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 22-Jun-2021 11:12:16
#1491 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 11-Apr-2005
Posts: 809
From: .fi

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote:
BigD Quote:

I cried when the Phase5 A/Box came to nothing. Seriously, Phase5, DCE and QuikPak did more for AGA Amiga hardware development than C= or Amiga Technologies did!


As well engineered as P5 hardware was, the A/Box concept looked too ambitious to me to be practical and cheap. I would have been surprised if the design was good for anything but high priced high performance hardware which I don't think would have helped the Amiga much without a successful lower end product that could be mass produced.

But at least A\Box's spiritual legacy lives in MorphOS, which has roots at the phase5 direction :) MorphOS has the API called ABox, it has fulfilled most of the operating system features defined in the A\Box specifications, supported hardware is way more powerful than it was in A\Box specs, etc. So it kind of materialized after all :)

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Tomppeli 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 23-Jun-2021 12:42:31
#1492 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Jun-2004
Posts: 1652
From: Home land of Santa, sauna, sisu and salmiakki

@matthey

Quote:
The Amiga 1000 was introduced at $1,285 in 1985 and only sold about 77,000 units the first year. The introductory price was high and the Amiga 1000 only supported NTSC. The Amiga really didn't sell well until spending more money to make a new ECS Agnus which supported PAL and cost reducing the Amiga which became the Amiga 500 in 1987


What crap are you talking. Of course there is PAL A1000's. A500 Plus has ECS from 1991. A500 is OCS.

A1000 was maybe expensive in some countries. But it was cheap in USA. I remember seeing a quote where IBM PC was twice the price and Macintosh was multiple times more expensive. People believed more in IBM and Apple as what they did believe in Commodore. (I've never been able to understand how Jobs pulled it off selling their machines at such high prices.) (Wasn't Commodore founded in Canada so maybe it wasn't domestic enough for Americans.)

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matthey 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 23-Jun-2021 17:44:39
#1493 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

Tomppeli Quote:

What crap are you talking. Of course there is PAL A1000's. A500 Plus has ECS from 1991. A500 is OCS.


According to Jeff Porter in the video I linked, The first Amiga 1000s were NTSC only. Yes, there were PAL Amiga 1000s before the Amiga 500 was released but the price was high, at least for Europe. The combination of a cheap price and PAL support came with the Amiga 500 which is when the Amiga started to see some success.

Tomppeli Quote:

A1000 was maybe expensive in some countries. But it was cheap in USA. I remember seeing a quote where IBM PC was twice the price and Macintosh was multiple times more expensive. People believed more in IBM and Apple as what they did believe in Commodore. (I've never been able to understand how Jobs pulled it off selling their machines at such high prices.) (Wasn't Commodore founded in Canada so maybe it wasn't domestic enough for Americans.)


IBM and Macintosh computers were expensive also. The Macintosh was more than twice the price of the Atari ST and the Amiga was about 50% more expensive. While the Atari ST and 8088 PC clones were inferior 16 bit offerings, the lower price helped sales volumes, especially in poorer markets. It was the IBM PC clone market commodity hardware and competition that pushed prices down and gained momentum as it did but it was a while before the PC market overtook the 8 bit market led by the C64.





https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/

In 1985 when the Amiga was introduced, the low end personal computer market was still 8 bit hardware. The high end was the IBM PC AT and Macintosh. The Amiga was in between but closer to the high end than most PC (808x) clones and the Atari ST. The Amiga offered better value but that didn't matter to people who couldn't afford it or couldn't justify the cost (over $3000 today). More people could afford an AmigaOne X5000 today which is cheaper when adjusted for inflation. However, personal computer prices have gone down and what people are willing to pay is much lower as can be seen in the sales of only hundred of units by A-Eon.

Jack Tramiel was originally employed in New York but first marketed products in Canada due to a licensing deal and CBM went public as a Canadian company.

Last edited by matthey on 24-Jun-2021 at 12:47 AM.

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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 27-Jun-2021 5:30:07
#1494 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote:
@matthey

Quote:
As well engineered as P5 hardware was, the A/Box concept looked too ambitious to me to be practical and cheap. I would have been surprised if the design was good for anything but high priced high performance hardware which I don't think would have helped the Amiga much without a successful lower end product that could be mass produced.


The Amiga itself was "too ambitious" on paper (it was only supposed to be a games console until the games crash) and it still was in its first iteration as the A1000 but C= cost reduced it and C= UK was able to market the A500 as a low cost home computer. Germany was able to market the big box Amiga 2000 as premium home computer and ditto with the A3000/A4000/T.

By contrast C= USA sat on its hands, fired Amiga engineers and tried to replace the Amiga with a PC clone business while the sales managers commissioned sepia adverts and other cr@p to attempt to sink the Amiga at every turn. Irving Gould even fired Rattigan the guy who oversaw the A500's introduction and a brief return to profitability so don't talk to me about a 'practical' business plan as the Amiga NEVER had one!

People were desperate for new hardware by 1997 and had Phase5 got it to market it WOULD have sold IMHO.

FYI, Commodore Germany also pushed for Commodore X86 PCs.

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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 27-Jun-2021 6:17:07
#1495 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@matthey

The main advantage for MS-DOS X86 PC clones is multiple source vendors and business software exclusivity.

MS Xenix was the highest-volume AT&T Unix license. 80286 includes MMU for Xenix. Xenix was multi-user and multi-tasking.

From a business POV with *nix requirement, Xenix and X86 PC clones win the micro-computer platform wars since AmigaOS (TRIPOS) is a toy OS and there's single source for the Amiga micro-computer hardware.

Commodore Amiga Operating System (CAOS) would have negated AmigaOS (TRIPOS) as a toy OS criticisms.

In BYTE magazine in 1983 described XENIX as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the future", hence 3rd party press are helping X86 PC negating AmigaOS's multitasking PR advantage.

68000 and 68010 don't include integrated MMU hence they are not competitive with Intel 80286 CPU.

Commodore is aware of business *nix requirement, hence niche Amiga 2500 model with 68020+68851 MMU or 68030. Meanwhile, PC's 80286 and 80386 didn't kitbash like 68EC030 vs 68030 or keep offering higher chip count 68020+68851 combo.

Motorola/Commodore failed to transition 68020 (with integrated MMU, a.k.a. 68030) into 68000 numbers. AMIGA Technologies GmbH's Walker's 1995 specs with 68030 were laughable i.e. it's like selling 386DX machines in the 486 transitions into Pentium era 1995.

Motorola/Commodore/AMIGA Technologies failed to transition the 68040 into 68000 numbers.

Motorola/Commodore/AMIGA Technologies failed to transition the 68060 into 68000 numbers.

Any X86 PC clone with 80286 and 80386 CPU can run MS Xenix i.e. business IT doesn't need to buy a niche Amiga 2500UX model. Motorola should have baselined 68000/68010 with integrated MMU.

68010's 68451 add-on chip is not the same as 68851 MMU, LOL. Motorola seems to hate software legacy.

Sun Microsystems' 68 K-based workstations used their own proprietary MMUs instead of the MC68451.

PC XT 8088 belongs in the 8-bit bus era micro-computer. IBM PC-AT clones standardized with 80286 CPU with 16 bit bus.

Dell traces its origins to 1984 when Michael Dell created Dell Computer Corporation, which at the time did business as PC's Limited. Compaq was founded in February 1982.

Compaq Deskpro 86 = year 1984
Compaq DeskPro 386 = year 1986, shipped with Windows/386 or Windows 2.1.

EISA bus = 1988, the gang of nine PC clone rebels, led by Compaq. Intel introduced their first EISA chipset (and also their first chipset in the modern sense of the word) as the 82350 in September 1989. Intel introduced a lower-cost variant as the 82350DT, announced in April 1991.





C64's MOS/CSG 65 series CPUs didn't evolve like X86 PCs, hence the Amiga 68K platform started from ground zero.

Amiga ECS mindset was already set in C128 which has aging gaming hardware with low color/high-resolution biz mode. According to DaveH, AGA was completed in Feb 1991.

MOS 65xx had the engineers to compete against Mototola's 6800 in 1970s, and it was affected by the Commodore's "let's run it down" mentality.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 07:12 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 07:07 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 07:04 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 07:03 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 06:42 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 06:31 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 06:22 AM.

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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 27-Jun-2021 6:48:20
#1496 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Tomppeli

The problem for 68K Amiga's competitive evolution is Motorola and Commodore.

The Commodore problem.


A500's October 1987 introductory price is $699 USD. Note that $1000 USD 486 33Mhz based PC in December 1993 is approaching A500's October 1987 introductory price range.


No 3rd party Amiga CPU accelerator will match Commodore's economics of scale. For 1993, the uncompetitive nature with 68K can also stem from Motorola not just from Commodore.


From USA's Amiga World Magazine (November 1993), page 58 of 100,
Price listed in USD in November 1993

A1200/020, 2MB, price $379
A3000/030 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 105HD, price $899
A3000T/030 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1199
A3000T/040 at 25Mhz, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1599
A3000s are missing AGA chipset.


Cost estimate for 68040 card, $1599 - $1199, cost for 68040 A3640 card = $400

A1200's $379 + 68040 A3640 card's $400 = $779.

A3640 includes extra glue chips for supporting the Zorro III bus is not needed for the A1200 version.


Commodore could have out-of-the-box configured A1200 with 68040 at 25Mhz for slightly above $779 (i.e. add 4MB fast ram, small HDD) which could compete against $1000 out-of-the-box 486 33Mhz based PC. Amiga 1200 with 68LC040 + 4MB fast ram at $779 cost would be targeting Doom-type PC games.


Reference for $1000 486 based PC in 1993
From https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NfZ_G7tzVw0J:https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-12-23-fi-4940-story.html+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk"
The year 1993, 486 at 33Mhz PC price in California, USA
Article date: DEC. 23, 1993


A year ago, a San Francisco-area PC clone dealer known for its low prices was advertising a fully equipped 33 Mhz 486 PC for $1,388. Today, that same machine costs about $1,000

Building A1200 SKU with 68LC040 sets up the infrastructure required for 68060.

A1200 with 68LC040 SKU slots between baseline A1200/020 and A4000/040(with FPU). 68LC040 doesn't include FPU which is not needed for Doom-type games.
-----
The Motorola problem


AMD second source insurance worked as intended when Intel supported Itanium IA-64 while AMD supported X86-64 as in K8 Athlon/Opteron.

Since Motorola abandoned 68K for PowerPC, 68K doesn't have AMD second source insurance. Apollo's AC68080 is a good "what if" when 68K has AMD-like cloner insurance.

In the 1993 time period, Intel's Pentium evolution is important for continued X86 based PC's competitive evolution.


------
1989 to 1991, Intel was involved to make the PC platform cheaper and competitive with the Intel chipset business.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Jun-2021 at 06:50 AM.

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pavlor 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 27-Jun-2021 7:34:21
#1497 ]
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@Hammer

Amiga market share was canibalised also from the lower end: newer video game consoles (like MegaDrive or SNES) directly competed with "home computers" (A500, ST) and were even more successful than NES vs C64 in that regard. Low margins at the lower end of the market and next to no investment in R/D could not lead to a viable computing platform in the long run anyway.

As of 486DX 33 MHz PC at the end of 1993 for 1000 USD, I don´t think this was with sound card and color monitor (I bet cheap ISA SVGA as GFX and monochrome VGA display).

Last edited by pavlor on 27-Jun-2021 at 10:50 AM.

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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 28-Jun-2021 4:29:25
#1498 ]
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Posts: 5246
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@pavlor


Quote:

pavlor wrote:
@Hammer

Amiga market share was canibalised also from the lower end: newer video game consoles (like MegaDrive or SNES) directly competed with "home computers" (A500, ST) and were even more successful than NES vs C64 in that regard. Low margins at the lower end of the market and next to no investment in R/D could not lead to a viable computing platform in the long run anyway.

As of 486DX 33 MHz PC at the end of 1993 for 1000 USD, I don´t think this was with sound card and color monitor (I bet cheap ISA SVGA as GFX and monochrome VGA display).

FYI, vanilla Doom ran only in a tweaked VGA "Mode 13h" 320x200 256 color video mode.

AGA Alice's Blitter and Copper still operate on 16-bit data width. AGA is NOT 32 bit SVGA chipset caliber e.g. AGA is inferior to S3 Trio 32, Tseng Labs ET-4000 VLB.

The mentioned Amiga 3000 doesn't have AGA. Our family-owned Amiga 3000 @25Mhz and 386DX33 based PC, I run Doom on the PC. Amiga 3000's Doom EHB results were garbage.

386DX33 (with Cirus Logic 54xx SVGA) based PC was enough to hold me over until 1996's Quake and Pentium 150 purchase.


1993 was the year MS pushed for MPC1 and MPC2 standards.

PC Mag 11 May 1993, Page 431,
Tseng Labs ET-4000 24X VLB 1MB Video RAM: $129
Sound Blaster compatible: $65

For the Amiga
X-Pert Computer Services / Village Tronic's Domino also used Tseng Labs ET-4000.


Tseng Labs ET-4000 VLB beats AGA, but AGA is enough for Doom with a fast CPU.

PC Mag 11 October 1993, Page 419,
Barebone PC with Intel 486SX25 VLB, 128 KB L2 cache, 4MB RAM, FDD, 128 MB HD, Keyboard = cost $750. Ready for Pentium OverDrive ZIF socket.

Additional components
S3 VLB 1MB Video RAM = $149
Tseng Labs ET-4000 24X VLB 1MB Video RAM: $129
Pro Audio 16: $159

Barebone PC + Tseng Labs ET-4000 + Pro Audio 16 = $1058 (October 1993)

Amiga AGA in 1993, there's a price gap between A1200/020 and A4000/040.

A4000/030 wasn't good enough for Doom.
A4000 wasn't designed for A1200 volume numbers since it has a higher chip count when compared to 32 bit PC competition.

After hearing DaveH's AGA being completed in Feb 1991, I regret that my Dad has bought the A3000 in early 1992. The blame is on C= management.

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 28-Jun-2021 9:55:14
#1499 ]
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@Hammer

Quote:
After hearing DaveH's AGA being completed in Feb 1991, I regret that my Dad has bought the A3000 in early 1992. The blame is on C= management.


Yes, but you can’t stick an AGA chip into an Amiga 1000, 500, 600 or 2000, So larger market was OCS, the tight integration cut price, but also made it hard to upgrade and expensive, a upgrade path to AGA, might have helped move the platform forward. But going AGA, wont helped when VGA kicked AGA ass in 93 with DOOM.

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Hammer 
Re: Trevor's Amiga Blog
Posted on 28-Jun-2021 16:00:05
#1500 ]
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Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote:
@Hammer

Quote:
After hearing DaveH's AGA being completed in Feb 1991, I regret that my Dad has bought the A3000 in early 1992. The blame is on C= management.


Yes, but you can’t stick an AGA chip into an Amiga 1000, 500, 600 or 2000, So larger market was OCS, the tight integration cut price, but also made it hard to upgrade and expensive, a upgrade path to AGA, might have helped move the platform forward. But going AGA, wont helped when VGA kicked AGA ass in 93 with DOOM.

June 1990 era Amiga 3000 already has 32-bit Chip Ram with 16 bit ECS.

With AGA being completed in Feb 1991, A1200 should have been released in Xmas 1991 instead of A500P and A600.

C65 was completed in December 1990 which is 256 color with 4096 color palette chipset. LOL.

Amiga 1200 production has been gimped by the factory move from HK to the Philippines.

Fast VGA clone can't run Doom i.e. it needs a suitable CPU. LOL.

386SX at 16 Mhz with IBM VGA from IBM PS/2 Model 55SX is slow.

IBM VGA with Athlon XP at 1800 Mhz is still very slow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=octArwHpaiY
Quake, 320x200 resolution =~ 8.6FPS with K7 Athlon XP at 1800 Mhz and IBM VGA.

With a fast CPU, AGA scales better than IBM VGA.

My Dad's 386DX33 has a Cirrus Logic 54xx SVGA card.

Vanilla Doom ran only in a tweaked VGA "Mode 13h" 320x200 256 color video mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl-gYdkIXCk
Amiga 1200 with Apollo 68040 @ 40 Mhz running Doom. 68LC040 enough for Doom since it doesn't need an FPU.

68LC040 @ 33mhz will run Adoom okay.

Refer to my post on 1993 era A1200 with 68LC040 + 4MB + small HD SKU and $799 cost estimate.

For AGA, Commodore has a price gap between A1200 and A4000.

With the 68LC040 CPU, AGA would be treated like a dumb frame buffer.

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