@matthey

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matthey wrote: C= could have adopted good standards like PCI

They could have, but would it have been worth the effort? PCI is now dead. How many different graphics card 'standards' have we had to endure over the years? I have lost count (don't even know what the latest PC motherboards have on them).

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(C= messed this up by not using IDE sooner in the Amiga 500, buffered IDE and cheaper 3.5" IDE drives in some Amigas).

IDE was originally a proprietry system developed for PCs by a single manufacturer in 1986. I doubt that Commodore would have had time to reverse-engineer it by 1987 when they released the A500. At that time SCSI was technically far superior and the drives didn't cost much more. All Amigas had expansion busses so there was no need to put a hard drive interface on the motherboard. By 1989 Commodore had the A590 which included an XT-IDE interface. IDE wasn't actually standardized unti 1992. Before (and even after) then, the lack of standards often caused compatibility issues in PCs.

The A4000 and A600 were both released in 1992, the same year IDE became standardized. The A600 was the first Amiga to have all surface mounted chips. It was also the first to have a PCMCIA slot - before the final PCMIA standard was released - so Commodore can't be accused of being tardy in including new technology. IMO the A600 with its smaller form factor, internal 2.5" drive and PCMCIA slot was an excellent replacement for the A500. But all it got was brickbats for not having AGA graphics and a (largely useless) numeric keypad.

I bought an A600 as soon as they were released, and loved it. 27 years later I got an identical one off eBay, slipped a Vampire accelerator, 2GB CF card and PCMCIA Ethernet card into it, and am now using it to make this post! In 1992 when I bought that first A600 I never dreamed that I would eventually have one this powerful or this cheap, or that it would still work perfectly after 27 years - a testament to Commodore's design and manufacturing expertise.

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The Amiga would likely have fallen behind the capitalistic competitive force of the PC with Moore's Law but I believe C= could have survived with competent management.

Commodore could have done better for sure, but I doubt they would have survived. How many did? I can think of only one - Apple - and they survived largely on iPhone sales. I don't think it would have mattered how well Commodore managed the Amiga, eventually PCs would kill it. Windows 95 was the final nail in the coffin, as PCs then finally had an OS that surpassed the Amiga.

@bhabbott

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bhabbott wrote: @matthey Quote: matthey wrote: C= could have adopted good standards like PCI They could have,

PCI was only released in 1992, after the Zorro-III architecture had been developed and used for the A3000 and A4000 design. So no, they couldn't have without a massive upheaval in the timeline of releases. Zorro was an excellent standard, and prior to PCI was superior to every other standard. But even Dave Haynie said they would have used PCI instead of Zorro-III had it been available at the time.

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but would it have been worth the effort? PCI is now dead.

For graphics cards and new peripherals, sure, but many PC motherboard still include it for legacy peripherals. Being almost dead now, more than 25 years after it was introduced, is still a pretty good run and would have been well worth it. Just look at the continuing popularity of PCI expansions for the Amiga.

Precious few computer hardware standards last as long as PCI - I'm curious about what standards you think they should have adopted? Even IDE hasn't lasted as long as PCI in the mainstream.

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How many different graphics card 'standards' have we had to endure over the years? I have lost count (don't even know what the latest PC motherboards have on them).

Before PCI there was a horrible mess that doesn't bear thinking about. But then there was PCI, AGP, and PCI-Express, the same standard we've had since the Pentium-IV era and still going strong. Each standard has lasted longer than the expected lifetime of any home machine, and essentially until the capabilities of GPUs exceeded those of the bus.

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(C= messed this up by not using IDE sooner in the Amiga 500, buffered IDE and cheaper 3.5" IDE drives in some Amigas).

IDE was originally a proprietry system developed for PCs by a single manufacturer in 1986. I doubt that Commodore would have had time to reverse-engineer it by 1987 when they released the A500. At that time SCSI was technically far superior and the drives didn't cost much more. All Amigas had expansion busses so there was no need to put a hard drive interface on the motherboard. By 1989 Commodore had the A590 which included an XT-IDE interface. IDE wasn't actually standardized unti 1992. Before (and even after) then, the lack of standards often caused compatibility issues in PCs.

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But all it got was brickbats for not having AGA graphics and a (largely useless) numeric keypad.

And for being more expensive than the A500 it was replacing, despite not offering any upgrade in terms of power for the average (i.e., floppy-based game player) user.

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@bhabbott

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I am glad that Commodore didn't keep bringing out new models with more advanced chipsets, because it means there are now only a few different hardware variations to cater for, and compatibility between chipsets is very good. Had they kept going we probably would have seen the Amiga go the way of PCs, with new 'Amigas' bearing little resemblance to the original design.

Uhm, glad? This is in large part what killed C= in the first place. -- No development.

Having made one more major upgrade from AGA+Paula to some chunky gfx format (8,16,24,32) and 16-bit 4-channel audio would have put Amiga waaaay further forward and secured that part of the future. Now this had to be invented and made by 3-parties which divided the users and program compatibility - No support in the OS.

Later of course we would have needed 3D-GPUs etc, but.... If they could just have layed the basics for the media future it would have made Amiga competitive for a much longer time than trying to push A1200+020 and A4000+040 with 8-bit sound and 8(18)-bit graphics in -92.

A1400 and A5000 should have been released with 030/50, 060/50 and 8,16,24,32-bit chunky grahpics capable hardware with 2D acceleration for scrolling, alphablending and sprites, and 4-channel 16-bit audio (8-channel support in the OS). 8MB chipRAM upgradable to 1GB. 4MB fastRAM upgradable to 2GB. That would have been an Amiga for the future. And it would have been realistic in -93.

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Why I left Amiga: The latest AMD gpu contains 5120 ALUs (64 compute units with 80 processing elements each) but someone trying to design a super Amiga thinks a single dual-threaded SIMD unit
in the cpu is plenty...

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Kronos wrote: And then there is the fact that it not just about transistor count but also how effective they can be used.

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bhabbott wrote: Agreed. But then the Mooore's law argument looses weight anyway, so...

The transistor count (design efficiency) didn't matter much *because* of Moore's Law. One or two die shrinks and a poor design had better performance and energy efficiency than a good design. Die shrinks are expensive so require economies of scale (mass production). Economies of scale and Moore's Law were catalysts rewarding getting chips to market fast (and a short development cycle).

A good example of economies of scale with Moore's Law at work was the Pentium vs 68060. The 68060 had similar, if not better, integer performance at the same clock speed. The 68060 design is much more efficient than the Pentium using approximately ~22% fewer transistors and drawing ~42% less power at 0.6um. When the Pentium moved to 0.35um, it now had a ~65-80% performance advantage on the 68060 due to a higher clock. The 68060 would have used less power at 0.6um than the Pentium at 0.35um but the performance and performance/W was now better for the Pentium where the 68060 dominated before.

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One argument that some Commodore bashers often make is that the Amiga's chipset was too tightly integrated, which made it harder to advance. IOW, it was too good! From a certain perspective they are right. Early PC chipsets were poor to non-existent, so they had less 'baggage' to carry forward.

The Amiga custom chip upgradability issue was mostly a problem because of games banging the hardware when it was recommended not to. C= was partially at fault because they were slow to upgrade the performance of the minimum Amiga standard spec and could have improved the functionality of the OS, improved algorithms of the OS and optimized parts of the OS so banging the hardware was rarely worthwhile. Applications rarely bang the hardware and have fewer problems on upgraded hardware.

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But the lack of a good base standard for PC hardware created massive compatibility issues, made life difficult for developers, and fragmented the market. Remember when PC games started coming out that demanded a fast CPU, VGA graphics and a '100% Sound Blaster compatible' sound card, limiting their sales to a tiny fraction of PC installations? PC developers did that because supporting a miriad of different hardware variations was just too difficult. They got away with it because the PC market was so huge, but this would never have worked for the Amiga. Having a constantly changing hardware spec would have fragmented the (already much smaller) market too much, as well as upsetting users.

The Amiga was more like a console of today. There is an advantage to having more standardized hardware but also an advantage to expandability. It should be possible to have some advantages of both with a good OS and good standards.

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I am glad that Commodore didn't keep bringing out new models with more advanced chipsets, because it means there are now only a few different hardware variations to cater for, and compatibility between chipsets is very good. Had they kept going we probably would have seen the Amiga go the way of PCs, with new 'Amigas' bearing little resemblance to the original design.

Amiga NG computers basically went the way of the PC and now they are going the way of the dodo bird.

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bhabbott wrote: The A4000 and A600 were both released in 1992, the same year IDE became standardized. The A600 was the first Amiga to have all surface mounted chips. It was also the first to have a PCMCIA slot - before the final PCMIA standard was released - so Commodore can't be accused of being tardy in including new technology. IMO the A600 with its smaller form factor, internal 2.5" drive and PCMCIA slot was an excellent replacement for the A500. But all it got was brickbats for not having AGA graphics and a (largely useless) numeric keypad.

It would have been difficult for the Amiga 500 to start with IDE but the Amiga 500+ or some later revision could have included IDE before it was "officially" standardized.

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I bought an A600 as soon as they were released, and loved it. 27 years later I got an identical one off eBay, slipped a Vampire accelerator, 2GB CF card and PCMCIA Ethernet card into it, and am now using it to make this post! In 1992 when I bought that first A600 I never dreamed that I would eventually have one this powerful or this cheap, or that it would still work perfectly after 27 years - a testament to Commodore's design and manufacturing expertise.

The Amiga 600 was a cute but costly mistake. C= was still trying to turn the original Amiga into another C64 when they should have been increasing the minimum standard to the 68020 and AGA. The Amiga 1200 was a good replacement and upgrade for the Amiga 500, albeit late and not perfect. C= did have the idea of going smaller right but they should have gone with integrating the hardware into a SoC and using a detachable keyboard. They should have designed a 68k+AGA+ SoC giving a motherboard less than half the size of a CD32 and pushing the U.S. cost below $100 for a Raspberry Pi like device and CD32 like console 20 years before the Pi. A 68000+ECS Amiga 600 was not it while the 68020+AGA CD32 and Amiga 1200 were at least closer to the mark.

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Deniil715 wrote: Uhm, glad? This is in large part what killed C= in the first place. -- No development. Having made one more major upgrade from AGA+Paula to some chunky gfx format (8,16,24,32) and 16-bit 4-channel audio would have put Amiga waaaay further forward and secured that part of the future. Now this had to be invented and made by 3-parties which divided the users and program compatibility - No support in the OS.

The FPGA guys are doing the same as they add chunky and 16 bit sound. Gunnar has no need for new standards because his product will create *the* standard and he is the *most* qualified to create any standard. MikeJ doesn't need new standards because his product is based on old standards with just minor enhancements and no future development. I didn't talk to the MiST/MiSTer guys but there wasn't much point to a standard after that.

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Later of course we would have needed 3D-GPUs etc, but.... If they could just have layed the basics for the media future it would have made Amiga competitive for a much longer time than trying to push A1200+020 and A4000+040 with 8-bit sound and 8(18)-bit graphics in -92. A1400 and A5000 should have been released with 030/50, 060/50 and 8,16,24,32-bit chunky grahpics capable hardware with 2D acceleration for scrolling, alphablending and sprites, and 4-channel 16-bit audio (8-channel support in the OS). 8MB chipRAM upgradable to 1GB. 4MB fastRAM upgradable to 2GB. That would have been an Amiga for the future. And it would have been realistic in -93.

This is pretty close to what the FPGA Amigas are providing though there is no standardization at the hardware level. It does make for a nice usable retro Amiga even though it has no future and could have more performance for more modern software.

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Lou wrote: Why I left Amiga: The latest AMD gpu contains 5120 ALUs (64 compute units with 80 processing elements each) but someone trying to design a super Amiga thinks a single dual-threaded SIMD unit in the cpu is plenty...

That is a single core integer only SIMD unit with no future upgrade path at a low clock speed too. Tabor only uses a standard single core integer unit at a medium clock speed but can offload most 3D work to that parallel processing GPU. Only Amiga makes it (im)possible.

Last edited by matthey on 15-Jan-2019 at 09:58 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

The FPGA guys are doing the same...

Yes, but 25 years too late. Now we are in nich-world and nothing matters anymore, except keeping what we have at a fun and acceptable level

Had C= put it in a real Amiga, which would have made it acceptable to everyone, we would not have needed the inkompatibility of CyberGraphics or Picasso, and relying on 3rd-party. It would have been *one* standard built into the OS and the hardware. Having support for 8-channel 16-bit audio-processing in the OS and partly in hardware would also have been awesome, and way better that competitors. Now we had to put sound cards on the clockport instead

Later on (like now) 3rd-parties could make new gfx-cards but we could have used the standard OS functions. That's not possible to a great extent now since everything was planar at the time. Only OS4 and MOS have implemented 32-bit gfx-function so that you can paint a pixel in any colour you want *without* allocating a stupid pen first. Such functions should have been in the OS from the start. Now that isn't backward-, nor side-ways compatible.

Fortunately there is only one AHI!! Amiga could just as well have had 3-4 different, and incompatible "AHI"s. Two on OS4, one on MOS and one on AROS..! We were lucky noone decided to write YAAHI (Yet Another AHI)

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@matthey

Yeah but I wasn't referring to anything PPC.

@Deniil715

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FFS was an absolutely horrible filesystem. The by far most fragile and slowest of them all. I just cannot believe some people are still using it on NG Amigas!!

I know I am.

Olaf worked hard to bring FFS up to scratch. I would have used it as my main OS4 Workbench filesystem for ten years. Now I use it on my boot volume.

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Having made one more major upgrade from AGA+Paula to some chunky gfx format (8,16,24,32) and 16-bit 4-channel audio would have put Amiga waaaay further forward and secured that part of the future. Now this had to be invented and made by 3-parties which divided the users and program compatibility - No support in the OS.

I agree with everything you said here. Though they may have needed a DSP above rigid hardwae channels. One you get into 16-bit you want to start producing professional quality music and for that you need more freedom with the instruments and giving them effects. Such as putting reverb on drums and doing echoes. Aside from variable volume and frequency control, with a rigid limit on tracks, it sounds fake when the sound gets cut off.

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Yes, but 25 years too late.

That's exactly right. And, it is still a level behind a basic AmigaOne, an "unreal" Amiga.

@AmigaBlitter

I left Amiga back in 1996 or 1997 I think, my A590 hard drive had just broken down, I had problem with floppy drive, I got sick of read write errors and having to reboot. Amiga 500 was not up to the task, I was after commodore went bankrupt, I did not see a lot light in end of tunnel. In 1998 I started to get some hope for Amiga. Again when Amiga Inc started to talk about AmigaOS3.5, it talk about the BoXeR, I got my student loan, and wondered if should by Amiga for some of that money, I investigated what it was going to cost me to buy a used one. Even then, it was ridicules prices; I quickly come to conclusion that desktop Amiga was too expensive for my wallet. So I hope I get money when started working, but the BoXeR was cancelled, I had hopes for AmigaOS4.x and AmigaONE-XE. And as it turned out in 2004, I got my first Amiga like system, at not too expensive price, what did not know was this computers was rebranded, I did know how buggy it really was, If did I most likely won't have bought it, but even so I got many years of joy using it. Even so Web browser where horrible useless for none Amiga web pages, some hope for more modern experience on the internet came with OWB, things did look that depressing, SDK where updated, OS updates where coming, and there where promises and talk about SMP, Memory protection. There where programs like Audio evolution, there was work on porting programs from Linux, there was lot activity, it was interesting times, sadly the mood in forums and community was toxic from the start with different camps fighting, and many got feed up, and left. There was lot disappointments from many people, and there was overhanging shadow of Amiga Inc, and all other people who wonted to put Amiga on everything and sell whatever as Amiga, to make a profit. Eyeteeth's bluff was exposed, and they run of, ACube came to rescue, and then stopped making hardware, A-EON wonted go for rescue it, and here we are. I got an Amiga, I left, I came back, and now we are stuck in limbo. Amiga sure is roller-coaster ride.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @AmigaBlitter ... what did not know was this computers was rebranded, I did know how buggy it really was, If did I most likely won't have bought it,....

Not that it matters today and long, long ago, but IIRC you wrere told about these facts back in the day on ann.lu by several members of "the blue camp"...
Oh those days, what hot discussions!

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Ever since I came here, practically 95% of all negativity and toxic attitude came from those who are anti A1 and 4.1 and when the A1 gets another os then suddenly you hear much less from a sub-group within them cause those focus on their side. So when you talk about toxicity and "camps" you need to lay it out there the way it has been in here for years - some come in an attempt at a conversation while a group of jackals wait on the bleachers for a chance to come at them and then it all gets wrapped inside this bogus pretense of a community. That's not how a community looks like just because aging nerds meet in different places and countries and call those meetings Amiga. If the end result is what's happening online the moment those meetings come to an end then those don't mean anything, just like these so called "camps going at each other" and other tired tropes. There is a camp of peeps who try to support new developments or even merely surviving attempts. Then there is this mix of trolls and washed up self-serving and egotistical and mostly anti-A1s who do everything to make this about them and preserve their little boys club.

Last edited by Srtest on 17-Jan-2019 at 04:09 AM.
Last edited by Srtest on 17-Jan-2019 at 02:39 AM.

@Zylesea

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Zylesea wrote: @NutsAboutAmiga Quote: NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @AmigaBlitter ... what did not know was this computers was rebranded, I did know how buggy it really was, If did I most likely won't have bought it,.... Not that it matters today and long, long ago, but IIRC you wrere told about these facts back in the day on ann.lu by several members of "the blue camp"... Oh those days, what hot discussions!

Gosh! What a long memory you have! Can we clone your brain and use it for a bio-FPGA-amiga?
As a successor of the AmigaOne's, I have a name for it, A2 as in "Adam 2" it would be a new Genesis!

@Amigo1

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As a successor of the AmigaOne's, I have a name for it, A2 as in "Adam 2" it would be a new Genesis!

LOL! It would have to fill big shoes. Jesus is said to be the second (or last) Adam. So with that in mind the A2 "Adam 2" would need to cancel out all the sins of the first AmigaOne models. That's a big job!

Last edited by Hypex on 21-Jan-2019 at 03:04 AM.

Please, no more Amiga computer products called Adam, Apollo, Genesis or Phoenix.

@matthey

How about "Gerald"?

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@klx300r

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klx300r wrote: Quote: Kicko wrote: @AmigaBlitter I feel with you. Been without amiga/lost interest since beginning of 2016. Soon 3 years. Even Winuae is getting dust. Logged in here today for historical reasons, to read some news :) Once an amigan always one kicko! I know you were working on some new music on your miggy over at amigans.net a few years back ..did you release any new stuff lately?

I tried to setup winuae to work with hd-rec or other but i failed, always something mising or not working as should so i give up and sold all my equipment. All music and amiga hardware. Only left from that times is radeon 7750 fanless a 500w psu and x1000 case (no motherboard). They are also for sale. I have some amiga stickers like one on my laptop at work :) People think im nationalistic Croatian haha. So i have to tell them its amiga boing.

I bought a powerfull pc, build myself and no i didnt crash anything like on my 2 x1000 i had :) I bought FL Studio (lifetime updates), powerfull audio software that i get lost to how much you can do. I have AKAI fire midi controller for it, audient usb audio, m.2 ssd etc. Logitech keyboard with led lightning etc. Windows is not like amigaos was for me but its just a tool that runs all kind of software that i need and its pretty modern. Drivers for most hardware.

Right now im working on my homestudio table, rearange some stuff like change my samsung monitor stand(foot) with another one to the right so i got more space and monitor looks like floating.

facebook music project

Im working on some music projects in FL but its going slow... work... social life... and netflix :)

I always thought i would be the last amigan using amigaOS and hoped amiga would rise and me beeing a great known amiga musician. To show the world what amiga is. Nice dream :)

Alot of text from me, alot to tell... beeing away.. Anyway nice to talk to you folks again.

Last edited by Kicko on 17-Jan-2019 at 08:00 PM.
Last edited by Kicko on 17-Jan-2019 at 07:58 PM.

@Kicko

not trying to talk you into anything, a contemporary system my certainly be better for the task, but setting up hd-rec under uae shouldnt be any issue. if your are missing something, snoopdos should show that up. i have been running it under pretty much basic aros68k (with just one small fix at that time) so it shouldnt be that hard, except you may need this or that lib from aminet.

Last edited by wawa on 17-Jan-2019 at 09:04 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 17-Jan-2019 at 09:03 PM.

@matthey

how about "Jesus" or "Lazarus"

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@NutsAboutAmiga

we have vampire already.