@ppcamiga1

Sadly, the PCs at university where I went, with windows 3.11, anything from 640x480 or so to 800x600 could only do 16 colours, had to use 320x240 for 256 colours. And even with just 16 colours they were rather slow. The macs were doing high resolution in monochrome, and only colours in lower resolutions too. On the other hand, Sun Sparcstations did high res 256 colours, as did the SGI Indigo etc. and a few systems could even do 24bit, but they were super expensive, regardless of platform.

Last edited by kolla on 08-Feb-2023 at 08:35 PM.

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@V8

I’ve bought all my consoles (xbox, gamecube, wii…) for Linux hacking, hehe :)

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@V8

Quote:

No one bought the SNES to use as a computer. They bought it to play games. Almost no one bought an A500 or A1200 to use as a computer. They bought it to play games.

A lie. The Amiga was popular for games but it was a true home computer and if it wasn't used for homework etc that was a waste. Scala, PageStream, Deluxe Paint and Draw Studio were awesome. Most Amiga magazines had productivity sections so I beg to differ.

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I think the market for 1200 upgrades casts shade on the claim people bought it only for games. Especially since most games available (at least pre FPS) didn't benefit from them.

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@Karlos

1200 and upgrades are a tiny share of the Amiga production, the vast majority were A500s. And yes, some A500s were used for productivity and as home computers but, and I'm guessing here but I don't think I'm wrong much, most were used for gaming.

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@WolfToTheMoon

So, I knew many A1200 owners back in the day. I didn't know any that ran a stock machine or only played games. Maybe it's a geographic thing.

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Commodore bankrupt because AGA has not chunky pixel.

Not really, it just made A4000 and A1200 less attractive on games. Look to the sales numbers, with the A1200 the Amiga was already in decline. It was not attractive for people who had an good already expanded Amiga, it wasn't attractive for newcomers and the A600 was seen as a flop by most Amigans.

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Atari Falcon 030+882+56k DSP had chunky pixel - it too died!

And VME bus, this was a standard on some industrial applications, there was a time when I thought Atari will succeed over Amiga, at the end Amiga didn't survive much longer.

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Let's face it. Every other personal computer died. The 80s was a Cambrian Explosion of different personal computers, the 90s was a mass extinction.

It's sad how everything went downhill and the competing PC wasn't even good, when the decline of home computer companies started.

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Commodore was rudderless. There was no clear corporate vision, and there was no strong leadership driving toward that vision.

If they have had a clear direction, they would not have bought Amiga, they would have had something equal development. Amiga was the last chance for them, a nearly ready developed platform, that could have brought the company to something new.

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Apple survived, the Mac didn't. OSX is just the evolution of NeXT that Jobbs brought back with him.

If C= would have made a real switch to Unix, something with a sand boxed AmigaOS inside of a Unix like OS, but it would not have been possible on a low cost machine like the A1200 and it would have needed ECS backwards compatibility for the Amiga games ... very difficult.

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Technologically, the Internet killed the Amiga. With the Internet came demands for all kinds of protections that AnigaOS has nothing to offer,

An off the shelf A1200 was to weak for internet, it would have needed an accelerator card with Fast Mem and in the long run it would have needed a better OS, something that wasn't really available for an A1200.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 08-Feb-2023 at 08:17 PM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote:Quote: Technologically, the Internet killed the Amiga. With the Internet came demands for all kinds of protections that AnigaOS has nothing to offer, An off the shelf A1200 was to weak for internet, it would have needed an accelerator card with Fast Mem and in the long run it would have needed a better OS, something that wasn't really available for an A1200.

When the WWW became popular(1995 and onward), neither System 7.x nor Windows 3.x/95 had the kinds of protections in the OS a connected computer would eventually require.

The key difference is that during this time these other mainstream consumer computing platforms had parents. Amiga OS was an orphan.
With technology, all things are possible. With good stewardship, Amiga OS could've progressively modernized while maintaining certain levels of backward compatibility.

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@WolfToTheMoon

Quote:

1200 and upgrades are a tiny share of the Amiga production, the vast majority were A500s.

Compared to how many A500s were in use, I agree that upgraded A1200s were in the minority.
But of all A1200 sales, the upgraded A1200 was not in the minority.

The A1200 came at a time when the versatility and accessibility of consumer personal computing was increasing. While I liked the wedge case, it was visually more related to the very gaming focused A500.
Ideally, Commodore should have packaged it in a slim Mac LC style of desktop case. An A4000 mini vs. A600 maxi.

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@kolla

Windows 3.1 has support for 24 bit graphics cards.
You mistake it with Windows 3.0.
In 1992 even atari has chunky pixel 16 bit color.
AGA has not, thats why Commodore bankrupt.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Windows 3.1 has support for 24 bit graphics cards. You mistake it with Windows 3.0. In 1992 even atari has chunky pixel 16 bit color. AGA has not, thats why Commodore bankrupt.

So, by your reasoning Atari should still be relevant thanks to surviving the "chunky pixel selection pressure". Not only did the falcon have chunky pixels, they were high colour and it had a DSP that could accelerate lots of rendering tasks. Including fixed point 3D and texture mapping.

And yet, it's just as dead. And died at the same time, more or less.

It makes you think, eh? Well not you, I guess.

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@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @kolla Windows 3.1 has support for 24 bit graphics cards. You mistake it with Windows 3.0.

I am not mistaking - I wasn’t talking about what was possible, I was talking about what was conmon and what you’d typically see.

Just about ALL platforms had support for 24 bit graphics cards - also Amiga - and for all of them it was rather exotic and expensive. I was using a DEC VAXStation 3525 with a 19” monitor and 1280x1024 24 bit graphics around this time.

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In 1992 even atari has chunky pixel 16 bit color.

At 320x200 or so.

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AGA has not, thats why Commodore bankrupt.

And Atari survived? No.

Last edited by kolla on 09-Feb-2023 at 08:36 AM.
Last edited by kolla on 09-Feb-2023 at 08:36 AM.

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@Karlos

I'm pretty sure reality doesn't matter with him.

Why acknowledge facts when you can repeat delusions that you probably know are inaccurate in hope of saying them enough times will alter reality?

Heck, it's not like the Amiga didn't have options for chunky pixel formats or that Commodore had no other machines besides the Amiga that used them nigh on exclusively, none of which influenced their inevitable bankruptcy.
The writing was on the wall even before AGA machines were released.

@fishy_fis

Quote:

by fishy_fis on 9-Feb-2023 18:42:02 @Karlos I'm pretty sure reality doesn't matter with him. Why acknowledge facts when you can repeat delusions that you probably know are inaccurate in hope of saying them enough times will alter reality? Heck, it's not like the Amiga didn't have options for chunky pixel formats or that Commodore had no other machines besides the Amiga that used them nigh on exclusively, none of which influenced their inevitable bankruptcy. The writing was on the wall even before AGA machines were released.

Totally agree, With all of it.
Didn't CD32 do chunky conversion in hardware?? Akiko chip?

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@Karlos

Quote:

So, I knew many A1200 owners back in the day. I didn't know any that ran a stock machine or only played games. Maybe it's a geographic thing.

Probably just a self-select thing. You probably chose to hang out with people that liked to use it as a computer and write code for it rather than to hang out with people you have way less in common with, like the people that just treated the amiga as a games machine.


EDIT:
What I think killed the amiga was two things.
1, A very major part of the initial sales were to gamers that just wanted a game-console (with a keyboard). But Commodore was slow to evolve and upgrade its graphics and sound hw so very rapidly it fell behind other offerings. The games that amiga could play were soon very poor compared to what other platforms could offer. AGA was too little too late imho.
2, Piracy. Piracy was rampant and I think it caused a lot of software houses to either just not spend too much effort to polish the amiga ports or just outright skip the platform.

Last edited by V8 on 09-Feb-2023 at 09:08 AM.

@SHADES

Akiko was not a good solution unfortunately. It could do the conversion but it should've been integrated into the display circuitry directly or at the very least do its own DMA. Instead, you had to do it all PIO style, writing 8 32-bit words (representing 32 successive chunky pixels) to its registers, then reading them back as 8 32-bir words each word representing a planes worth of 32-bit planar pixels. For the basic 020 in the cd32 this was still faster than rolling your own 8-bit c2p (though maybe some of the more optimised routines may be a match).

At the very least if it could have had a set of plane pointers that it wrote to and incremented by itself it would've been better.

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@Karlos

Oh right. I can see how a faster CPU would make that redundant. Maybe it was too hard to re-design the graphics. Gee that is weird. The cycles stolen just to do that data transfer stuff. That extra chip can't have been cheap to design either. Even an extended copper would have been more useful, one would think.

Well, just in case ppcamiga had a valid point, I asked Chat GPT on why Amiga failed.

The Commodore Amiga was a popular and innovative computer in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it ultimately failed to capture a significant market share for several reasons.

1. Competition from other companies: The personal computer market was rapidly expanding during the time that the Amiga was available, and it faced intense competition from other companies such as IBM, Apple, and Atari. These companies had larger marketing budgets and a more established brand presence, which made it difficult for the Amiga to stand out.

2. Lack of software support: Despite its technical superiority, the Amiga faced a lack of software support compared to its competitors. Many software developers chose to focus on other platforms, such as the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh, which had larger user bases and more established software ecosystems.

3. Changing market conditions: The personal computer market was undergoing significant changes during the time that the Amiga was available, with the advent of new technologies such as the graphical user interface, CD-ROM drives, and the Internet. The Amiga was unable to keep up with these changes and faced increasing competition from newer and more advanced computers.

4. Mismanagement by Commodore: The company that manufactured the Amiga, Commodore, was facing financial difficulties, and this impacted their ability to invest in the development and marketing of the Amiga. The company's mismanagement and lack of focus on the Amiga ultimately led to its decline and eventual failure.

In conclusion, the Amiga failed to capture the market due to a combination of intense competition, a lack of software support, changing market conditions, and mismanagement by its manufacturer. Despite its innovative features and technical superiority, the Amiga was unable to compete with other companies and eventually faded from the market.

So, that's a nope to chunky playing a roll, even an Ai doesn't agree. Although it got the GUI part wrong, it self-corrected though.

Me - That's not really correct. The Amiga had one of the first GUI, mouse driven, interfaces

I apologize, you are correct. The Amiga was one of the first personal computers to feature a graphical user interface (GUI) that was mouse-driven, which was a major innovation in its time. This was indeed a significant selling point for the Amiga, and it helped to distinguish it from other computers on the market.

My earlier response was not entirely accurate and I apologize for any confusion caused. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

.Yes.....It's a slow night

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@SHADES

I think it was spare space on the chip. Its main role, I think, was to control the CD. I may be wrong there so don't take that as gospel.

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@Karlos

Oh right. I'll go look it up. Still, involving the CPU for every transaction is not going to be fast on an underpowered 020 console. Actually, it seems almost useless.

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@SHADES

https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1479

Seems like I was half right. This suggests the same split purpose but that the primary motivation was the chunky to planar.

It does make me wonder what the point was. The class of games that needed chunky pixels the most, tended to be those that calculate them one at a time, e.g. texturemapped FPS type games. Almost all 2D games that rely on pre-rendered graphical elements could do it better in the planar chips using the classic blitter/copper tricks.

Adding custom designed hardware to assist supporting chunky pixel rendering engines but leaving the same basic 020 with no fast memory, seems like terrible hubris. Especially an implementation that requires moving data from chip, to Akiko, from Akiko and back to chip. It just seems utterly pointless. For the same outlay they could've just built a 28MHz machine with fast memory and it would have been significantly better.

Last edited by Karlos on 09-Feb-2023 at 09:51 AM.

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