@DiscreetFX

Quote:

but what if you were laying out a color publication.

You printed your greyscale work onto colored paper

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All the way, with 68k

@pavlor

>For productive work (office, DTP etc.) high quality high resolution monochrome display is far >superior over low quality low resolution colour display... and even cheaper.

Yes, of course! I remember back in 1992 I much preferred using the 9" monochrome 512X384 that most Mac users had over my 17" color multi-scan at 800X600 that I was using on my A1200.

@Zeus

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… my 17" color multi-scan at 800X600 that I was using on my A1200.

Ooph, too rich for my blood.
I didn’t use a 17” monitor on my Amiga 1200 until 1996 when it was in a tower and I was using a Blizzard PPC + BVisionPPC GPU. Before then, the best my A1200 had was the 14” NEC 3D MultiSync, 640x480/640x512.

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All the way, with 68k

@DiscreetFX

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: @NutsAboutAmiga Steve Jobs successfully convinced people to buy a black and white computer for years so he was a marketing genus. I’ll never understand why people bought B&W computers when plenty of color ones were available.

I happily take monochrome postscript display NeXT machine over any "colourful" Windows or "classic" Apple any day, thank you very much.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@agami
amazing setup, I had the same system!

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Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@agami


I got lucky, I actually paid $0 for my 17". We received a load of "defective" monitors for disposal at my work. Back in the late 80's and early 90's we were so wasteful. Returned product that was perfectly fine was routinely sent off to the landfill. As you said 17" monitors were very expensive back then. I believe I paid $799 just for the Amiga 1084 monitor in 1991.

I went through and found that many of monitors were perfectly fine except they weren't in the original packing. Imagine my happiness when I found not only a working 17" but one that was multi-sync. I also recovered a couple of 15" multi-sync. I used these monitors for years on my Amiga computers but my pride and joy which I still have today is the 20" Toshiba Timm monitor that I purchased on close out in the late 90's.

The largest CRT monitor that I ever saw that could multi-sync was the Mitsubishi 42" TV/monitor. It was a massive beast, I can't remember the weight but it had to be in excess of 200 lbs. My aunt actually had one that she purchased to use just as a TV. Later when she retired and sold her house she offered it to me but when I checked it out it was beginning to fail. That and the fact that I had no way to move it except for renting a truck meant I passed on it. One of her coworkers took it and had it repaired so I'm glad that it didn't immediately end up in a landfill.

@agami

Quote:

Things appear very clear from our 2021 vantage point and having 20/20 hindsight

C= knew about the downside of the existing chipset:
-There was the 'A2024 Hedley Monitor' with a built in frame buffer for hi res GFX
-There was Amber (A3000 Customchip) and the 'A2320 Flicker Fixer' making interlaces modes usable
-There was the A2410 a GFX card from Commodore.

They knew exactly what was missing for a 'professional' Amiga but they rarely added expansions to the default chipset.

And Commodore even made a special hack so their floppy drives where able to use HD Floppies without Paula modification and even AGA was a hack for easier game porting to the low cost machines.

Commodore should've used a 2-year new release cadence for the chipsets but this is what we got:
- 1985 OCS
- 1989 ECS
- 1991 AGA
- 1994 bankruptcy

And those steps from OCS to ECS to AGA where only small and tiny steps losing the advantages over PCs that existed in 1985

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 11-Dec-2021 at 10:46 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 11-Dec-2021 at 10:46 PM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

Commodore should've used a 2-year new release cadence for the chipsets but this is what we got: - 1985 OCS - 1989 ECS - 1991 AGA - 1994 bankruptcy And those steps from OCS to ECS to AGA where only small and tiny steps losing the advantages over PCs that existed in 1985

Considering the pitiful Amiga R&D budget and the $3million salaries paid to Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali in the 90s it was a miracle that they progressed beyond the 68000 CPU, OCS and the failure that was the CDTV. If it was left solely to the upper management and even most mid grade engineering managers brought in from a PC background I would think that they would have happily become a 100% PC clone manufacturer around 1991!

Last edited by BigD on 12-Dec-2021 at 12:51 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Dec-2021 at 12:48 AM.

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

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: - 1997 Big box / small box (no more wedge keyboard case). CPU? (Age of Hombre) + OS 4.x

Noooo!

Wedge cases forever!!

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Founder of NWAG - North West Amiga Group

Night Operations

A1200 020/28MHz + 64Mb / 4Gb CF / OS 3.1.4.1 / 1438S
A500+ / 2Mb
A600

@OneTimer1

Quote:

C= knew about the downside of the existing chipset

I'm sure certain people at Commodore knew, beyond that I'm no willing to make any wholesale assumptions regarding what the entire company knew.
Looking back, it seems that they were very focused on the bottom line, and were mostly reacting to consumer sentiment.

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All the way, with 68k

BigD Quote:

Considering the pitiful Amiga R&D budget and the $3million salaries paid to Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali in the 90s it was a miracle that they progressed beyond the 68000 CPU, OCS and the failure that was the CDTV. If it was left solely to the upper management and even most mid grade engineering managers brought in from a PC background I would think that they would have happily become a 100% PC clone manufacturer around 1991!

I suspect that Mehdi Ali wanted to transition away from the Amiga and to PC clones which is why he hired Bill Sydnes the guy behind the PCjr disaster at IBM. Amiga budgets were cut which was a major reason why AGA was late and ECS Amigas were still being developed in the '90s. Of course the PC clone market competition predictably picked up and CBM was unable to make a profit on their clones. Dave Haynie stated CBM was selling PC clones at a price lower than they could buy them so CBM was forced to pivot back to the still profitable Amiga. It helps to have a product which can differentiate itself in the market and Amiga software compatibility had become important to some customers even as the hardware had now fallen further behind because of upper management delays during the attempt to kill off the Amiga. Like the PCjr, customers didn't want a cut down ECS Amiga but rather a full featured enhanced and compatible Amiga at a reasonable price.

agami Quote:

I'm sure certain people at Commodore knew, beyond that I'm no willing to make any wholesale assumptions regarding what the entire company knew. Looking back, it seems that they were very focused on the bottom line, and were mostly reacting to consumer sentiment.

Yes, CBM was reactive becoming an industry follower instead of industry leader. Moore's law kicking in to high gear in the '90s made this painfully obvious.