@ppcamiga1

There were options for adding RTG hardware for more practical graphic modes. If you were willing to spend the money and expand it. I could have bought a BlizzardPPC on special with the option of a BlizzardVision. Unfortunately I decided not too, because it wasn't practical for a desktop case, and the tower I had was only suitable for drives and not hosting a full A1200 board inside. So I put up with my A1200/030 and only AGA with a VGA monitor so couldn't even play real Amiga games on it.

Despite my A1200 not having very high specs by the end it still cost thousands over the course of many years. When my AmigaOne XE eventually took the place of my A1200 on my desk, the whole setup cost me less and the end result was way more powerful.

@BigD

Quote:

You could ask A-EON if you could buy a pile of Freescale QorlIQ P1022 PPC CPUs to add to your shrine!

Oh no! If you pile that up you get piles. We don't need haemorrhoids of PPC chips!

@fishy_fis

LOL. Well, there was always going to be a point where common hardware would become too powerful, and the AmigaOne hardware would simply draft too far behind. I think, considering it really was too late, that getting the [strangely named] AmigaOne out at all was an amazing feat. By that stage most Amiga users had given up on any Amiga reboot given it was ten years down the track. Nothing could compete with the awesome looking PPC ABox on that cover of CUAmiga ever again.

What's interesting with the A1200 and high ends Amiga in general is a trend appeared to replace the Amiga chipset with PC parts. PCI became an expensive bridge for more reasonable cards. In a sense the Amiga had become like a car where all the parts had to be replaced over time but it was still the same car. It's even got to the point where there are hardware CPU expansions emulating the 68K now. While obviously a technical feat it does start to look silly at that point.

@Hypex

I bet it hasn't held its price like your A1200 setup would have! I'm sure you would recoup your costs on the A1200 investment that you made, I'm not so sure about the AmigaOne XE! The A1200 is iconic and much loved! I'm a Big Box Amiga convert but there is something very special about the A1200 even with just AGA and preferably an 030/50 accelerator added for good measure! Go go Blizzard POWER!

Last edited by BigD on 26-Feb-2023 at 02:21 PM.

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

@BigD

I think they might hold there price, consider they made in low quantities, however when you have two or tree at that point you start wonder do need all, can give one away. So, some lucky people might get one free.

I will only consider it, if someone have the programming skills, he does not have a PPC system from before, is active in coding (C or ASM, Pascal), not biased towards PPC, and willing to pay for shipment.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 26-Feb-2023 at 03:17 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 26-Feb-2023 at 03:16 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@Hypex

Quote:

There were options for adding RTG hardware for more practical graphic modes. If you were willing to spend the money and expand it. I could have bought a BlizzardPPC on special with the option of a BlizzardVision.

I was one of those people that did get a Blizzard PPC with Bvission add-on.

I had about a year earlier transitioned my A1200 with multiple external expansions into a tower system with mostly internal expansions. There was an Amiga retailer based out of Adelaide that had a full-tower kit for A1200.

At the time I had a Blizzard 040 with SCSI II, so I christened my new beige tower Amiga 1240T. My brother had a vinyl cutter, so I cut out some nice decals using the Amiga Technologies/ESCOM font style.

Just around the time when I was considering an 060 upgrade, Blizzard announce the BlizzardPPC with 603e+060+SCSI-II and optional Bvission card with additional SIMM slot. It was not cheap, but I felt I was future-proofing my “Frankenstein’s Monster” of an Amiga.

By early 2002, when I ended up frying the motherboard, I was using Debian PPC on it more than I was using Amiga OS 3.9.
At the time it was my only Amiga system, and I was getting more into Linux and Mac OS X, so I sold the the BPPC + Bviz, and anything else I thought could fetch a price (SCSI HDD, SCSI CD-R drive, Amiga FDD, PCMCIA Ethernet).

It wasn’t until some time in 2003 when I did a single day’s worth of consulting at Movielink (now Ezestream) to fix their A4000T, that I asked them to pay me in A1200s. They had plenty because they were going through their upgrade of hotel VOD systems, moving from Amiga to Wintel PC. I scored three A1200’s that day, two of which are still running today (the third one is repairable but it is low on priority list).

My tower phase is well behind me. I opted to only use upgrades that keep them in their original wedge case. And what do you know, Apollo created some cool FPGA based expansions. One has a V2 and the other has a V4 card.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami



It seems like it's time for you to up the priority of repairing the third A1200, in order to get a fresh new PiStorm32 housed in it

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

@agami

Quote:

Then comes the highly controversial A3000. Excellent engineering, but for which market segment is this machine? The video toaster card doesn’t fit in it, etc. Then the failed A300 (A600), and the wall spaghetti that is CDTV.

For the 1990 workstation, the Amiga 3000's ECS was already dated and wasted three 32-bit memory bus improvements.

Amiga 3000 introduced the 32-bit Zorro III expansion bus with a 32-bit 68030 CPU and ECS wasn't the best 16-bit graphics chipset with a 68000 memory access pattern.

1989 ET4000AX ISA has either high-speed 16-bit VRAM or 32-bit DRAM SKUs.

1992 era EGS RTG was only for big box Amigas with small userbase and it didn't attract game developers. Meanwhile, PC VGA has 1990-era Wings Commander and clone VGA market existence. Clone VGA vendors competed with each other to release faster VGA clones when compared to IBM's original 1987 VGA. PC VGA standard is winning like VHS.

For 1992, there is no unified game-optimized graphics API for Amiga AGA and Viona Development's EGS.

NekTek Video Toaster's video editing market is niche and smaller than PC's general business market. Commodore can't survive by attaching themselves to Video Toaster sales and social media YouTube content creation market didn't exist in 1992.

In 1992, SNES arrived in Amiga's core European market while PC 386DX and 486 has a relentless price reduction pace i.e. Amiga 4000 wasn't price competitive against PC 486 and Amiga 4000/030 was released in 1993, hence missed the 1992 XMas window.

The PC has a longer time to build up the install base with 386DX, 486, and VGA clones for Q4 1993's Doom release while AGA started from ground zero in Q4 1992 with about 120,000? Amiga 1200 units are available for European 1992 Xmas.

PC has superior platform distribution with the clone business model (VHS biz model) when compared to single vendor A1200.

In Q3 1993 (for Xmax 1993), Apple was able "zero-sum" PC clone's 486SX-25 price range ($1000 USD) with Quadra 605 (68LC040 @ 25Mhz). Amiga 4000/030 was priced slightly higher than the 486SX25-based PC LOL.

Commodore failed to release A1200 with 68LC040@ 25Mhz out-of-the-box SKU to "zero-sum" PC clone's 486SX-25 price range ($1000 USD).

For Doom Q4 1993 (for Xmax 1993), Commodore failed to release Amiga 1200 with 6EC8030 @ 50 Mhz out-of-the-box SKU to rival PC clones with 386DX40 ET4000AX in Q3 1993.

Sometime in 1993, big game developers told Commodore management about the need for higher spec Amiga 1200 SKU with Mehdi Ali telling them to fukc-off and a few months later in 1993, the same game developers partnered with Sony's PlayStation prototype. Sony's PlayStation was released in December 1994.

Amiga AGA was squeezed out from the low-cost SNES and from the top via PC's relentless price reduction pace.

Sony's PlayStation was released with games. The PlayStation is a strong integer-based 3D games machine i.e. 33 MIPS RISC CPU and 66 MIPS graphics chipset (missing hardware Z-buffer).

In 1995, the gaming PC Master Race has Pentium 120 with 134 MIPS and 67 MFLOPS. Intel quickly evolved Pentium CPU to distance itself from the RISC-based game consoles. 3DFX's Voodoo was released in 1995 with floating-point format support and hardware Z buffer acceleration.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 02:52 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 02:48 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 02:47 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 02:38 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @fishy_fis LOL. Well, there was always going to be a point where common hardware would become too powerful, and the AmigaOne hardware would simply draft too far behind. I think, considering it really was too late, that getting the [strangely named] AmigaOne out at all was an amazing feat. By that stage most Amiga users had given up on any Amiga reboot given it was ten years down the track. Nothing could compete with the awesome looking PPC ABox on that cover of CUAmiga ever again. What's interesting with the A1200 and high ends Amiga in general is a trend appeared to replace the Amiga chipset with PC parts. PCI became an expensive bridge for more reasonable cards. In a sense the Amiga had become like a car where all the parts had to be replaced over time but it was still the same car. It's even got to the point where there are hardware CPU expansions emulating the 68K now. While obviously a technical feat it does start to look silly at that point.

PC 3D graphics acceleration was assimilated from SGI's OpenGL and its ideas evolved into Direct3D.

PC market rejected other 3D accelerations with quad polygon (NVIDIA's NV1 similar to Sega Saturn) and Sony Playstation style integer-based 3D was rejected.

Amiga Hombre has OpenGL target and FP32 support.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 03:03 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: @pepsiamig0 AGA might not have been industry breaking, but from late ‘92 and all the way into the new millennium, it was still very cool. It gave us:

- Alien Breed 3D, inferior Doom clone experience. Refer to Amiga's Dread or Grind presentation.

- Banshee 1994, aging gameplay presentation. PC has Wing Commander (time exclusive), Star Wars: X-Wing, and Tyrian. Refer AGA's Boss Machine and Reshoot·R presentation.

- Super Stardust, Not exclusive. Amiga AGA version is good. AGA's Boss Machine and Reshoot·R wasn't released from 1992 to 1993 time period.

- Pinball Fantasies, Not exclusive.

- Pinball Illusions, Not exclusive.

- Slamtilt (1996)

- Aladdin, Not exclusive.

- The Lion King, Not exclusive.

- Jurassic Park, Not exclusive.

- Breathless (1996), PC has Quake, Duke Nukem, Rise of Triads, Star Wars Dark Forces and 'etc'. Refer to Amiga's Dread or Grind for presentation and good frame rate performance on stock Amiga 1200 hardware.

- All New World of Lemmings, Not exclusive.

- Worms DC, Not exclusive.

- Body Blows, Not exclusive. PC's Mortal Kombat 2 is arcade quality

- Rise of the Robots. Not exclusive.

- Fightin’ Spirit, inferior experience.

- Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Inferior experience. PC's Super Street Fighter II Turbo is arcade quality. Amiga's Super Street Fighter II Turbo can't scale with higher CPU power.

- Roadkill, Not exclusive.

- Super Skidmarks. Available on Sega Genesis (limited by 512 color palette shades). The Amiga version has an 8-multiplayer via a two Amiga 1200 network. A well-polished Amiga game.

- Bubble and Squeak, Aging platform gameplay.

- The Chaos Engine 2, Not exclusive. Aging top-down shooter gameplay when PC has Doom. Refer to Amiga's Dread or Grind presentation.

- Diggers

- Guardian, aging 3D without textures. PC has Descent, SW X-Wing, and Wing Commander (time exclusive).

- Gloom, Inferior experience. Refer to Amiga's Dread or Grind presentation.

- Heimdall 2, Not exclusive.

- Sim City 2000, Not exclusive.

- Theme Park, Not exclusive.

- TFX, Not exclusive.

- Impossible Mission 2025

- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Not exclusive.

- International Open Golf Championship, Not exclusive.

- James Pond 2, Aging platform gameplay.

- Morph, Aging platform gameplay.

- Virocop,

- Napalm, a good "Command and Conquer" clone on the Amiga.

- Microcosm, PC has Descent.


Amiga AGA version avoids the DOS command line interface which is an advantage.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 04:02 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 03:54 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 03:49 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

Quote:

Alien Breed 3D, inferior Doom clone experience

Go and wash your mouth out, you foul heathen! How very dare you!

Alien Breed 3D stands alone as one of the best FPS games on any platform. You obviously either didn't play it or were just too rubbish to finish it

Seriously though, you made two mistakes here. First of all, it was in several ways technically superior to Doom itself as well as most of the clones, with actual RGB display (sure it was big pixels but the were 12-bit RGB), allowing for shading, transparency and refraction, as well as room over room and other tricks. Don't misunderstand me here, I'm a huge fan of Doom, but the original engine had it's limitations.

Secondly comparing it to Doom is like comparing Turrican to Mario because they are both 2D platformers. The games are very different. Doom is fast action, push forwards combat. Alien Breed 3D is survival horror, ammo counting, sudden death round the next corner.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

FYI, Alien Breed 3D was released in 1995.

Alien Breed 3D's small gameplay presentation is a joke. Dread or Grind has a near full-screen presentation with better frame rate performance on stock A1200 / CD32.


Alien Breed 3D was crafted like a tech demo with little focus on the actual gameplay presentation.

Last edited by Hammer on 27-Feb-2023 at 04:13 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

Just stop talking now. People have had decades to improve upon the state of the art, AB3D needs to be judged in context.

I completed it on a stock machine. It was punishingly slow on later levels, but I still finished it. I revisited it when it got my 040 and it was super smooth. Of course, I wished it had higher resolution but it was what it was, but that would've been a trade off on the colour resolution.

Last edited by Karlos on 27-Feb-2023 at 04:16 PM.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

You can't handle the truth.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

Alien Breed 3D can never return, it’s been too long. Also it’s very obsolete, dead and the corpse kind of smells

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @Hammer Just stop talking now. People have had decades to improve upon the state of the art, AB3D needs to be judged in context. I completed it on a stock machine. It was punishingly slow on later levels, but I still finished it. I revisited it when it got my 040 and it was super smooth. Of course, I wished it had higher resolution but it was what it was, but that would've been a trade off on the colour resolution.

I played it on a stock A1200 and the small gameplay window size is a joke. I remember my Sony PlayStation friends mocking the small window size.

Throwing 68060 at it wouldn't change the size of the small rendering window.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@DiscreetFX

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: @Hammer Alien Breed 3D can never return, it’s been too long. Also it’s very obsolete, dead and the corpse kind of smells

It DID return in remastered form as Project Osiris!
Check it out!

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

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @Karlos You can't handle the truth.

Yes the truth is it was visually no more impaired than all contemporary doom clones on the Amiga. You conveniently forget that it was the chunky coppersceen era and that Gloom and Fears were the competition, not Doom. These had equally blocky or reduced play areas because that's how you did chunky coppersceen emulation back then. You can only change so much stuff per scanline.

Chunky to Planar didn't appear until slightly later with games like Breathless and they just weren't playable on unexpanded systems either.

And while C2P became the defacto way of doing FPS games since then, it came with the trade off of reduced colour depth. At best you'll get 256 colours. Games like Dread do what they do with much less.

As blocky as AB3D was, every pixel was 12-bit RGB and good use was made of it.

Quote:

I remember my Sony PlayStation friends mocking the small window size.

Sounds to me like you're the one who couldn't handle it. So what? The playstation was pathetic next to the PC with its tiny resolution, mostly unfiltered, low polygon graphics and other shortcomings. I bet they didn't care, too busy having fun.

So you can't take your criticism of AB3D and insert it into your bodily orifice of your choosing. It was an excellent game. Stick to what you know, shilling AMD to a disinterested audience :p

Last edited by Karlos on 27-Feb-2023 at 06:17 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 27-Feb-2023 at 06:13 PM.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @DiscreetFX Quote: DiscreetFX wrote: @Hammer Alien Breed 3D can never return, it’s been too long. Also it’s very obsolete, dead and the corpse kind of smells It DID return in remastered form as Project Osiris! Check it out!

Yep. And it's brilliant.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

commodore bankrupt because aga has not chunky pixels.
there was not 040 cards for a1200 before commodore bankruptcy.
c2p on 040 is something not interesting somethign boring that come after commodore.
something like worse ng. it is better to just forget about it. switch to gfx card.