@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @agami the A1222 was planned to be a "cheap" entry model. We all know that it was not very successful.

Hard to be cheap enough when you can get a 'modern' PC for free or very cheap. Drop in a hard drive with Linux and you're away. Stick an Amiga emulator on it and you have almost the equivalent of NG Amiga but at practically zero cost and mainstream OS and hardware compatibility.

But PPC was not on Commodore's RADAR, so any talk about it here is off topic.

According to post bankruptcy documents, in late 1993 Commodore's roadmap for the Amiga was to have an 'A1200+' with AGA+ chipset and 68EC030 in mid 1994, followed by 'RISC ready' desktop machines with AA and 68030/040/060 in late 1994, and PA-RISC/3D in late 1995. There was also talk of eventually putting the 68k CPU in an asic to support legacy software (including the OS?) in low-end machines.

According to Brian Bagnall's book 'Commodore the Final Years', in November 1993 the Amiga software engineers proposed that 'AmigaOS 4.0' should have retargetable graphics and 'user interface improvements'. They also looked at putting OpenGL into AmigaOS. Finally they proposed a new gaming-centric operating system called "RISC/3D OS 1.0" for the CD3D (successor to the CD32). However the book doesn't say that anyone was 'working' on any of these things. The furthest they got appears to have been developing some low-level code for doing 3D on PA-RISC.

@bhabbott

there were some nice PDF promising a lot, but as far as I know most were not reality because hardly anyone working on it. Commodore needed money so they needed something to show to potential investors. AAA-Chipset would not have been compatible, the promised new hardware would have been a totally new platform. If that would have been successful, I have doubts. The AAA chipset was being worked on by Dave Haynie but it not looks like amigaos was starting to be prepared to be ported. It was in a bad state, tightly connected to the old amiga chipsets and not portable.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 28-Oct-2024 at 10:27 AM.

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @bhabbott there were some nice PDF promising a lot, but as far as I know most were not reality because hardly anyone working on it. Commodore needed money so they needed something to show to potential investors.

Without a doubt they were projecting value to a prospective "bailout" investor. But that doesn't mean that the planned improvements were pure fiction.

What's good to see is that the software and hardware engineers did recognise in 1993 that the computing landscape was changing and that most of what had been implemented by then was considered as legacy.

Amiga OS, as originally designed around the custom chipset and the commercial constraints of computing in the late'80s, was no longer the right approach for future hardware which would potentially become more modular, and looking to be more adaptable to industry standardisation e.g. PCI.

Were C= able to get Sony, Phillips or some other company to acquire them, I can see how the pressures from the new majority shareholders would shift them toward using Windows NT as the the desktop OS, instead of wasting resources in refactoring Amiga OS, which at best may have had its life extended in lightweight appliance use cases.

Last edited by agami on 31-Oct-2024 at 12:07 AM.
Last edited by agami on 29-Oct-2024 at 11:19 PM.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

agami Quote:

Without a doubt they were projecting value to a prospective "bailout" investor. But that doesn't mean that the planned improvements were pure fiction. What's good to see is that the software and hardware engineers did recognise in 1993 that the computing landscape was changing and that most of was implemented by then was considered as legacy.

The CBM mistake was not upgrading the compatible legacy hardware faster. They lost focus trying to replace the unique 68k Amiga with commodity PCs before that market predictably collapsed in the early 1990s practically eliminating profit margins. They returned to the practical, incremental and compatible Amiga AA+ development but they were too late. The 68EC020&AGA@14MHz really should have been 68EC030&AA+@28MHz which likely would have improved Amiga value enough to survive, at least if they built the hardware that was in demand. Some CBM developers were adamant about moving from the 68k to a new ISA but this would have been a disaster without retaining 68k Amiga compatibility with an ASIC CMOS 68k SoC but once that is created it becomes easier for CBM to upgrade it themselves and/or with the help of Motorola. CBM developers looked at PA-RISC, M88k, MIPS and Alpha but porting the AmigaOS to one of them and losing 68k compatibility was going to be a slow expensive process that loses some of the 68k Amiga customers. The IBM PC market was successful because compatibility was retained despite starting with a much inferior 8088 compared to the 68000. The problems for CBM were later realized by PPC AmigaNOne. Now some Amiga developers and users are calling for another ISA change and port which hasn't happened because it is an expensive and slow process that loses compatibility and customers. The grass was not greener on the other side of the fence then and it is not now. PA-RISC wasn't a total disaster because CBM had fairly short term plans for it that were not Amiga but could be used as a GPU for the Amiga. Still, PA-RISC was not a particularly good choice and not for very long. Just picking another of the potential RISC ISAs because there was a need to move to another ISA would have created a large gap in the product pipeline and created a financial disaster which would have grown if/when the "chosen" ISA fades too, much like PPC for the AmigaNOne. This is why CBM management returned to the 68k Amiga incremental upgrade path which they never should have left.

agami Quote:

Amiga OS, as originally designed around the custom chipset and the commercial constraints of computing in the late'80s, was no longer the right approach for future hardware which would potentially become more modular, and looking to be more adaptable to industry standardisation e.g. PCI.

The AmigaOS is one of the most modular and best code sharing OSs there is. Supporting devices like PCI and other newer I/O was no problem at all. AmigaOS is necessarily thin and lacks modern desktop features but it was targeting low end embedded like hardware, unlike AmigaOS 4. The modularity of the AmigaOS allows to upgrade many features while retaining 68k Amiga compatibility but SMP and security are very challenging. They are easier to improve if breaking compatibility and porting to another ISA but PPC AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS failed to do this despite these features being practically mandatory for a desktop OS. There are still many potential uses for a tiny footprint 68k AmigaOS for retro, hobby, educational and embedded markets but practically zero use for any serious desktop, workstation or server markets. The 68k AmigaOS development has been neglected for many years and it requires updated features to better compete even in the markets it is good at but the door is still open enough to get the foot in the door with affordable hardware from leveraging the tiny footprint to reduce costs.

agami Quote:

Were C= able to get Sony, Phillips or some other company to acquire them, I can see how the pressures from the new majority shareholders would shift them toward using Windows NT as the the desktop OS, instead of wasting resources in refactoring Amiga OS, which at best may have had its life extended in lightweight appliance use cases.

PA-RISC Windows NT would have been an expensive option for higher end hardware. It would have given CBM a more business oriented option with good profit margins but there were plans to keep a cheaper AmigaOS like option from porting at least parts of the AmigaOS to PA-RISC. Most likely PA-RISC Windows NT would have resulted in some workstation sales but I expect the desktop standard would have remained x86. Many people thought x86 was EOL, including Intel at least twice, but compatibility was too important to dislodge the 808x/x86 handicap compared to the 68k. The problem was CBM committed suicide instead of following the excellent early marketing advise.

https://ia903100.us.archive.org/10/items/commodorestrategicplan19851987/Commodore_Strategic_Plan_1985-1987.pdf

The link is working again for me. Do you think CBM would have survived if they had followed this marketing advice?

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: The CBM mistake was not upgrading the compatible legacy hardware faster. They lost focus trying to replace the unique 68k Amiga with commodity PCs before that market predictably collapsed in the early 1990s practically eliminating profit margins.

They started working on PC clones in early 1984, 6 months before acquiring the Amiga and a year before the A1000 was released. And this was Commodore Germany, a separate operation with a different market. Commodore Germany actually did very well selling PCs until cheap nasty Asian clones swamped the market in the early 90's.

The real mistake Commodore made was trying to make the Amiga more like a PC, rather than playing on its strengths as a gaming and hobbyist computer.

However we should remember that the Amiga was originally produced for sale in the US, which by this time was very PC-centric. It's not surprising that they tried to make it more PC-like when all the industry pundits were calling for it. This pressure pre-dated Commodore's acquisition of the Amiga. Here's what Brian Bagnall said about it in his book "Commodore the Amiga Years":-
Quote:

Since unveiling the Lorraine in January [1984], a chorus of voices began asking about MS-DOS compatibility. Creative Computing in particular urged Amiga to adopt IBM PCjr compatibility. After the most recent CES, the volume only intensified... Amiga [corp] wanted to be able to claim the existence of business applications that could run under MS-DOS... The Amiga team had already incorporated a coprocessor slot and now they continued to work an Intel 8088 coprocessor card, which would allow the system to boot up MS-DOS. It was almost like an IBM PC with an exceptional video and sound card...

Remember that this was happening before Commodore entered the scene. But Commodore resisted the temptation to make the A1000 PC compatible, relying instead on software emulation. They also gave it a 3.5" disk drive rather than the 5.25" drive Amiga corp were planning on. Why would they do that? One reason is that they already had a PC clone, the Commodore PC-10. So it was better to make the Amiga a unique product that didn't compete against it.

Later, in 1986, they developed the Sidecar, which was a complete PC in a box that plugged into the A1000. It was effectively a PC-10 motherboard with a daughterboard giving the Amiga shared access to video and I/O space, allowing it to use the Amiga's video display and I/O devices. Keeping it uncoupled like this meant the Amiga could maintain its uniqueness.

However after the A1000 was released, Jay Miner pushed even further from the hobbyist/gaming side to making the Amiga a 'work-station' with a high resolution monochrome display - the so-called 'Ranger' chipset that eventually became ECS. Luckily CEO Thomas Rattigan was more enamored with a C128 style machine that would tap into the home computer market, and ordered parallel development of the A500. Commodore Germany was given the task of developing a business oriented Amiga with IBM compatibility, which became the A2000. The A500 was a runaway success as expected, but not in the US - where PCs dominated and the 'low-end' gaming/hobbyist computer market was saturated with the C64 and Tandy 1000.

You say Commodore 'lost focus' trying to replace the unique 68k Amiga with commodity PCs, but this isn't true. They were quite different markets that could coexist without cannibalizing each other - until the 90's when PCs got sufficient hardware to play games as well as the Amiga could. But even before that PCs dominated the market overall, and despite not being as good for games still attracted just as many game developers (more in the US, less in Europe). The reason for that is not that the PC had better gaming hardware (it didn't) but because there were many more of them. This didn't get any better for the Amiga in later years despite gaining millions of users, and 'upgrading the compatible legacy hardware faster' wouldn't have prevented that.

Problem is the Amiga wasn't 'unique' enough to prevent developers from porting their 'unique' products to other platforms - particularly the PC. As soon as a game became popular the developers became attracted to the PC's larger user base. They did that despite the average PC having much worse gaming specs - proof that it was never about the hardware.

To make matters worse, customers felt they could justify spending a lot more on a PC to get access to 'industry standard' software. If it could also play games that was just a bonus. This slanted PC game design towards strategy, adventure and simulation games where a faster CPU and hard drive were more valuable than a blitter, copper and sprites. Then 486's appeared with enough grunt to make texture mapped 3D action games viable, and the Amiga's 'unique' hardware became completely irrelevant.

Turns out the pundits were right. Commodore could have done better by shoving an x86 CPU into the Amiga and putting MS-DOS on it. The Amiga chipset would become a combined graphics / sound subsystem that could be sold separately on a plugin card. Instead of CIA chips this 'Amiga' would use an 'industry standard' floppy controller and I/O chips identical to the PC. Commodore would simply be producing a PC clone with fancy video and sound. Had they done that in 1985 they might have set the standard for sound and video on PCs!

Quote:

The 68EC020&AGA@14MHz really should have been 68EC030&AA+@28MHz which likely would have improved Amiga value enough to survive, at least if they built the hardware that was in demand.

Still not enough. Doom needed a minimum of a 25MHz 486 to get a reasonable frame rate. Commodore would have to put an 040 into the A1200 to compete, and then they would lose the all-important price advantage. To keep up to date without having to design a new machine every year (or sooner) they would have to put the CPU on a board in a generic CPU slot (which is what they did in the A3000 and A4000). But this would raise the price even more and limit performance.

Their solution for the A1200 (onboard EC020 with 32 bit CPU trapdoor slot) was the best because it kept the price down, while providing plenty of CPU power for 'Amiga' games that used the custom hardware, and the ability for the user to upgrade to faster CPUs when they became available.

But as I have said many times, nothing would stop the PC from eventually crushing the Amiga. Its lack of PC compatibility combined with 'unique' hardware made it unattractive to the general public, who knew only one truth - if it's not IBM compatible don't touch it. It could only survive by being so much cheaper than a PC that it gained customers who couldn't afford a PC. But of course those customers couldn't 'afford' software either, so developers still wouldn't be attracted to it.

Last edited by bhabbott on 30-Oct-2024 at 11:28 AM.

bhabbott Quote:

They started working on PC clones in early 1984, 6 months before acquiring the Amiga and a year before the A1000 was released. And this was Commodore Germany, a separate operation with a different market. Commodore Germany actually did very well selling PCs until cheap nasty Asian clones swamped the market in the early 90's.

The commoditization of high volume computers followed the commoditization of high volume calculators. Jack Tramiel knew it well as Commodore and TI struggles with low calculator margins due to commoditization and was a major motivation for Commodore to enter the new MPU computer market. Chip fabrication technology was one of the areas where Japan was learning quickly and in some cases gained an advantage over US chip producers. Japan started out with US chip designs and added and improved I/O functionality which could reduce chip counts and external chip logic, a predecessor to the modern SoC. Hitachi had better fab tech than Motorola which learned from them when they entered into a partnership around the time of 68000 development. Japan had large conglomerate businesses and many became vertically integrated to produce both the chips and devices. This advantage won Sony the console market with the low cost PS1 despite being initially reluctant to enter the console market and having minimal experience with computers. High volume and production cost advantages (a wide moat) are required to compete in a commoditized market and even then cyclical markets may result in no margin or even negative margins at times. Dave Haynie joked about a negative profit margin for CBM PCs in the early 1990s which is entirely possible as this would not be the only time for the saturated PC market.

bhabbott Quote:

The real mistake Commodore made was trying to make the Amiga more like a PC, rather than playing on its strengths as a gaming and hobbyist computer. However we should remember that the Amiga was originally produced for sale in the US, which by this time was very PC-centric. It's not surprising that they tried to make it more PC-like when all the industry pundits were calling for it. This pressure pre-dated Commodore's acquisition of the Amiga. Here's what Brian Bagnall said about it in his book "Commodore the Amiga Years":- [quote]Since unveiling the Lorraine in January [1984], a chorus of voices began asking about MS-DOS compatibility. Creative Computing in particular urged Amiga to adopt IBM PCjr compatibility. After the most recent CES, the volume only intensified...

https://pipiscrew.com/apps/amiga/ Quote:

How important did you think PC compatability was going to be? "Eventually Sidecar came out from Germany but there were a lot of bugs in the software and the Los Gatos team helped with solving those. They did that before the 2000. It's funny but I never really saw MS-DOS compatability as being that important for the Amiga. I said at the time to Commodore "Hey, we're different. Try to take advantage of that, not imitate or simulate other people". We could make our commands more similar to theirs. There's a tendancy when you're writing new software to try and be different with names and functions, but it isn't really necessary. We could do a better job than MS-DOS, which would have been enough with the Amiga's superior operating system and colour resolution capabilities to take a really big bite out of IBM. Instead they kept promising compatability and not delivering which is worse."

The Amiga needed software, period. No matter how good the hardware is, it is useless without software. There was good reason to add 808x compatibility or at least interoperability but it was better to provide it with CrossDOS, emulation and upgraded hardware for both the Amiga and PC emulation. The Amiga 2000 passive ISA slots were a mistake that increased the cost of the Amiga 2000 and Zorro II/III cards which had to extend further over the IDE slot.

I believe there was room in the US computer market for a mid-priced computer before the PC completely dominated. PCs were junk on the low end and expensive on the high end with little value anywhere. The Amiga 1000 offered good mid-priced computer value with the lack of software and the reputation of Jack/CBM being the killer. Amiga was in few stores and I don't remember seeing an Amiga in a store until the Amiga 500 which was at least 1987 in gaming stores. Few computer stores carried the Amiga. Even by the 1990s there were 1-2 computer stores in the Kansas City area which sold higher end Amigas and I ended up traveling to Topeka to buy my Amiga 3000 (the few Amiga computer stores were dying but a few Video Toaster stores replaced them). Before that, I had bought an Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 by mail order and later a new NTSC CD32 through connections. CBM was completely inept at marketing the Amiga in the US. The Amiga price was not the problem for the US. A higher end cartridge based 68000 Amiga console may have worked here in 1986-1988 if it could have been cost reduced down to about $300 USD. CBM marketing was still inept but store displays of a cheaper console may have sold better than higher priced Amiga 500s in gaming, electronic and toy stores.

bhabbott Quote:

However after the A1000 was released, Jay Miner pushed even further from the hobbyist/gaming side to making the Amiga a 'work-station' with a high resolution monochrome display - the so-called 'Ranger' chipset that eventually became ECS. Luckily CEO Thomas Rattigan was more enamored with a C128 style machine that would tap into the home computer market, and ordered parallel development of the A500. Commodore Germany was given the task of developing a business oriented Amiga with IBM compatibility, which became the A2000. The A500 was a runaway success as expected, but not in the US - where PCs dominated and the 'low-end' gaming/hobbyist computer market was saturated with the C64 and Tandy 1000.

Jay Miner did want to push up toward a lower cost workstation but he wanted the Ranger chipset to support color and higher resolutions which was the right call for the high end desktop and workstation markets. He also wanted a 68020 and VRAM which were expensive but practical necessities for the high end. The high resolution monochrome call came from within CBM and was a short lived compromise chasing the current standard instead of setting the new standard. Jay can be criticized for focusing on the high end when a cost reduced low end Amiga was necessary to expand the Amiga user base enough to be viable for software developers but this is the part CBM was good at as exhibited by the Amiga 500. The Amiga did not retain its reputation for graphics superiority and high end Amiga value diminished because CBM did not adequately upgrade the CPU and chipset like Jay wanted. The Amiga needed a high end and low end chipset but the low end chipset could be upgraded to the previous high end chipset in order to reduce costs and improve logistics. ECS was not enough of an enhancement and AAA was impractical. AGA was practical but too little too late.

bhabbott Quote:

You say Commodore 'lost focus' trying to replace the unique 68k Amiga with commodity PCs, but this isn't true. They were quite different markets that could coexist without cannibalizing each other - until the 90's when PCs got sufficient hardware to play games as well as the Amiga could. But even before that PCs dominated the market overall, and despite not being as good for games still attracted just as many game developers (more in the US, less in Europe). The reason for that is not that the PC had better gaming hardware (it didn't) but because there were many more of them. This didn't get any better for the Amiga in later years despite gaining millions of users, and 'upgrading the compatible legacy hardware faster' wouldn't have prevented that.

I was under the impression that CBM upper management tried to EOL the Amiga in the early 1990s. Bill Sydnes the PCjr guy was brought in. Amiga Engineering funding and staff was cut while PC engineering funding and staff was increasing. In any case, it is a market pivot away from the Amiga and toward the PC which ended up being catastrophic when the bottom dropped out of the PC clone market forcing CBM to pivot back but the damage was already done.

bhabbott Quote:

Problem is the Amiga wasn't 'unique' enough to prevent developers from porting their 'unique' products to other platforms - particularly the PC. As soon as a game became popular the developers became attracted to the PC's larger user base. They did that despite the average PC having much worse gaming specs - proof that it was never about the hardware.

If CBM had continued to upgrade the Amiga, PCs would have not been able to catch up so easily. Integrated hardware has a cost advantage over using discreet hardware. This was still true even for the Amiga 1200 on the low end but the high end did not compete because of the lack of CPU+chipset upgrades. The Amiga 1200 and CD32 could have better integrated yet with fewer chips and even a 68k SoC while AA+ would have higher clock speeds including for the CPU and much needed enhancements like chunky, blitter and audio upgrades. CBM fell behind in chipset upgrades, the value dropped and the volume of sales with it which was required for further development.

bhabbott Quote:

To make matters worse, customers felt they could justify spending a lot more on a PC to get access to 'industry standard' software. If it could also play games that was just a bonus. This slanted PC game design towards strategy, adventure and simulation games where a faster CPU and hard drive were more valuable than a blitter, copper and sprites. Then 486's appeared with enough grunt to make texture mapped 3D action games viable, and the Amiga's 'unique' hardware became completely irrelevant.

The PC won because economies of scale from free market capitalism pushed it forward while the Amiga practically stood still. There is a cost advantage to using the chipset instead of expensive CPU performance but CBM did an awful job leveraging the advantage.

bhabbott Quote:

Still not enough. Doom needed a minimum of a 25MHz 486 to get a reasonable frame rate. Commodore would have to put an 040 into the A1200 to compete, and then they would lose the all-important price advantage. To keep up to date without having to design a new machine every year (or sooner) they would have to put the CPU on a board in a generic CPU slot (which is what they did in the A3000 and A4000). But this would raise the price even more and limit performance. Their solution for the A1200 (onboard EC020 with 32 bit CPU trapdoor slot) was the best because it kept the price down, while providing plenty of CPU power for 'Amiga' games that used the custom hardware, and the ability for the user to upgrade to faster CPUs when they became available.

A 68EC030&AA+@28MHz likely would have been adequate for low end psuedo-3D in 1993 when the CD32 was introduced and certainly better than the slide show pixelated mess of a 68EC020&AGA@14MHz. The combo of twice the CPU and chipset clock speed, much improved memory bandwidth and real chunky modes would have been a major upgrade. It wouldn't allow a full sized window or high frame rates but it likely would have been more playable by the low frame rate and resolution expectations back then. I would expect something between the SNES and 3DO Doom ports perhaps close to but inferior to the Jaguar port.

Longplay of DOOM (1993)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fTKGsq5Oa4

Doom for the Atari Jaguar
https://youtu.be/FoAEi4dPQ_Y?t=587

Doom 3DO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx2k8jrCOUU

None of these ports have 80486@25MHz CPU performance but then chipset features are more efficient and lower power. The CD32 was much cheaper than the 3DO and a 68k SoC could have reduced the cost by another $100 USD and may have allowed 68EC030&AA+@56MHz according to CBM documentation. A 68060&AA+@56MHz was soon to become a higher end option and upgrade path. CPU caches are one of the easier changes for a core and can greatly improve performance but the Amiga needed 3D chipset enhancements as PC brute force x86 CPU performance required expensive CPUs and power supplies, a cost disadvantage that was partially offset by economies of scale.

@matthey

I don't in principle disagree with any specific point. What becomes reality, however, is closely tied to any given strategy. And to be perfectly honest, I can't see what Commodore's business strategy was in late 1993, beyond the critical and immediate goal of surviving.

Therefore, I'm not even sure C= would've spent the resources to modernise Amiga OS, and perhaps get out of the OS business altogether and just focus on hardware. When times are tough businesses have to make tough decisions. Pick their battles.

Now throw into the mix a potential new owner like Matsushita or Philips, and one has to wonder how purchasing C= would've fit into their strategy. Is it the custom hardware, the OS, patents, all of the above?
Would the new owners look at Amiga OS and the evolution plans in the investment proposal and think it's just not worth the effort? Maybe they'd be more interested in consumer appliances, or pro-sumer appliances like the Casablanca?

What I know now with the benefit of hindsight is that during the early to mid '90s there was a lot of land-grab opportunities, and many wanted to make their claim. We had new players in NeXT and Be Inc. We had the rise of Silicon Graphics. NewtTek did an amazing thing with the Toaster/Flyer combo on the A4000. Pixar had their own Image Computer.

What would've survived of Commodore and Amiga under new ownership in this new wild west is hard to say. In 1991/92, Commodore Amigas represented the 3rd most used computing platform globally at about 5%. (what I'd give for those numbers today)
In this new wild west, the once industry darling Apple Computers was also slowly dying.

In our own timeline we saw what a new owner like Gateway did with the still somewhat relevant Amiga tech in the second half of the '90s, defined by the internet and multi-media.
Practically nothing.

I stand even firmer on the position that Commodore was the wrong company for Amiga tech. I doubt Atari would've been much better. Was there a third option back in 1984? Should we count our blessings that it happened at all, because there are no guarantees in life?

Not this Amigan. Not while I continue to find annoyances in my use of macOS, Windows, and Linux.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

As usuall the some spreads the some anti ppc propaganda.
It has to be cleared.

Even if Amiga 1222 has some drawbacks.
Amiga 1222 is no pc.
On Amiga 1222 Amiga Os runs native and native code runs faster than any emulator.

PowerPC was chosen by Amiga Technologies back in 1995 as next amiga cpu.

PowerPC Amiga is Amiga that Commodore will made if not bankrupt.

Big endian RISC, with 3D and OpenGL source only compatible.

It looks like Hombre with one exception PowerPC instead of PA-RISC.

Hombre if made will have no compatible chips no binary compatibility
only source compatible port Amiga OS.

Like PowerPC Amiga.

Last edited by ppcamiga1 on 31-Oct-2024 at 06:50 AM.

@ppcamiga1

STFU with all the BS and state what UNIX you want MUI on!

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

stop trolling start working on mui clone for aros

What I find odd is that you didn't chose MorphOS instead of PS4, you would be on paradise. There everything is MUI

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

agami Quote:

I don't in principle disagree with any specific point. What becomes reality, however, is closely tied to any given strategy. And to be perfectly honest, I can't see what Commodore's business strategy was in late 1993, beyond the critical and immediate goal of surviving.

Survival was the name of the game. The early 1990s PC market crash resulted in margin compression across the computer industry and caused a major crisis for CBM. The CBM PC division may have had a negative cash flow draining their reserves and C64 production and sales were finally shut down. Amiga margins were compressed too but the Amiga was still profitable, maybe the only computer product Commodore had that still was. The only hope CBM had was the PC market rebounding and a few Amiga products.

Amiga 1200 - It was borderline between low end and obsolete but still had enough margin and value to survive.

Amiga 4000(T) - Mostly outdated for the high end market but saved by the Video Toaster.

Amiga CD32 - A mid-priced console with below average hardware saved by a large Amiga library of games that could be released on CD-ROM to increase the value.

The CD32 being the newest product was the hope for survival but CBM barely had enough financing for production let alone launching and advertising, the XOR patent in the US created dead inventory and the CD32 hardware barely offered enough value to be competitive, especially for pseudo-3D games which were becoming more common. All the things considered the CD32 did pretty well but it could have done much better with more value and especially a lower price. All the Amiga products above have the AGA chipset in common and lack value but still had enough value to remain profitable. AGA was a rushed and lackluster chipset because of avoidable if not deliberate delays. If all these machines had had the planned AA+ chipset instead, the low end Amiga 1200 and CD32 would have had 68EC030&AA+@28MHz instead of 68EC020&AGA@14MHz with a cost reduction to at least partially offset the 68EC030 cost and providing a much needed boost in value. I'm not sure if this would have been enough to save CBM but I expect a 68EC030&AA+@57MHz SoC with a $100 cost reduction according to CBM documentation would have been enough. CBM could have dropped the CD32 launch price by $50 USD and the 100,000 units they sold would have generated $5,000,000 USD more not counting they would have sold many more due to the much increased value. Competitive Pseudo-3D performance for a console should have been possible while the all CMOS Amiga SoC reduces power compared to less NMOS chips with less integration. Jay Miner showed CBM the importance of integration and enhancing the chipset by bringing the Amiga chipset to market and immediately beginning work on the enhanced Ranger chipset but CBM waited 5 years to bring out the barely enhanced ECS chipset and another 2 years to bring out a rushed AGA that still used 3 major custom chips including two NMOS chips and Paula unchanged at 5000nm which limited the chipset clock speed to 14MHz. No value, no margin is self inflicted financial suicide as Dave Haynie correctly calls the demise of CBM. Ignorance is Bliss as Trevor follows in the footsteps of Irving making the same mistake of ignoring deteriorating value which is relative to the competition much worse than AGA Amigas when CBM failed. Trevor doesn't make any big gambles but he is playing for a draw instead of Amiga win so he can keep his subsidized charity going until he dies and the Amiga with him having missed the window of opportunity for a win.

agami Quote:

Therefore, I'm not even sure C= would've spent the resources to modernise Amiga OS, and perhaps get out of the OS business altogether and just focus on hardware. When times are tough businesses have to make tough decisions. Pick their battles.

I don't think CBM upper management appreciated the AmigaOS at first because a lower resource primitive OS was possible but I think they came to respect it later because a lower resource dynamic multitasking OS taking advantage of a large flat address space was not possible or at least not by much (Dave Haynie said at AmiWest that CBM was experimenting with flash memory which could have further reduced the tiny memory footprint). There were other OSs available but most were not free and would have required licensing which CBM preferred to avoid. There was no reason for CBM to get rid of the AmigaOS. It was still fulfilling the purpose it did for the original AmigaOS which was a cheap low resource default OS allowing a cheaper tiny footprint system. Other OS support helped sell more hardware and could be optional upgrades with a higher margin like Unix and Windows NT.

agami Quote:

Now throw into the mix a potential new owner like Matsushita or Philips, and one has to wonder how purchasing C= would've fit into their strategy. Is it the custom hardware, the OS, patents, all of the above? Would the new owners look at Amiga OS and the evolution plans in the investment proposal and think it's just not worth the effort? Maybe they'd be more interested in consumer appliances, or pro-sumer appliances like the Casablanca?

It really depends on what the new owner wanted from CBM. CBM started out about 2 years ahead of the competition with the Amiga and ended up about 2 years behind. There was still value even after another year of bankruptcy. It is too bad the Amiga tech was not available sooner as more than a few ex-Amiga employees had to recreate AmigaOS like OSs for embedded use and consoles. The 68k continued to be available for at least another decade after CBM went under although Motorola unfortunately discouraged the use for new hardware (except for ColdFire which was planned for one of the projects Dave Haynie worked on despite using an AmigaOS replacement). The chipset was more difficult but still useful. I believe Escom/AT continued production of some chips for the Amiga 1200 and 4000T but they failed to enhance the chipset. How easy it is depends on how far along the AA+ chipset was in being converted to CMOS with improved modularity as planned. From CBM documentation, there was time for the chip engineers to make progress on AA+ if they were kept busy on it toward the end like other engineers. The BoXeR prototype showed that even early on (1997-2001) it was possible, mostly by one person, to further integrate and significantly enhance the chipset using FPGAs that could be turned into ASICs. Other FPGA cores since have reverse engineered and enhanced the Amiga chipset and simple 68k CPUs with new 68k CPU cores available too. There is even a 68k+chipset SoC with enhancements like AA+ and beyond that could be turned into an ASIC immensely boosting the value but I'm afraid the design is not as modular and ASIC ready as would be desirable. If all the time and money spent reinventing the 68k Amiga wheel had been spent once to develop it right and produce an ASIC then it would already be done.

agami Quote:

What I know now with the benefit of hindsight is that during the early to mid '90s there was a lot of land-grab opportunities, and many wanted to make their claim. We had new players in NeXT and Be Inc. We had the rise of Silicon Graphics. NewtTek did an amazing thing with the Toaster/Flyer combo on the A4000. Pixar had their own Image Computer. What would've survived of Commodore and Amiga under new ownership in this new wild west is hard to say. In 1991/92, Commodore Amigas represented the 3rd most used computing platform globally at about 5%. (what I'd give for those numbers today) In this new wild west, the once industry darling Apple Computers was also slowly dying. In our own timeline we saw what a new owner like Gateway did with the still somewhat relevant Amiga tech in the second half of the '90s, defined by the internet and multi-media. Practically nothing. I stand even firmer on the position that Commodore was the wrong company for Amiga tech. I doubt Atari would've been much better. Was there a third option back in 1984? Should we count our blessings that it happened at all, because there are no guarantees in life? Not this Amigan. Not while I continue to find annoyances in my use of macOS, Windows, and Linux.

CBM was well positioned to take advantage of the Amiga technology.

CBM
+ valuable chip engineering and production assistance for the Amiga chipset
+ capable at cost reducing, production and logistics
+ valuable brand name in computers
+ good international market presence
- rudderless upper management with no vision
- poor and deteriorating financial situation
- Jack Tramiel burnt supplier and distribution channels in the US
- poor marketing

Atari
+ best US brand for a console and low end computer gaming
+ license of Amiga chipset gave Amiga Corporation $5 million
- onerous license agreement may well have resulted in lawsuits
- poor management caused many employees to leave and contributed to the 1983 video game crash
- worse financial situation than CBM after 1983 video game crash resulting in sale to Jack Tramiel
- just wanted the chipset without Amiga engineers even before Jack took over
- poor international market presence

Apple
+ better financial situation than CBM or Atari
+ Apple spent more on R&D and was better at incremental upgrades than CBM
+ Apple was good at marketing
+ the Mac would have had color, DMA/hardware acceleration and TV compatibility
+ the Mac would have had a better OS to skin with their GUI
- Steve Jobs made the mistake of thinking it was too much hardware
- maybe Steve Jobs was right that the chipset was too difficult for Apple (not like ARM SoCs today)
- not much presence in Europe so the Amiga may have done well in the US but poorly in Europe

Tandy
+ good US marketing and support through many Radio Shack stores
+ the Amiga would have been better for Tandy than PC compatible market which collapsed
- not the best upper management, too conservative
- not much international market presence

HP
+ Carl Sassenrath was given money to buy Sun for bitmap workstation so why not Amiga Corporation
+ better chip development and fab capabilities than CBM
+ quality brand
+ financing
- upper management was too conservative and not open minded
- low end computers were low margin and off their radar much like RPi like hobby computers today

IBM
+ IBM could have abandoned the difficult to upgrade 808x/x86 and ditched the clones
+ better chip development and fab capabilities than CBM
+ quality brand with good marketing
+ good international market presence
+ big potential boost to Amiga business and productivity markets
- very conservative upper management
- higher margins would have resulted in more expensive Amiga computers
- there may have been other OS options and AmigaOS may have been replaced altogether
- uncertain that IBM could regain the PC market and leave clones behind with the Amiga

There are some interesting possibilities for sure. It's hard to believe that only CBM and Atari seemed interested in the Amiga.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: Even if Amiga 1222 has some drawbacks.

Some drawbacks?

The A1222+ is nothing but drawbacks.

Stop trolling, and start working on a low-cost 3GHz+ PPC AmigaOS 4 compatible motherboard without drawbacks.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Amiga 1200 - It was borderline between low end and obsolete but still had enough margin and value to survive. Amiga 4000(T) - Mostly outdated for the high end market but saved by the Video Toaster. Amiga CD32 - A mid-priced console with below average hardware saved by a large Amiga library of games that could be released on CD-ROM to increase the value. The CD32 being the newest product was the hope for survival but CBM barely had enough financing for production let alone launching and advertising ... All the things considered the CD32 did pretty well but it could have done much better with more value and especially a lower price ... If all these machines had had the planned AA+ chipset instead, the low end Amiga 1200 and CD32 would have had 68EC030&AA+@28MHz instead of 68EC020&AGA@14MHz with a cost reduction to at least partially offset the 68EC030 cost and providing a much needed boost in value. I'm not sure if this would have been enough to save CBM but I expect a 68EC030&AA+@57MHz SoC with a $100 cost reduction according to CBM documentation would have been enough.

This gets me to double-down on my view that the CD32 should've come out first, and the A1200, if at all, should've come out later.

Forget about "World's First 32-bit Gaming Console", go with "World's First Expandable and Upgradable Console".



Quote:

CBM - rudderless upper management with no vision - poor and deteriorating financial situation - Jack Tramiel burnt supplier and distribution channels in the US - poor marketing Atari - onerous license agreement may well have resulted in lawsuits - poor management caused many employees to leave and contributed to the 1983 video game crash - worse financial situation than CBM after 1983 video game crash resulting in sale to Jack Tramiel - just wanted the chipset without Amiga engineers even before Jack took over - poor international market presence Apple - Steve Jobs made the mistake of thinking it was too much hardware - maybe Steve Jobs was right that the chipset was too difficult for Apple (not like ARM SoCs today) - not much presence in Europe so the Amiga may have done well in the US but poorly in Europe Tandy - not the best upper management, too conservative - not much international market presence HP - upper management was too conservative and not open minded - low end computers were low margin and off their radar much like RPi like hobby computers today IBM - very conservative upper management - higher margins would have resulted in more expensive Amiga computers - there may have been other OS options and AmigaOS may have been replaced altogether - uncertain that IBM could regain the PC market and leave clones behind with the Amiga There are some interesting possibilities for sure. It's hard to believe that only CBM and Atari seemed interested in the Amiga.

Looking at all the negatives, one has to wonder where exactly would the Hi-Toro/Amiga team be welcomed and treated as visionaries?

I sometimes wonder if I had a time machine and could go back to 1983, what would my advice be to Jay Miner et al?
I admire the mid '80s vision of "A gaming console that can be expanded into a home computer", but maybe that's why no one other than C= and Atari were interested.
Would I tell them that in order to get there they would first have to compromise on that vision to get serious players interested, and then leverage that success to realise that vision many years later. Maybe focus on digital video and audio production pipelines from the outset.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

stop trolling start working on mui clone for aros

back to the topic.

We all know what Commodore do if survive.
It will be console with big endian risc cpu
no 68k because Motorola end with 68k
no pc no emulator real cpu other than 68k
Amiga os port source only compatible
no binary compatybility with 68k
no chipset no OCS/ESC/AGA etc
new 3D with opengl support at least as fast as ps1

pretty well what was made later as Amiga NG PPC
with only change from PA-RISC to PPC in 1995 by Amiga Technologies

Last edited by ppcamiga1 on 01-Nov-2024 at 07:19 AM.
Last edited by ppcamiga1 on 01-Nov-2024 at 07:17 AM.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @agami stop trolling start working on mui clone for aros

There already IS a MUI clone for AROS, and it is being worked on, wtf?!

Anyways, you wrote earlier MUI for UNIX, not AROS! But WHICH UNIX?!

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@ppcamiga1

I had x1000 for almost ten years, so ... hear I, hear I :D
Every NG model is half balked. OS4 cant use half of Nemo board as Limux PPC can.
I prepaid OS 4.2 that was never delivered, Timberwolf and Libre OFfice were promised
before x1000 launch and are not done up to 2024, and seems never will be, cause same people that do OS4 do that.
x1000 CFE is router level buggy trash that will never get fixed as Hype lost its source. Its open source but x1000 version is not anywhere, so its FLOSS violation. MUI5 for OS4 is good, but never blessed by MUI author, unlike real MUI4 in MOS.

PPC was chosen by Amiga Inc and was supposed to be The future, but OS4 (OS3 recompile) was late in the start, remember that early buggy cheap and bad Terron boards were shipped with Linux and preview versions? well so was x1000. I paid OS4 and OS 4.2 and got beta, had to pay OS 4/1 Fe, Radeon drivers, PAID PPC Ubuntu by AEON (which is free minus kernel) and Enhancer (and Enhancer 2 and more drivers) to get anywhere near OS 4.2
Shipped Radeon never got 3D so I had to change gfx card. Shipped onboard net card never got supported so I had to put Wi Fi and LAN card in PCI slots. Second CPU never got supported, memory over 2GB too. Trevor adevertised it as OS4 dream machine, Hyperion announced OS 4.2
AEON announced Libre, Hyperion took MOZZILA BOUNTY and did TW that later stopped working on x1000.
Ah yes, RadeonHDs dont send signal on soft reset and Hyperion support that and CFE bugs consider normal. I have tried official forums. Card is OK when used on PPC linux or x64, or even on SAm460 that has some x86 BIOS support. It should have PPC firmware but that exists just for 9600 level cards that can`t do 3D on OS4 with paid Enhancer/drivers/.

XENA is bullshit that sacrifices PCIE slot for nothing. It would be better to have Cyclone FPGA
with Mister AGA core or best Apollo SAGA core.

Even OS4 is direct OS3 port when I tried clean OS3 apps MorphOS is way more compatabile. Trevor paid x5000 MOS port to have some edge on it, but dont want to do same for x1000.

There is nothing wrong with PPC CPU - PA Semi is G5 level CPU when both cores and RadeonHD are fully used.

I was so pissed off that I wanted to ship x1000 back to AmigaKit UK but they refused argument that OS and software is permanent beta.

A1222 has worse PPC CPU of all NG boards. SAM 460 FPGA never got OS4 support, x1000 and x5000 and x1222 have second CPU just for Linux etc.

3D and Warp3D wrappers on OS4 use about 50% soeed of high end radeins.

I am glad Hombre never existed, but NG Amigas are almost next to it ,maybe alongside TAO.

I like PowerPC CPUs, I still have iMac G5, it costed x20 less and can do way more.

Everything good done in OS4 is slowly backported to OS3, see OS 3.1.4 and OS 3.2 feature list and A600GS has m68k version of Enhancer.

Effectively, OS4 is constantly with no hardware and with expensive and slow SW development. Comparably, AROS, MorphOS has grown way more in same period, see all MOS 3.x updates and AEROS, ApolloOS, AROS x64 with Multicore support etc.

_________________
OS 3.x AROS and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionalism. Learn it harder way!
SinclairQL and WII U lover :D
YT http://www.youtube.com/user/rasvoja

@ppcamiga1

Stop trolling and fix Zune or develop OS 4.2, Timberwolf with FF16 brothers promised and Libre Office 3.x for OS4. And then backport it all for m68k :D

_________________
OS 3.x AROS and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionalism. Learn it harder way!
SinclairQL and WII U lover :D
YT http://www.youtube.com/user/rasvoja

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: There are some interesting possibilities for sure. It's hard to believe that only CBM and Atari seemed interested in the Amiga.

It's not hard for me to believe.

I followed the development of home computers from the early days when the first microprocessors were developed and hobbyists started designing computers around them. By the late 70's there was enough off-the-shelf silicon available to produce pretty nice machines without much effort, the only problem being costs - particularly RAM and ROM. But Moore's law was in full swing and the situation was changing rapidly. It wasn't long before you could throw together a practical design in a few weeks for not much money. I actually did that in 1980 with a design based on the 6800 CPU and 6847 VDG - which was similar to the Tandy MC-10 'Micro Color Computer' released in 1983, except mine had a proper keyboard and 6kB of battery backed CMOS RAM. Soon afterwards I bought a 6809 with programmers reference manual for NZ$25 (~US$13), but then the ZX81 came out in 1981 which had what I couldn't produce myself - BASIC - and I entered the world of commercial home computers.

But something else happened in 1981 which changed everything.

I got most of my design ideas from Byte magazine, which featured regular articles on hardware and software techniques as well as the latest technical developments. Many of the articles were written by experts in the field who were actually doing it, not clueless journos writing half-baked reviews about stuff they didn't understand. In 1981 that all changed. Byte magazine quickly morphed into being little more than an advertisement for the latest PC-related hardware and software. Other systems might get a bemused review on release like the Amiga did, but otherwise crickets. Advertising dollars ruled as everyone went all-in on PCs.

IBM naming their machine the 'Personal Computer' was pure genius, as it summed up the industry's desire for a design that said it all. No longer did they have to weigh up the pros and cons of this or that incompatible platform, hoping they didn't make the 'wrong' choice. IBM showed the way and everyone followed. This made perfect sense from both the user's and vendor's perspective. The era of diversity over, now it was just a matter of consolidation and incremental development.

Then four years later Amiga dropped their maverick design on an industry which was now in lockstep with IBM and Microsoft. Nobody considered it more than a curiosity. The immediate response from pundits was to strongly recommend giving it IBM compatibility, as they knew that any machine which didn't have it was sunk.

Who would be interested in taking it on? Certainly not any of the industry leaders, who were either all-in on PCs or struggling to swim against the tide themselves. And the Amiga didn't offer anything they wanted anyway. The graphics and sound was nice but where was the high resolution flicker-free screen? Where was the hard drive and slots for specialized I/O cards? Oh, you don't need that for playing games? Sorry, but there's no room for toys in this industry!

So that left the computer manufacturers who were into making toys - Atari and Commodore. But Atari was still reeling from the video game crash of 1983 - which they were largely responsible for. So there was really only one choice for Amiga Corp if they wanted someone with the experience, resources and will to breath life into their design. In fact Commodore was pretty much the perfect partner - if it wasn't for one thing... Jack Tramiel.

By 1983 Commodore was already looking towards the next generation of 16-bit home computers. The C64 wouldn't last long in a world dominated by PCs. The Amiga offered much of what they wanted ready to go, including a low cost high performance design with custom chips that Commodore could easily manufacture in-house. Throw in a couple of CIA chips and they were all set to leapfrog into the 16-bit world with a worthy successor to the C64. Or they would have been, if Tramiel hadn't thrown his toys out of the cot when Gould pushed back at his plans to make it a 'family' business.

Tramiel was bad in other ways too, including burning home computer vendors in his war against TI etc. But that was a minor issue compared to the fatal blow he struck against Commodore by leaving and setting up in competition against them, taking the best engineers with him and the driving force needed to get things done. Of course Gould floundered - he was no leader. He was the purse strings, the long-suffering investor who bailed the company out whenever Tramiel screwed up. So of course he turned to others to do the job, and of course they screwed up too. Commodore was tuned to Tramiel's leadership style, and duplicating or changing that would be difficult. Few, if any, potential CEOs had the skills to do it well.

Nevertheless, despite all the problems Commodore had after Jack left they still managed to do a great job of realizing the Amiga - as Jay Miner himself admitted - achieving respectable sales figures with the A500 and A2000 to build up a loyal user base and continuing to develop both the hardware and software for another 9 years, resulting in arguably one of (if not the) best true home computer lines ever. Not a single Amiga model was a dud technically, which was unusual for Commodore. Their biggest problem was financial, a curse that followed them throughout the Amiga years and was the primary thing holding them back and ultimately their demise - the unfortunate result of Tramiel's actions.

We can speculate all we like about how much better Commodore might have done in a perfect world, but given the cards they were dealt I think they did pretty good. I for one am very happy with my Amiga models and would love to own the rest of them too - if I only I had the time to appreciate them. I can't say that about any other home computer line, and I have many of them. Many Amiga fans don't realize how much worse it could have been.

Last edited by bhabbott on 02-Nov-2024 at 03:12 AM.

@matthey

Thank you Mathhey for good and objective overview of complex topic
what Amiga was, what CBM plans were and what is current situation.

Development of new m68k like Apollo 080 or mixed bags with ARM
like A600GS and PiStorm gives a bit of hope of either m68k comeback
or ARM transition (since parts of Pi and A600GS code are getting ARM)

What is sure is that PPC is completely dead with not even FPGA successors, except
expensive IBM POWER which is overkill for current AOS-MOS-AROS abilities even combined.

So real choices remain m68k and ARM. There is nothing wrong with PPC it just failed due to breakup of Alliance (by Apple first), loss of MS support beyond NT4, increased loss of Linux support. Even MorphOS is looking to jump away, AROS did it, and AmigaOS is increasingly developed for strong RTG m68k style again.

This makes OS4 situation quite dubious, even A1222, FE update 3, some very late games ((but often also offered for m68k RTG)

Too bad Linux ditched m68k unaware there are PiStorm, 080 since that would be source of important software. Linux PPC did make A1 x1000 quite usable and capable machine, unlike OS4. On G5 Mac its usable but slower then MorphOS but offers way more modern apps then OS X PPC. Gladly ARM Linux is current, so maybe ARM transition seems best for both AOS and complementary Linux.
ARM devices seems to rule the world from cheap phones to high end Macs, making even x64 struggle pricewise. Only thing that kills ARM fun is Apple CEO stupidity to solder everything and remove PCI-E to gain more profits.

@bhabbott

CBM failed for more reasons then Amiga. Bad side is legal mumbo jumbo, good side we have OS 3.2, OS4,. MorphOS and AROS that are way beyond OS 3.1 and more HW felexibile.

Amiga chipset was great for 1984 to 1990, but after that having more open concept is a must. And OS 3,.x, MOS, AROS and OS 4.x have nice versatile drivers to utillize some nice hw. Too bad its not one OS and one driver feature model - some long desired AOS5.

Last edited by vox on 02-Nov-2024 at 05:42 PM.

_________________
OS 3.x AROS and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionalism. Learn it harder way!
SinclairQL and WII U lover :D
YT http://www.youtube.com/user/rasvoja