#Future of Amiga
63 messages in this thread
Anybody heard about the new line of Amigas? I read somewhere that there
is going to be Amiga 4000's in the near future. I also read in Amazing
Amiga that the new line of Amigas wont even carry the Amiga name, and
compatability will be very low. Does this mean the Amiga may become
obselete!? The new line will most likely carry all the trademarks of the
Amiga and its great graphics capability, but starting over is very risky.
I wouldn't leave it past C= to do that, but I hope it doesn't happen to all
the loyal Amiga owners out there.
How about this strange line from Doug Barney's comments in the June AW:
[speaking about the new GVP A530 add on for the A500]"With this, you have
an A500 that is not only faster than an A3000 (soon to be old hat)…"
Now what do you suppose that was supposed to mean?
Michael
….from the north coast (go Cavs!)
Michael
Hmmmm… couldn't tell you! Possibly the speed of the A3000 will be
old hat, but I also read the article and Doug seemed quite optimistic.
He better be, Amiga puts bread on his table.
Nothing lasts forever. Imagine how poor the Amiga (now about 7 years old)
would be if CBM had insisted on compatibility with the Vic20! When
currently available RISC based systems are pushing 50 MIPS, do you really
want a new line of CBM systems to be trapped in the 68000 world? If all
Amigas were 68040s, hooray – but they aren't. The future is going off in a
new direction. I hope (and expect) Commodore will follow – and lead as
well. Just so whatever they make can be programmed in assembler!
I think I saw a posting from someone high up in Commodore trying to quell
gloom and doom predictions of the end of the Amiga. One thing I think I
recall was a remark about new Amigas using the best of the new
technologies. I am not sure what that meant, but I took it to mean some
sort of at least hardware compatibility—like the new cards on the A6000,
which are industry standard devices. Maybe the next generation will be
able to use all that cheap hardware. That would be smart.
Neil,
Commodore is very aware that changes and improvements need to be made in
the Amiga line. The Amiga is now >50% of their sales. For them to remain
profitable (they had >$1B in sales last year — first time since the C-64
glory days, and it appears they'll do the same this year) they'll need to
remain competitive.
At the last Devcon many advanced designs were shown and talked about. Many
of this these designs will be available in the future. Nothing in this
industry says still.
-sja
I get several European Amiga magazines, and there has been talk and
articles about a new Amiga series called the A600.
First, the A600 is smaller than the A500, it lacks the keypad. It does use
the 2-meg Agnus and Super Denise, and comes with KS-2.04. The A600HD will
be the same except it will have a 2.5-inch IDE Hard Drive (internal). I
believe the A600HD has a "2.05" which has added supprt for the IDE drive.
There are going to three compatiblity problems:
1) AmigaDOS 2.04(2.05). Programs that won't work under 2.04, won't
work with the A600 series.
2) The ESC. The Enhanced Chip Set, is used in the A600. Programs
that can't work with MORE than 512K CHIP memory, and/or play
with the Denise in illege ways — may not work.
3) Programs that REQUIRE the keypad probably won't work.
However, I don't believe the features of the A600 series has been poured in
concret yet.
Ron.
Yes, and supposedly they are going to have all the chips surface mounted.
This is a cop-out, it saves Commodore money (probably won't see that
yourself) but kills all plug-in chips compatibility, and makes it a lot
less expandible.
Well, I hope whatever it is (and I hope I don't offend everyone) that CBM
is developing will be marketed well. A lot of people will sugar coat CBM's
policy regarding marketing, but when it comes down to it, it is what has
hurt the Amiga most. The Amiga of 1985 was years ahead of anything at the
time, be it PC, Mac, or ST. Unfortunately, CBM rested on its laurels.
And, if you believe what you hear, the next generation of computers which
are due out next year will probably be quite a bit ahead of their time.
The interesting part will be if CBM can market it right. God knows if IBM
or Apple had the Amiga, it would be a household name (the price wouldn't be
too household friendly, though) 🙂
Brad
Brad…
I don't want to address the issue as to whether or not CBM rested on it's
laurels as far as marketing the Amiga was concerned. I honestly can't say
one way or the other, because I don't know how well the Amiga was
advertised. I do remember a few very glitzy ad campaigns, and some very
high end looking literature.
I wanted to point out that you may have discovered the answer to the
dilemma that you raised. If you feel that IBM or Apple owned the Amiga, you
also feel that the price would be higher than it is for an Amiga.
I think it's fair to assume that IBM and Apple sink a fair bit of
percentage of the machine sale into marketing. Commodore, it seems, does
not quite take this approach. Or at least it does not appear that they
charge the customer as much for their hardware, and as a result don't have
as much money left for things like marketing.
Either way, it's a tradeoff. The Amiga is a strong computing platform (not
as strong as the PC or Mac, but strong just the same). Sales continue to
grow, and there are millions of Amigas out there. We have some excellent
software for the Amiga. Sure, we don't have as much software (especially
productivity) as the Mac or PC, but there isn't much you can't do well on
the Amiga, and isn't that what it's all about?
All things considered, the situation could be a whole lot worse. Sure, the
situation can always be better, but it's pretty darn good as it is now.
Jim
True. And your point about higher cost equating with a higher R&D budget
is quite true. However, I think that, hardware-wise, the Amiga is every
bit as good as the Mac or PC. Software is the area where we lack (except
in video,graphics, and animation software). I think my point was that it
CBM does release a new line of computers, I will initially be a bit weary
of it, no matter how great it is. You see, I feel that the A2000 line
should have had a 68020 standard. Yes, it would have added quite a bit of
cost to the machine, but I think CBM could have marketed a machine like
that in 1987 for nearly the price of an A3000 now. The A3000 and CDTV are
another matter. The A3000 didn't, in my opinion, go far enough. Most
people immediately point out the lack of a new 32-bit chip set. I
understand this is a major engineering feat, but the A3000 should have had
at LEAST, in my opinion, standard 24-bit graphics in the form of a board or
on the motherboard. That doesn't necessitate the need for a 32-bit chip
set, but it certainly would have been a great improvement. I won't go into
CDTV, because I think it was a mistake (no offense intended to anyone),
especially with the release of the A600 in Europe (and probably eventually
in the US). For the price of CDTV, you could get an Amiga with a CD drive
(well, it may be a little more). My point is that Commodore's premise that
the CDTV would sell to "computerphobics" was, in my opinion, an erroneous
view. Yes, I agree that it could be worse, that we could have a totally
orphaned computer. But I just hate to see the potential of perhaps the
most revolutionary computer ever released (admittedly, there are other
machines that could claim this) squandered away by a lack of knowledge on
the part of the public.
Brad,
I think your pricing info is a bit off.
When the 2000 was introduced, it sold for $1995 (no HD, no monitor). I
just got off the phone with my (full service) dealer. He's currently
selling the A2000 with 50M HD and 1084 monitor for $1505. He's selling it
with a 40M HD and a 105M HD and 1084 for $1795. The A3000/25 with 50M HD
and 1960 monitor is going for $2585. There is no way that in 1987 an '020
based A2000 could have sold for "nearly the price of an A3000 now".
-sja
And why not? The 68020 chip was around in 87 (I forget the exact year it
came out). I think CBM could have sold a 68020-based Amiga for around
$2600 even then (of course, retail would have been higher, but lets not
forget that the 2500 retailed for $4600 and one could be had for around
$3000.
Working at a Amiga dealership, I see a large percentage of sales come from
referrals by current Amiga owners. Perhaps CBM should encourage that by
offering incentives to Amiga owners when they convince a friend to buy.
Just a notion…..
Hmmm if IBM had the Amiga instead of the PC, it's own price would be steep,
but cheep clones would abound. I still agree with their allowing cloning to
happen as a smart idea for their platform, even if at the cost of a smaller
market share of their own platform. Anywayz, they're advertising of OS/2 is
getting the kind of treatment from its advocates that Commodore normally
gets from Amiga types.
…
Andrew,
Nope….if IBM owned the Amiga…there would be no clones.
The IBM is cloned because there's absolutely nothing special about
it. It's plain jane off the shelf hardware, nothing proprietary at all.
The Amiga on the other hand, has several proprietary components,
thus clone makers can't simply go out and buy off the shelf parts.
Now yes, someone could attempt to reverse engineer the Amiga chip
sets and other proprietary components…but they'd be slapped with a
lawsuit in a heartbeat.
Don
Don,
Of course, if the Amiga gets DIG, and people actually write programs with
it, then I think someone could finally begin making Amiga clones. Killer
ones, in fact. (Perhaps CBM knows this? 🙂
IMO, the Amiga proprietary components are a drag, not a help… because
most software is still too dependent on them.
best – kevin
Kevin,
I'm not so sure of that.
You know, there's talk of computer independant software, device
independant graphics and other similar "independant" ideas. I've got mixed
feelings on that subject. Independant smacks of generic, and generic
smacks of plain jane, unimaginative, so so software.
Don
Yes, (the lawsuit) is what Commodore (and Apple, for that matter) would do.
You may not remember, but the whole PC clone thing came as a result of two
things. First, they contracted out the operating system to Microsoft, who
retained rights to it and could sell it to others (MS-DOS), and second, I
think it was Phoenix who first did the Rom Bios, but anyway, when the Roms
were duplicated, IBM chose not to press it. This may have hurt them some,
but helped the platform immeasurably.
Many companies have tried messing with Apple's Roms, Apple has fended off
all it co with lawsuits or threats of lawsuits. They're still trying…
what you've got to do is document each step of your development process, in
a closed lab, to prove you didn't copy it. Some guy is supposedly close
now.
Commodore doesn't have quite the legal muscle of Apple, but have provided
trouble for would-be cloners, including wrecking one attempt at a laptop
already by not letting them liscense the chips. (Commodore DOES liscense
its chips a lot, particularly for arcade video games that don't threaten
it).
Right now, as much as I hate to say it, the main reason for no Amiga clones
is pr probably because the clone masters in the far east have no desire to
make one. Even the best U.S. based clone makers (like Gateway) get their
parts from various places, primarily in the far east.
Anyways, I think the Amiga (not Commodore-Amiga, the Amiga in general)
would be stronger today if Commodore allowed unlimited cloning. Clone
companies usually come up with a plethora of expansions to original specs,
like new video modes, etc. and all IBM has to do is basically take one that
has been done before, do it, and call it the new standard. But it is
progress.
Phoenix did the first clean room BIOS. When the roms were duplicated, IBM
did press it quite strongly; they put several mfgrs out of business.
Everyone rushed to get hold of a clean room BIOS, rather than the knock
offs previously used.
IBM is also famous for agressively protecting its patents and copyrights
through lawsuits and lawyers. Most computer companies are paying IBM
royalties on one or more of IBM's crown jewel patents. (Did you know they
had a patent on DMA ?) Companies do not do this willingly.
IBM didn't choose not to protect the PC. There just wasn;t much they could
do about it given the simplicity of the hardware design (all off the
shelf components), the simplicity of the BIOS (fairly easy to reverse
engineer in a clean room environment), the public availability of the OS.
IBM certainly wasn't happy about it…remember the licensing arrangements
for MicroChannel, where, ti (to) get a license they wanted each computer
company to pay royalties on all PC compatible machines made, microchannel
or no ?
To clone a MAC would require considerable investment on the part of the
clone maker in reverse engineering the toolbox rom. (256K or 512K of code
is nothing to sneeze at). To clone an Amiga would require comparable
software effort, plus the erstwhile clone maker would have to reverse
engineer three full custom chips, a couple reasonably complex gate arrays,
not to mention the 8520s (which are Commodore Semiconductor custom parts).
The investment required is much larger. So much so its hard to justify
it. (for either machine, actually; that's why most Mac clones seem to
require the availability of actual Mac roms, thus saving all development
effort)
andy
Andy,
The last CeBitt fair in Hanover (a month or so ago) had a company called
NuTek show off a Mac-compatible ROM and base-board. NuTek has been
publically working on a Mac-compatible ROM for over two years and I've
heard that Apple has tried to/is trying to clamp down on them.
However, the claim to have finally succeeded and the package they were
showing at Hanover was supposed to be enough to clone a Mac IIci (or was it
a IIcx?) for about $700. These ROMs were clean-room developed and are
compatibles (you need their ROMs and another item in silicon, plus some
Apple software) not clones.
Things should be getting interesting in Apple land.
-Chas
If its real, yes. I've been to two NuTek showings; the first one had
nothing running, the second was running the XWindow system (and not Mac
applications). I've not heard from anyone who has seen the NuTek stuff
actually running Mac programs.
But, two years is enough to clone the rom set, so it may be real now.
We'll have to wait until they ship to find out if its real now, if its
really clean room, and if they also cloned the disk stuff, or are they
planning for people to get the System software downloaded from the
networks.
There's also Apple's join ventures for the powerbook series, which might
also produce some clones.
The most interesting result in Apple land of cloning will be to give Apple
another chance to reduce its profit margins. 🙂
andy
Thanks for corrections….
No problem; I've been involved with micros since around 1975 (with a
KIM-1) so I've lived through much of the history.
andy
Andrew,
IBM did press the issue against Phoenix…and lost. They could
prove they clean room engineered a compatible BIOS ROM.
Don
I've always been amused at the computer world's efforts to patent "look and
feel." In other markets, this isn't a problem. Yeah, those Korean
knock-offs of Guess jeans were seized a few years ago, but only because
they were counterfeits using the real name. But you can still go down to
the supermarket and buy any number of "clone" shampoos or whatnot, with
bottles, colors and labels that look like the high-priced nationally
advertised product. Indeed, the labels often carry phrases to the effect
of, "If you like [National Brand], you'll love ours." Wonder if anyone at
Lever Brothers has ever tried a look and feel lawsuit? Nutek ought to slap
such a label on its board, if it ever finalizes a working design. "If you
love Apple Macs, try our chips." >>>> Ron Legro / Milwaukee via WHAP!
"Wherever you go, there you are!"
Yeah, but it's easier and cheaper to make a shampoo than a computer. You
don't have to worry about a specific platform (is this rinse compatible
with my favorite shampoo?)… heh.
I'm not sure if this is exactly the case, but I think that with fonts you
can copy another font exactly, but not the name of the font. It may have
something to do with the fact that there are only so many possible
monospace fonts (5×8, for example would have 2^40 possible bits, times 256
for the character set makes (well, not going for different orders)
1.099511627776e+12 * 256 or something like that.
>>Yeah, but it's easier and cheaper to make a shompoo than a computer.<<
I don't know about that. You should have heard my Chemistry teacher talk
about making shampoo (he works for Redkin during the day). Pretty
complicated stuff. 8^)……
<<< Michael Shea >>>>
<<< 76665,3360 >>>>
Yeah, the world's greatest chemists bring us fabric softeners, natural
shampoos, and laundry brighteners while people starve. Can't blame 'em,
they gotta avoid starving themselves first.
Andrew,
Close. Font copyrights extend to the name and _the method of generation_
You can copyright a font that outputs perfectly identical to another, just
so long as it's named differently and the generating code/nethod is not the
same.
This is primarily directed toward scalable fonts. As you stated, you
just have so many bits to play with in bitmap fonts, plus, unless you like
EBDIC and suchlike, ASCII codes limit the range somewhat. 8)
Doug
Thanks for the info. Not that WE'D ever copy a font. My Boss once burned
out his eyes trying to get the right look from an old VT terminal so that
his VT font would look right….. I'd rather not try that, personally.
Andrew,
It's designed as a low priced, NON expandable machine. If you want
an expandable machine…then buy an A2000 or 3000. The "under the chip
upgrades" are hacks…albeit some well designed hacks…but never intended
by Commodore.
Don
Yeah, designed as "low priced", how come it costs the same as an Amiga500
plus ??? I think Commodore designed it as a "higher profit margin"
machine, maybe expecting slower sales, I dunno…
What's more, it looks a lot less professional too.
A Commodore rep once told me that Commodore had the smallest profit margin
per machine of any manufacturer. I don't blame them for trying to make
money, but I think that this isn't the way to do it.
Andrew,
How do you know what it sells for…since it's not yet for sale?
From everything I understand about it…it's not a "professional
machine", it's a game machine.
Don
This is the price given at the show it debuted in, also listed in Amazing
Amiga.
Don,
Last Friday, I attended the AMIGA SHOPPER SHOW at Wembley Exhibition Hall
in London, and the Amiga 600 and Amga600 HD were on display in the
Commodore booth, and were also for sale at many of the booths. As best I
can recall, the list price of the 600 was 399 pounds, but the machine was
rather heavily discounted at the show. They were selling, too. I saw
large numbers of people taking them home. The ones available at the show
had either floppies only, or else had 20M hard disks.
The technical spec sheet, which I did bring home, says the preocessor is
the 8000/7.14Mhz, 1M of memory expandable to 2M with an optional A601 card,
three co-processors (Graphics, Video, Sound and Port); one integral 3.5"
floppy; AmigaDOS 2; ports for one PCMCIA-card slot, programmable parallel
and serial ports, standard parallel/serial ports; two control ports for
Mouse/Joystick, graphics tablet, or Ligthpen; stereo audio, RGB
anagloue/TTL, color composite video, TV modulator. It has a 78 key
keyboard, standard 1-button mouse, can have one external 3.5" floppy. It
measures approximately 354mm x 244mm x 66mm, weighs approximately 2.35kh,
has an external power source, and can be expanded with a stereo color
monitor, external floppy, 20M IDE hard drive, and parallel printer.
The computer is small and portable. The size is excellent for taking
around, and having a hard disk installed makes it extremely handy for
taking to meetings, travelling, etc. Since it has the internal TV
modulator, it could be used with a TV in a motel, for instance, or with one
of the tiny portable TV's. It weighs more than the notebook Toshiba that I
took with me to England – but not a great deal more.
I think we will have to wait and see what becomes available for that PCMCIA
slot. There were rumors around the show of several interesting options for
that.
Incidentally, Mr. Dionne of CBM USA was there. I talked with him for a
while at the show. He said there were going to be some interesting
[ MORE ]
OOpe!! the processor was 6the 68000. I didn't proofread that message very
well. May I blame it on jetlag?
Betty
Betty,
Jetlag…sure….Welcome Back!
Don
Betty… "standard 1-button mouse"??? I hope this is a typo.
I suspect that was about as BAD a job of typing as I ever did! It has a
standard Amiga mouse. It uses the 68000 chip. It has the new ECS chips,
but is basically like a 500 without a number pad. Cute little thing.
Biggest problem is lack of expandability, but I suspect someone will find a
way around that, just as they have with the 500.
By the way, I saw a 500 running from a tower at that show. I believe the
tower was from Innovatronics, but they had it running with a bridgeboard
and all sorts of other goodies.
Betty
[ continuation ]
announcements, products, etc. in the USA in the near future. Among other
things, he was there to enlist UK exhibitors for the Commodore show to be
held on the West coast this fall.
Betty
Don,
Don't be suprised if all future Amiga products go to surface mount
technology.
-sja
Steve,
That wouldn't surprise me…it's cheaper to manufacturer, and CBM
is backing off of board level repairs…they're simply swapping them
out…so no big deal there either.
Don
We were told that everything in the A600 is surface mounted except the ROM
chip. Even the I/O chips (and I was told that they were new ones) are
surface mounted. Hope the new ones are more stable than the 8520's.
Betty
Betty,
Yes, that's the issue that scares me most about going surface-mount on
the A600 (otherwise, it's a great idea!): Those 8520's. Since CBM uses them
as fuses that go when you pick a little too much static at your computer
desk, simple replacement is imperitave. But maybe CBM has added some
protection diodes surrounding the chips or something. Let's hope so;
replacing a motherboard for an 8520 failure in an out-of-warranty machine
would cause a few complaints, I'd think.
Thanks for the report!
Karl
– via Whap!
I have a sneaking feeling that CBM is listening to these complaints and
worries. Now whether they _do_ anything about them is another matter. But
we all can hope that they switch to PLCC (or something similar) sockets….
Brian
– via Whap!
Brian,
Even if CBM listened to my concern about blowing 8520's, their marketing
guy's solution to the problem would be to remove the mouse and joystick
ports. 😉
In a cynical mood,
Karl
– via Whap!
Naw, They'd remove the floppy and serial ports first!
Anybody notice that Matthew Leeds said his farewell to the Amiga in
the latest MicroTimes?
Oh dear. What did he say?
Mostly "This will be my last regular Amiga column," and "I'm very
disappointed in the lack of progress for the Amiga." The "hooker"
text on one page says "…I'm still waiting for Commodore to figure
out how to advertise the Amiga…." On the other, it states, "…The
number of Amiga developers who could be counted as true successes is
small, and most of them diversified with development on other
platforms."
It's worth looking for — MicroTimes May 25, 1992, page 30-31.
Erv Bobo, most recently the Amiga columnist for Computer Monthly,
recently signed off the same way, flaming Commodore and slow Amiga
development and sales growth. Just a hunch, but I think the farewells
in both cases had more to do with personal professional
considerations than with the state and fate of the Amiga. After all,
Computer Monthly still has an Atari ST column!
Now who's going to step in for him? I've written to MicroTimes on
occassion only to rebut something published (ie: Video Toaster 1.0
users having no way of converting their work to TIFF format for them
to publish the work in MicroTimes.). It'd be quite an adventurous
step to write for them full time. Who's up to it?
I'd love to do it! I think that my writing skills are up to it…is
MicroTimes online here? How do I contact them?
Ron,
All three items you've mentioned as compatability problems are not
problems. All three are programming problems and should be corrected by
the authors of the programs, not by Commodore.
Don
When I referred to them as problems, I wasn't accusing CBM, just stating
that these "situations" will pop up.
Ron.
yeah, thanks. Small things like that can run up to serious trouble for the
average sized amiga software development company. We recently took some
heat for charging $9.95 to get 2.0 versions of some of our programs, after
we said they were 2.0 before. A last minute tinker before 2.04, for "future
compatibility" reasons (amigados 3.0?) caused this, and even so it cost a
ton getting different bunches of disks back in, and we had a deal with
Commodore UK (who had no idea), that required massive re-copying of
masters, etc., and got tons of angry letters saying it was our fault, etc..
No prior documentation from Commodore had ever stated that this change
would be made, or that this one routine had anything wrong, until is was
made.
what was done was done, it's over now, and if necessary we'd do it again
(what choice is there), but you gotta realize what things like these can
cause…
– anyway, just letting of some steam. The above paragraph represents my
personal opinion and has nothing to do with my company's policy..
Andrew,
You're complaining to the *wrong* person. I have NO sympathy for
MSS and any problems they may have. It's personal, so if you are
interested in following up … do so via EMail.
Don
YEah, I guess that seemed a bit…hasty. I apoligize.
Andrew,
Could you be a 'bit' more specific? Which routine was changed at the
last minute?
Oh, the structure we got our mouse coordinates from. We got something in
AmigaMail eventually that listed it among things that were now illegal. One
of the IDMCP structures. I can get the exact reference if you want.
I didn't mean to sound so upset in the previous message.
Andrew,
Yes, I would like the exact referenc (I don't want any of our stuff
breaking). Thanx.
Okay, hang on till next msg. If it didn't break yet, it won't break.
Apparently this was a routine most people didn't use. Once we knew what it
it was, it was no trouble to do it otherwise except getting it to everyone
who had older versions.