From: mjp3783@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Subject: Re: Amiga Future?!?
Reply-To: mjp3783@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 05:21:16 GMT

In article <1100@se.alcbel.be>, magu@se.alcbel.be (Mike Aguilar) writes:
>
>
>Hi guys,
>
>Reading about the "dying Amiga" and not being able to do anything about it
>except shout at Commodore is depressing.  But maybe there's something else
>we can do ...
>
>One of the reason for the PCs dominance was the proliferation of its 
>compatibles. Why can't the Amiga have a compatible?  Who says it can't,
>Commodore?  I'm sure most of you will agree that Amiga is not just Commodore.
>
>Remember how the Amiga was rescued from its early demise by faithful
>programmers who filled the PD market with a lot of their goodies?
>
>Thats the software part of things.  Aren't there any hardware hackers who
>could hack up a similar Amiga hardware from off-the-shelf chips, and of course
>add in improvements/innovations etc... that Commodore lacks.  Maybe if we
>start a discussion on this topic, someone might pick things up and give
>Commodore some competition.  And competition in the PC (+compatibles) market
>is what's giving them the edge over the Amiga, right?
>
>If anything, that discussion would provide us something more educational
>than a post that whinges on Commodore's inadequacies.
>
>
>--
>  // Mike Aguilar                          Phone: (32) 3 240 4289
>\//  email : magu@se.alcbel.be             BELL ext. 4289


It would be hard/impossible to do without the Amiga custom chips that C= makes
and sells. Consider the prices on those + the price of the memory,drive,etc and
the 500 is a real cheap machine. The emphasis for such a product would have to
be higher end. 

Now, on the other hand, I think that one of the major advantages the PC market
has is in CHEAP peripherals. The $50 disk drives and $10 serial/parallel cards
make the finished machine MUCH cheaper. How many people keep an "off the shelf"
Amiga for very long? Not many. What I think might be more productive/easier
would be a line of dirt cheap high quality peripherals ala the hardware hacks
going around. Look at what AE did - they sold a HD 3.5 for $250 and actually
sold a bunch of them. NOw imagine if some enterprising person made a HD 3.5 for
the Amiga and sold it for, say, $90. Same price as current dd's. Not a bad
deal! How about the serial/parallel hacks? Why can't someone make one and
market it (actually, this idea came up in c.s.a.datacomm and someone has a
working (I think) solution that they are building - I volunteered to write the
software end). Now if that were to be marketed for <=$100, how many people do
you think would buy one? How many people have already bought the C= board or
the ASDG board for way too much? How about a service to upgrade a machine to a
PC tower case (imagine - we could sell a 500 modified to be in a tower case
with a 150-200 watt power supply for $550-$600)! And so on. I only wish I knew
enough about hardware to do it...
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| Michael Phipps == mjp3783@ritvax.isc.rit.edu (R.I.T.)            |
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy