From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: I DID giev up on the Amiga!
Date: 23 Jul 92 13:06:31 GMT
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries

In article <1992Jul22.133417.4121@cs.olemiss.edu> skip@cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.054538.8070@uwm.edu> gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
>
>>: wasted on the C64 line, but then again we do hear rumors about the C65,
>>: the C256, etc. and there is that stupid "console" that was sold in the UK.
>>
>>Some people really don't think it was stupid.
>
>I was in the UK last summer and saw those things for sale at fire-sale prices
>because Commodore was going to drop them.  Had they introduced it a few years
>earlier when Nintendo was starting out, they might have had something.

Does anyone remember the Max Machine (I think it was called)?  That was
announced at the same time as the C64, and was a 64 with a membrane keyboard
and something like 16k ram.  It was to sell in the console market, but there
wasn't much of a market in 1982, so they never released it.  It does show,
though, that Commodore had been thinking of games consoles for the past ten
years at least.  Pity they didn't stop thinking and act sooner.

>>: It would also be pretty stupid for Commodore to spend lots of money on
>>: R&D for the PC line, but I wouldn't put it past them.  If anyone with a
>>: screwdriver can put together a PC clone, I'd hope that Commodore could do
>>: the same without too much trouble.  What are the PCs like?  Are they
>>
>>They're some of the best PC's made, and I've heard that from people
>>all over Germany.  PC's by C= are considered by a lot of people to be
>>some of the best systems made.
>
>That is great if you live in Germany.  If they are so wonderful, why don't 
>they sell them in the U.S.?  It has been some time since I've seen a Colt,
>PC10, PC20, or whatever they are calling them now.

They also sell them in Australia.  The newest 386SX machine in particular
looks very nice, and the price was suprisingly competitive when I saw one in
a department store in Brisbane last month.  A friend of mine, who works in
the store, says that they sell several Commodore PCs for every Amiga.  They
also sell IBM PS/1's at the same place, and the Commodore PCs outsell them by
a wide margin.

>>"Funky parts like the Amiga line".  Oh boy.  The Amiga doesn't use
>>"funky parts".
>
>I've yet to see a PC or Mac that uses ZIPs.  I just added another 4M to 
>my A3000 and it was definitely much more difficult than just popping in
>a SIMM.  

ZIPs are hardly a Commodore invention.  It's not as if I hadn't heard of them
before the A3000 came out.  It could be worse - they could be using SIPs, or
maybe custom SIMMs you can't get anywhere else.  You can get ZIPs from just
about anyone who sells memory.

>Use that wonderful programmable ECS to display a 640x480 16 color screen.
>Wow!  That is exactly what stock VGA is!  The palette for VGA is larger
>you say?  Well believe it or not it is easy to go from 18bits to 12bits.
>Sure, you do lose a few hundred thousand colors, but for things like
>DOS and Windows it wouldn't be much of a problem.

Agreed, but Bridgeboard screen updates are already slow enough without going
to a 16 colour hires screen.

>But what about the
>320x200 256 color mode?  Well doesn't the mighty Amiga with its wonderful
>programmable ECS support 320x200 in 4096 colors?  The Amiga is the almighty
>video wonder, so surely it won't have problems with the simple little
>stupid non-programmable VGA displays.

You know as well as anyone that HAM is quite different to a direct-mapped
256 colour mode.  The software would have to approximate as best it could,
and that would be far too slow to be usable in real time.

>I purchased my A3000 with the intention of buying an 040 board soon after.
>Several people from Commodore were predicting that 040 boards for the 
>A3000 would be easy to build and would sell in the $1000 range.  That
>sounded great, but here it is over a year later and nothing is available.
>Of course there is such a great selection of two and one of those is
>from the company who claims that the A3000 has buggy chips and that the
>Zorro III bus is not fast enough for their video board.

Actually, one of the GVP people at the WoC, Sydney, told me that a Zorro III
design was entirely feasible, and he said that one may well be on the way, no
promises, though.  I take it that this was a marketing decision, designed to
sell accelerators.

>I am not so sure that C= can put out an 040 Amiga.  They were supposed to
>be one of the first with an 040 system, yet NeXT and Apple have shipped
>their second generation systems before Commodore can ship one.

Why do you doubt their ability to design systems?  What evidence is there?
All I see is that they made a strategic decision to focus on the low end for
a while.  That doesn't say that they can't build a high-end system, only that,
for whatever reason, they choose not to.


-- 

David Meiklejohn                  | Internet : davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au
Computer Systems Officer, QDPI    | Fax      : +61 70 92 3593
Mareeba, Australia                | Voice    : +61 70 92 1555
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy