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Yes really. The clone market made PCs very cheap. Certainly a lot cheaper than anything 'Amiga.' Atari ST had poor expansion; you could get a clone PC with 8

Yes really. The clone market made PCs very cheap. Certainly a lot cheaper than anything 'Amiga.' Atari ST had poor expansion; you could get a clone PC with 8 expansion slots for the same price, plug in whatever you needed, leave out whatever you didn't. The market spoke.

icedchai 8y ago
Cheap, but not capable. You should price out an Amiga 500 and an equivalent 286 PC (VGA, SoundBlaster, etc.)
- djur 8y ago
  There were a lot of business users with no interest in the Amiga's A/V features, though. That was the strength and weakness of the PC platform -- it was adaptable for a lot of different use cases, in exchange for being worse at most of them than more specialized (or more expensive) platforms.
  - orionblastar 8y ago
    The Amiga 2000 series had ISA slots and IBM bridgecards to run DOS and Windows on the Amiga. Commodore also had the PC Colt series PC compatible systems cheaper than IBM and Compaq etc. The Commodore name and reputation of selling C64s in toy stores made businesses not see the Amiga seriously. There also was that Amax Mac emulator for the Amiga as it used the same CPU as the Mac. But all people could see was the AV part not the other parts.
    - icedchai 8y ago
      Don't forget Commodore's marketing was so terrible, they were lucky if anyone saw the Amiga at all! The only reason I knew about was a fellow BBSer convinced me it was a much better deal than anything Apple was producing at the time.
      - orionblastar 8y ago
        Commodore nickle and dimed marketing in the USA. Computer stores blackballed Commodore products because the VIC20 and C64 sold in toy stores.
- orionblastar 8y ago
  By the time the VGA and Soundblaster came out as affordable (the early 1990s) the Amiga 500 sold for $299 and was replaced with the Amiga 600. Commodore was hit hard by PC cloners but could mass produce their computers cheap. About 1/3 rd the price of the Macintosh at least so did the Atari ST series. A 286 was not as powerful as a 68000 with the coprocessors.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    Yep, 286 was pretty lame. 68000 w/coprocessors "felt" on par with a low end 386... though clearly it still lacked in raw computational performance.
    - orionblastar 8y ago
      It has a low overhead to run faster than DOS Windows. IBM ruined OS/2 by sticking to 16 bit mode for too long and not support enough apps and drivers. Microsoft had a better sdk as well. The Amiga ran games better than even a 486 thanks to coprocessors multitasking events.
- flomo 8y ago
  Yeah, back then IBM was charging ridiculous margins, and so everyone else was charging merely fat margins. Depending on what brand and sales channel, PC prices were all over the place. And they certainly weren't priced for the consumer market. And people were paying for the big heavy cases, expansion slots, full keyboards and etc. Amiga didn't look the part. (And neither did Apple until the Mac IIs came out.)

icedchai 8y ago

Cheap, but not capable. You should price out an Amiga 500 and an equivalent 286 PC (VGA, SoundBlaster, etc.)

djur 8y ago
There were a lot of business users with no interest in the Amiga's A/V features, though. That was the strength and weakness of the PC platform -- it was adaptable for a lot of different use cases, in exchange for being worse at most of them than more specialized (or more expensive) platforms.
- orionblastar 8y ago
  The Amiga 2000 series had ISA slots and IBM bridgecards to run DOS and Windows on the Amiga. Commodore also had the PC Colt series PC compatible systems cheaper than IBM and Compaq etc. The Commodore name and reputation of selling C64s in toy stores made businesses not see the Amiga seriously. There also was that Amax Mac emulator for the Amiga as it used the same CPU as the Mac. But all people could see was the AV part not the other parts.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    Don't forget Commodore's marketing was so terrible, they were lucky if anyone saw the Amiga at all! The only reason I knew about was a fellow BBSer convinced me it was a much better deal than anything Apple was producing at the time.
    - orionblastar 8y ago
      Commodore nickle and dimed marketing in the USA. Computer stores blackballed Commodore products because the VIC20 and C64 sold in toy stores.
orionblastar 8y ago
By the time the VGA and Soundblaster came out as affordable (the early 1990s) the Amiga 500 sold for $299 and was replaced with the Amiga 600. Commodore was hit hard by PC cloners but could mass produce their computers cheap. About 1/3 rd the price of the Macintosh at least so did the Atari ST series. A 286 was not as powerful as a 68000 with the coprocessors.
- icedchai 8y ago
  Yep, 286 was pretty lame. 68000 w/coprocessors "felt" on par with a low end 386... though clearly it still lacked in raw computational performance.
  - orionblastar 8y ago
    It has a low overhead to run faster than DOS Windows. IBM ruined OS/2 by sticking to 16 bit mode for too long and not support enough apps and drivers. Microsoft had a better sdk as well. The Amiga ran games better than even a 486 thanks to coprocessors multitasking events.
flomo 8y ago
Yeah, back then IBM was charging ridiculous margins, and so everyone else was charging merely fat margins. Depending on what brand and sales channel, PC prices were all over the place. And they certainly weren't priced for the consumer market. And people were paying for the big heavy cases, expansion slots, full keyboards and etc. Amiga didn't look the part. (And neither did Apple until the Mac IIs came out.)