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“It didn’t use standard parts” is a silly criticism of a personal computer in 1985; to a first approximation there were no standard parts yet, as MS-DOS/x86 was
by eschaton 6y ago
“It didn’t use standard parts” is a silly criticism of a personal computer in 1985; to a first approximation there were no standard parts yet, as MS-DOS/x86 was still in the process of driving CP/M-80 out of the commodity system marketplace. Even keyboard layouts weren’t fully settled: Look at the layout of the Amiga 1000 keyboard vs Atari ST and the later Amiga models.
And monitors were always different—though you weren’t actually limited to Commodore, any 15kHz analog RGB display would work!—because resolutions were always advancing. Expecting to use (say) a CGA monitor with Amiga is just silly, it’s insufficient for the output. You could also always use composite out or an RF modulator if you really had to use a different display that wasn’t 15kHz analog RGB.
Finally, one of Commodore’s big selling points for Amiga was PC compatibility: One of the pieces of launch software was official Amiga-badged PC XT emulation software, and one of the pieces of launch hardware was a 5.25in PC-compatible floppy drive. Commodore explicitly promoted that you could exchange documents with and even run MS-DOS, unlike most other systems at the time.
- DanBC 6y agoYes. There were loads of home computers and they all had slightly odd things about them. One of the main selling points of one range of home computers (the MSX range) was standardisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
- justin66 6y agoPC compatibility is either "silly" or a "selling point," but it can't be both.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago> Finally, one of Commodore’s big selling points for Amiga was PC compatibility: One of the pieces of launch software was official Amiga-badged PC XT emulation software, and one of the pieces of launch hardware was a 5.25in PC-compatible floppy drive. I had to go hunting for this one; I didn't remember the Amiga 1000 launching with a software PC emulator, but I found what you were referring to, "Amiga Transformer"! But I confess I definitely don't remember it being a "big selling point", perhaps because from the reports I can find, it was absolute shit, running at the equivalent of 0.3 MHz. What I remember was the slightly later hardware "emulator" for it called the Sidecar; I put "emulator" in quotes because it was, well, basically a complete PC XT clone.
- ChainOfFools 6y agoit was mostly a bandaid of hype to tide people over until the Amiga Sidecar was ready, which was essentially a full 8086 pc in an add on box. IIRC it used some rather expensive dual-port ram as the interface between the two systems by which the PC side's display and basic I/O could be merged into the Amiga UI. This later became the rather more elegant full ISA compatible Bridgeboard used in the 2000 series Amigas. I am fairly sure a comparable x86 software emulation solution existed for the contemporary Mac of the days, called MacCharlie, which like the software-based Amiga Transformer was useless for anything other than a proof of concept demo.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoWhile I didn't remember the name MacCharlie, I found the Wikipedia article and the description kind of rang a bell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCharlie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCharlie As it turns out, it's a hardware device more like the Sidecar, except from the description much worse. :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]