5 ms·
For context: this document describes the design goals for the successor chipset to the AGA chipset shipped in the Amiga 1200 and 4000. If you watch the Deathbed
by mjg59 3y ago
For context: this document describes the design goals for the successor chipset to the AGA chipset shipped in the Amiga 1200 and 4000. If you watch the Deathbed Vigil video of the last day at Commodore there's a brief shot of a prototype, but this never made it to production before Commodore folded.
- gbraad 3y agoThe document was published by Dave Haynie himself, who worked on the design and is also the producer of the Deathbed Vigil video. Haynie was one of the main hardware engineers for later models of the Amiga.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIt's my understanding that AAA was supposed to be the successor to ECS, but business problems forced the creation of AGA, a stop-gap (so they thought) successor since ECS was rapidly becoming too out-of-date to compete with PCs. Commodore never resolved its business problems and the rest is history.
- snvzz 3y agoFurthermore, Ranger, not ECS, was supposed to be the successor of OCS, with much higher specs. Ranger was even finished and ready to go, but CBM management decided against it. It would have shipped around 1988. Management culture of overruling architects was one of many reasons CBM went to hell.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIn Commodore's defense, Ranger needed (at the time) very expensive VRAM to work, and would have made Ranger-equipped Amigas prohibitively expensive.
- snvzz 3y agoThat was CBM's argument line. CBM didn't see value in having the best machine, or being first to market.
- rasz 3y agoVRAM requirement suggests it was BW starved. Easiest was of adding BW without bumping clock is going wider, thats what AGA did. Ranger wouldnt matter anyway with its 7 bit color, planar arrangement like AGA when games went all in on high color bitmaps. Wing Commander runs at ~1fps on AGA (CD32) because of planar to packed conversion.
- ekianjo 3y ago> Wing Commander runs at ~1fps on AGA (CD32) because of planar to packed conversion. Are you sure about that? It was running decently on Amiga 500, I would expect it would run much faster on A1200 hardware (including the CD32)
- rasz 3y agoOk, it drops to 1fps, normal AGA Wing Commander framerate is around 3-6fps https://youtu.be/n5wXmeI8w9k?t=479 https://youtu.be/n5wXmeI8w9k?t=479. A500 is ~2-6fps https://youtu.be/iR1Nc4hLKq4?t=936 https://youtu.be/iR1Nc4hLKq4?t=936 ? and this was full 25pount/$50 retail release game with 85-90% ratings, simply amazing :o
- snvzz 3y agoThe never released AAA, unlike AGA, had non-planar aka packed aka chunky modes. CD32, unlike A1200/A4000, had an extra chip handling many tasks specific to that console, and that chip also had specific hardware for planar to packed conversion.
- actionfromafar 3y agoCommodore biz decisions were, to steal an expression, a Fractal of Bad Biz Design. Even the tragically underpowered CD32 and Amiga 1200 machines would have been twice as fast for gaming if they had 64 kilobytes of extra RAM. Why? They had 2 megs, of "slow" RAM, slow because it shared bus cycles with the graphics and because CPU caches had to be turned off. It they had just a sliver of dedicated CPU RAM, games could have put inner loops in that RAM and achieved 2 to 4 times the speed in many calculations. You could buy expansion RAM (2 megs or 4 megs were common) which did that, but very few customers did, and almost no games took advantage. This was at the tail end of Commodore life, but it's such an obvious example of penny wise, pound foolish decision.
- fulafel 3y agoAn alternative history where Amiga originally shipped at the same or higher price point than Macintosh is interesting to imagine. Follow ons would then presumably have had more budget headroom for advanced custom hardware designs. Less initial users but possibly a shot at longevity.
- snvzz 3y ago"low-end" A500 could have been ECS, with Ranger being A2000-only. Instead, A2000 was that much more expensive, while not adding anything that'd justify its pricing. Insanity.
- icedchai 3y agoSo true. The base A2000 was way over priced. All you got for the extra money was empty expansion slots!
- h0l0cube 3y ago> Management culture of overruling architects was one of many reasons CBM went to hell. I used to be a massive fan of Amiga (still am) to the point where I'd still be waving the banner in the late 90s as my friends all were playing Quake and laughing at me. I've often been tantalized by these 'what ifs', but it's pretty clear in retrospect that IBM PCs were always going to win. IBM (accidentally) democratized hardware expansion with PC clones, so technological advances could be stolen from other architectures, and competition could reduce costs. And, crucially, they already had a massive value advantage by having an excellent suite of business software, justifying their purchase price for many households. Looking at the graphs in this article it's pretty clear they had already won the war by the mid-80s. https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/
- rvense 3y agoIt sounds like you're speaking from the assumption that a monopoly is inevitable in computing - the PC was so good, all other platforms had to fail. But all other platforms didn't fail. If Commodore had run their company properly and delivered viable products, marketed them properly, there are people would have bought them. It's an open question if that could have supported a viable niche business and for how long.
- bombcar 3y agoWhat would have saved the other platforms is what (I argue) saved the Mac - the Internet itself. Unfortunately it came a bit too late (widespread) for too many of the platforms, and Moore's Law finished everything else off.
- ekianjo 3y ago> monopoly is inevitable in computing it's not a monopoly, it's an open standard, which is the opposite of a monopoly.
- h0l0cube 3y agoPrecisely. IBM PCs also had a software ecosystem and brand around delivering business value. Just like Mac did. They both survived because of this. Once those ecosystems are established, it's hard to supplant them.
- icedchai 3y agoIt’s pretty sad how the platform stagnated until 1992 with AGA. ECS didn’t add much. AGA was too little, too late.
- b112 3y agoI touched an AAA, Amiga3000 prototype Dave Haynie had, in an elevator.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- detrites 3y agoWell, that's a bold move.