3 ms·
No system with the number of custom ICs found in the Amiga is a self-sufficient design. The ultimate self-sufficient design is the IBM PC. Today, right now, yo
by snakeyjake 3y ago
No system with the number of custom ICs found in the Amiga is a self-sufficient design.
The ultimate self-sufficient design is the IBM PC. Today, right now, you can find a compatible version of every single component used to manufacture the original IBM PC sitting on a shelf somewhere for sale.
Try replacing a Gail, Paula, Alice, or Lisa that's gone bad in an A1200.
- timbit42 3y agoWhat makes the design of the IBM PC ultimately self-sufficient relative to other early designs like the Apple II, MITS Altair 8800, TRS-80, etc?
- pjmlp 3y agoIt was mostly off the shelf components, except for the BIOS, hence why they were so easy to clone after Compaq's sucessful reverse engineeering of it. IBM tried to take over its lost property with the PS/2 MCA architecture, but it was largely ignored.
- timbit42 3y agoYes, but the ones I mentioned, and many others, were also all off the shelf components. Why was the IBM PC "ultimate" relative to them?
- actionfromafar 3y agoHave an upvote, but I didn't mean what old chips you can get off the shelf right now. I meant what you could build with a budget and a chip factory. There are so many Verilog and FPGA implementations of Amigas to start from. (Related note: the Draco "Amiga compatible" ran AmigaOS and "well behaved" programs, even though it didn't have the custom Amiga chips, just the m68k processor.) The Amiga is in a such a sweet spot, because you can do all "modern" things like web browsing, developing with an IDE, play movies and music etc etc, while still being very simple and easy to understand. IBM PC clones win on the "easy to understand" front but they are clearly from a previous era. Amigas are somewhere in between...