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The trio Amiga, ST and Macintosh all had music software, DTP and graphics, but I think they ruled one craft each: The ST became the king of MIDI. The Amiga wa

by Max-q 2y ago

The trio Amiga, ST and Macintosh all had music software, DTP and graphics, but I think they ruled one craft each: The ST became the king of MIDI. The Amiga was the queen of gfx and video. Machintosh created and ruled the DTP revolution. Still, they had so much in common. If the three companies had made one OS and all standardized on the Amiga chipset, they could have won over the IBM PC. Of course, back then, they didn't know how the PC would crush them all, at that time the three thought they were each others biggest competitors.

snek_case 2y ago
It's kind of insane that the Amiga didn't do better, given it had much better graphics and sound than the PC at the time. It effectively had some simple accelerated 2D graphics. It feels like a wasted opportunity.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  this article actually explain it. they didn't understand magazine article sold machines. so simple.
- sixothree 2y ago
  It was literally a matter of expansion and upgradability. People saw it as a “micro” with vendor lock in.
- ChainOfFools 2y ago
  And probably the biggest "like living in the future" advantage out of all, true preemptive multitasking. However with the major Achilles heel of no memory protection; message passing done through pointer exchange was wonderful for insanely fast lightweight contact switching but terrible for system stability.
  - beagle3 2y ago
    It’s not like anything with a comparable price had memory protection - windows at the time was equally unstable and lacking protection, and it didn’t even have preemptive multitasking. The later Amigas (3000 for sure, don’t remember about 2000) did have the memory protection, used e.g. by Enforcer.
    - icedchai 2y ago
      "Enforcer" did not provide full memory protection. It only protected the lower page of memory (which were used as lookup tables by the OS, example: address 4 which was the Amiga "Exec" base address), in addition to some unmapped areas of memory. It definitely helped, but it did not prevent processes from writing all over each other like on a modern operating system.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It had preemptive multitasking when consumer windows was still stuck on cooperative technologies. Where one misbehaving application could crash the whole system.
  - the_af 2y ago
    There is an interesting "History of the Amiga" article in Ars Technica [1], and the sense I got is that the Amiga didn't win out for non-technical reasons. It was, hands down, the best hardware/software combo out there. If I remember the article correctly, the Amiga failed for other reasons. Bad marketing, bad Commodore management decisions, etc. [1] https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/ https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/
weebull 2y ago
Those 3 68000 based machines did ok against the PC until the 486 arrived. At that point all Motorola had was the 68030, and it wasn't enough progression. If the processor line had had more legs, then maybe Commodore and Atari could've remained competitive. I think they both did 68030 based machines, but it was too small a step. Then it became a battle of operating systems.
- icedchai 2y ago
  It wasn't just the 486. It was SVGA and SoundBlaster cards making the Amiga and Atari multi-media capabilities mostly irrelevant. The 486 also made 386 machines very cheap, which obviously worsened the problem.
  - beagle3 2y ago
    Indeed, but it was just enough. In 1995, the PC was finally starting to move from 8-bit to 16-bit sound. The Amiga was capable of 14-bit stereo sound in 1985. It required a trick that only became popular around 1990, but the hardware was capable on day 1. Of note, the C64 was capabale of 8-bit sound on day 1 in 1981, but this was only discovered (by Linus Akesson IIRC) around 2010.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Even EGA was good enough for most people - and it was non-interlaced at 60Hz, much better than what Amigas could do back then. When VGA came out, it became clear the Amigas couldn't keep up with the ecosystem around the PC.
    - vardump 2y ago
      Amiga could do 384x240 (64 colors or 4096 color HAM) and 768x240 16 colors 60 Hz without any interlacing. Much, much better than EGA.
    - DerekL 2y ago
      The original chip set (OCS), which debuted with the Amiga 1000 in 1985, could display 320 by 200 in four colors, or 640 by 400 in 16 colors, and the colors selected from a gamut of 4096. This is non-interlaced in 60 Hz. A PAL display would have higher vertical resolution in 50 Hz. It could go up to 16 colors in high res or 32 in low res, but this could slow down other operations.
j45 2y ago
Except, Calamus on the ST seemed to be light years ahead of anything else out there.

by Max-q 2y ago

snek_case 2y ago

It's kind of insane that the Amiga didn't do better, given it had much better graphics and sound than the PC at the time. It effectively had some simple accelerated 2D graphics. It feels like a wasted opportunity.

1oooqooq 2y ago
this article actually explain it. they didn't understand magazine article sold machines. so simple.
sixothree 2y ago
It was literally a matter of expansion and upgradability. People saw it as a “micro” with vendor lock in.
ChainOfFools 2y ago
And probably the biggest "like living in the future" advantage out of all, true preemptive multitasking. However with the major Achilles heel of no memory protection; message passing done through pointer exchange was wonderful for insanely fast lightweight contact switching but terrible for system stability.
- beagle3 2y ago
  It’s not like anything with a comparable price had memory protection - windows at the time was equally unstable and lacking protection, and it didn’t even have preemptive multitasking. The later Amigas (3000 for sure, don’t remember about 2000) did have the memory protection, used e.g. by Enforcer.
  - icedchai 2y ago
    "Enforcer" did not provide full memory protection. It only protected the lower page of memory (which were used as lookup tables by the OS, example: address 4 which was the Amiga "Exec" base address), in addition to some unmapped areas of memory. It definitely helped, but it did not prevent processes from writing all over each other like on a modern operating system.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  It had preemptive multitasking when consumer windows was still stuck on cooperative technologies. Where one misbehaving application could crash the whole system.
- the_af 2y ago
  There is an interesting "History of the Amiga" article in Ars Technica [1], and the sense I got is that the Amiga didn't win out for non-technical reasons. It was, hands down, the best hardware/software combo out there. If I remember the article correctly, the Amiga failed for other reasons. Bad marketing, bad Commodore management decisions, etc. [1] https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/ https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/

weebull 2y ago

Those 3 68000 based machines did ok against the PC until the 486 arrived. At that point all Motorola had was the 68030, and it wasn't enough progression. If the processor line had had more legs, then maybe Commodore and Atari could've remained competitive. I think they both did 68030 based machines, but it was too small a step. Then it became a battle of operating systems.

icedchai 2y ago
It wasn't just the 486. It was SVGA and SoundBlaster cards making the Amiga and Atari multi-media capabilities mostly irrelevant. The 486 also made 386 machines very cheap, which obviously worsened the problem.
- beagle3 2y ago
  Indeed, but it was just enough. In 1995, the PC was finally starting to move from 8-bit to 16-bit sound. The Amiga was capable of 14-bit stereo sound in 1985. It required a trick that only became popular around 1990, but the hardware was capable on day 1. Of note, the C64 was capabale of 8-bit sound on day 1 in 1981, but this was only discovered (by Linus Akesson IIRC) around 2010.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Even EGA was good enough for most people - and it was non-interlaced at 60Hz, much better than what Amigas could do back then. When VGA came out, it became clear the Amigas couldn't keep up with the ecosystem around the PC.
  - vardump 2y ago
    Amiga could do 384x240 (64 colors or 4096 color HAM) and 768x240 16 colors 60 Hz without any interlacing. Much, much better than EGA.
  - DerekL 2y ago
    The original chip set (OCS), which debuted with the Amiga 1000 in 1985, could display 320 by 200 in four colors, or 640 by 400 in 16 colors, and the colors selected from a gamut of 4096. This is non-interlaced in 60 Hz. A PAL display would have higher vertical resolution in 50 Hz. It could go up to 16 colors in high res or 32 in low res, but this could slow down other operations.

j45 2y ago

Except, Calamus on the ST seemed to be light years ahead of anything else out there.